Image ID: 41935

Stapleford Recreation Ground - opening day

Stapleford
Nottinghamshire
England

Possibly on the site now occupied by Fairfield School, Toton Lane, Stapleford. This is one of a series of pictures which show the crowds of children and their familys 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).There are no details of the date of the event or where the recreation ground was at that time (was it off Hickings Lane as it is today ?) Can anyone give us any more information. The fashions suggest that the pictures dates around the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, probably 1900s. 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).

Organisation:

Rate this image:

Keywordsrecreationhealthwelfareplaygroundchildrenfashioncommunitycrowdsfamilieseventsgirlsboysparkgardens

Stapleford Library