12th February, 2019. History of Public Parks, 26.

Thomas Hayton Mawson (s.p.b.) published his autobiography in 1927 (by which time he was suffering from Parkinsons Disease), this cataloguing his 50 year career as a garden, park and town designer. The book was entitled The Life and Work of an English Landscape Architect. This self-taught gardener was, in 1923, to become the first President of the Institute of Landscape Gardeners. The Royal Horticultural Society, ‘the world’s leading gardening charity’ had been formed back in 1804 so the two organisations were to run in tandem (the picture above, from the internet, shows the cross-section of a greenhouse design for the R.H.S. by J.C. Loudon, s.p.b.s). I am not clear as to the story of the I.L.G. but today the design element as well as the horticultural element is presented by a proliferation of professional organisations such as; the British Association of Landscape Architects, the Professional Gardeners Association, the Society of Garden Designers, the Association of Professional Landscapers and others.

Mawson amassed a great deal of archives across his long career, these now held in the Cumbria Archive Office, Kendal (Lake District) where, I understand, the cataloguing is proving to be a very big task.

Two other books written by Mawson were The Art and Craft of Garden Making, 1900 (this title reinforcing a point made in my previous blog) and Civic Art.

One of the many public parks designed by Mawson is Sidney Park, Cleethorpes (North-East Lincolnshire), 1904. Despite many visits to Cleethorpes I have tended to keep to the Promenade and foreshore south of the Leisure Centre as well as the area around St. Peter’s church so have not been to Sidney Park, although I know local people speak fondly of it and I have seen a video of the Model Boat Club in action. Model boat clubs became a feature of many public parks with lakes, East Park, Hull being another example. Victoria Park, east central London (s.p.b.s), claims to have the oldest model boat club with a continuous history.