The earliest suggested occupation of the Queen’s Park site is a reference by local antiquarian, Arthur Passmore, who nearly a century ago, excavated part of what is believed to have been a Roman building on the north slope of the Old Town hill (old Swindon) in what is now Queen’s Park.
Before the park was developed, it was a popular haunt of local people including a young Diana Dors and Desmond Morris.
Queen’s Park covers an approximate area of 12 acres or 4.9 hectares (The lake area covers approx 2 acres (0.8ha) and was acquired in stages by the Borough Council between 1947 and 1962 as a pleasure ground under Section 164 of the Public Health Act 1875. The park was laid out in 2 main phases between 1949 – 53 and 1959 – 64 by the Borough Architect, J. Loring-Morgan and Maurice J. Williams, the General Superintendent of Parks.
Queen’s Park is considered by English Heritage to be of sufficient historic interest to be placed on the ‘Register of Parks & Gardens’ as a grade II site in 2001 because it is a representative example of a public park laid out in the immediate post war years and developed further in the early 1960’s.
Queen’s Park was designed to be a modern park and to reflect the informality of the 1960’s rather than the Victorian splendor and formality of Town Gardens.
The aim was to create a garden where cultivated plants / trees can be grown in natural surroundings with an atmosphere of freedom and space characterised by glades and vistas created by the non-symmetrical planting of trees and shrubs.
Today Queens Park holds an impressive collection of ornamental trees and shrubs.
Around the 1870’s, the area between Drove Road and Victoria Road, later to become Queen’s Park, belonged to a local builder and brick maker called Thomas Turner. Turner was responsible for producing a variety of local, distinctive dark red bricks and ornate terracotta embellishments that make his buildings so recognizable. Examples of his work can be seen on the outside of a pair of houses nearest to the park at 148 -150 Drove Road. These were known as the “catalogue houses” as they displayed the range of products made at the works.
Turner lived in a large brick house in Drove Road near the entrance to his brick works in what is now called The Grove.
Swindons rich railway heritage left their mark on the town in more ways that one. Unsuccessful attempts in the latter part of the 19th century to create a tunnel joining the Great Western Railway to Swindon’s other railway – the Midland & South West Junction Railway (M&SWJR) through the Old Town hill aggravated what was already an unstable portion of hillside. Originally, the railway planned to buy The Lawn and route the line near to the old churchyard at Holy Rood. However, the Goddard’s refused to sell and work started on the alternative plan involving the tunnel in 1875.
Progress was slow due to the complex geological structure of the hill with its bands of stone, sand and sandy clay as well as a high water table with many subterranean springs that caused frequent collapses. Work struggled on but finally stopped in 1876 and the area filled back in and houses built on top (Hunt St). There is little evidence that work ever progressed beyond the digging of a very substantial cutting as shown on the 1886 OS map. However, rumour has it that following one collapse, several railway trucks were buried and left in the tunnel.
Further major landslips occurred in 1931, 1951 and 1982. Swindon Corporation carried out a limited site investigation in the 1970’s relying on a single borehole. The scheme included the construction of a deep land drain near Hunt Street in an attempt to reduce ground water flows. Further attempts were made to stabilise the ground by a variety of operations, the last and the most expensive was carried out by Thamesdown Borough Council in 1982 at a cost of some £2 million.
Engineering works were carried out to stabilise and drain the slope using a series of very deep drainage trenches spread across the slope in an attempt to reduce the water pressure. The water flow from these deep trenches was recorded at 37,000 litres a day (9,700 gallons). Work proved very difficult like the railway engineers before them with the trenches prone to collapse. The trenches vary in depth but are generally 6m deep and placed at 6m intervals with a pipe at the bottom to collect the water before discharging into the lake. The trenches were backfilled with free draining stone, which left over an acre of unsightly limestone scree in full public view in one of the borough’s finest parks and the loss of the circular walk around the lake.
The challenge for the Council was therefore to devise a reclamation scheme that restored this area of the park to its former glory while ensuring the slope’s continued stability. The design had to use negligible weight and could not interfere with the newly installed land drains. Such factors placed real constraints on plant growth.
The Garden of Remembrance, located off Groundwell Road, was officially opened by Princess Elizabeth on the 15th November 1950. This was also the Golden Jubilee year of the Borough and the event is recorded on a plaque just inside the entrance gate. The Garden was created to commemorate those who fell in the Second World War (1939 – 45).
The original garden was refurbished and altered a number of years ago when the two ponds were filled in and new paving laid. The garden is aligned exactly to view the Christ Church spire on N/S axis although the view today is partially obscured by trees.
The derelict land and lake to the south of the Garden of Remembrance was subsequently laid out as a public park using funds from the Coronation celebrations in 1953 and the whole area renamed Queen’s Park.
A re-dedication service was held on the 29th August 1997 when a new plaque was unveiled.
Maurice Williams was the General Superintendent of Parks from 1949 to 1975 and is widely credited with transforming the derelict clay pit and surrounding wilderness into Queen’s Park. A plaque on the outside wall at the entrance to the Garden of Remembrance commemorates this achievement with the words “If you would see his monument, look around”
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