Adventure Playgrounds
Danish landscape architects and town planners became interested in the concept of adventure playgrounds, also known as 'junk playgrounds', in the 1930s, after observing children using building sites and ...
Boy with hoop at Calthorpe Park
In the 19th century public parks were introduced to provide the poor and working classes with healthier ways to spend their leisure hours. The land was often given by social reformers – Lord Calthorpe ...
Norman Chamberlain
Norman Chamberlain was the paternal cousin of Neville Chamberlain. He was Chairman of the Parks Committee of Birmingham City Council between 1912 and 1914, when he volunteered to serve in the First World ...
Organised Games
This report was compiled by the organisers of schemes that ran in a number of Birmingham parks and recreation grounds during the summer of 1911. It was managed by Norman Chamberlain, chairman of the Parks ...
Pearson’s Fresh Air Fund Day at Manor Farm Park
A number of ‘Fresh Air’ funds were set up in both Britain and North America during the late nineteenth century, to provide days out or sometimes summer holidays, in the countryside, to children from low ...
Pearson’s Fresh Air Fund Day at Manor Farm Park
One of a series of photographs documenting days out at Manor Farm Park for children from city centre schools, run by Pearson's Fresh Air Fund with the assistance of Elizabeth Cadbury who offered the use ...
Postcard of Edgbaston Reservoir
In 1903 postcards were still a relatively new phenomenon. Only the address could be written on the back, and any message had to be fitted onto the front alongside the picture. This postcard carries a ...
Watercolour depicting Factory Girls Dancing in Bournville Grounds
This watercolour of girls participating in open-air dancing was taken from a photograph dated 1921. The watercolour was an exact copy of the photograph. Both images are illustrative of gender segregation ...
Watercolour depicting the Men's Recreation Ground, by H.N. Bradbear
‘[Where] industrial life today is concerned, Work and Play are not only closely related subjects, but one subject’.1
Bradbear produced watercolour views of both the men’s and girls' recreation grounds, ...