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 VICTORIA PARKQUICK LINKS Park HistoryEventsDownloadable MapVictoria Park is a green oasis which provides an invaluable resource to the local community in a highly urbanised area. Steeped in history and supported by an active Friends Group, this park has enjoyed ongoing improvements including play areas, toilets, footpaths, football and basket ball facilities. There is also the newly planted inter-faith garden which represents a unified wish for world peace and tolerance.
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Park HistoryOn 7th May 1894 the Mayor of Nottingham, Alderman Frederick Pullman, formally opened Victoria Park in Bath Street. A leading figure in the Sneinton area and proprietor of a successful drapery shop in nearby Sneinton Street, Pullman was well aware of the value to the community of an attractive open space in this far from wealthy part of the town.However the history of Victoria Park does not start here and goes back more than half a century when the earliest mention of a recreation ground on this site was in the 1845 Enclosure Award Map. It named the open space as Meadow Platt Cricket Ground, and cited the Mayor, Aldermen & Burgesses of Nottingham as its owner. 
The Enclosure Award referred to it in these terms: 'One other allotment or piece of land situate in the Clay Field… containing four acres and eighteen perches bounded towards the East by Recreation Road, towards the West by St Ann's Cemetery, towards the North by allotment 95, and towards the South by Meadow Platt Road, and which said Allotment 91 now forms and is called the Meadow Platt Cricket Ground...' Recreation Road was the thoroughfare known nowadays as Robin Hood Street: St Ann's Cemetery is now the Bath Street Rest Garden: and Meadow Platt Road became Bath Street. Land for the cemetery was given by Samuel Fox, a Quaker, following the cholera outbreak of 1832. Consecrated as St Ann's Cemetery in 1835, it was later officially named St Mary's Cemetery, though often referred to locally as Fox's Close.
In 1945 Nottingham City Council took over the responsibility of the park, keeping much of its legacy intact. The most celebrated occupant is William Thompson, a renowned prize fighter known as 'Bendigo', whose tomb is guarded by a statue of a lion, but perhaps the most puzzling to passers by is the curious little stone tower which stands close to the boundary wall within the old cemetery. It is believed that the tower was originally an access shaft built by Foster & Barry to the Belk Culvert Tunnel, part of Nottingham City's drainage improvements. It became, however, a ventilation shaft for the culvert, foul air being carried up the shaft, and out through a grille at the top. Return to top of the page 
Events For further information on forthcoming events at Victoria Park, please click here. (External link to Nottingham City Council What's On Guide)
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MapClick here to download a map of the parkVictoria Park Bath Street Nottingham NG1 1DF Return to top of the page
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