Image ID: 41933

Toton Lane Recreation Ground, off Toton Lane, Stapleford, c 1914

Toton Lane Recreation Ground
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, and the newly landscaped gardens. 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). 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).Keith Goodman has written in with the following information gleaned from the Parish Council Minutes:The recreation ground that it being opened is the Toton Lane Rec. The sloping nature of the terrain and the back gable ends of the house showing at the top of the picture confirm it. The house is still there on Toton Lane between the rec entrance and Brookhill. The rec itself was opened on the 6th May 1911 by Mr. Palmer. However, all the laying out was still to be done and I suspect that the event shown in the picture was latter than this. The upper part of the rec was opened on the 27th July 1914 when Mr. G A Harrison opened the bowling greens.

Date: c 1914

Organisation Reference: NCCS001673

Organisation: