Gheluvelt Park, Worcester

The following is from the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest. For the most up-to-date Register entry, please visit the The National Heritage List for England (NHLE):

www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/

The battle of Gheluvelt was an early engagement in the First World War. The British Expeditionary Force had established a line to prevent the German forces reaching the Channel ports. On 31 October 1914 the Germans broke through this line and the 2nd Battalion of the Worcestershire regiment was sent to plug the gap and did so with a bayonet charge in the grounds of the Chateau at Gheluvelt in Flanders. They pushed back the German force of more than a thousand men, but with the loss to the battalion of 34 men and 158 injured. The victory was seen by many as highly significant, and a turning point in the early history of the war. At the opening of the park, on 17 June 1922, Field Marshal John French said that 'on that day the 2nd Worcesters saved the British Empire'.

In the C18, the land on which Gheluvelt Park was to be laid out was owned by the Cookes family who leased it to a Mr Garaway. It was apparently used as a fuller's yard for making sailcloth, with seven or eight ponds fed by the Barbourne Brook. At this time the land nearest to Barbourne Road was described as a ‘whitening yard' and a building which straddled the brook was perhaps used as a mill or in connection with fulling.

Barbourne House, with its park and grounds, was built and laid out during the late C18 and Revd. Thomas Cookes is recorded as living in the house in 1788. The house was located on the site of the current Nos. 7-12 Gheluvelt Park and to its west was a service yard approached along the route of Lavender Road, which was then a private driveway. The house and grounds were sold to JP Lavender, a banker who owned adjacent land, in 1838. At this time there was a kitchen garden to the west of the service yard and a lawn to the south of the house, surrounded by shrubberies. At the southern foot of the sloping lawn was a fish pond, with the Barbourne Brook flowing through it, which is likely to correspond to the present pond and, below a weir, was a further fish pond or stew, described in later sales particulars as ‘anciently a bath'. To the west of the garden was a paddock with trees and to the east was a meadow. Lavender sold the house in 1881 and it became a school, known as Barbourne College, recorded as such on the Ordnance Survey map of 1904. The gardens of the college featured the Barbourne Brook, which flowed across the land and had been diverted to create the large pond which still exists in the park and would appear to be part of the C18 layout. To the east of this was a large lawn on the site of the former 'whitening yard' with a circular pathway, sometimes referred to as ‘the meadow'. In 1909 the site was again on the market and Worcester City Council considered buying the land, but the First World War intervened. The sales particulars reveal that the kitchen garden still existed, and there is mention of a croquet ground, apparently in the middle of the former meadow area, and of tennis courts.

The Worcester City Council General Purposes Committee minute books (see sources) show that it was agreed to buy the land and the college buildings for £2,300 in January 1918, and to accept the mayor's offer to subsidise the purchase. The committee minutes reveal further progress: on 6 September 1918 Alderman Alfred Hill Parker, an architect with an office in Worcester, presented a plan for the layout of the park, and it was also agreed that the land should be known as Gheluvelt Park in commemoration of the significant victory won by the Worcesters. By 1919 a resolution had been passed to start on the layout and to deposit refuse on those areas where the ground needed to be raised and to give manual labouring tasks to the unemployed. An estimate for £3,230 to lay out the park was presented by the borough engineer in February 1920. A broad roadway was planned in front of the homes for ex-servicemen, and land to the west, which included the former pleasure grounds and paddock of Barbourne House, was raised by the tipping of town waste to create a series of four terraces with turf slopes or rockeries on the northern side of the park, gradually sloping towards the brook and the pond on the south side. The terraces were also intended to form an amphitheatre, looking towards the planned bandstand, which was not initially designed to sit on the island in the pond, which had been intended as a refuge for wildfowl. In March 1920 it was decided to include recreation areas, amongst them a children's playground and a tarmac 'beach' to the south side of Barbourne Brook, plus six tennis courts. These alterations, as well as the need to make the bed of the brook safe for children by means of a concrete lining, pushed the estimated cost up to £4,540. The mayor offered a drinking fountain in October 1922 so that children would not drink out of the brook, and in May 1923 the High Sheriff of Worcestershire, Alfred Wiggin, gave the bandstand to be set on the island in the pond, while a third donor, Mr James Ward, offered the bridge to get to it. Twelve houses for ex-soldiers and seamen, also designed by Alfred Hill Parker, were built along the northern side of the park in 1919-20. From November 1919 there had been discussion of the placing of a tank in the park as a feature, including the practicalities of removing its engine and regular cleaning. It seems to have been placed to the east of the Servicemen's houses, in the centre of a large, oval flowerbed, but was removed at some time in the mid-C20. Horticultural advice was given by Earl Beauchamp's head gardener from Madresfield Court, Mr Crump, although he declined to oversee the work.

The layout of the park appeared to be reaching the final stages in October 1923 when the turfing of the tennis courts and gravelling of the paths were discussed at a meeting, together with the employment of a ‘superannuated policeman' to keep order at band concerts. In January 1924 the siting of the arch was agreed upon, set close to the road and with a fence of oak pales marking the rest of the boundary. In April 1924 a motor mower was bought and in September swings and see-saws were approved for the children's playground; these various expenditures seem to have marked the completion of the park in its initial incarnation.

Later work included a greenhouse, bought in 1925, and the tea house to the west of the tennis courts which was gifted by Richard Cadbury in 1925. In 1928 a putting green was laid out and a miniature railway was installed which survived until the 1960s. In May 1939 a new house for the park keeper, including a public lavatory block, was planned by the city surveyor, CI Carey Walker, and built on the north side to the west of the servicemen's homes. The wooden shed for the Sons of Rest (an organisation for retired servicemen) was built in 1953 to the west of the servicemen's houses to commemorate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. In 1963-4 it was found that the brook was being polluted by local industry and it was consequently enclosed by hedging and a new paddling pool was built, to safeguard children's health, to the south of the servicemen's houses.

The park suffered damage from flooding in 2007 from the River Severn and the Barbourne Brook. A grant of £810,000 was made by the National Heritage Lottery Fund in 2010. Resulting works in the park have included the replacement of the railings along the Barbourne Road, the renovation of the Bandstand, the replacement of the former paddling pool with a new water feature, the building of two concrete table tennis tables and the restoration of the lavatory building in the south-east corner of the park. A war memorial in the south-eastern corner was commissioned from Plincke Landscapes at a cost of £33,000.

Type

Park

Purpose

Recreational/sport

Principal Building

Parks, Gardens And Urban Spaces

Period

20th Century (1901 to 2000)

Survival

Extant

Hectares

3.92

Open to the public

Yes