How the Prince of Wales Park took pride of place in Bingley

Land for Peel Park was conveyed from the Tolson family of Bolton Hall in 1852 for £9,000, an ornamental private park, of 61 acres, later conveyed to Bradford in 1863.

The Bingley Park was created and built by the town’s people.

The public parks movement came from the 1838 Select Committee for Public Walks. Their remit was ‘to find the best means of securing open spaces in the neighbourhood of large towns, for the healthful exercise of the population’.

The drinking fountain is a popular feature in the park (Image: Allan Mirfield)

Such space above Bingley was Brown Hill’s moorland and quarry workings. The 1861 Enclosure of Gilstead Moor’s 348 acres awarded land for agriculture but some plots became villa sites for Bradford’s wealthy merchants.

Unwanted, the 10 acre central section of moorland and former quarries was to be allocated. Few plots went to commoners, so it was given to the ‘Labouring Poor’.

Public meetings in 1862 together resolved that, with the agreement of the Enclosure Commission, the 10 acres should become a public park for recreation, also the adjacent eight acre plot, should be purchased from the Tolson family.

That plot was conveyed to William Ferrand and 20 trustees for only £174. Permission given, it was, in 1863, that William Ferrand turned the first sod on Brown Hill for the park, on the wedding day of HRH, the Prince of Wales, hence the park’s name.

Allan's book looks at the history of the park (Image: Allan Mirfield)

Its trustees, from gentry to workers, agreed park rules, banning gambling and alcohol. After two years of voluntary labour, on June 6, 1865, the park was officially opened and a grand gala took place in the adapted quarry’s Ariana.

By 1866, walks, gates and walls were made, thousands of trees were planted.

Mr Waddington is recorded as following a plan, sadly never archived. The work was financed partly but significantly by workers having contributed £300 from tin collections in mills and factories plus a valuation of their park work.

In 1866 a stone drinking fountain with drinking cups was donated by the Bingley Total Abstinence Society, with their inscription ‘Bingley Pure Water Be Mine’.

A variety of trees from Sandringham rewarded the hours given by the workers in the royally named Prince of Wales Park. The trustees were delighted to receive 53 trees from the Prince of Wales, which arrived at Bingley railway station in November 1866.

The Nicholson plinth with a bust of John, the Airedale poet, was unveiled in 1870 near the drinking fountain but the terracotta bust did not last long! In1872, the park developed with ideas for swimming baths, lakes and statues, yet it needed a man, with lodge, ‘to keep order’ but money to build was not available and could not be borrowed.

More than 10 years later the lodge was built, with a loan of £1,000 from the Charity Commission. In 1888 the Market Hall and Stocks were relocated from Bingley Main Street to the Ariana, to be returned in 1984, leaving a playground.

The Hall, the ‘Beehive’ shelter and stone buildings were shown on an 1893 Ordnance Survey map which showed the actual layout of the park as no other existed. It also showed the Barden and Nidd subterranean aqueducts which run through the park, over which some paths were constructed.

In 1920, two captured First World War guns were presented to Bingley in a national scheme to reward war efforts. They were soon dispatched to the Prince of Wales Park, but in 1940 removed for scrap.

In the 1920s, concerts were held in the park and accounts showed the costs of the park’s gardeners employed. Few park records for the1930s exist but, post Second World War, came the re-installation of gates and railings.

In 1957 Bill Wilson arrived as a fully qualified head gardener. He worked with a small staff but made major changes. Having found the park’s two natural springs, he constructed two small lakes and an attractively landscaped cascade in his 20 years’ service He was the last gardener to live in the lodge, together with his family.

Tranquil waterfall cascade in the park (Image: Allan Mirfield)

For the last 10 years the park has been maintained and developed by the Friends of Prince of Wales Park to whom the community should be immensely grateful.

* Email allan.mirfield@blueyonder.co.uk for a copy of his book, Prince of Wales Park: The People’s Pride of Place, priced £15.