Homestead Park, 12 September 2018

It’s a calm autumn morning here in York, as I write. Sunny and still. I’ve just been out into the garden to collect my thoughts before sitting down to work, trying to appreciate the sunshine and the stillness … But instead I found myself pacing about, thinking about Persimmon … more specifically, Persimmon’s plans for the pitch, for the football ground.

This serious subject and others will need weighty words at some point, but for now I think a walk in the park is needed, via some photos I took at Homestead Park, Clifton, earlier this month. With some thoughts, on land use, and greenery, and generosity.

One afternoon recently, feeling that I’d spent too much time looking at a computer screen, and with information overload meaning my brain was struggling to find space for the details of planning applications and other local matters of importance, I felt a need for a walk, some sunshine, and to ‘rest my eyes in shades of green‘, as the song puts it. There’s greenery in my small garden, but it doesn’t get the sun later in the day, and walking helps to put things in perspective. As I headed off purposefully towards the greenery of Clifton Green and the riverside someone else’s garden suggested itself – Seebohm’s garden, as it used to be. Now more familiar as Homestead Park.

Near the Water End entrance to the park there’s a relatively new circle garden, which I’ve mentioned before, in a review of the year. By a rather beautiful and soothing water feature (pictured above) a screen of ironwork with clear panels, with poetry, leaves framing the poems and the scene beyond.

This park includes so much, in separate areas, which combined together make it a fine place to visit. Everything here is handsome and well-maintained. Helpful signs point the way.

It has changed a lot over the decades, but with its handsomeness constantly enhanced. This year the planting near the children’s play area includes wonderful willow sculptures, by Leilah Vyner (dragonwillow.co.uk), inspired by the book The House at Pooh Corner.

Poor old gloomy Eeyore, with his downward-hanging ears.

I’d been feeling a bit like Eeyore, but by the time I left Homestead Park I felt more like Tigger.

How about a game of Pooh sticks …

All around, the scent from generous plantings of heliotrope.

These sculptures might not be here permanently, but nearby is the permanent  and well-established Backhouse Pond, with a path around it weaving under trees, past fine old acers, even over a little bridge over a stream. Though there was a period when it seemed to be closed off most of the time, the gates in its railings are now open again.

Beyond that, on the Shipton Road side of the park, there’s a less formal area, open space with grass and trees.

I sat awhile here and watched squirrels dashing across the grass, lit by long shadows, while bits of beech nut fell on my head from the squirrels in the tree above. One squirrel came very close, scampered from nut to nut, checking a couple, then finding one it liked the look of, ran off with it across the grass. The squirrel was too quick for me to capture it on camera, but here are some of the rejected bits of beech nut.

Squirrels can of course also be seen in the Museum Gardens, in the city centre. What you can’t find in the Museum Gardens, at least in recent years, is toilets. Another impressive thing about Homestead Park is that it has these essential facilities, freely provided. And rather nice old signs on the building too.

Time to head back to work, past the handsome herbaceous borders near the Water End entrance.

If you’d like to stay a bit longer in the park, I can offer a couple of earlier visits, from 2007, and 2004 (though my photos were much smaller then, and the 2004 page won’t look good for many readers viewing on phones and other smaller devices).

Some years back (2006) I reflected on aspects of the history of the park, and its Rowntree connection, and how it’s another example of that family’s generosity and philanthropy.

I first visited here as a child, and back then I was of course familiar with the name Rowntree, but only from seeing the name so often on sweets and chocolates. Now, when I think about the Rowntree name, and this park, and particularly when I sit awhile on the bench in the meadow area of the park, I think about the Rowntree legacy in terms of land, land use. I think about how this part of Clifton might have looked so different, covered with buildings, if land here hadn’t been bought by the Rowntree family back then.

Over on the other side of town there’s Rowntree Park, its name making the connection with the famous family more obvious. Here, at the Homestead, the name should remind us that this land was part of someone’s home, or rather, the garden of that home, and that it was opened up for other people to enjoy, kept green and open, full of trees and flowers, and that it remains that way, and I hope it always will.

Hard to imagine anything like that happening now, isn’t it. Homeowners with extra garden space they don’t need have in recent times been more likely to sell the land for redevelopment, for the much-needed housing. So the gaps between the buildings get smaller, and we value more and more the green and grassy areas we have left.

Having rested my eyes in these shades of green it’s time to return to consideration of another piece of land, not far away, where the green grass is soon to make way for houses. I understand if you’d rather stay in the park (there’s more info on it here), but I’ll have to get back to my desk.

. . . . .

When I can, I like to focus on cheering and positive things here in York, and when dealing with the difficult, I try to do it thoughtfully, in a considered kind of way. If you appreciate these pages, and this particular approach, then you might like to support it with virtual coffees. Thank you to everyone who supports the site in this way, helps pay the hosting fees, and keeps it green and growing.

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November 2007

This is one of my favourite local green spaces, and I’ve mentioned it before. It’s next to Homestead House, the head office of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, originally Seebohm Rowntree’s house, 100 years ago. Since then the land behind the house has been maintained for the benefit of local people.

The tree-lined walkway is in the central part of the park – shown in summer and with the fallen leaves of autumn.

Whether you prefer green spaces that are wild and left natural, or tidy, well-maintained parks like this one, I think we can all see that when someone bequeaths a piece of land as a park they are giving us space, and greenery, and most importantly, a view of open sky. Increasingly valued, by many of us, as York becomes filled with apartment blocks that block out increasing amounts of sky.

With ground staff often present, and an air of order and calm, it still feels rather like someone’s back garden – albeit a large one.

This one has several different areas around its central open space, with some very handsome herbaceous borders for those with horticultural interests.

The park stretches across the corner from Water End to Shipton Road, with an entrance on both roads, so you can walk through and incorporate it as part of a circular wander through the delights of Clifton. Many people seem to walk through here on their way home from work – probably a good place to wind down from the stresses of a working day.

Particularly striking are these – I think they’re cardoons. The bees would collect in the flowers, loads of them, searching for pollen, making those filament-like purple bits move gently like sea anemones underwater.

If you like your flowers more in the traditional park style, they have these too. A lot of work goes into this area of zingy-coloured formal bedding. These large beds are planted up a couple of times every year.

Children are particularly well provided for – and the playground here is usually full of children, as it has been for 100 years or so, since Seebohm Rowntree since invited local children to use this land. Nowadays – apart from the recognisably old-style tyre swings – the play equipment is much more sophisticated, with all kinds of interesting-looking structures, which unfortunately I’m far too old to play on.

I think I visited here though as a child, and have vague memories of the 1970s version of this playground – rather more basic metal-framed swings perhaps.

If you’re too old to play on the swings and climbing frames, and would prefer a nice quiet corner and a sit down, the area of the park near the Shipton Road entrance is a more naturalistic kind of spot, with grass and trees and picnic benches. On some bright winter mornings, I’ve noticed the occasional person sitting here at one of the picnic benches, braving the cold, making the most of the winter sun.

The best part of this park, perhaps, is the carefully landscaped area fenced off, in a quieter corner, where a winding path takes you around an ornamental pond, across a little bridge over a small stream. Huge fish glide through the pond, which reflects the sky and the handsome trees and shrubs around it. This area was obviously created and planted up long ago. It’s in an area protected by railings and a gate, and on my first few visits, the gate was locked every time I visited. It was a small magical moment the first time I visited and found it unlocked, and could go off for a wander down its winding path.

It’s like a miniature version of an area of Harlow Carr gardens I remember being enchanted by as a child, where there are interconnecting ponds and streams and little bridges over them, and paths all about that disappear around corners.

It’s particularly handsome in autumn, with the leaves turning colour. For any tree-hugger, there are a number of particularly huggable trees.

And while I’m mentioning trees – recent family history research shows that a branch of my family tree spent some years living in Clifton, near Clifton Green, at the end of the 19th century, into the early 20th century. They moved from what sounds like the very cramped housing in a place called Cowl’s Yard (since cleared) to a small terraced house on the other side of the Green. Like all the other working-class families they didn’t have the luxury of space, or a garden.

They would have been living in Clifton when Seebohm Rowntree first opened his garden to the local children. Many generations since then, and still we’re all invited to enjoy this area of green and pleasant land.

Links

On this website: photos of the park in 2004

External link: Homestead Park – Joseph Rowntree Foundation

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Autumn 2006

This is the Homestead Park, in Clifton, York. About a hundred years ago, a member of the Rowntree family handed his back garden over to local people. On 16 July 1904, Seebohm Rowntree announced that for a month in the summer the fields behind his house were open to children attending local schools. The gardens offered "Donkey rides, swings, see-saws, sand heaps and games". In 1936 he gave the land to the Joseph Rowntree Village Trust on condition that the fields remained open to the public. This land has developed into the park we know today.

The Rowntree family’s confectionery business is well-known, as is the work of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and associated concerns. The Rowntrees, who were Quakers, were enormously influential here in York, as other Quaker families were in other cities. All in a time when religious faith was shown not just in words but in deeds.

The religious part may not be so important these days, but in Homestead Park someone is still planting carefully arranged floral displays in neatly-edged flowerbeds. Here and elsewhere, the caring continues.

Then there’s Rowntree Park at the other end of town – which we can see from its name is another piece of land left to the city by that important family. And New Earswick too owes its existence to the Rowntree family. And it all comes from the belief in trying to provide something more than just a wage for the workforce.

I’ve been to Homestead park as a child, more often as an adult, and perhaps it’s as adults that we appreciate more the idea that people would want to use their good fortune to benefit others, and use their land to benefit them too. Because we know that now, in our time, it’s more common to take than to give.

And here’s the factory where the chocolate and other confectionery was made. After Rowntrees built it, at the end of the 19th century, the company later became Rowntree Mackintosh, then Nestlé Rowntree.

It’s not as good-looking as the Homestead Park or Rowntree’s Park – it’s just a factory. But it employed generations of York people and powered the local economy, and made the Rowntree family wealthy enough to give away large areas of land as public parks.

It seems worth noting that these parkland areas are protected from redevelopment – this becomes even more important when flats are springing up everywhere else.

As they will be here. Nestle Rowntree announced this week that they are to lay off a large percentage of the workforce and sell some of the land, as the old factory site is no longer commercially viable. This of course comes after the complete closure of Terry’s factory last year, the announcement of the closure of the British Sugar factory, and the announcement of major job losses at the Norwich Union office in York. Too much to cover on one page . . .

Many people believe that this factory won’t exist at all in a year or two.

It’s difficult to watch the way our local manufacturing industry is apparently imploding. Most people recognise the need to move with the times. But most people also recognise that something fundamental is being lost.

It’s difficult to imagine that anyone now would give away a piece of land for the ordinary public to use as a park. If you’ve got some land in York and it’s not earning you enough money, it’s best to flog it for a fortune and build some flats. Still, thanks to the old-style, more caring approach of our original chocolate makers, at least we have some nice parks to sit in when we’re all unemployed.

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