Image ID: 41930

Stapleford Recreation Ground - opening day

Stapleford
Nottinghamshire
England

This is one of a series of pictures which show the crowds of children and their family's who attended this event. Many Borough and District Councils from the mid Victorian period recognised the need for public recreation The pictures are unusual in that they show the children in close detail; usually photographs around this time tended to show children at a distance, posed, with scrubbed faces in their 'Sunday best' clothes. These pictures, however, show the children in a variety of dress - some have clean pinafores and starched 'eaton' style collars and have obviously been dressed for the occasion, other children are not so fortunate and have attended in their raggy playclothes with dirty faces and look like 'streetwise Artful Dodgers.( see NCCS001661 to NCCS001671). There are no details of the date of the event or where the recreation ground was at that time (was it Toton Lane Rec., next to Fairfield School, now known as Queen Elizabeth Park?) Can anyone give us any more information. The fashions suggest that the pictures dates around the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, probably 1900's. The child at the front of picture NCCS001663 is wearing a straw hat with HMS Invincible on the band. This could give a clue to the date (The fifth HMS Invincible, a battlecruiser, was built on the Tyne in 1907 and launched in 1909).

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Keywordsrecreationhealthwelfareplaygroundchildrenfashioncommunitycrowdsfamilieseventsgirlsboysparkgardenspeople

Stapleford Library