Alan Barber: champion of the people's parks
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Sarah Jackson
Alan Barber, who died in February 2011, fought for many years to reverse the late 20th-century decline in public parks. Sarah Jackson talked to him in 2008 about his experiences at the heart of the system and the need for root-and-branch reform.
Alan Barber Alan Barber has spent his life in parks: working in them, campaigning for them, and latterly playing in them with his grandchildren. They are, he says ‘one of this country's greatest cultural achievements', but they have been betrayed.
With a combination of practical expertise and reforming zeal, Alan has fought unceasingly for better public understanding of the value of parks, together with dedicated funds for their upkeep. His work has helped to secure the millions of pounds spent on restoring public parks in the past decade.
Born on 11 June 1942 in Southport, Lancashire, Alan began work at the age of 16 as an indentured apprentice with Southport Parks Department. His love of wide open spaces was engendered by a childhood playing in the sandhills around Birkdale and Southport, and was reinforced by an awareness of his father's hatred of nine-to-five office life.
‘His escape from the drudgery was to grow chrysanthemums. That got me interested in growing stuff, so he bought me a greenhouse that I erected myself when I was about 14 and I grew plants to sell to the local florist,' recalls Alan.
Early on, Alan showed signs of the dissenting nature that has led him always to question the system and those in authority.
‘The local council's idea of day release was to shove us in the back of classes at the local technical college for anything they could find that was even remotely relevant. We rebelled because we'd heard that in Liverpool their apprentices went to a proper class where they got taught botany and horticulture, and we insisted we be part of that!' he laughs.
Leaving Southport at the age of 21, Alan went to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in 1963, where he completed two years before deciding that he'd had enough of being a student and needed to earn some money in order to get married.
He got a job with the Lancashire playing fields service, where his boss was delighted to recruit a technical officer with Kew training. ‘He wanted school grounds to be much more horticultural. It's common now, but it wasn't then,' explains Alan, ‘so I was designing schemes for the front gardens of schools as well as doing the basic work.'
While there, Alan learned the ancient art of dowsing, which was used to detect old drains beneath playing fields. Each area manager would travel with a pair of copper welding rods bent at right angles in the back of the car. ‘We got accused in the profession of practising black magic, but we said scoff as much as you like, because it works!' he laughs.
Moving on to Middleton Borough Council (now part of Rochdale, Manchester) in 1968, Alan's third job had the grand title of Deputy Director of Parks and Recreation and Deputy Registrar of Cemeteries and Crematoria. ‘But the grade was AP3 and the salary was only about £1200 per annum,' he grins.
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Anglesey Abbey England, Lode.
Formal and landscaped gardens of 47 hectares (116 acres) dating from 1926 onwards, surround the former 13th-century Augustinian priory. The garden features a notable collection of statuary, herbaceous borders, a dahlia garden, island shrub beds, and arboretums of conifers and deciduous trees.
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Birkenhead Park England, Wirral.
Birkenhead Park is a mid-19th-century public park occupying 90 hectares. It features parkland, woodland and meadows as well as two lakes and sports facilities.
It is reputed to be the oldest public park in England, and elements of its design occur in Central Park, New York.
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Claremont England, Esher.
Claremont has 18th-century landscaped pleasure grounds and a park. Features include a lake, amphitheatre, grotto and water pavilion.
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Craig y parc Wales, Cardiff.
The house and garden are integrated into a strongly axial design, taking full advantage of the southward slope. The garden survives in its entirety, is well preserved, and is a very good example of this type of architectural Edwardian garden.
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Hall Place, Bexley England, Dartford.
Hall Place is a Grade I listed manor house surrounded by extensive parkland on the banks of the River Cray at Bexley. There are formal gardens around the house, with topiary and herbaceous borders. The walled gardens contain a plant nursery.
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Hestercombe England, Taunton.
Hestercombe House is set in 120 hectares of parkland. There is a formal garden of around 3 hectares beside the house, designed by Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll from 1904 to 1908. There is also a landscaped valley behind the house of around 13.5 hectares, created by Coplestone Warre Bampfylde between 1750 and 1790.
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Howick England, Alnwick.
Howick has an early-20th-century woodland garden set within 35 acres of 19th-century wooded pleasure grounds and a 50-hectare late-18th-century parkland.
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Iscoyd Park Wales, Grindley Brook.
Iscoyd Park is a complete, small 18th-century park, although its origins could be much earlier. It has fine specimen trees such as oak, beech and sycamore, and a pond with a mount next to it. The park was enlarged in the 19th century and boundary oak paling erected at that time. There are pleasure grounds around the house.
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Little Sodbury Manor England, South Gloucestershire.
Little Sodbury Manor is a garden on a 15th-century site. There are a number of gardens, including a formal garden and a sunken garden. There are also ponds, a kitchen garden, bowling green and many mature trees.
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Prior Park England, Bath.
Prior Park is a landscaped pleasure grounds and park, laid out from 1734 on by Ralph Allen with advice from Pope to 1743. There are terraced balustraded steps by Goodridge, dating from 1834. These replaced terraces by Allen and Pope. Other features include a Palladian bridge, two gate lodges and a grotto.
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Sydney Gardens England, Bath.
Sydney Gardens occupy a 4 hectare elongated hexagon-shaped site in a residential area to the north-east of Bath. The gardens were opened as a public pleasure ground on the 11th May 1795. They have since been subject to a series of alterations.
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Mayfield Park England, Southampton.
Mayfield Park is a municipal park in the south-east of Southampton with wooded gardens, a walled garden and playing fields.
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Dumbleton Old Hall England, Dumbleton.
The site has humps and hollows in a grass field, the remains of a formal garden which surrounded the 1690s house. An engraving of Dumbleton Hall by Johannes Kip in 1712 shows a formal landscape. A new information panel shows very clearly where the original canals and walkways shown in the Kip engraving were.
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Glandyfi Castle Wales, Machynlleth.
Glandyfi Castle is a Regency gothic castle built on a commanding site overlooking the Dyfi estuary. It has a walled kitchen garden, a setting of mature deciduous woodland, exotic shrubs, lawns and borders.
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Easton Lodge Gardens England, Bishop's Stortford.
The gardens of Easton Lodge, designed by Harold Peto in 1902, include an Italianate garden, Japanese garden, formal lawns and flower beds, and a rose walk. The gardens have been under restoration since the 1970s.
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Glyn Aur Wales, Abergwili, Carmarthen.
Glyn Aur was a cottage garden with extensive topiary, much of it representing biblical figures and events. It was sometimes known as the Garden of Eden. The garden was open in its heyday but is now sadly lost. There are, however, a number of old postcards based on photographs taken by the then owner, which show the full glory of the topiary.
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Brooksby Hall England, Melton Mowbray.
Brooksby Hall is set in 31 acres of grounds, sloping northwards down to the River Wreake. The estate is the country campus of Brooksby Melton College of Further Education and offers training in a wide range of country skills. It was formerly the county agricultural college. The Hall, originally a late 16th Century country house, was extended in the late 19th century. It houses administrative offices for the College as well as offering conference, banqueting and wedding facilities. In the grounds to the south of the Hall, is the Church of St Michael, which dominates the landscape. Modern college buildings, dating from the 1950s to 1970s are located to the north and east of the Hall. The gardens, which are informal in style, include a lake and a stream. The wide range of planting reflects the College's status as a horticultural college.
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Glenfall House England, Charlton Kings.
Glenfall House has a stream garden through a glen with waterfalls. It is partly accessible under Defra's Farm Conservation Scheme until September 2014. The garden has been supplemented by terraces designed by Norman Jewson.
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James Backhouse (3) was a nurseryman and alpine specialist active in the 19th century. He was a member of the noted Backhouse family of horticulturalists and naturalists and a member of the Society of Friends.
Backhouse was born in Darlington, England on 8 July 1794, the son of James Backhouse (2) (1757-1804).
In 1815, together with his brother, Thomas Backhouse (1792-1845), James Backhouse established James Backhouse & Son of York (and later of Leeds), a plant nursery first based at Telford Nursery, York, on what was once the old York Friars Gardens owned by the Telford family.
James married Deborah Lowe (1793-1827) of Worcester in November 1822. Deborah had been very ill when she was young, and suffered ill-health after her marriage to James. She died at the age of 34 on 10 December 1827, and was memorialised by her husband in A Memoir of Deborah Backhouse of York, 1828.
In 1831, Backhouse embarked on a combined missionary tour and plant collecting expedition of Australia, Mauritius and southern Africa, leaving his two young children in the care of family. During his decade abroad, he corresponded with his friends and family in England, including his brother Thomas who was managing and developing the nursery in his absence.
In 1851, together with his son, James (4) (1825-1890), he travelled to Norway. The two also toured the Arctic Circle and several parts of Great Britain in search of plants. Backhouse died in 1869.
Sources:
Backhouse, James, A Memoir of Deborah Backhouse of York; Who Died the Tenth of the Twelfth Month, 1827; Aged Thirty-four Years (W. Alexander & Son, York, 1828).
Davis, Peter, ?Backhouse family (per. c.1770–1945)?, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/56500> [accessed
21 Nov 2008]- 'The Backhouses of Weardale, Co. Durham, and Sutton Court, Hereford: Their Botanical and Horticultural Interests', Garden History, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Spring, 1990), pp. 57-68.
Hadfield, Miles, Robert Harling and Leonine Highton, British Gardeners: A Biographical Dictionary (London: A. Zwemmer Ltd., 1980), p. 19.
Further reading:
Mary Bartram Trott, 'Backhouse, James (1794 - 1869)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 1 (Melbourne University Press, 1966), pp 45-46.
Also online at: Mary Bartram Trott, 'Backhouse, James (1794 - 1869)', Australian Dictionary of Biography at http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010042b.htm [accessed 12/01/2009] .
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Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, 4th Earl of Cork
Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork, was an architect and garden designer, a major landowner in Ireland and in England, and a great patron of the arts, active in the 18th century.
In England he had houses at Londesborough, in London's Piccadilly and at Chiswick. Boyle was born at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, England on 25 April 1694. He died on 3 December 1753 at Chiswick and was buried in the family vault at Londesborough on 15 December 1753. Boyle is particularly noted for his patronage of William Kent and for his promotion of the revival of the Palladian style.
Sources:
Colvin, Howard, A Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840, 3rd edition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 147-152.
Kingsbury, Pamela Denman, ?Boyle, Richard, third earl of Burlington and fourth earl of Cork (1694–1753)?, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3136> [accessed 21 Nov 2008]
Further Reading:
Carre, Jacques, 'Lord Burlington's Garden at Chiswick', Garden History, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Summer, 1973), pp. 23-30.
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Eleanor Coade was a remarkable woman who rose to the top of the male-dominated trade of artificial stone-making in the 18th century. Her own brand of stone was widely used in some of the best gardens of the day. Timur Tatlioglu looks at her contribution to the art of garden ornamentation.
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Alan Barber: champion of the people's parks
Alan Barber, who died in February 2011, fought for many years to reverse the late 20th-century decline in public parks. Sarah Jackson talked to him in 2008 about his experiences at the heart of the system and the need for root-and-branch reform.
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