Bygone Burnley: Thompson Park

Burnley Express

Bygone Burnley: Thompson Park, with historian Roger Frost MBE 1-5-25

Transcript

00:00Today we're in Thomson's Park in Burnley. It goes back to 1930, but the story of it

00:09is a little bit older. James Whitton Thomson of the Thomson family, the textile firm,

00:17who were involved in constructing the Thomson Centre, now demolished, and after which the

00:25pool in the St Peter Centre is named, he was responsible for setting this park up. What

00:36he did was, in his will, he left £50,000. Unfortunately, he had a tragic death because

00:44he was killed in a motor accident, but a few years after his death, a committee of the council

00:51and other interested parties did something that might surprise you. They travelled to

00:56Blackpool to look at the new Stanley Park in Blackpool. Thomson's Park is designed to feature

01:07many of the things that you can see in Stanley Park. Of course, Stanley Park is much bigger.

01:14It contains a cricket ground, used by the county regularly. It used to have an athletics track.

01:21It has even more important facilities, like the Blackpool Zoo. And it's got that feature,

01:30which is really a miniature town in the park. But the park itself is vast. It's tens of acres,

01:42whereas here, we've got 16 to 18 acres. And we're looking at two of the features that people most

01:50associate the park with. That is the lake, which is only small compared to the one in Blackpool,

01:59and the famous bridge, which crosses the lake, halfway along the lake. It is the original bridge,

02:08there's some work being done to restore it in recent years, but it is the original bridge. And of course,

02:18the lake itself is the original lake. James Whitton Thompson was keen that if a park was established,

02:28it should be a facility for the whole town. It wasn't only the lake, which he thought people would enjoy,

02:34it was another feature he liked, was the idea of providing a paddling pool. Now in 1930, when the

02:44park was opened, although the work started a little bit before that, it was very popular to have paddling

02:50pools in lakes. However, because of health and safety legislation, a number of these have been lost. But

02:59here in Burnley, it's not only been retained, it's been refurbished and made safer. And we're looking

03:06today because we've got children in the pool paddling, their parents and grandparents are looking after

03:13them. Things probably couldn't be safer. Now, Whitton Thompson was very keen on this area

03:25becoming a park. He actually is reputed to have first seen it when he was on the top deck of a Burnley

03:32tram. And he looked out of the window, saw Bank Hall, he knew the mine was there, he knew the canal was

03:39there. But beyond those two and between both of them, there were trees. And he thought that would be a

03:47great area to have a park. And he made that known. But of course, he died before he could put it into

03:54effect. The last thing I will say from where we are now is we've got the Boathouse. This is also

04:02original to 1940. It opened in 1931. And it's not only the Boathouse. At various times a year, it provides

04:12refreshments. It's a refreshment room as well. So, that. We're in the Italian gardens now and people

04:20often ask me, why are they called Italian gardens? They look at the columns in the, as you can see,

04:27they're Doric, Greek in other words. But they're called Italian gardens because of the way the garden

04:33was planted. It's got nothing to do with the architecture or little to do with the architecture.

04:39When it was first built, just ahead of us, there used to be a fountain and pond. And the

04:47little gardens themselves were designed to look not only colourful, but colourful all year round. And

04:56we've got a picture, which we'll show you, of the Italian gardens as it was in the 1980s,

05:03before the recent work had taken place. So, the Italian gardens are so-called because they represent

05:11the Italian gardens of medieval Italy, where there were architectural features. They might well have

05:21reproduced Doric columns like this, but other features. Sometimes they actually designed buildings

05:32to look old or to look as it in ruins. So, if you go to Rome, all the buildings that you see in central

05:39Rome were classical. Some of them were built as ruins in gardens and parks. So, this is the Italian garden,

05:47which, thank God, we've managed to keep and retain. It's been restored in the last half a dozen years.

05:58We're now at the Nature Railway, which is a very important feature of the park. And I'm afraid I'm

06:06being a bit big-headed here, because in 2005, this is the extension loop, which, when I was mayor,

06:14I opened. And, of course, we have the first official journey. It's only about a nine-inch gauge,

06:22as you can see. And I don't think they've ever used steam engines in large numbers, miniature steam

06:28engines. But it is a really good, fun facility for the park. We're standing in front of the pavilion,

06:36which is another of the buildings that was erected in 1930 to 31. But we're benefiting with what the

06:45purpose of the pavilion was. It was to have a view of the lake, the boathouse, the paddling pool,

06:54all of which we can see from here. And when it was first built, this was the restaurant,

07:01the park cafe. But cafe doesn't really match. It was more than a cafe. Good food was served here

07:10by people in black and white uniforms. I've got photographs of them in the 1930s, just before the

07:17war. Then, of course, after the war, things were different. And the council used to give contracts

07:25to ice cream merchants. And the firm that came to this park, as we say, Thompson's Park,

07:35was a favourite ice cream merchant in Burnley, CC's. Now, all Burnley people will remember CC's.

07:43I went to school and sat beside Tony CC in class. Unfortunately, I believe that he died now.

07:52But this is where he served his ice cream from. And of course, he had a little mobile unit that was

08:00over where the paddling pool is in front of where I am now. The other thing to mention about this site

08:07is that we're very close to the old conservatory, which was built again in 1930, copying one in Blackpool

08:18and another one in Blackburn, and a third in Liverpool. And Burnley was very proud of its conservatory.

08:26But during the war, the park was the victim of a bombing. Now, there was only one bomb fell in the park,

08:38but it destroyed all the glass in the conservatory and a lot of the windows in Burnley College, which

08:44was near to it. So it's behind where we are now, between here and Ormrod Road. And we'll include a picture

08:52of a man standing in the bomb crater, which was created in the Second World War.

08:58And incidentally, it was the nearest bomb dropped in Burnley to the canal, only a few yards away.

09:08But if it hit the canal, all the town centre, or a lot of it, would have been flooded.

09:14And that was the one thing they wanted to avoid, because there were a lot of town centre buildings

09:20involved in the war effort, industrial firms making bombshells and all sorts of things for the military

09:28and the army, navy and air force. Burnley contributed to all those. And so they didn't want a bomb

09:38to hit the canal, and there were special security arrangements put in place to make sure that if

09:44the canal was hit, minimum damage would be done. There are several entrances to the park, but this is

09:52the main one. Behind me is Ormrod Road, and the entrance was constructed here because of the house

10:02on the other side of the road. It is taller than all of the others, because it's got an additional floor

10:08with a window in it. It was built between 1885 and 1887. The park opened in 1930, so it had been

10:19there 45 years. And the planners of the park thought, we'll make a feature of the park

10:26so that the main entrance is opposite the dominant house on Ormrod Road. And that's what that property is.

10:35Well, we can't miss this feature. We're standing on the edge of the Rose Garden,

10:40which is spring, it's not the Arntine Flower yet, but when they are, the Rose Garden is spectacular.

10:47However, behind me, there is a memorial, which was erected in the 1930s,

10:54to Burnley's beloved physician. He was a man who was really the founder of heart surgery,

11:04and the study of diseases of the heart. He was Sir James McKenzie, as you can probably see on the

11:14information board there. He came from Scotland, like a lot of Burnley's early doctors,

11:21set up in practice on Bank Parade, where the owners of what was his surgery, have just taken down

11:31the plaque to him, which is there. But we're lucky, we have enough plaque to him here,

11:36and the plaque has always been associated with Sir James McKenzie, who my family suffered from heart

11:45disease, I've got angina, so all of us are very pleased that he did what he did in the study of

11:52heart disease. He definitely deserved his night on him.

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