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BCD Special Report
Historic Gardens 2010
11
Stanley Park
and the Gladstone
Conservatory, Liverpool
Adrian Pearson
S
tanley Park, a Grade II registered
landscape, is located some two
miles north-east of Liverpool city
centre in a predominantly late-19th and
20th-century residential area. The site is
approximately 45 hectares, and slopes
away from its southern boundary.
The park’s surroundings are dominated
by the football stadiums of Liverpool
Football Club and Everton Football Club.
Liverpool’s ground, Anfield, abuts Anfield
Road on the Park’s southern boundary,
while Everton’s Goodison Park lies across
Walton Lane beyond its north-west corner.
Stanley Park
Stanley Park was one of three municipal parks
conceived together in the mid-19th century to
provide Liverpool with attractive open space
for citizens of all classes, but specifically for
the working class. At that time the city was
growing at a phenomenal rate in a generally
unplanned and uncoordinated manner.
Public open space was extremely limited. The
successful development of the highly influential
Birkenhead Park (1843–7) by the towns’s local
rivals provided the spur for the development
of a grand plan to form a ring of parks around
the city limits. Although not fully realised,
the plan’s outcome was the creation of three
great Victorian municipal parks: Sefton in
the south (André and Hornblower, 1872),
Newsham in the east (Kemp, 1868) and Stanley
in the north (Kemp and Robson, 1870).
Stanley Park is arguably the most
architecturally significant of the city’s parks.
The park and adjacent Anfield Cemetery
were designed by Edward Kemp, a pupil
of Joseph Paxton who had assisted with the
design of the landscape at both Chatsworth
House and Birkenhead Park. His proposals
combined many of the features laid out at
Birkenhead Park and Sefton Park. The result
View of the restored conservatory and bandstand in its new landscape setting