Bygone Burnley: Scott Park, with historian Roger Frost MBE
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00:00We're in Scott Park today which I think is Burnley's best park. It's an urban park surrounded by housing. Some of the best housing in Burnley. In fact just behind us there's a backstreet which people in the old days used to call Swank's Roll because it was a backstreet to really good domestic residential property.
00:26However, talking about the park, it was Burnley's second park. The first was Queen's Park. This was opened in 1793 if I remember correct. It might be in 1795. It was 1795 and is named after a mayor of Burnley who was known as Hargreaves Scott, James Hargreaves Scott.
00:55And he left in his will £10,000 for the people of Burnley to build a park. He had already helped Burnley in his official capacity. But we'll talk about him when we look at his memorial.
01:12The park that was created took a little bit longer to build than it was intended.
01:21The designer was the park keeper at Queen's Park who was called Murray and the plantings that you see are all based on his designs and they survived very well because the council, when a tree has come to the end of its life or when it's been damaged in a storm, they've replaced them.
01:44And kept the park kept the park like it was. And you can see exactly what Murray wanted to achieve. An urban park with views of the open countryside and from here we can see parts of the Pendle area, Pendle Hill and the valley around it.
02:04OK.
02:05Yeah, just one correction Roger, it was the 1890s wasn't it, not the 1790s.
02:10What?
02:11When it was opened.
02:12Did I say 1790s?
02:14Yeah.
02:15Can I repeat it?
02:16No, that's fine, 1890s.
02:18We're standing in front of the memorial that was built by Burney Corporation to the man who is the individual that the park is named after.
02:33This was Alderman, as you can see, John Hargreaves Scott, JP. He was a member of the old commission that ran the town before the Burney became a borough. He was elected to the first council in 1862.
02:55He was chairman of several committees and it's due to him that Burney's sewage works was undertaken. He constructed the first sewage works at Bond when he was chairman of the committee and he had a particular interest in the arts.
03:14And so when Burney mechanics decided that they would need a school of art, he gave the land upon which the school of art is built. And of course that is now part of Burney mechanics.
03:31If you look at the building from the Scarlet Street, the York Street entrance, you can see that the mechanics is really two buildings. The old mechanics of 1855 and then the school of art of 1871, which Mr. Scott was very much involved in.
03:54However, his name has come down to us through the park. He left £10,000 when he made his will in 1880. He lived another year or thereabouts and the funds were passed for the maintenance of his widow when she died.
04:14And I think that was in 1884. And I think that was in 1884. A committee was set up, which included councillors and friends of Mr. Scott. And they looked for a location for a public park.
04:27The first one they looked at was in Eighton Hill. And there is a park there and we've already looked at that in this series. But a few years later, the house upon which this park is located became available.
04:48That was Hood House. That was Hood House. It had fairly extensive gardens. The rest of the area that was purchased for a park had two farms on it. And they were both remembering names of streets and other features around the park.
05:08But Hargreaves was an interesting man in his own right. He was a descendant on the female side, his mother's side, of Hargreaves, the inventor of the spinning jenny.
05:25He was born in Blackburn in 1809, but came to Burnley as a boy when his father died and his mother remarried. She married a watch and clockmaker on St. James Street.
05:40James was put to the business and when his stepfather died, he took over and moved the business to Manchester Road. It was very prosperous, very successful business.
05:54And he became a leading citizen of the new developing industrial town of Burnley.
06:05In the park there is a feature which doesn't really survive now and it's a great pity. It's called the battery and we're standing where the battery was intended to be.
06:18In Victorian parks there were often places where field guns were placed. They were often taken in battle, rather like in Burnley, field guns from the Crimean War in which Burnley men had fought were taken.
06:37And they were placed near what became Bank Hall Park, the area around the old maternity hospital.
06:49Now here, they never bought the field guns. But the intention of this was to get people to come up to this level. The trees, remember, were newly planted.
07:02And then, looking in the direction I'm looking at now, over the bandstand and the children's play area, you could see all of the Ribble Valley.
07:12Right over from Long Ridge, Ingleboro and Wormside in the background. It was a magnificent view. And we might just be able to see it on the highest paths which are to our right.
07:27But from here, this is where people were encouraged to climb up the steps that we've just come up and see the countryside around the area.
07:41To remind them that Burnley wasn't just an industrial smoky town. It was in a beautiful part of the country.
07:49And people in late Victorian England were very conscious of that. The railways had just opened. They had easy and cheap access to the countryside.
08:04And this reminded them of it. It was a very important social development in the town.
08:10Acknowledgement that we weren't just industrial. We were part of something else. Part of something that was beautiful and God created.
08:21We're at the bridge over Sepp Clough. This is the stream in the background.
08:28When the park was opened, the stream, which was a natural stream, it originates up near where the golf course is now.
08:36Burnley golf course. And they made it into a feature of the park by creating four pools with waterfalls in each of them.
08:49And the one that we're looking at now had a fountain in it. And we'll include an image of the fountain when it was in full use.
08:57Now it's a great pity that the council has not been able to maintain these features because they really were very attractive.
09:07And the postcards that we've got show some interesting waterfalls and a fountain, shall I say. Not some. Only one fountain.
09:19And a fountain which was a feature of the park to such an extent that people used to come just to see the fountain.
09:26The fountain.
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