Stanley Park, Blackpool - History

History

As early as 1921, former Blackpool Mayor and Member of Parliament (MP) Sir Albert Lindsay Parkinson acquired a large area of land, intending to develop it into a park with the help of the town council. The council subsequently took over the land and the project, further extending the area by purchasing and demolishing some of the surrounding buildings. The task of designing the park was given to the distinguished landscape architects TH Mawson and Sons and much of the work was handled by the founder's son Edward Mawson as his father's health failed due to Parkinson's disease. The park's golf course was designed by the famous partnership of Harry Colt and Dr Alister MacKenzie, who also created the nearby Blackpool North Shore and Royal Lytham and St. Annes courses. The park was finally declared open on 2 October 1926 by the 17th Earl of Derby, Sir George Edward Villiers Stanley. It is named in honour of his father, the former Governor General of Canada, Frederick Stanley, 16th Earl of Derby KG, GCB, GCVO, PC who, from 1885 to 1886, had been the first MP for the newly created Blackpool Parliamentary Constituency having been, for 20 years before that, one of the MPs for the larger constituency of which Blackpool had then been part.

Since 1995, Stanley Park has had Grade II status (as a historically important garden) on the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens and is currently undergoing extensive restoration with the help of National Lottery funding. Despite its age, the park was still the most recent park development in Blackpool until 2006 when George Bancroft Park was opened.