Birkenhead Park

The world’s first publicly funded civic park demonstrates what an urban green space can offer to the environment and local community in a world of climate change.

Birkenhead Park’s Grand Entrance (Photo: Ron Thomas).

With the industrial revolution reaching its peak in the early 1840s, people leaving the countryside led to rapid and unplanned urbanisation. Urban centres such as Liverpool became overpopulated, and the living conditions of the working class deteriorated. High densities led to the spread of epidemic diseases, leading political leaders to recognise the need to improve urban sanitation.

The small village of Birkenhead developed into a new town on the fringe of its giant neighbour Liverpool across the River Mersey. Soon after the introduction of steam ferries, Birkenhead became an attractive – and healthier – place to live for the industrialists and merchants expanding their business on the other side of the river. In 1833, the Birkenhead Improvement Act enabled the growth of the town. Ten years later, a second act approved the creation of a park.

When Birkenhead Park officially opened in 1847, it was widely regarded as social evolution of the first order. Its designer, Joseph Paxton, was acclaimed for having devised a high-quality landscape, combining ‘natural’ features and architectural components, where citizens could escape the busy urban environment. The creation of Birkenhead Park symbolised the start of a new era when ordinary people would be able to enjoy free access to public parks. Its historic significance spread when the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, on visiting the park, was inspired to design Central Park in New York.

Today, historic urban public parks can be difficult to classify. They are human-made, designed landscapes, but essentially made of natural features which would have a life of their own if not carefully maintained. At the same time, they usually integrate architectural components in their landscape, requiring very different kinds of maintenance and conservation.

Birkenhead Park is a Grade I-listed historic landscape. The park and its immediate surroundings are a designated conservation area that contains 42 listed buildings. Encompassing nearly 140 acres of historic parkland, it has much more to offer than heritage. Its environmental benefits are too little celebrated. Endowed with a variety of vegetation, biodiversity and flood management virtues, the park is a multifunctional blue-green infrastructure asset.

Situated on the Wirral Peninsula, the park welcomes more than 1.5 million visitors a year. Beyond the exceptional character of its landscape, this ‘people’s park’ embodies unprecedented social and political values. Located in a disadvantaged community, it plays an important role in building community cohesiveness.

As the forerunner of public parks across the world, the park represents ‘an important interchange of human values’, and its landscape ‘illustrates a significant stage in human history’ – both being ‘outstanding universal values’ of Unesco world heritage sites. Since its contribution to history transcends national boundaries, it is not surprising that in April 2023 Birkenhead Park was included on the UK’s tentative list for potential nomination as a Unesco world heritage site.

ICOMOS-IFLA define ‘historic urban public parks’ as being freely accessible and in public ownership. Fundamental to their identity is ‘their composition and dependency on such elements as vegetation, architectural elements, water features, paths, or topography. These elements contribute to their character, seasonal interest, shade, and spatial and visual identity.’ Although this definition highlights a number of natural elements in public parks, none of them seems to acknowledge their environmental value. They focus on their aesthetic values.

While designed landscapes are considered as ‘living heritage’, they often belong exclusively to the ‘cultural heritage’ site category. In the Unesco world heritage system, to be considered as a ‘mixed’ site, there is a requirement to meet at least one of the natural criteria, which is often quite difficult – if not impossible – for sites that do not contain ‘superlative natural phenomena’ or ‘the most important… natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity’. To fill this gap, in 1992 the World Heritage Committee created the category of ‘cultural landscape’, intended for sites that represent the ‘combined works of nature and of man’. Even there, the dual character of historic urban public parks does not seem to be fully embedded.

Birkenhead Park can be considered as being an ancestor of what we now call urban green spaces. Its importance as a historic urban park remains unparalleled. It delivers beyond its role as a heritage asset. It provides environmental benefits, and is a community asset as a place for sports, social gathering, enjoying nature, escaping from the town, learning, and meeting friends and family. As the park prepares itself to apply for the final listing in the Unesco heritage list, it must achieve its fullest potential. Heritage protection and enhancement go hand in hand with the protection and enhancement of our natural environment and social well-being. Created as social and environmental spaces, historic urban parks are assets in combating the impacts of climate change. It would be a mistake to focus solely on their designed and built character in terms of heritage conservation.

This article originally appeared as ‘Birkenhead Park shows the way’ in the Institute of Historic Building Conservation’s (IHBC’s) Context 180, published in June 2024. It was written by Urmila Jha-Thakur, a senior lecturer in the school of environmental sciences, University of Liverpool, and editor of the journal, Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, and Marie Le Devehat, a world heritage project officer at Birkenhead Park, Wirral Council.