“We Have Gone Recreation Mad”: The Consumption of Leisure and Popular Entertainment in Municipal Public Parks in Early Twentieth Century Britain

Abstract

This study examines the development of popular entertainment in the municipal public parks of a variety of British cities in the early decades of the twentieth century. It seeks to extend the debate about the social role of the urban park beyond the Victorian period and to challenge the idea that parks were mere mechanisms for social control. Their later developments were more complex and offered an increasing variety of popular entertainments such as dancing to a more discerning leisure consumer. In so doing, park managers found themselves in direct competition with private leisure providers and attempting to anticipate future trends in an expanding leisure population. The article concludes by considering how the determination to broaden the recreational value of the public park ultimately weakened its unique character and began a long cycle of decline.

‘Sing, sing! Why shouldn’t we sing?’ Popular music in the age of the music hall

“…Across the country brass bands played regularly in local parks and at seaside resorts. 6 They were but one, albeit the most prominent, part of a range of local music-making activities that embraced concertina bands, bell-ringers and amateur orchestras. 7 There was a more irreverent tradition of music making, variously known as 'Waffen Fuffen' or ' Jiggerum, Juggerum' bands, which echoed earlier mummers' performances.…”

A Park for the People: examining the creation and refurbishment of a public park

“…First, they provided a means of addressing contemporaneous miasmatic theories of disease by ensuring the provision of 'large sanitary "lungs" to stem the progress of epidemics' (Reid, 2000, p. 763). Secondly, they provided a means by which to 'civilise' and 'improve' the working-class, for example, through so called 'rational recreation' 2 (O'Reilly, 2013). Thirdly, various speculative development schemes had started to use parks to improve the value of the houses being developed (Layton-Jones & Lee, 2008;Sharples, 2018).…”