There are several ‘People’s Parks’ gracing towns and cities across Britain and Ireland. They are a Victorian invention, parks designed for all the townspeople to enjoy, popping up in places like Halifax, Banbury and Grimsby in England, and in Ireland, there’s one in Dun Laoghaire, one in Waterford and another in Ballymena. But the subject of this post is the People’s Park in Limerick.

After Dublin, Belfast and Cork, Limerick is the fourth largest urban area on the island of Ireland, a bustling city straddling the River Shannon at its lowest bridging point. It was established by vikings and has some fine Norman architecture, but it was the Georgians who gave the modern city centre its grid of streets as well as many handsome brick terraces. The Georgian centre of Limerick is known as Newtown Pery, named for its champion, Anglo-Irish politician, Edmund Sexton-Pery.

No Georgian city is complete without a garden square or two, and in Pery’s 1769 masterplan for Limerick, one was planned for a residential development to the south of the new city centre. It did not become reality until the following century, well after Pery’s death, when property speculators started developing Pery square. The intention was that the gardens at its heart would be accessible by keyholders, residents of the elegant terraces that would eventually surround it. By 1829, the Spring Rice Monument1 had been built, and in 1835 construction began on the first houses.

At the same time, the Irish economy went into decline, and the catastrophic mid nineteenth century Great Famine followed. As a result, Pery Square did not develop beyond this terrace. Beyond the locust years, it was the 1870s when the garden square and surrounding land was leased to Limerick Corporation for use as a public park. Money for the extended park was raised through public subscription and in 1877 (ish – dates are a little sketchy), and to great fanfare, the People’s Park opened.

It is interesting to consider the motivations for developing a public park, one whose name, the People’s Park is definite about its intended use by the people, a term I think we can take to mean the entire population of Limerick. This is in sharp contrast to garden squares which were exclusive, locked places intended for a privileged few. Limerick’s People’s Park opened in 1877 which puts it in the vanguard of municipal park openings in Ireland and Britain. That was a few decades after the pioneering public parks of industrial British cities, but it did open 13 years before its namesake in Dun Laoghaire and a decade before Grimsby’s People’s Park.

Today, this park is a gem. It encompasses Georgian and Victorian features in a relatively modest footprint, it has many original architectural features, well kept planting (on the jolly, colourful spectrum typical of municipal parks departments) and an excellent collection of mature trees. An original archway in the northwest corner – dedicated to Richard Russell, a member of a local flax-milling family who presumably stumped up some cash – provides a fine entrance feature, next to which is Limerick City Art Gallery, a solid Victorian affair with sympathetic extensions in the international modern gallery style. Beyond the art gallery, there is a row of mature copper beech trees2 on the park’s western boundary complimenting the original late Georgian terrace across the thoroughfare now known as Pery Square. It is just one short street now, its name an echo of its originally intended grandeur.

The original garden square can be traced by raised mounds enclosing a circular path and rose beds around a central hillock on which the Spring Rice Monument stands. It is an impressive focal point. Elsewhere, there is a splendid 1895 cast iron bandstand, painted red and blue; a pair of attractive gazebo-like pavilions and a rare and very ornate cast iron water fountain. This last feature, sporting a date plaque of 1871, was restored in the early 2000s and has been well looked after since, it has a particularly fetching paint job in scarlet and white with gold highlights picked out around its dome. I assume this must be the original palette which may also have informed the bandstand colours.

Trees are a particular feature of the park, and some will be original plantings from the 1870s. Beeches are the most eye-catching, particularly the copper beeches, but there are regular, green-leaved specimens of Fagus sylvatica too. Other old trees include plenty of limes, including a short avenue, and a single London plane. Among the younger trees I noticed a couple of maturing elms. I couldn’t be sure of which type they are, but it is always pleasing to see healthy elms. More modern plantings include a lovely paper birch (which on my first visit in 2022 had a bench around it, but in 2026, it is no longer there), a Persian ironwood and a thriving dawn redwood. Fastigiate hornbeams make up the canopy, a cultivar which seems to have been very popular throughout Ireland in the late twentieth century judging by its frequency, it is a common Dublin street tree for instance. A final mention should go to a lovely old, white flowering cherry tree by the twenty-first century Pery Gate. Perhaps it is a Yoshino, but I only have Google Streetview3 to go on which shows it flowering in March.

People’s Park details

Visit: People’s Park, Pery Square, Limerick V94 E67F, Ireland
Community: Visit Limerick
Managed by: Limerick City Council

To start my new Substack column, I thought I would focus on one of my favourite and relatively local parks. Waterlow Park in Highgate (I don’t, alas, live in Highgate) is fairly small, just 26 acres, or 10.5 hectares, but it packs a lot in.

It occupies a sloping site in Highgate above the Whittington Hospital and below the centre of Highgate Village. Excellent views of London’s skyline can be had from the higher parts, and where it adjoins Highgate Cemetery at the southern end, the keen-eyed can spot the bearded bust of Karl Marx’s grave through the railings. I don’t think I know another park that offers so much variety in such a small area; it feels like a series of green rooms. In the south east corner, this is quite literally the case where four small hedged compartments – once the kitchen garden – each contain a hidden micro garden of their own.

This feeling of green rooms or compartments is unsurprising when you learn of the park’s history1. It was originally four private gardens including that of the 17th century Hullensian2 poet Andrew Marvell3 who is remembered on a plaque attached to the park wall on Highgate Hill where his cottage once stood.

Sir Sydney Waterlow, one time Lord Mayor of London, and resident of one of the houses whose gardens would come to form the park, bought out his neighbours and combined their gardens into one large private estate. By the 1880s, Waterlow had decided to sell up, but after failing to find a buyer he made the supremely generous donation of the estate to the London County Council4 in 1889 who opened it to the public as Waterlow Park in 1891. He described it as a gift for ‘the enjoyment of Londoners’5. A statue of Waterlow was erected by public subscription in 1900.

One of the principal entrances to the park is via Lauderdale House, an attraction for many visitors as a venue for craft fairs and amateur art exhibitions. Lauderdale House is actually of considerable age and interest; it was once the home of Nell Gwynn, mistress to Charles II. It is of half-timbered construction, which is hidden behind its rendered neo-classical exterior. This makeover was completed in 1760, an unusual Georgian ‘hatchet job’ where an unfashionable building was updated – much like seeing a 1930s semi modernized with new satin grey doors and a paved-over front garden. Visitors may also notice that the park encircles part of Channing School which is well screened by an austere high brick wall. This Victorian building was originally Fairseat House, Waterlow’s own home which, owing to complex lease arrangements was not part of the gift and despite attempts by the council to purchase it, it remains disconnected from the park.

Usually, I enter the park at the upper Dartmouth Park gate where formal planting surrounded by dense shrubs and the canopy of giant planes acts to immediately envelop visitors. There is a sense of the sloping site here too with steps soon leading up to the formal garden on the right and a path sloping down to the Waterlow Park Centre6 and aviaries (where I have never seen any birds) on the left. Take the steps up to the formal garden passing just below Lauderdale House to discover the most exhilarating compartment. Here are three of the finest trees in the park: the astonishing strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo), London’s best, an elderly honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos), the oldest I have seen in the UK, and a towering ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba). There’s a charmingly grotesque fig too.

The formal garden is terraced and has several features of note (not least the park café at the rear of Lauderdale House) including the fountain by the strawberry tree, rustic 17th century figures on the steps up to the café terrace and the eagles at the bottom of the steps leading down to the main lawn.

Like many parks, there’s a tree trail7 – but, like many, it focuses on the obvious and omits some of the most interesting trees which visitors should seek out. The strawberry tree is marked number 11, but the honey locust and ginkgo (despite both having botanical labels attached to their trunks) don’t get a look in. The trail redeems itself for putting the great pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) at number 1. This is the park’s oldest tree, one which might be as old as Lauderdale House, it is a veteran hollow oak lurking in the undergrowth, unnoticed by many. Other highlights include an old lime (Tilia x europaea) avenue on the western side. It must be a remnant of one of the old houses which are now long gone, as it now finds itself high and dry with no obvious reason for its start or end. Look out too for a huge black walnut (Juglans nigra) partially hidden near Lauderdale house, a red maple (Acer rubra), like the honey locust, the oldest and biggest I have seen in the UK, near the lower Dartmouth Park Hill entrance, a lovely hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) is an obvious feature and there’s a good swamp cypress (Taxodium distichum) by the upper lake. These are just a few of the delights of Waterlow Park, it is truly a gem of a park.

Waterlow Park details

Visit: Waterlow Park, Highgate Hill, London N6 5HG
Community: Friends of Waterlow Park
Managed by: Waterlow Park Trust and London Borough of Camden

The particularities of place, aspect, size, planting, history and use of parks ensures that no two are the same and that each adds something unique to its wider environment. Parks are key to every town and city, and they are, I think, an under-appreciated part of how a place feels and how people inhabit it.

Take Liverpool for instance. A grand city known for its impressive architecture and its internationally important waterfront, but also a city that has a rich assemblage of nineteenth century parks that encircle its city centre from Prince’s Park in the south to Stanley Park in the north, not to mention the wonderful Sefton Park and ornate Calderstones Park. Together they define Liverpool as much as St George’s Hall and the Waterfront. Each of these parks has its own fascinating history, a distinct landscape and a singular feel to it – each has at least one tree featured in Tree Hunting too!

The concept of parks has a long history, and each individual park has its own history which can stretch back centuries. But parks as we think of them today are mostly of the nineteenth century, the legacy of improving Victorians who recognised that rapidly expanding towns and cities needed to have places of resort and recreation for new urban populations.

There is a lot to unpack in parks, socially, culturally, environmentally and botanically. Over the coming weeks and months, this new Substack will explore parks across Britain and Ireland and along the way pick up these themes. In the meantime, I have a plug for a new publication…

Since the beginning of 2026, I have been visiting London’s parks. It has been a fascinating journey. I have visited all the big, well-known places like Richmond, Hyde and Greenwich Park, but I have also been to smaller, lesser-known places like Myatt’s Fields Park, Arnos Park and Roundwood Park. My explorations have come together in a map, the Great Parks of London Map, to be published by Blue Crow Media imminently. It is a double-sided map featuring 53 Royal Parks, historic commons, formal gardens and other green spaces that fit into the broad description of ‘park’.

If you’d like to order a signed copy, I am taking pre-orders which will ship as soon as the maps come back from the printer later this month.

Preorder the Map

Better still, if you take out or upgrade to an annual or founding subscription to The Street Tree, I’ll send you a copy as a thank you for signing up. This applies to UK subscribers only, but if you become a founding member, I’ll send it to you anywhere in the world.

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