From the Burnley Express Archive: It is like having an ancient garden in mill town Burnley ...

As you might be able to see, we are in Thompson Park which opened in 1930, but I am not sure that the park is old enough to be an Old Fragment.

The parks are open in Burnley and they all look great at the moment. This is particularly true of Thompson Park because it is just coming into its own after the Heritage Lottery Fundinvested over £1m on its improvement.

I was there the other day and I headed for the Italian Gardens. I was interested in seeing how the new plantings had taken and, though it was a wet and overcast day, they looked very well indeed.

You might not realise it, but the Italian Gardens have been rebuilt as part of the project. To the left, in the picture, and in the background, you will be able to see the Doric columns. They might look like they were made of marble, or even granite, but, unfortunately, they are of neither of these two expensive materials. They are constructed out of concrete and a couple of them were rather worse for wear.

If you remember, they had to be taken down and were in store for a couple of years. Since then they have been re-erected after work had been done on them and they look as good as new. To me it does not matter that they are made of concrete. The Romans invented that material so it is alright that it is used in the Italian Gardens.

The Romans copied Greek architecture so it was perfectly OK for them to make use of the Greek Doric columns. In addition, the Roman gardens were often based on Greek designs and this one is no exception.

To me, it is like having an ancient garden in “mill town Burnley” and our hometown is all the better for it. The one thing in the present Gardens that I would have liked to have seen restored is the water feature, you can see on the right.

In this image, which was taken very early in the 1930s, the pond is being admired by some young children and presumably their teachers. Since then the pond has been filled in but the gardens are still recognisably the same.

This picture shows the original plantings, flowers that had to be replaced each year. I was in favour of replacing them with hardy plants that would survive our winter. This year they look great. They will not need to be replaced (an expensive job) and we will be able to enjoy the same plants next year.

If you look carefully you will notice three mill chimneys in the distance. The one on the right was either at Bank Hall Colliery of the Brick Works, which was near the mine. The other two were attached to mills, one of them being Stanley Shed, near Duke Bar.

It is rare to have a postcard of a park which includes mill chimneys. Postcard makers tried to avoid the combination of a park and industry because they thought that the card would not sell, but I am glad they produced this one.