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Description: | By 1839, in his seventy-fourth year, Joseph Strutt had accumulated a great deal of wealth from his industrial activities, he had been a Mayor of Derby, the first for the new Borough Council and had witnessed great strides forward with new inventions and engineering technology. As one of the great social reformers of the time he also recognised the fact that the working classes, though better off regarding housing and working conditions, were being deprived of open space where they had the right to walk freely. So Joseph Strutt wished to create a 'Pleasure Ground or Recreation Ground to offer the inhabitants of the town the opportunity of enjoying, with their families, exercise and recreation in the fresh air, in public walks and grounds devoted to that purpose'. He first suggested a Botanical Garden, but was advised that this would be too difficult and expensive to maintain. Following advice from John Claudius Loudon and he wished that 'they should comprise a valuable collection of trees and shrubs (from around the world), so arranged and described as to offer the means of instruction to visitors'. When Loudon had completed the task, Joseph Strutt named these public walks and grounds, 'The Arboretum'. Shown here is the new entrance lodge on Arboretum Square, There is a clock on the other side of the pediment and on this side is an honorary statue to Joseph Strutt, erected by the town council in 1850. This became recognised as the main entrance and Grove Street became a secondary entrance. This brought the number of entrances to four, two more than Strutt had originally intended. The Derby Arboretum was the first public garden which fulfilled Loudon's ideal of a garden of public instruction. Derby City Council's bid for funding to refurbish the Arboretum to its former glory has been approved by the Heritage Lottery Fund. More than £5 million will be invested in the park to restore the two old lodges and to build new facilities and play areas for children. | Format: | JPEG/IMAGE | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/ | Publisher: | North East Midland Photographic Record | Source: | Picture the Past OAI feed | Creator: | Nixon, Frank | Identifier: | http://www.picturethepast.org.uk/fronten... | Language: | EN-GB | Format: | JPEG/IMAGE | Go to resource |
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