Sport in London’s public green spaces in the inter-war years

ABSTRACT

Most research on sports venues has focused on commercial stadia instead of public green spaces like parks in major cities such as London. This article charts the development and distribution of sport in London’s public green spaces from the early 1920s until the outbreak of a new war in 1939. Based on original sources from various London archives, the article depicts general trends in the evolution of sport and public parks. By comparing various municipal authorities and the Office of Works, the government department responsible for the Royal Parks, the article demonstrates that most sport venues were located in parks. It shows that in London most municipal parks became sports parks accommodating numerous facilities, suggesting that public parks were crucial sport venues for most people. It furthermore argues that the authorities managing parks were the main providers of sport in the city and that they reacted to continuously growing demand from below. Nevertheless, there were crucial differences between authorities on allocating their public green space for sport. Challenging the view that men dominated public green space, the authorities studied paid close attention to women and children as users of parks and sports facilities.

KEYWORDS:

• Sport
• recreation
• park
• green space
• London

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Matti O. Hannikainen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5485-7585

Notes

1. Jeffrey Hill, ‘“What Shall we do with Them When They’re not Working?”: Leisure and Historians in Britain’, in Leisure and Cultural Conflict in Twentieth-Century Britain, ed. Brett Bebber (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2012), 32; see also Hugh Cunningham, ‘Leisure and Culture’, in The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1950, vol. 2: People and Their Environment, ed. F.M.L. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Stephen Williams, Outdoor Recreation and the Urban Environment (London and New York: Routledge, 1995); Douglas Reid, ‘Playing and Praying’, in Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. 3, ed. Martin Daunton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Peter Borsay, A History of Leisure: The British Experience since 1500 (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); on swimming, see Christopher Love, ‘Local Aquatic Empires: The Municipal Provision of Swimming Pools in England, 1828–1918’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 24, no. 5 (2007).

2. Joyce Kay, ‘Grass Roots: The Development of Tennis in Britain, 1918–1978’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 29, no. 18 (2012): 2534.

3. John Hargreaves, Sport, Power and Culture: A Social and Historical Analysis of Popular Sports in Britain (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987); Daphné Bolz, ‘Creating Places for Sport in Interwar Europe. A Comparison of the Provision of Sports Venues in Italy, Germany and England’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 14 (2012); Jo Halpin, ‘“Thus Far and no Farther”: the Rise of Women’s Hockey Leagues in England from 1910 to 1939’, Sport in History 37, no. 2 (2017).

4. Hill, ‘“What Shall we do with them When They’re not Working?”’, 19.

5. Halpin, ‘Thus Far and no Farther’, 154–8.

6. Fiona Skillen, Women, Sport and Modernity in Interwar Britain (Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang 2013), 1.

7. Williams, Outdoor Recreation, 20–21.

8. Matti O. Hannikainen, The Greening of London, 1920–2000 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2016), 56, 70–87.

9. Richard Holt, ‘The Amateur Body and the Middle-Class Man: Work, Health and Style in Victorian Britain’, Amateurism in British Sport: It Matters not Who Won or Lost?, eds Dilwyn Porter and Stephen Wagg (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 8–14. For a discussion on other European cities, see articles in Sport, Recreation and Green Space in the European City (Studia Fennica Historica 16), eds Peter Clark, Marjaana Niemi and Jari Niemelä (Helsinki: Hakapaino Oy, 2009).

10. Hill, ‘“What Shall We do with Them When They’re not Working?”’, 22; Hargreaves, Sport, Power and Culture, 3–7.

11. Ina Zweiniger–Bargielowska, Managing the Body – Beauty, Health and Fitness in Britain, 1890–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 283.

12. See, for instance, Jeffrey Hill, Sport, Leisure & Culture in Twentieth-Century Britain (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2002), 151; Peter Thorsheim, ‘Green Space and Class in Imperial London’, in The Nature of Cities, ed. Andrew C. Isenberg (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006), 31–3.

13. Robert Snape, ‘New Leisure, Voluntarism and Social Reconstruction in Inter-War Britain’, Contemporary British History 29, no. 1 (2015); see also Robert Snape and Helen Pussard, ‘Theorisations of Leisure in Inter-War Britain’, Leisure Studies 32, no. 1 (2013).

14. Stephen G. Jones, Sport, Politics, and the Working Class – Organised Labour and Sport in the Inter-War Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 28.

15. Helen Jones, Health and Society in Twentieth–Century Britain (London and New York: Longman Group Ltd. 1994), 69.

16. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body, 5; Elizabeth Darling, Re-Forming Britain – Narratives of Modernity before Reconstruction (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 51–4; David Matless, Landscape and Englishness (London: Reaktion Books, 1998), 90–92, 151–2.

17. David Matless, ‘“The Art of Right Living”: Landscape and Citizenship, 1929–1939’, in Mapping the Subject: Geographies of Cultural Transformation, eds Steve Pale and Nigel Thrift (Routledge: London 1995), 94–5, 109.

18. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body, 151–2, 251–3, 281–310; Matless, Landscape and Englishness, 88–91, 162–6.

19. John Welshman, ‘Physical Culture and Sport in Schools in England and Wales, 1900–1940’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 15, no. 1 (1998): 69–71; see also Bolz, ‘Creating Places for Sport in Interwar Europe’.

20. Richard Holt, Sport and the British: A Modern History (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989), 271; Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body, 151–2, 280–1.

21. Skillen, Women, Sport and Modernity in Interwar Britain, 105.

22. For a general discussion on non-commercial outdoor leisure, see Hannikainen, The Greening of London, 1920–2000, 70–6.

23. Departmental Committee on Organisation of Parks Department – Games Section (1926), GLC/RA/A1/151/1, London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA).

24. Chief Officer of the Parks Department, an undated report [most likely late 1930]. GLC/RA/E3/1/40, LMA.

25. Hannikainen, The Greening of London, 72–3.

26. Stephen G. Jones, Workers at Play – A Social and Economic History of Leisure, 1918–1939 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), 172–3, 192–3; Reid, ‘Playing and Praying’, 749–51; James Riordan, ‘Amateurism, Sport and the Left: Amateurism for All versus Amateur Elitism’, in Amateurism in British Sport: It Matters not Who Won or Lost?, eds Dilwyn Porter and Stephen Wagg (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 128–9, 135–7.

27. Jones, Workers at Play, 9, 135–6; Stephen G. Jones, Sport, Politics, and the Working Class – Organised Labour and Sport in the Inter-War Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1988), 43–4; Reid, ‘Playing and Praying’, 749–51.

28. Martin Pugh, ‘We Danced All Night’ – A Social History of Britain between the Wars (London: The Bodley Head, 2008), 233–7.

29. Susan Lasdun, The English Park: Royal, Private, and Public (London: Andre Deutsch, 1991), 188; J. Allan Patmore, Land and Leisure (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1970), 19–21; Irene Maver, ‘Glasgow’s Public Parks and the Community, 1850–1914: A Case Study in Scottish Civic Interventionism’, Urban History 25, no. 3 (1998): 336–7; for a discussion on a London park, see Chapter 4 in Matti O. Hannikainen, ‘Park Life – An Urban Environmental History of Battersea Park, 1846–1952’ (master’s thesis, University of Helsinki, 2005).

30. Snape and Pussard, ‘Theorisations of Leisure in Inter-War Britain’, 11–13; Skillen, Women, Sport and Modernity in Interwar Britain, 109–110.

31. Hill, Sport, Leisure & Culture in Twentieth Century Britain, 167–168; Skillen, Women, Sport and Modernity in Interwar Britain, 111.

32. John Garrard, Democratisation in Britain – Elites, Civil Society and Reform since 1800 (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2002), 3; Ken Young and Patricia Garside, Metropolitan London: Politics and Urban Change, 1837–1981 (London: Edward Arnold, 1983), Appendix 1, 343.

33. See, for instance, Andrew Saint, ‘Spread of People: The LCC’s Dispersal Policy, 1889–1965’, in Politics and People of London: The London County Council 1889–1965, ed. Andrew Saint (London: Hambledon Press, 1989); Gilwyn Gibbon and Reginald W. Bell, History of the London County Council (London: Macmillan, 1939), 677.

34. Skillen, Women, Sport and Modernity in Interwar Britain, 110–111.

35. David Bowher, ‘Parks and Baths: Sport, Recreation and Municipal Government in Aston-under-Lyne between the Wars’, in Sport and the Working Class in Modern Britain, ed. Richard Holt (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1990), 92–3; Peter Shapely, ‘Civic Pride and Redevelopment in the Post-War British City’, Urban History 39, no. 2 (2012): 313–14; Charlotte Wildman, ‘Urban Transformation in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918–1939’, The Historical Journal 55, no. 1 (2012): 143; Mike Goldsmith and John Garrard, ‘Urban Governance: Some Reflections’, in Urban Governance – Britain and Beyond since 1750, eds Robert J. Morris and Richard H. Trainor (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 18; Richard H. Trainor, ‘The “Decline” of British Urban Governance since 1850: A Re-Assessment’, in Urban Governance – Britain and Beyond since 1750, eds Robert J. Morris and Richard H. Trainor (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 30–32, 35–38.

36. London County Council (hereafter LCC), ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1924, July–December’, 167–168 (15 July), LMA.

37. E.F.C. to Secretary, a memorandum, (8.2.1923), Work 16/1486, TNA;

38. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1934, January–June’, 848 (12 June), LMA; Nicholas Fenwick, English Football and Society 1910–1950 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1989), 11.

39. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1922, July–December’, 728–729 (12 December); id., ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1927, July–December’, 264 (26 July), LMA.

40. Departmental Committee on Organisation of Parks Department – Games Section (1926), GLC/RA/A1/151/1, LMA.

41. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1924, July–December’, 167–168 (15 July); 868–869 (9 December); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1925, July–December’, 374 (28 July); 897–898 (8 December); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1926, July–December’, 30 (6 July); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1934, January–June’, 848–850 (15 May), LMA.

42. Hampstead, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1934–1935’, 541 (24 October 1934), Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre (hereafter CLSAC).

43. Camberwell, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1935–1936’, 25 (11 December 1935), Southwark Local History Library (hereafter SLHL). Words in brackets added by the author.

44. Hannikainen, The Greening of London, 1920–2000, 141.

45. John Lowerson, ‘Sport and the Victorian Sunday – The Beginnings of Middle-Class Apostasy’, in A Sport Loving Society – Victorian and Edwardian Middle-Class England at Play, ed. J.A. Mangan (London: Routledge, 2006), 182.

46. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1920, January–June’, 234 (17 February); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1921, January–June’, 181 (8 February), LMA.

47. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1922, January–June’, 606–7 (9 May); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1933, January–June’, 579–580 (4 April), LMA.

48. Notes of Conference held with London County Council on the subject of Sunday Games (17.10.1922), Work 16/549, The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA).

49. F.L. Brient, a memorandum to Departmental Committee on Organisation of Park Department (6 November 1925), GLC/RA/A1/1/51/1, LMA.

50. Bailiff of the Parks to the Clerk of the Council, London County Council, a letter (3 October 1922), Work 16/509, TNA; Notes of Conference held with London County Council on the subject of Sunday Games (17.10.1922), Work 16/549, TNA.

51. A memorandum on Sunday Cricket (28 July 1922), Work 16/509; Secretary, a memorandum (28 July 1922), Work 16/559, TNA.

52. Deputation from the Sunday Leagues Football Campaign Committee (15.6.1934), LCC/CL/PK/1/24, LMA.

53. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1922, January–June’, 606–607 (9 May), LMA; Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill, Games and Games Grounds, Office of Work No.6, Memoranda (July 1923). Work 16/850, TNA.

54. Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill, Games and Games Grounds, Office of Work No.6, Memoranda (July 1923). Work 16/850, TNA.

55. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929, January–June’, 478–85 (26 March), LMA.

56. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1933, January–June’, 579–80 (4 April); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1934, July–December’, 70–72 (10 July); 487–488 (30 October), LMA.

57. Deputation from the Sunday Leagues Football Campaign Committee (15 June 1934), LCC/CL/PK/1/24, LMA; LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1934, July–December’, 517 (30 October), LMA; see also Jones, Workers at Play, 191–192.

58. Deputation from the Sunday Leagues Football Campaign Committee (15 June 1934), LCC/CL/PK/1/24, LMA;

59. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1935, January–June’, 892, (25 June), LMA.

60. A.R. Mawson, list of pitches, 1938–1939 (November 1939), GLC/RA/A1/1/19, LMA.

61. Fenwick, English Football and Society 1910–1950, 15; Stephen G. Jones, ‘Working-class Sport in Manchester Between the Wars’, in Sport and the Working-Class in Modern Britain, ed. Richard Holt (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 75.

62. Skillen, Women, Sport and Modernity in Interwar Britain, 132; see also Maver, ‘Glasgow’s public parks’, 340–341.

63. Jones, ‘Working-class Sport’, 78.

64. Jerry White, London in the Twentieth Century: A City and Its People (London: Vintage Books, 2008), 319.

65. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929, January–June’, 478–485 (26 March), LMA.

66. Holt, Sport and the British, 152, 271; Stephen G. Jones, ‘State Intervention in Sport and Leisure in Britain between the Wars’, Journal of Contemporary History 22, no. 1 (1987): 167–168.

67. Jones, Working-Class Sport’, 75–78.

68. Skillen, Women, Sport and Modernity in Interwar Britain, 104.

69. Ibid., 142–3.

70. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929, January–June’, 478–485 (26 March), LMA.

71. John Bale, Sport, Space and the City (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 18–20; Christiane Eisenberg, ‘Playing Fields in German Cities’, in Sport, Recreation and Green Space in the European City (Studia Fennica Historica 16), eds Peter Clark, Marjaana Niemi and Jari Niemelä (Helsinki: Hakapaino Oy, 2009), 79–84.

72. See, for instance, Sonja Dümpelmann, ‘Creating Order with Nature: Transatlantic Transfer of Ideas in Park System Planning in Twentieth-Century Washington D.C., Chicago, Berlin and Rome’, Planning Perspectives 24, no. 2 (2009); Pim Kooij, ‘Urban Green Space and Sport: The Case of the Netherlands, 1800–2000’, in Sport, Recreation and Green Space in the European City (Studia Fennica Historica 16), eds Peter Clark, Marjaana Niemi and Jari Niemelä, (Helsinki: Hakapaino Oy, 2009), 64–74.

73. LCC, London Statistics, vol. 24: 1913–1914, 258; London Statistics, vol. 26: 1915–1920 (London: LCC, 1921), 159; London Statistics, vol. 34: 1928–1930 (London: LCC, 1931), 162.

74. Holt, Sport and the British, 152–75.

75. LCC, Annual Report of the Council 1920, 82; A.R. Mawson, list of pitches, 1938–1939 (November 1939), GLC/RA/A1/1/19, LMA.

76. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1920, January–June’, 909 (4 May), LMA.

77. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1930, July–December’, 194 (15 July), LMA.

78. Major Hussey to the Secretary, Richmond Park – Football Grounds (2 July 1923), Work 16/1486; Letter to the Town Clerk (Richmond, Surrey) (28 July 1923), Work 16/1687, TNA; Memorandum (15 February 1936), Work 16/1687, TNA.

79. Mike Huggins, ‘“And Now Something for the Ladies”: Representations of Women Sport in Cinema Newsreels 1928–1939’, Women’s History Review 16, no. 5 (2007), 691.

80. Holt, Sport and the British, 175–9, 287.

81. F.E. Carter, ‘Urgent Question for Monday 25 November 1929’, (12/11/1936), Work 16/850, TNA.

82. Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill, Games and Games Grounds, Office of Work No.6, Memoranda (July 1923), Work 16/850, TNA.

83. St Pancras, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1933’, 305–6 (12 April), CLSAC; Regent’s Park Superintendent, a note to Mr Carter, (22.11.29), Works 16/850, TNA.

84. On educational background of sport authorities, see in Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England 1918–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) and Holt, Sport and the British.

85. On tennis at national level, see e.g. Kay, ‘Grass Roots’, 2538–41.

86. Kay, ‘Grass Roots’, 2539–41.

87. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929, January–June’, 478–485 (26 March), LMA.

88. Parks department – Staffing and Organisation (22 March 1927), LCC/PK/GEN/2/1, LMA.

89. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1926, January–June’, 141 (26 January), LMA.

90. Departmental Committee on Organisation of Parks Department (6 November 1925), GLC/RA/A1/1/51/1, LMA.

91. Report of Parks and Open Spaces Committee – Survey of Open Spaces and Playing-Fields in London and Its Neighbourhood (8 March 1929), London County Council, Presented Papers (26 March 1929), LMA.

92. Bailiff to Secretary (16.2.20), Work 16/1687, TNA; Clerk of the Richmond Town Council to the Secretary of Office of Works (11.2.1920), Work 16/1687, TNA.

93. Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill, Games and Games Grounds, Office of Work No.6, Memoranda (July 1923), Work 16/850, TNA; Mr Connolly, letter to Mr J. Ivor Griffith (31 January 1929), Work 16/848, TNA.

94. Mr. Jowett to Lieutenant-Colonel Assheton Powall (in Parliament) (3 March 1924), Work 16/1704, TNA.

95. Williams, Outdoor Recreation, 21–2; McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, 359–61; Holt, ‘Amateur Body and the Middle-Class Man’, 12–13. For a general discussion on golf, see Holt, Sport and the British and Martin Polley, Moving the Goalposts – A History of Sport and Society since 1945 (London and New York: Routledge, 1998).

96. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1908, January–March, 247 (11 February); id., ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1908, July–October, 439 (28–29 July), LMA.

97. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1906, April–June, 1187–8 (8 May), LMA.

98. E. Batch, Richmond Park Golf Course (31.5.1923), Work 16/1267, TNA; ‘Richmond’s Public Course’, The Times, 11 June 1923, 7; Deputation on new golf course at Richmond Park (13 February 1924), Work 16/1430, TNA.

99. ‘Duke of York at Richmond’, The Times, 11 June 1925, 5.

100. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1927, July–December’, 264 (26 July); 684–685, 697 (6 December); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1933, January–June’, 315–318 (21 February), LMA.

101. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1933, January–June’, 315–318 (21 February); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1934, January–June’, 398–399 (27 February), LMA.

102. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1935, January–June’, 760 (28 May), LMA.

103. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1931, July–December’, 211 (21 July); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1937, July–December’, 317 (9 November), LMA.

104. Pugh, ‘We Danced All Night’, 289.

105. Parks Department – Staffing and Regulations (22 March 1927), LCC/PK/GEN/2/1, LMA; LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1927, July–December’, 537, (8 November), LMA; An extract from the Times (3 May 1924), Work 16/1704, TNA.

106. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929, January–June’, 478–85 (26 March), LMA.

107. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1927, January–June’, 357–8 (8 March), LMA.

108. Deputation on new golf course at Richmond Park (13 February 1924), Work 16/1430, TNA; Bailiff, a memorandum (18 July 1928), Work 16/1704, TNA

109. Lionel Earle to Lord Riddell (1 August 1923), Work 16/1704, NA; A.D. Pole, A memorandum on Putting Greens (18 July 1928), Work 16/1704, TNA.

110. F.E. Carter, A memorandum (17 April 1940), Work 16/1676; A. D. Pole, a letter to Mr John Southon (24 September 1945), Work 16/1676, TNA.

111. LCC, Annual Report of the Council 1920, 82.

112. See Skillen, Women, Sport and Modernity in Interwar Britain, 121–2.

113. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1922, July–December’, 728–729 (12 December); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1927, July–December’, 264 (26 July), LMA.

114. LCC, London Statistics, vol. 28: 1921–1923 (London: LCC, 1924), 338; LCC, London Statistics, vol. 41: 1936–1938 (London, LCC 1939), 401.

115. Hannikainen, The Greening of London, 64–5.

116. D.W. Royle, a note to Miss Lomas (2 May 1956). Work 16/2085, TNA.

117. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body, 294, 297–8; Pugh, ‘We Danced All Night’, 235–6.

118. Love, ‘Local aquatic empires’, 625–7.

119. Jones, ‘Working-class Sport’, 77.

120. White, London in the Twentieth Century, 320.

121. St Pancras, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1927’, 204–205 (16 March), CLSAC; Hampstead, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929–1930’, 117–18 (23 January 1930), CLSAC.

122. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1934, July–December’, 848 (18 December), LMA.

123. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1935, January–June’, 452–3 (2 April), LMA; see also Bernard Donoghue and G.W. Jones, Herbert Morrison: Portrait of a Politician (London: Phoenix Press, 1973), 199.

124. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1937, July–December’, 59–60 (13 July), LMA.

125. Hampstead, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1935–1936’, 166–167 (23 January 1936); 304–5 (26 March 1936), CLSAC; St Pancras, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1936’, 404–406 (6 May), SLHL; Janet Smith. Liquid Assets – The Lidos and Open Air Swimming Pools of Britain (London: English Heritage, 2005), 156–7.

126. LCC 1931, 162; LCC 1939, 186.

127. Hannikainen, The Greening of London, 22.

128. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1926, July–December 1926’, 4201 (20 July), LMA; Recreational Facilities, LCC/CL/PK/2/3, LMA.

129. LCC, London Statistics, vol. 24:1913–1914, 256–258; London Statistics, vol. 41: 1936–1938 (London: LCC, 1939), 183–186; on the transfer, see Hannikainen, The Greening of London, 44–6.

130. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929, January–June’, 480 (26 March), LMA.

131. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929, January–June’, 478–85 (26 March), LMA.

132. Recreational Facilities, LCC/CL/PK/2/3, LMA.

133. Major Hussey to the Secretary, a memorandum (1 January 1921), Work 16/549, TNA.

134. Ian Taylor, Karen Evans and Penny Fraser, A Tale of Two Cities: Global Change, Local Feeling and Everyday Life in the North of England: A Study of Manchester and Sheffield (London: Routledge, 1996), 85.

135. Recreational Facilities, LCC/CL/PK/2/3, LMA.

136. F.E. Carter (12 November 1936), Work 16/850, TNA.

137. Opening of New Running Track, Regent’s Park (12 June 1930), Work 16/1117, TNA; Mr Carter, a note to Mr Cambell (October 1936), Work 16/1117, TNA; K.C to Mr Cambell (4 May 1938), Work 16/1117, TNA.

138. Recreational Facilities, LCC/CL/PK/2/3, LMA.

139. Recreational Facilities, LCC/CL/PK/2/3, LMA.

140. Hannikainen, The Greening of London, 1920–2000, 76–77.

141. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1925, July–December’, 714 (17 November); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1926, January–June’, 238 (2 February); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1927, July–December’, 198 (19 July), LMA.

142. Hampstead, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929–1930’, 72 (19 December 1929), CLSAC.

143. Hampstead, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929–1930’, 417 (24 July 1930); 505 (30 October 1930), CLSAC.

144. Hampstead, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1936–1937’, 514–515, 533 (22 July 1937), CLSAC.

145. Anne Werner,’ The Promotion of Historic Parks and Landscapes in Urban Areas in Britain and Germany and its Effects on Their Conservation’, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität, Hannover 2010, 258.

146. M.C. Davey, a note to Mr Emberson (2 February 1972), Work 16/2412, TNA.

147. Urgent Question for Monday 13 July 1931. Work 16/850, TNA.

148. F.E. Carter, a memorandum (12 November 1936), Work 16/850, TNA.

149. Bowher, ‘Parks and Baths’, 93–94.

150. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929, January–June’, 478–485 (26 March), LMA.

151. Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill. Games and Games Grounds Office of Works No. 6 Memoranda (July 1923), Work 16/850, TNA.

152. Bermondsey, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929–1930’, 178–9 (3 September 1929); 245–6 (15 October, 1929); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1930–1931, 77–8 (20 May 1930); 254 (7 October 1930), SLHL.

153. Camberwell, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1938–1939’, 214 (5 April 1939), SLHL.

154. Camberwell, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1936–1937’, 195–196 (14 April 1937), SLHL.

155. Richard Holt, ‘Sports and Recreation’, in A Companion to Contemporary Britain, 1939–2000, eds Paul Addison and Harriet Jones (London: Blackwell, 2005), 111.

156. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929, January–June’, 478–85 (26 March), LMA.

157. Hill, Sport, Leisure & Culture in Twentieth-Century Britain, 130–1.

158. Skillen, Women, Sport and Modernity in Interwar Britain, 165–6.

159. LCC 1915, 255.

160. Memorandum by Mr F.L. Brient. Attached to Departmental Committee on Organisation of Park Department, 6 November 1925. by B. Merton. GLC/RA/A1/1/51/1, LMA.

161. Bermondsey, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1931–1932’, 94 (16 January 1931); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1932–1933’, 450–2 (15 March 1932), SLHL.

162. Holt, Sport and the British, 270–271.

163. James Walwin, Leisure and Society 1830–1950 (London and New York: Longman, 1978), 83–96; Jones, Sport, Politics and the Working-Class, 44; Holt, Sport and the British, 118; McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, 368–369.

164. Skillen, Women, Sport and Modernity in Interwar Britain, 1–7, 50–66.

165. Ibid., 197–209.

166. Ibid., 95–9.

167. Zweiniger–Bargielowska, Managing the Body, 237–8; Ina Zweiniger–Bargielowska, ‘The Body and Consumer Culture’, in Women in Twentieth-Century Britain, ed. Ina Zweiniger–Bargielowska (Harlow: Longman, 2001), 188; Skillen, Women, Sport and Modernity in Interwar Britain, 66; Huggins, ‘“And Now, Something for the Ladies”’, 695–6.

168. Holt, Sport and the British, 135.

169. Maggie Andrews, ‘Homes Both Sides of the Microphone: The Wireless and Domestic Space in Inter-War Britain’, Women's History Review 21, no. 4 (2012): 605–621.

170. Huggins, ‘“ And Now Something for the Ladies”’, 683.

171. Hazel Conway, People’s Parks: The Design and Development of Victorian Parks in Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 194–5; Hannikainen, Park Life, 83.

172. Holt, Sport and the British, 124–30; Borsay, A History of Leisure, 114–16; J. Lee, ‘Life after death’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 24, no. 11 (2007): 1492–3.

173. Holt, Sport and the British, 128–30. Holt writes that women’s football was ‘laughed at, scoffed out of existence’. Pugh, ’’We Danced All Night’, 49; Skillen, Women, Sport and Modernity in Interwar Britain,

174. Huggins, ‘“ And Now, Something for the Ladies”’, 684.

175. Holt, Sport and the British, 124–7; Polley, Moving the Goalposts, 85–92.

176. Helen Waller, ‘Lawn Tennis’, in Sport in Britain – A Social History, ed. Tony Mason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 249–50; Alun Howkins and John Lowerson, Trends in Leisure 1919–1939 (The Sports Council and Social Science Research Council, 1979), 42.

177. Halpin, ‘Thus far and no farther’, 153.

178. Skillen, Women, Sport and Modernity in Interwar Britain, 55–6.

179. Report of the facilities for the playing of games and the number of games played, during the period ended 30 November 1903, LCC/CL/PK/1/107, LMA.

180. E. Batch, A memorandum (23.7.1925), Work 16/1373, TNA.

181. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929, January–June’, 486 (26 March), LMA.

182. Report of Parks and Open Spaces Committee – Survey of Open Spaces and Playing-Fields in London and Its Neighbourhood (8 March 1929), London County Council, Presented Papers (26 March 1929), LMA.

183. Mandy Treagus, ‘Playing Like Ladies: Basketball, Netball and Feminine Restraint’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 22, no. 1 (2005): 100–101.

184. LCC, 1927, 136; A.R. Mawson, list of pitches, 1938–1939 (November 1939), GLC/RA/A1/1/19, LMA.

185. Regulations for playing netball (May 1937), LCC/PK/GEN/1/29, LMA.

186. St Pancras, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1933’, 305–306 (12 April), CLSAC.

187. Jean Williams, A Game for Rough Girls? A History of Women’s Football in Britain (London & New York: Routledge 2003), 36.

188. Mr Carter, a note to Mr Cambell (October 1936), Work 16/1117, TNA; Mr Carter, a note to Mr Cambell (2 May 38) and (4 May 38), Work 16/1117, TNA.

189. Regent’s Park Superintendent, ‘Return of Persons Using the Regent’s Park Running Track from 25 July 1939 to 31 August 1939’, Work 16/1117, TNA.

190. LCC, ’Minutes of Proceedings 1936, July–December’, 206 (28 July), LMA.

191. Claire Langhammer, Women’s Leisure in England 1920–60 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000), 80.

192. Skillen, Women, Sport and Modernity in Interwar Britain, 173–5.

193. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body, 294, 297–8.

194. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929, January–June’, 752–753 (14 May), LMA.

195. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1931, January–June’, 950 (12 May), LMA; see also Catherine Horwood, ‘“Girls who Arouse Dangerous Passions”: Women and Bathing, 1900–39’, Women’s History Review 9, no. 4 (2000): 658–65.

196. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1934, July–December’, 848 (18 December), LMA.

197. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1935, January–June’, 452–453 (2 April), LMA; Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body, 298.

198. David Reeder, ‘London and Green Space, 1850–2000: An Introduction’, in The European City and Green Space: London, Helsinki, Stockholm and St Petersburg, 1850–2000, ed. Peter Clark (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 36; David Reeder, ‘The Social Construction of Green Space in London Prior to the Second World War’, in The European City and Green Space: London, Helsinki, Stockholm and St Petersburg, 1850–2000, ed. Peter Clark (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 51, 59–60.

199. Southwark, ‘Minutes of Meetings 1926–1927’, 468 (27 July 1927), SLHL; Hampstead, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929–1930’, 72 (19 December 1929), CLSAC; Bermondsey, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929–1930’, 51 (7 May 1929); 178–179 (3 September 1929); 414–415 (18 February 1930); id., ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1930–1931’, 50 (15 April 1930); 170 (8 July 1930), SLHL; id., ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1932–1933’, 149–150 (5 July 1932); 201 (27 September 1932, SLHL.

200. See, for instance, LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1933, January–June’, 790–1 (16 May), LMA. See also individual documents filed in Work 16/1167, TNA.

201. Hazel Conway, People’s Parks, 195–8, 208–12; Hannikainen, Park Life, 81–2.

202. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1929, July–December’, 3 (2 July); 79 (9 July), LMA.

203. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1928, July–December’, 811 (11 December), LMA.

204. Hannikainen, The Greening of London, 1920–2000, 25–6, 65, 70.

205. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1937, July–December’, 509–510 (7 December); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1938, January–June’, 338–9 (22 March), LMA.

206. Regent’s Park Superintendent, a note to Mr Carter (22 November 1929), Work 16/850, TNA.

207. LCC, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1937, January–June’, 585 (4 May); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1939, January–June’, 162 (28 February), LMA; Comptroller of the Council, Report on Floodlighting Playgrounds (27.1.1939), LCC/CL/PK/1/37, LMA.

208. Bermondsey, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1937–1938’, 243 (21 December 1937), SLHL.

209. Camberwell, ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1935–1936’, 289 (17 January 1936); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1936–1937’, 254–255 (16 June 1937); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1937–1938’, 22 (12 January 1938); ‘Minutes of Proceedings 1938–1939’, 32 (7 December 1938), SLHL.

210. Williams, Outdoor Recreation, 38.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland [Project number 278008].