Bygone Burnley: Scott Park, with historian Roger Frost MBE

Roger guides us around this superb urban park, off Manchester Road, named in honour of Alderman John Hargreaves Scott, who bequeathed the majority of his estate in his will, some £10,000, that could be turned into a public green space following his wife’s death in 1884.

The park is surrounded by “some of the best housing in Burnley” including what used to be known as “Swank’s Row” according to Roger.

Burnley’s second park, after Queen’s Park, it opened in 1895 and was designed by Robert Murray who had also been responsible for the design of the latter park, which opened two years earlier in the north-east of the town.

A committee of Burnley Corporation councillors and friends following the death of Scott’s widow was formed to look for land to site the park, and eventually decided on part of the estate of Hood House, which was documented as early as 1563 and was latterly owned by the Halsted family of Rowley Hall.

Roger said: “Scott had already helped Burnley in his official capacity as an alderman. Indeed, it’s due to him that Burnley’s first sewage works at Barden were undertaken. He was also interested in the arts, and gave the land on which the Burnley Mechanics was built.

“However, his name has come down to us through the park. The park was eventually sited on land associated with Hood House, and two farms, which were remembered in names of streets and other features around the park.

“The eventual designer, Robert Murray, wanted to achieve an urban park with views of the open countryside including views of Pendle, the Ribble Valley and even Yorkshire.”

Our video next looks at what was originally planned as the site of “the battery” – field guns from the Crimean War were intended to be located to draw people to a high viewing point offering spectacular views of the Ribble Valley and even Ingleborough and Whernside in Yorkshire.

This was, as Roger points out, to remind residents that Burnley “wasn’t just an industrial, smoky town, but in a beautiful part of the country.

“People in late-Victorian England were very conscious of that – the railways had just opened which gave them easy and cheap access to the countryside. It was a very important social development in the town – acknowledgement that we weren’t just industrial, we were part of something else, part of something that was beautiful, that God had created.”

Field guns were however placed at Bank Hall Park for similar reasons.

Finally, our video ends with a look at Sepp Clough, a beautiful natural stream that originates near Burnley Golf Club, which was made into a feature of the park containing four pools with water falls in each of them, and one including a fountain.

Roger said: “It’s a great pity that the council has not been able to maintain these features. They were very attractive. The fountain was such a feature, people would come to the park just to see it.”