The People’s Park, Banbury, Part II: ‘The Brightest Spot Throughout the Whole History of the Borough’

As we saw in last week’s post, Sidney Hilton, Banbury’s multi-disciplined and talented Borough Surveyor from 1925 had turned the People’s Park in Banbury into a well-used and popular green place for fresh air, recreation and light exercise.  While the council totted up their expenditure on and income from the tennis courts, the putting green and the bowling club annually – and acknowledged their overall losses – they knew that the park offered invaluable green space.

A contemporary map of the park, courtesy of Sacha Barnes Limited

Neithrop House, part of the Council’s purchase from the syndicate in 1918-19, became vacant in 1929.  The Education Committee took on a lease of the first floor at £100 per year as an Infant Welfare Clinic and a school clinic.  In the 1940s this included the treatment of cases of scabies and pediculosis.  Countless schoolchildren went to Neithrop House for eye tests, vaccinations and to the dentist – and to the playground and paddling pool afterwards.  Parents collected orange juice, dried milk, cod liver oil and gas masks.

The cottages in Paradise Square, also part of the original Neithrop House estate, were more problematic.  Paradise was a misnomer.  There were many cases of drunkenness and breaches of the Elementary Education Act, one tap served about 20 households. (1) The Council had other rental streams by then and Hilton had no time for it.  Soon after the Medical Officer had issued closing orders he saw to it that the cottages were demolished and the tenants rehoused in brand new council houses.  Paradise was lost when a new shrubbery and a car park was created on the site of the square.

Hilton’s stone pillars at the entrance to the park from Horse Fair.  Originally there were wrought iron gates.  Photograph May 2019

The design and execution of Hilton’s plans for new walls and paths perhaps best demonstrate his understanding of what the People’s Park is for and how it is used.  The outer boundaries of the park are encircled by paths.  Those in a hurry can walk the length of the park without being distracted by flowers and trees.  Hilton put in dwarf stone walls along the edge of these paths in place of the old high walls and fencing that had surrounded the Neithrop House estate.  Barely noticeable now, it is easy to think that they serve no purpose.  I don’t see it as an exaggeration, however, to say that Hilton’s provision of these walls was the physical confirmation that the park was open for everyone to enjoy.  Originally there were railings set into the top of the walls and some now have privet or hawthorn hedging alongside them.  Even when the park gates were locked, the people of Banbury could see into their park.

An example of Hilton’s dwarf walls allowing a clear view into the People’s Park on the right.  Public footpath towards The Shades on the left.  Photograph May 2019

Hilton demonstrated great foresight too in his provision of paths within the park.  There are no muddy ‘desire lines’; people in 2019 use the same routes provided by Hilton.  He respected the old footpaths in place before the Enclosures – The Leys, for instance – and his paths take people where they want to go: to each exit, to the aviary, to the playground.

And, since 1912, people have treasured the park as a convenient route to the town centre; a pleasant short walk accompanied by birdsong.  What makes the People’s Park so useful to local people then and now is its dual function: a place for leisure and recreation and a quick cut through to work or into town.

As Hilton’s new houses and streets added substantially to the residential population to the north-west of the park, the greater the value of its location.  The Banbury Advertiser in July 1939 carried a headline ‘The Quickest Way to work from King’s Road District’. (2)  

Plans for a new path across the park were described as a plea for something that would save 60 yards and cost £60.  Councillor Jones had carried out his own informal census one sunny afternoon and found that 348 people had walked across the grass.  He felt his research proved that: (2)

the majority of people living in that district were of the working class, who had only a limited time to get home to meals and back to their place of business …..unless a footpath is made there will always be the present eyesore of a mudpath across the field.

The new path went ahead quickly.

The aviary was first put up in 1927 and rebuilt in 1992.  Photograph May 2019

People had enjoyed listening to bands playing in the park since the early days of the syndicate’s tenure.  The council acknowledged public pressure for a bandstand and there were, of course, numerous others up and down the country.  The People’s Park bandstand was opened in June 1932.  A rather grand affair, the money for it was donated by a charitable trust.  Hilton’s design was tailored to the site – on falling ground that forms a natural amphitheatre near the centre of the park.

The bandstand is in the centre of this aerial photograph taken in 1947.  Photograph courtesy of Richard Savory.

Hilton supervised the entire construction by the council’s direct labour force. The rectangular bandstand with a bow-shaped front could house 40 musicians.

The opening of the Bandstand, June 1932 (2)

Fete after fete, rally after rally, parade after parade, a war time nursery and a British Restaurant kept spirits up in World War II.  With little physical damage in Banbury, a shortage of deckchairs in the People’s Park kept the council busy.

With its new facilities in place, the People’s Park was, by the late 1930s, well established as a place of leisure and relaxation.  The reduction in average working hours during the 1930s through to the 1960s only increased its popularity; Hilton’s facilities in the People’s Park are good examples of well-designed facilities provided by local councils to meet a need for local, safe and ordered recreation.

Sidney Hilton photographed in 1954 and close to his retirement.  Plans for his housing schemes are in the background. (2)

The People’s Park had become Banbury’s most popular outdoor venue.

Banbury Grammar School’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was performed in the bandstand in June 1951.  The council gave a grant of £50 towards this production. (2)

Summer music festival 1973, photograph courtesy of Michael Amor

The post-war borough council’s thoughts turned to horticulture.  In the gloomy and cold late 1940s there was a new appetite for municipal horticulture and landscaping.  Mindful of the extent of Hilton’s new housing estates under construction, the council asked the Institute of Landscape Architects for an outline scheme to improve all of their present and proposed parks and recreation grounds, the People’s Park included.  For a fee of 100 guineas the Institute sent a Miss Crowe of London to produce a report. (3)

In April 1947 the council considered her more detailed recommendations and decided that

having regard to the abnormality of the times and the fairly heavy capital expenditure likely to be involved … the further consideration of (Miss Crowe’s) report be adjourned and … that the matter must probably lay in abeyance for a period of at least two or three years.

Miss Crowe’s report is not included in her archives and we do not know her thoughts on the People’s Park.  She had a reputation for producing rushed scruffy sketches bursting with ideas; we can imagine her sketching plans for new trees and flowerbeds in the park, perhaps with Hilton in tow.

Part of Sylvia Crowe’s plans for the Garden of Rest at St Mary’s Church Banbury, adjacent to the People’s Park.  Her plans were implemented by the council in 1950.  Drawing courtesy of the Museum of English Rural Life at the University of Reading.

Sylvia Crowe was born in Banbury.  From the 1930s and in private practice she took on many commissions including projects for nuclear power stations, hospital grounds, colleges and new housing estates.  In 1948 she was the landscape consultant for Harlow New Town bringing Sir Frederick Gibberd’s masterplan for urban green spaces to life.  With an international reputation she is considered one of the great landscape architects of the second half of the 20^th century.  She wrote several books; The Landscape of Power (1958) is her best known.

The 1950s was to see a shift in policy: the Council made a specific decision to designate the People’s Park as an ornamental flower garden while investment in new playing fields went on elsewhere.  The Council appointed a superintendent of horticulture in 1953: an expert gardener with planning and administrative capabilities to take charge of all of their parks.  Tommy Jackson from Winsford, FRHS, was their man.

The People’s Park became the nerve centre of Jackson’s responsibilities.  A new mess room, potting shed, and greenhouses were built.  New lighting and heating systems meant that work would not stop during the winter.  He asked for and was provided with a Land Rover and a garage for it was built next to the potting shed.

Jackson soon had a staff of 17 looking after Banbury Borough Council’s 69 acres of parks and recreation grounds, verges and 16 acres of land in the cemetery.  Three of the men were qualified horticulturists.  In 1958, 4500 geraniums and 32,000 annual bedding plants were grown from seed.  They created extraordinary flower displays in the town’s libraries, public buildings and for the tables at council meetings.  Still something of a blank canvas, thousands of bulbs were planted in the People’s Park.

Jackson created several new flowerbeds in the People’s Park.  Photograph 1958 courtesy of the Oxfordshire History Centre

The Cuttle Brook fed the paddling pool until the water was piped and Jackson turned the course of the stream into an herbaceous border.  The park shelter is in the background.  Photograph courtesy of Banbury Museum Trust.

Council gardeners in the People’s Park greenhouses, photograph from 1965 reproduced in the Banbury Cake 24 July 2003 (2)

An expert horticulturist and perfectionist, by 1965 Jackson needed more skilled gardeners to grow top quality flowers for public displays.  The council received numerous compliments for his spectacular floral displays in the People’s Park.  His influence on the Borough’s housing policy was such that new council housing was offered to three green-fingered applicants to join Jackson to ‘keep Banbury blooming’. (2)

The Council never did revisit Sylvia Crowe’s work.  Her naturalistic designs may have proved more durable and cheaper in the long run but is unlikely to have been as popular as Jackson’s colourful, high-maintenance style during the 1950s and 1960s.

Local Government reorganisation in 1974 put the People’s Park in the hands of Cherwell District Council.  The national government’s Standard Spending Assessment excluded spending on parks and the district council’s approach appears to have been one of damage limitation only; with a scaled down presence in the park there were no real improvements to speak of. (4)

By then there had been a sea-change in the nation’s leisure habits.  Like other medium-sized towns within reach of London, Banbury had become an expanded town; a high proportion of the 1960s suburbs’ first occupants were either from sub-standard or bomb-damaged housing in North London or beneficiaries of slum clearance schemes in Solihull and Coventry.  Households had sole occupancy, security of tenure and good sized gardens.  People enjoyed spending their spare time at home, took up gardening and enjoyed sport and music on television. A trip to the shopping mall on a Sunday afternoon became, in many cases, a new walk in the park. (4)

Hilton’s facilities had a lifespan of roughly fifty years. The paddling pool proved too expensive to clean, the timber shelter was torched, some incidents took place in and around the public toilets leading to their closure. Bands played to smaller audiences and the council demolished Hilton’s graffiti-strewn bandstand in 1988.

The new Banbury Town Council took on the People’s Park from 2000.  A Green Flag was awarded in 2001 but has since lapsed.  The Town Council appears to dislike anything too contemporary; there is no coherent policy on the planting style or the provision of facilities.  CCTV was installed in 2015.  Hilton’s walls and paths are intact; the quality of the infrastructure he laid out for the park in the 1930s is borne out by the hundreds of people who crisscross the park as part of their daily routine.

Neithrop House – Grade II listed – under renovation and conversion to flats and townhouses, photograph 2019

Renewal of paths in the People’s Park, May 2019

Banbury Town Council’s beautiful tulips in May 2019

Financially speaking, Banbury Town Council has no difficulty maintaining the People’s Park at present. (5)  Whether this is publicly acknowledged or not, the park is able to play its part in increasing biodiversity and mitigating the effects of air pollution and, in an era of growing concern about the nation’s physical and mental well-being, it has a positive impact on local people’s health in encouraging short walks with or without the dog, and as a meeting place that can foster social ties. (6)  Above all it is still a place for relaxation – as important to people now as it was to those who joined in the celebrations in 1919.

The People’s Park, Banbury   Photograph May 2019

On 14 July 2019 a Fine Lady on a White Horse will once again make her way through Banbury’s streets to the People’s Park.  A small and peaceful market town in the middle of England will celebrate the park’s 100^th birthday.  It has a name that someone could have come up with yesterday; a name that has never been a nickname but one that was set by its first benefactor, George Ball.  Let’s celebrate the achievements and generosity of its founders and designers.

Sources

(1) Banbury Museum Trust’s Reminiscence Group on memories of the People’s Park, October 2018

(2) Contemporary quotations from the press, unless otherwise credited, are taken from the Banbury Advertiser between 1897 and 1955 held by the British Newspaper Archive.

(3) Banbury Borough Council  Baths, Parks and Markets Committee minutes, 18 November 1946

(4) Travis Elborough, A Walk In The Park (2016)

(5) Heritage Lottery Fund report, The State of UK Public Parks (2014), warned that local authorities faced larger budget cuts for parks than in the late 1970s.

(6) CABE Space, The Value of Public Space (2004)

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The People’s Park, Banbury, Part I: ‘The Brightest Spot Throughout the Whole History of the Borough’

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1920s, 1930s

I’m pleased to feature another guest post from Jane Kilsby who has previously contributed excellent articles on pre-First World War council housing in Banbury and interwar schemes in north Oxfordshire. Jane worked in housing management for councils and housing associations across the country for over twenty years before settling in Banbury over five years ago. Here she writes on the People’s Park in Banbury, a public park celebrating one hundred years of municipal ownership in 2019. 

From the Banbury Advertiser (1)

On 19 July 1919, a Fine Lady on a White Horse led a stunning procession through the streets of Banbury.  In a gown of brocaded plush with an ermine border and a veil of valenciennes lace and in pouring rain, the Fine Lady made her way to the People’s Park to celebrate peace and a new beginning for the park.  Her horse, a white arab charger, had served throughout the Great War and wore the Mons ribbon on his brow.  She was followed by wounded soldiers and sailors, Red Cross hospital nurses, the Fire Brigade, boy scouts and guides, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, the Co-operative Society and many, many more representing the town’s public services and commercial interests.

Unlike a majority of towns in England and Scotland, Banbury did not have a public park laid out in the Victorian period.  Banbury’s Aldermen felt that there was so much open countryside surrounding their town that there was no need for one.  But, as Banbury’s population and industrial activities grew, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions became more common and a place for fresh air began to be seen as an essential.

There are several People’s Parks in England: some of them have proper names too such as Victoria Park in East London and there are larger and much older People’s Parks in Halifax and Tiverton, for example.  Banbury’s People’s Park came about through a combination of late Victorian benevolence, imagination and a sense of public responsibility on the part of the town’s council in the early 20^th century.  Let’s return to the decorated wagons and the large crowd in the park in July 1919 to hear how the story began.

The Town Clerk read out the will of the late George Vincent Ball.  Ball had left a legacy of approximately £3,200 for the Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses of Banbury:

to be applied by them in the purchase of land in some suitable situation near the town as a Park for the recreation of all classes during every day of the week from sunrise to sunset all the year round, to be ornamentally laid out, and called the People’s Park.

Born in Banbury in 1814, George Ball owned a chemists shop from 1844. (1) A borough councillor from 1858 to 1864; the provision of accessible stiles into fields around Banbury was among his achievements.  He died in 1892.

In response to his legacy the borough received offers of land but rejected all of them either because they were too small or the locations were not quite right.  In any event Ball’s legacy was deferred until his sister’s death.  The burgesses were reluctant to raise money via the rates before the legacy was available.  It was to be eighteen years before the perfect opportunity presented itself.

Central Banbury 1882 indicating the location of the People’s Park and the Neithrop House estate. The ‘Old Flower show Ground’ was rejected as a potential site.  Map courtesy of Banbury Museum Trust

The Neithrop House estate came up for auction in October 1910.  The lot comprised the house, gardens and pleasure grounds – about three acres – and six and a half acres of rich turf, stabling, gardener’s and coachman’s cottages, and 19 cottages in Paradise Square.

Neithrop House, a hunting box built for the Croome family in 1839.  Photograph c1988 courtesy of the Oxfordshire History Centre

As a site for their people’s park this was irresistible.  The Council had no funds to bid and did not expect the Local Government Board to grant a loan; the rules on councils taking on mortgages to buy land at that time only applied to sewage disposal schemes.  But, the week before the auction, the Mayor, Joseph Chard, called for the formation of a syndicate.  The People’s Park Syndicate was the only one in Banbury which announced, from the outset, its intention to give no interest or profits to its subscribers. (1)

Within days, the syndicate received a donation of £500 and went ahead in the knowledge that there was no better location and price for a people’s park.  The estate did not meet its reserve; the syndicate bought the whole lot privately shortly afterwards for £5,250.  Ball’s sister, Mrs Luckett, was 83; the syndicate assumed the council would be able to use Ball’s legacy to buy the estate from them before long.

By December 1910, total subscriptions from the great and good of Banbury, including several councillors, were £990 and the final purchase account including conveyancing was £5,305 17s 6d.  A bank loan made up the difference.

People’s Park Syndicate certificate, 1910.  Copy courtesy of Oxfordshire History Centre.

Syndicate members set about managing their estate with competence and efficiency.  They put up sanitary conveniences and did some repairs to the cottages.  Members were able to visit the parkland; some were a little resentful of the 2s 6d they had to pay for a key.  The park was not open to the public; new fencing protected their investment.

The syndicate held some enchanting garden parties.  Photograph 1912 courtesy of The Banbury Museum Trust

Councillor Brooks, elected Mayor in November 1910 and then Chairman of the People’s Park Syndicate, nevertheless saw the syndicate solely as the park’s temporary caretaker.  By February 1912 the syndicate offered the council:

a rent of £80 per annum to include all liabilities… the syndicate will apply any balance of income arising year to year to reduce the ultimate purchase price of the estate.

Councillor Herbert Payne , local housing campaigner, pounced on the syndicate’s proposal.  In the council’s debate on it, Payne pronounced: (1)

three things were wanted in Banbury: a public lavatory, a people’s park and a public library…The place could be made a very pleasant outdoor pleasure resort….  It was easy of access and the splendid trees and undulating turf made it a delightful spot and they (the Council) should encourage the present tendency of taking pleasure in the open air.  There would be no first class, second class or third class; the youngest and oldest, the richest and poorest could meet here.

His fellow councillors agreed that this was a very good deal; some expressed their embarrassment that Banbury did not already have a public park. With a joint committee of council and syndicate representatives set up the council took on the rent of the parkland.

A ceremony was held on 25 June 1912 to mark this landmark in the park’s history.  The Mayoress, Mrs J.Bloomfield, planted an oak tree and, as a symbol of the park’s opening to the public, she was presented with a key.

Only a week later, the Banbury Guardian reported: (1)

The People’s Park is evidently going to verify its name.  Ample evidence of this was given on Sunday afternoon when there was a very large number of the inhabitants taking advantage of this charming ‘rus in urbe.’  Strangers from a distance – as well as residents – were loud in their praise of the foresight of the public-spirited gentlemen who had secured such a sylvan spot for the recreation of the people.

The council continued to rent the park from the syndicate until 1918.

Understandably, no action was taken on the option to buy the estate during the First World War.  In February 1918 the legacy became available on the death of Ball’s sister and, with a bank loan making up the difference, the council bought the park, Neithrop House and the cottages in Paradise Square for £5,186 18s 2d.  The land’s value had doubled during the syndicate’s ownership but no profit was paid to the subscribers.  The council anticipated that the rents from the cottages would, over time, clear the overdraft from the bank; the People’s Park came into local authority ownership without any funds from ratepayers.  The 1919 procession and garden party to celebrate the council’s ownership of the People’s Park was a huge success.

The Banbury Advertiser in 1932 described the whole process of the acquisition of the People’s Park by the council – with its combination of private generosity and public opportunism – as ‘the brightest spot throughout the whole history of the Borough.’ (1)

Municipal ownership brought in some talented and diligent municipal managers.  Recreational facilities, thoughtful planning and ordered cultivation turned approximately eight acres of green fields and trees into a recognisable and well-used public park.

But first there was the need for commemoration.

The cenotaph in the People’s Park designed by T Gardner, FRIBA in 1922. (2) Photograph May 2019

In municipal ownership from 1919 and open to all, the people of Banbury were not the only occupants of their new park.

In August 1917 four sheep were found dead beneath an elm tree after a violent thunderstorm.  Photograph from the early 1920s courtesy of Banbury Museum.

The syndicate had tendered for sheep grazers throughout their tenure of the park.  Equally loathe to waste money on a lawn mower, the council followed like sheep.

Cicely Bailey describes how much she enjoyed the park during her childhood: (3)

there were sheep in the park then and … we children loved them.  They used to wander back and forth, eating the long grass which was sometimes as high as the smaller children.

It was not until spring 1926 that the council enjoyed showing off a new Ransome’s triple mower.

The council wanted to make its presence felt and instil some discipline.  Its byelaws for the People’s Park were approved by the Minister of Health in 1920.  Drying washing, beating rugs, singing, injuring birds, wading or bathing in the stream and playing any sports or games that needed a dedicated space were all banned with a £5 penalty payable for every offence. (4)

Tom Rawlings was appointed as Park Keeper in November 1926.  His wages were £3 a week with free accommodation in part of Neithrop House. Councillors found him an excellent worker and always ‘busily engaged’ (1); children thought him stern and feared his stick. (3)

Banbury Borough Council’s first plan for the park’s facilities, drawn up mid 1920s (1)

The 1920s were a period of great interest and increased participation in sport, there was public support for new facilities.  The building of ‘homes for heroes’ was putting a strain on council staff’s time and expertise; the borough council needed someone to carry out their plans for the park.

Sidney Hilton was appointed as the new Borough Engineer, Surveyor and Architect in April 1925.  Born in 1891, the son of a King’s Lynn builder, the Banbury Guardian welcomed him:

Everyone will be most anxious for his success for upon him largely depends the welfare, development and expansion of the town.  His duties are onerous and it will be necessary to exercise some patience before Mr Hilton can possibly obtain a full knowledge of the many problems under his administration.

Hilton photographed by the Banbury Advertiser, 1925 (1)

They needn’t have worried.  Hilton was one of the Borough’s most respected and talented employees.  Described as one of the old school of ‘dual-qualification’ men, Hilton was a member of the Institute of Municipal Engineers, a Registered Architect, Member of the Royal Sanitary Institute and a Fellow of the Institute of Housing.

Council housing was Hilton’s greatest interest and he designed 24 different types of houses, including houses built in 1933, when the Ministry of Housing demanded the utmost economy, for £260 each, a design used as a model of economical building by authorities across the country.  He was responsible for the completion of Banbury’s larger peripheral estates – about 1,200 houses – including the large post 1945 development in Ruscote.  Importantly, it was Hilton who designed the layout of these new estates, all with public parks, as well as individual house designs.  Hilton Road was named in recognition of his work.

Hilton Road, Banbury, photograph May 2019

During Hilton’s career Banbury’s population increased from about 13,000 to 20,000.  In 1933 he designed an extension to Banbury’s sewage works that doubled the works’ capacity.  The Borough’s outdoor swimming pool, opened in 1939, is all Hilton’s work, as was an extension to the public library, town centre public conveniences and a new street lighting scheme.  He retired in 1955 after 46 years of local government service as the first Honorary Freeman of the Borough and the last man to wear a silk hat to civic functions.

But what did he do in the People’s Park?  A lot, as you might expect.  It was Hilton who designed and, as the director of the council’s direct labour force, built almost all of the park’s facilities in the interwar period.  He turned what was really a field full of sheep into a classic English well-ordered public park with soft grasses and trees, and plenty more besides.

Council elections in November 1925 threw up calls for action.  Councillor Allsopp expressed the public’s demands. (1)

there is a crying need for the provision of further opportunities for recreation for all classes of the community.  A bandstand and tennis courts would provide remuneration and an increasing attraction to Banbury without unduly burdening the rates.

If we note that Leeds, for instance, had 150 public tennis courts in its parks by 1924, Banbury’s initial plans – for three lawn tennis courts – seem unambitious.  But by the late 1920s Hilton’s comprehensive approach included a bowling green, a putting green, a park shelter, a pay office, new paths, a children’s corner with a swing, see-saw and giant’s stride, new entrances, seating, toilets and cloakrooms.  With estimates of £2,000 for these facilities the council received some donations and took on a Public Works Board loan: £1,170 repayable in 10 years and £520 in 20 years.  Well received by the public, these facilities were put in place during the next five years.

The tennis courts came first, in 1926.  Next, the park shelter, with a buffet at one end and then a new toilet block near Neithrop House.  Sanctioned by the Ministry of Health, the new block replaced the syndicate’s conveniences and was built by W & A Collisson of Banbury.  Hilton knew the high quality of W & A Collisson’s work – between the wars they built 216 council houses and a further 100 houses after 1945.  (5)  Hilton’s neat and clever design for the new block, in Banbury brick, incorporates the park’s boundary walls and provided access even when the park gates were closed at night.

The old toilets in the People’s Park are currently vacant.  Photograph May 2019

The Oxfordshire Surveyors’ Association met in Banbury in July 1927. (1)  In reporting on his achievements Hilton added ‘we have no miracles to show you.’  He hadn’t, but the Councillors noted that their new facilities had attracted three times the number of visitors than previously.  They wanted more.

Banbury’s unemployment figures in 1930 were not as high as elsewhere but the council, urged on by central government advice, wanted to ease living conditions for unemployed men in their town.  With no large unemployment scheme to refer to the Minister of Labour, they set a budget of £1960 for the pool, playground, putting green and bowling green and, very unusually in Banbury, agreed to pay all of it from revenue with the levy of a separate rate.  Councillor Monks described the building of the bowling green as: (1)

it was much better to give the men work they could see something for rather than they should be on the dole.  About half the money would go in wages; they would employ about 50 men for eight weeks in the park.

Hilton planned the green for the Banbury Borough Bowls Club – founded in 1929.  It was built using direct labour.  Insisting on best quality turf – Lancashire sea-washed turf – he wanted people to use it.  90 percent of club members’ fees went to the borough council.

Banbury Borough Bowls Club.  Photograph May 2019

The new children’s corner and a pool for toy yachts and paddling, the putting green and a drinking fountain completed this phase of new facilities.

The paddling pool was enjoyed by generations.  A breach of the byelaws c. early 1970s.  Children over 14 were not allowed to use it.  Photograph courtesy of Sheila Evans.

Next week’s post will look at further improvements to the People’s Park and the council’s changing approach to horticulture during the post war period.

Sources

(1) Contemporary quotations from the press, unless otherwise credited, are taken from the Banbury Advertiser between 1897 and 1955 held by the British Newspaper Archive.

(2) K Northover, Banbury During the Great War (2003)

(3) C Bailey, Childhood Memories of Banbury 1922-1939 (1998)

(4) Byelaws made by the Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses of the Borough of Banbury with respect to the People’s Park, 31 August 1920 held at the Oxfordshire History Centre

(5) W & A Collisson, builders, Banbury 1874-1967, archive records held at the Oxfordshire History Centre

Early Council Housing in Banbury, Part I: King’s Road and the Cow Fair Roarer

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Pre-1914

I’m delighted to feature this week and next another guest post – a fascinating piece of social, political and housing history from Jane Kilsby in Banbury.  Jane worked in housing management for councils and housing associations across the country for over twenty years before settling in Banbury three years ago. Thanks also to her husband Steve, another former housing professional, who first spotted the significance of the King’s Road houses. 

It’s amazing what turns up on eBay these days, isn’t it?  Recently, I bought this postcard: (1)

It’s a tribute to Herbert Payne, local councillor and advocate of social reform in early 20^th century Banbury. Forty houses were built by Banbury Borough Council in King’s Road in 1913 and they came about largely as a result of Herbert Payne’s powerful commitment to the benefits of good housing for working people.

King’s Road in November 2016

Banbury is 64 miles from London; a prosperous market town with a large rural hinterland.  On the edge of the Cotswolds, much of its early prosperity was from the wool trade; later it became a centre for cattle sales, horse trading, weaving, printing, engineering and comfort food of all kinds.  Cakes, custard, cheese, chocolate and coffee have all played a large part in Banbury’s employment and charm.  Banbury lies more or less in the middle of England; it’s a long way from the sea and transport improvements in the 18^th and 19^th centuries made a dramatic difference to the size of the town.  The Oxford Canal connected Banbury to the Midlands in 1778 and the railways invigorated Banbury’s trading links to the North of England and to Paddington. The M40 maintains Banbury’s role as a distribution centre today.

Banbury is a hardly a hotbed of reform and revolt but its famous nursery rhyme provides an air of innocence which belies some notable instances of radicalism in its history.  The townspeople, strongly Puritan, destroyed the original Banbury Cross and, later, Cromwell’s men smashed Banbury Castle to smithereens.  In the 1840s there were agricultural workers’ riots.

With the coming of the railways, Banbury’s population grew by about 40 per cent between 1851 and 1881.  Rapidly constructed terraces and much older agricultural workers houses made of the local ironstone rubble left a legacy of sub-standard property.

Rag Row in Neithrop – a notorious slum pictured in about 1890. These houses lasted at most forty years. Photograph courtesy of Oxfordshire History Centre

Banbury was one of the boroughs reformed by the Municipal Reform Act of 1835. The councillors and Town Clerk came from the local elite and, between them, the Liberals and the Conservatives busied themselves with matters of great importance such as new lighting for the Town Hall in time for the Hunt Ball.  They received regular reports from the Medical Officer of Health on the extent of insanitary housing but did nothing about it.

But the wider world was changing.  Campbell-Bannerman’s Liberal landslide in February 1906 brought about a period of social reform and, with 29 Labour MPs elected, there was some impact on local affairs, even in Banbury.  A Banbury branch of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) was formed in 1906; Herbert Payne was among its early members.

One of the first ILP meetings, in September 1906, in Banbury took as its topic the ‘House Famine – its cause and cure’.  ‘The workers of Banbury are waking up’, it declared: (2)

In Banbury there was a scarcity of houses suitable for working men and high rents appeared to be the order of the day, and yet no attempt had so far been made by the Town Council to provide houses for the workers and their families, notwithstanding the utter failure of private enterprise.

The proposal to run two ILP candidates, one of them Herbert Payne, in the next Borough elections was met with acclaim and housing became a hot topic as the ILP renewed its case for municipal homes:

These cottages will be let as near cost as possible and would not cost a penny to the ratepayers.  Private builders are making fortunes.  Why then should it be a failure for the Council to build?

On 1 November, the two ILP candidates were elected.  With victory declared, Payne and William Timms were lifted up in chairs, cheered and paraded around the town, finally coming to rest at the ILP committee rooms, then in Parsons Street.

Herbert Payne was born in Uppingham in Rutland in 1882.  Nothing is known about his education except to say that he did not attend Uppingham School.  He came to Banbury in about 1901, working at Mawles, a large ironmongers in the Market Place. Dismissed for talking politics in the shop, he set himself up as a commercial traveller, selling cutlery, and that was his business for the rest of his life.  He lived in a terraced house in Queen Street, now Queen’s Road, later moving to Marston House, 37 Bridge Street, now demolished, where he had his business premises.  He was 24 when elected to the Town Council.

Payne was a respectable radical, a Congregationalist, a pacifist, a teetotaller and a vegetarian.  Above all, he was a great speaker, described as someone who could really hold a crowd, with a voice full of resonance and power.(3) It was not long before his opponents began to call him ‘the Cow Fair Roarer’.

The Cow Fair was the favourite meeting ground for local politicians. Cows were tethered and sold in the street until 1931. The Town Hall with its tower is in the background.

Payne lost little time in making his presence felt at the Town Hall.  In February 1907, his motion to increase the wages of Corporation workmen was agreed unanimously.  At the same meeting, he demanded the Council appoint a ‘Housing Investigation Committee…to enquire into…the sufficiency or otherwise of the existing supply of dwelling-houses’ for local working people. Furthermore, he requested that it look into the work of other councils under the 1890 Housing of the Working Classes Act and whether Banbury itself should build.

After a lively debate, Payne got what he wanted.  The Banbury Advertiser mentions that this Council meeting set a record, lasting three and a quarter hours.  The reporter must have been exhausted.

Payne kept up the pressure, chivvying the Town Clerk for news of progress inside the Council chamber and agitating outside it.  In Boxhedge Square in Neithrop, an area notorious for its squalor, stench and unruly behaviour (4 ), Payne roared to a large crowd about ‘the rotten and bad houses with foul drains, leaky roofs, small windows and dirty walls…only inhabited because the people had nothing better to go to.’

Payne’s campaign was supported by the local Co-operative movement and railwaymen.  Mr T Jackson, secretary of the Banbury Branch of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, told the Council in December that many of his members:

who were sent to Banbury had to wait weeks or even months before they could bring their wives and families to the town owing to their inability to procure houses at a rent suitable to their earnings.

Local businesses added their own pressure.  An open letter from W Braithwaite, the president of the Banbury Borough Development Association formed in 1907, suggested that some firms had declined to set up in Banbury due to ‘the present and prospective insufficiency of housing accommodation for their workpeople’.

A house in the Tan Yard, photographed c.1903.  Banbury Borough Council issued a demolition order on it in June 1914 (from Barry Trinder, Cake  Cockhorse (the magazine of the Banbury Historical Society), vol 3, no. 6, 1966

The Medical Officer and the Inspector of Nuisances also reiterated to the Council the dire facts of Banbury’s housing situation.  The population was 13,483 by 1911 and the number of inhabited houses was 3085.  Rents for workmens’ dwellings ranged from two shillings to six shillings a week.  The former were mostly unfit for habitation – some had no backs and many were overcrowded – but six shillings was more than most workingmen in Banbury could afford when the average wage for unskilled men was 15 to 20 shillings a week.  The Medical Officer often stated that he would have condemned more houses had there been any possibility of alternative housing for the residents to move in to.

It was to be six years before King’s Road was built.  Most councillors were hesitant and they were anxious about costs – they wanted expansion but didn’t want to increase the rates.  Some of them were landlords and they worried that a larger pool of accommodation for working men and their families would reduce their rents.

Payne too was adamant that any house building should be done with a minimal impact on the rates. In 1908, he tried to persuade the Council to back the campaign of Huddersfield and other councils for land tax reform which would encourage landowners to sell land for housing:

Land is being held in Grimsbury and Neithrop – if people chose to hold their land idle, let them pay what they ought to pay for it in taxation.

The debate rumbled on.

JR Hodgkins mentions that Payne never enjoyed good health and it is tempting at this point to speculate that at times he was not particularly well.  Certainly he is absent from several consecutive Council meetings in 1909 and 1910.  By then he must have been working hard on his business which took him away from home for long periods.

It was the Housing and Town Planning Act, passed in January 1910, combined with Payne’s tenacity, which crystallised Banbury’s decision to build.  The Housing Committee also visited Newbury and returned impressed by the ten houses recently built by the local council:

Let at 4s.6d. per week each: these rents are rather lower than those charged by private owners for similar property and therefore there is no difficulty in obtaining tenants.

The death of both the Town Clerk and the Medical Officer – on whom the Council was heavily reliant for facts and advice – in August 1911 delayed progress but Payne, at last appointed to an enlarged Housing Committee, kept up the pressure.

In May 1911, he addressed a mass meeting – the Banbury Advertiser describes ‘a large assembly round the waggonette in the Cow Fair’ – alongside Liberal councillors Ewins and Viggers, and Mr Jackson of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants.  They accused councillors of slumbering ‘very peacefully’ and Ewins pointed to the example of Hornsey, which he had visited, where he found that ‘after six years the local authorities had 60 houses and were £360 to the good with which to put up two or three more houses’:

If other towns where land and labour were dearer than in Banbury, could go in for housing schemes and make them successful, why could not Banbury?  Were not Banbury workmen as good, as clever and as hard-working as those in any other place?

Payne and his comrades railed against complacency.  The crowd called for action:

people were in favour of having something practical and useful and why should the Council not build 50 or 100 houses, to start with, to commemorate the coronation of the King?

The question, however, remained where to build.  The Council already owned several acres of land in Grimsbury but there were problems of drainage and flooding.  Eventually the decision was taken to construct a new school and a mechanical sewerage system but no housing.

Thankfully, there were the Gilletts, Banbury bankers, Quakers and local philanthropists. In the mid 19^th century many Oxfordshire farmers had their accounts with Gilletts Bank and, as farming profits fell, the bank acquired fields through forfeiture.  In 1895, Gilletts began a programme of land disposal, creating Queen Street in Neithrop (now Queen’s Road and parallel with King’s Road) by selling parcels of land to builders to build terraced housing for sale.

Queen’s Road.  The bay windows and house names are a token of its respectability.

Gilletts set strict rules on the quality of construction which ensured that Queen Street became an attractive residential area. Payne’s first family home was in Queen Street; his rent was £15 per year. (5)

Joseph Gillett approached the Council with a field northwest of Queen Street that was let out as allotments.  At just a shilling a square yard, the price, £1000, was considered reasonable but the councillors still saw a dilemma – the site was too large.  To everyone’s relief, a deal was struck.  The Council paid £500 for half the land with an option to buy the rest for the same amount three years later.  From then on, the whole project ran smoothly.

The Council elections of November 1911 saw cross-party agreement that ‘housing has become the most pressing requirement of our town’. This was a striking achievement for Payne, a councillor for just five years and still a young man under thirty. Next week’s post looks at the fine new homes which resulted and the personal tragedy which followed Herbert Payne’s early triumph.

Sources

(1) Postcard from Past Time Postcards

(2) Contemporary quotations from the press, unless otherwise credited, are taken from the Banbury Advertiser between 1905 and 1930 held by the British Newspaper Archive

(3) JR Hodgkins, Over the Hills to Glory: Radicalism in Banburyshire 1832-1945 (1978)

(4) Barrie Trinder, Cake & Cockhorse (The magazine of the Banbury Historical Society), Vol 3, no. 6, 1966, pp83-127

(5) Derrick Knight, Once Upon A Time, Queen’s Road: Its Origins, Its Growth, Its Character (2014)

My thanks to the Oxfordshire History Centre of Oxfordshire County Council for their generosity in allowing the use of the credited images.