Research Rabbit Hole – Southampton Parks 1926

The town of Southampton was once surrounded by ancient fields where townspeople grew crops in summer and grazed animals in winter. By law, all crops had to be harvested by 1 August, Lammas Day, so the fields were called Lammas Lands. In 1844, the Marsh Improvement Act allowed the council to drain the Saltmarsh around the new Terminus Station. To compensate the townspeople for losing this common grazing land, the council agreed to turn the other Lammas Lands into parks. The Central Parks were laid out in the late 1850s, and old OS maps of the time show the layout has changed very little since. Southampton’s wonderful parks are still a prominent feature to this day, and they also feature in many of my books. Making sure I got things right required a good deal of research.

In Land Fit For Heroes, when Percy went on the first date with his sweetheart, I chose East Park for their meeting because it was midway between their two houses. The obvious meeting place was Richard Andrews’ Monument in the middle of the park. It’s a familiar sight to Sotonians today, but, in 1926, it looked a little different. The plain stone column the statue stands on is a replacement for the original ornate plinth. Erected in 1860, the statue and pedestal were made from limestone, which weathered badly. The council replaced the ornate pedestal with its wrought-iron railings in 1971. The original carvings and stone tablet are stored in a vault at 88 High Street.

It took me a while to find photos of the statue and pedestal, as they would have been in 1926. When I did, I realised how easy it would have been to miss the person you were supposed to meet if they stood in the wrong place. This gave me a great idea to torment poor Percy. As Percy’s sweetheart was a fan of history, I had her tell him the story of Richard Andrews. The current plinth tells it better. ‘Born the son of a wheelwright at Bishop’s Sutton, Hampshire he became a coachbuilder of international fame. His manufactory in above Bar was one of the town’s leading industries. Five times Mayor of Southampton he was known for his generosity and energy in furthering the prosperity of the town. A good employer, he devoted himself wholeheartedly to promoting the self-reliance of the working man. This statue was erected in 1860 and the pedestal reconstructed in 1971.‘

Once they’d found each other, Percy and Winnie took a walk in West Park and sat on a seat near the statue of Isaac Watts. When I found a wonderful hand-coloured F G O Stuart postcard of the park, I was a little concerned that there might not have been benches to sit on in 1926. Luckily, I found another old postcard that showed a bench, so I could breathe a sigh of relief and leave the story as it was.

The central parks were the scene of a major dramatic moment in the book. I don’t want to give any spoilers, so I can’t say what this entailed, but I needed to know what West Marlands Park looked like in 1926. If you live in Southampton, you may wonder where West Marlands Park is. It no longer exists today, but in 1926, it was across Commercial Road from West Park. Marlands dates back to medieval times, and is named after the nearby leaper hospital, Magdalens, which, over time, became corrupted to Marlands. In more recent times, the park was a meeting place and had a speakers’ corner. They held circuses and other events there, and huge crowds gathered after the death of King Edward VII in 1910. It was also used for recruiting drives during the Great War and one of the first tanks was displayed there as part of a National Savings campaign. 

Alderman Sidney Kimber thought it was the ideal place to build a Civic Centre, but he faced stiff opposition. It took several years for him to persuade the rest of the council to accept his scheme. Even then, it was only agreed in return for five acres of land at Weston Park and three and a half at Shirley Warren being turned into playing fields in recompense. In 1929, a bill was passed by Parliament to use the land for the Civic Centre and the Duke of York laid the foundation stone on July 1, 1930. The last event held on West Marlands Park was O’Brien’s Great Fun Fair.

In 1926, it was still a park. As the 1928 aerial photos I found show, the grass was worn away from overuse and a line of trees ran behind the shops at the top end of Above Bar Street. These trees would prove useful to my plot, but if you want to know why, you will have to read the book. This is the description I wrote, ‘According to Winnie, there’d been a leper hospital here once. Now it was just a shabby park of balding grass surrounded by a line of trees that at least had the advantage of hiding him from view.’

When I needed an event in the summer to engineer an important meeting, I turned to the Daily Echo archive for inspiration. The Southampton Hospital Carnival on 10 July ticked all the right boxes. The carnival was an annual event used to raise money to build a hospital extension. The route ran past another Southampton park, Queens Park, opposite Dock Gate four. This made it perfect for my purposes and the echo archive provided lots of details to add colour to my description. The carnival took place on 10 July and the floats were manned by hospital staff wearing red, white and blue historical costumes, or the national dress of foreign countries. More photos of the event can be found on the Echo Archive. Here is some of what I wrote, ‘Percy was right about the children; they loved it. Gladys could hardly contain her excitement as the first of the brightly coloured floats came into view. Percy had given them a few pennies to put in the collection buckets, and he lifted them over the railings so they could get a better view.’

Another green space in the town, Southampton Common, also appeared in Land Fit For Heroes. During the General Strike, they held meetings on The Common and Marlands. On 9 May, they held a mass meeting on The Common attended by several thousand workers. They set two stages up and two speakers addressed the crowd simultaneously. The main discussion was the Southampton Board of Guardians’ decision to deny benefits to strikers’ families, something which caused great hardship. Percy and Lenny went along and another important meeting took place. ‘Perhaps if the place wasn’t packed with thousands of people, being out in the spring sunshine with all the trees coming into leaf might have been pleasant. As it was, they couldn’t get anywhere near either of the two stages.‘ Sadly, there were no photographs of the meeting, but a look at old maps showed the most likely place to be in the open space near the crossroads and Artesian Well.

The parks and The Common may not have changed much over the years, but my research showed me it’s wise not to be complacent, even when I think I know an area well. What I learned also stood me in good stead when it came to writing about the parks and The Common in other books. Maybe I’ll tell you more on another day . . .

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