Public walks

For those who pay attention to such things it is common to see streets called ‘walks’, such as Church Yard Walk which I photographed in Westminster, London earlier this year.

Photograph of Church Yard Walk sign which leads to Paddington Green, Westminster, London. Credit: Clare Hickman, 2022

However, the concept of a ‘Public Walk’ as a particular urban feature which emerged in the late eighteenth century has an interesting background that intersects with the histories of public health and leisure – two key concerns which still impact our thinking on rights of way today. These were more than an alternative way to name streets or roads and had particular identifiable features including street trees and benches.

By looking at these earlier examples we can see some of the long running themes which link bodily movement, health and natural environments to accessible rights of way. By taking a long view we can also understand more fully some of the debates which informed the later campaigns for access to the countryside and the twentieth-century interest in codifying rights of way. The 1833 debates in the House of Commons and the Select Committee Report on Public Walks, all led by the MP for Shrewsbury Robert Slaney who was an avid public health campaigner, reveal concerns about green spaces for leisure in an urbanising world, the importance of spaces for healthy leisure and the problems of accessing the landscape via footpaths and other means.

The New Walk, Leicester which was created in 1785 as a promenade. Oil on canvas by George W. Moore Henton, 1914. Photo credit: Leicester Museums and Galleries

What was a Public Walk?

In 1833 the Select Committee on Public Walks asked one of the expert witnesses: ‘do not you think a few trees planted there, with a few seats, and improvements of that nature, would make that a good public walk?’ Clearly these ‘walks’ were not intended to be just places for people to move through but somewhere they could also sit and watch others promenading under the shade of street trees. Similarly, the landscape gardener, John Claudius Loudon (here quoted by Hazel Conway in People’s Parks: The Design and Development of Victorian Parks in Britain, CUP, 1991, p. 11) described them as ‘promenades or roads among trees, “and such other verdant scenery as the situation may afford, heightened and rendered more interesting by art”. This suggests that he saw them as designed spaces with carefully placed planting in the same manner as a landscaped walk across an elite landscape garden.

One example of an early public walk is the New Walk in Leicester which was opened in the late eighteenth century as a promenade and is now Grade II listed. John Throsby refers to ‘Queen’s Walk’ (it later becomes known as New Walk) in his The history and antiquities of the ancient town of Leicester, 1791. He writes that ‘the Corporation, at the intercession of some gentlemen, friends to improvement, gave the land by an order of Hall, April 29th, 1785. Such acts are the very spirit of their institution. It forms a line almost a mile long, with an easy curve or two; and nearly forms a bounding fence between St. Margaret’s and St Mary’s Fields. This walk, which is gravelled from one end to the other, was, at the end nearest the town, originally ornamented most delightfully with young trees of various sorts’, pp. 381-2.

Given that one of the earliest parks with some public access, the Derby Arboretum, wasn’t opened until 1840, Public Walks were in many ways precursors of these larger green spaces. The 1833 Report explicitly stated that it was appointed to ‘consider the best Means of securing Open Spaces in the Vicinity of populous Towns, as Public Walks and Places of Exercise, calculated to promote the Health and Comfort of the Inhabitants’ which it could be argued paved the way for uses of larger stretches of land for public recreation of an acceptable kind known as ‘rational recreation’. This rational recreation of course included walking, as well as visiting improving institutions such as museums and art galleries.

The idea of health in relation to the rapidly urbanising and industrialising country was also crucial. One of the key factors in the move to create new spaces for recreation for town and city dwellers was the concept of ‘miasmas’ or noxious gases that were seen as the leading cause of disease and death. Access to cleaner air in the countryside became increasingly seen as important for health as well as the development of ‘green lungs’ within the urban spaces themselves in the form of parks and public walks. As we can see in the 1833 report here where they argue that:

It cannot be necessary to point out how requisite some Public Walks or Open Space in the neighbourhood of large Towns must be, to those who consider the occupations of the Working Classes who dwell there; confined as they are during the week-days as Mechanics and Manufacturers, and often shut up in heated Factories: it must be evident that it is of the first importance to their health on their day of rest to enjoy the fresh air, and to be able (exempt from the dust and dirt of public thoroughfares) to walk out in decent comfort with their families.

Similarly, the Manchester doctor, James Phillips Kay who also advocated for educational reform, gave local medical evidence to the Committee suggesting that in his opinion:

Healthful exercise in the open air is seldom or never taken by the artizans of this town, and their health certainly suffers considerable depression from this deprivation. One reason of this state of the people is, that all scenes of interest are remote from the town, and that the walks which can be enjoyed by the poor are chiefly the turnpike roads, alternately dusty or muddy. Were parks provided, recreation would be taken with avidity, and one of the first results would be a better use of the Sunday, and a substitution of innocent amusement at all other times, for the debasing pleasures now in vogue.

View of Manchester from Kersal by John Barton Waddington, 1856. Credit: Manchester Art Gallery

Moral overtones

We can already see here that health in the nineteenth century was not just about clean air and exercise, there are moral overtones to the discussion around the need for these green recreational spaces. In particular, they were seen as an ideal alternative to the public house for the working classes as the Committee state:

Your Committee feel convinced that some Open Places reserved for the amusement (under due regulations to preserve order) of the humbler classes, would assist to wean them from low and debasing pleasures. Great complaint is made of drinking-houses, dog fights, and boxing matches, yet, unless some opportunity for other recreation is afforded to workmen, they are driven to such pursuits.

The consumption of alcohol by the lower classes, and particularly spirits which were increasingly being drunk rather than ale or wine, was often framed as a major public health concern in this period. In his second annual report as Registrar General published in 1840, Dr William Farr, commented that ‘spirit drinking almost always ends in impairing the health; […] and must, therefore, be considered one of the indirect, but certain causes of fevers, and other diseases’, pp. 75-6. Given this is also the period where cholera epidemics become rife across Britain there was a growing concern that the use of alcohol was one of the factors leading to large numbers of deaths from that and other diseases.

As well as offering an alternative to these other forms of leisurely enjoyment, the Committee also considered that promenading, which allowed for the mixing of different classes, would also have benefits:

A man walking out with his family among his neighbours of different ranks, will naturally be desirous to be properly clothed, and that his Wife and Children should be so also; but this desire duly directed and controlled, is found by experience to be of the most powerful effect in promoting Civilization, and exciting Industry.

Within these pieces of evidence given to the committee we can also see a growing concern about the inaccessibility of the countryside as well as a desire to create new green spaces. For example, Theodore Price, Esq. was examined by the Committee as a magistrate of the counties of Stafford and Warwick. The exchange below illustrates the question from the Committee and his response:

Committee: Are there in the immediate vicinity of Birmingham any open spaces in the way of parks or public walks or open grounds, in which the humble and middle classes can take exercise on their holidays or Sunday evenings?

Price: No, there are not; there are fields, which they can occasionally walk in if they think proper; but there are no public walks.

Committee: In walking in those fields, if they go out of the footpaths, are they not in trespass?

Price: Certainly.

Committee: Is not so large a population likely to commit some trespass in the fields, they having no place on which they can rightfully go?

Price: Doubtless, and it is very frequently done.

This theme of trespass runs through several of the accounts, and we can see the start of the movement to ensure access to the countryside via accessible footpaths. During the 1833 House of Commons debate, which preceded the formation of the Select Committee, Slaney argued that in Manchester:

The artizans there had no place to walk on Sundays, and near that town and other such places, the working man and his family were met on the road with notices against trespass, and the inhospitable intimation of spring-guns, and Steel-traps. It happened, that there was a Benevolent Society formed at Manchester, to protect the working classes in the enjoyment of footpaths, which were too often attempted to be closed up against them, and from the exertions of that society, which were necessarily limited, the greatest advantages had followed; for they had preserved for the working man many of his limited comforts, of which he would otherwise have been deprived.

Mr Potter, MP for Wigan responded to Slaney, stating that he had also been connected with the Manchester Association for the Preservation of Footpaths. He commented that ‘such was the constant desire to stop up footpaths, that had it not been for the exertions of the Manchester Society [the same Association mentioned by Slaney], he believed there would at this time have been very few footpaths left within ten miles of Manchester.’ Here then we can see the debates around parks, footpaths, trespass, access to the countryside and human health all being part of the discussion in the 1830s and laying the foundations of what would eventually become twentieth century legislation. There are also themes that we are familiar with such as the blocking up of footpaths by landowners and the privatisation of once public space. For more on the latter, see Katrina Navickas’ project on ‘A History of Contested Public Space in England’.

As a term, ‘Public Walks’ has long since fallen out of favour, but it was commonly used throughout the nineteenth century. As Conway notes, ‘the Public Health Act 1875 used it, despite the fact that a Public Parks Act had been passed in 1871’ (Conway, p.11). For us though they are useful spaces as they connect the concerns around parks, footpaths and access to the countryside within a wider narrative of urbanisation, industrialisation and the health of urban populations. They allow us to see the interconnections between ideas and different types of spaces in a more holistic manner and give us new ways of approaching the challenges we face in the twenty-first century.