Women in Manchester’s Edwardian parks 1900 – 1935

O'Reilly, C

Abstract

This paper examines women’s use of public parks in Edwardian Manchester. It addresses both leisure and non-leisure activities. Like many cities at this time, Manchester City Council was investing in municipal public parks, the high point of which was the purchase of the 650 acre Heaton Park in 1902.
Evidence demonstrates that women were some of the earliest users of the new park – both as leisure visitors with or without children, but also as political activists such as suffragettes and members of the temperance movement. The availability of large, open spaces resulted in a reconfiguring of the lives of Edwardian women. The restrictive atmosphere of many Victorian parks with their improving and didactic agendas had begun to ease in the Edwardian period; consequently, the opportunities for women to become active (in the leisure and non-leisure sense) in parks increased also.
While the development of sporting amenities such as golf and tennis in public parks often reinforced gender segregation, parks also offered an opportunity for the private female and the public male worlds to interact. Contemporary photographs enable us to speculate about the kinds of women who visited public parks and for what purpose. The flowering of the municipal public park in Manchester in the Edwardian era complemented the gradual increase in the opportunities for women to liberate themselves from the domestic sphere and to develop new roles as users of social spaces.

Citation

O'Reilly, C. (2009, November). Women in Manchester’s Edwardian parks 1900 – 1935. Presented at Women's Life and Leisure in the Twentieth Century, Staffordshire University

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: Women's Life and Leisure in the Twentieth Century
• Conference Location: Staffordshire University
• Start Date: Nov 25, 2009
• Deposit Date: Nov 26, 2010
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 26, 2010
• Additional Information: Event Type : Conference