Beautiful old postcards capture London's Royal Parks in all their former glory.
The Royal Parks of London are lands originally owned by the monarchy of the United Kingdom for the recreation (mostly hunting) of the royal family. They are part of the hereditary possessions of The Crown. With increasing urbanization of London, some of these were preserved as freely accessible open space and became public parks with the introduction of the Crown Lands Act 1851. There are today eight parks formally described by this name and they cover almost 2,000 hectares of land in Greater London. Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, Green Park, Regent's Park and St James's Park are the largest green spaces in central London. Bushy Park, Greenwich Park and Richmond Park are in the suburbs. The Royal Parks agency also manages Brompton Cemetery, Grosvenor Square Gardens and Victoria Tower Gardens. London's Royal Parks The Postcard Collection takes the reader on an evocative journey into the past of these much-loved green spaces past through a selection of old postcards which offer a fascinating window into their history and continuing development.
Dr Paul Rabbitts has over 35 years of experience in designing, managing and restoring urban parks across the UK. As a qualified Landscape Architect, he is also a published author and regular contributor to journals and periodicals. As well as being a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Member of the Chartered Institute of Horticulture, he currently works full time for Norwich City Council as their parks manager. He is an author of books on architects Sir Christopher Wren and Decimus Burton as well as Regents Park, Richmond Park, Hyde Park, the wider Royal Parks and that icon of public parks, the Victorian and Edwardian bandstand, on which he is acknowledged as a UK expert and which was the subject of his PhD at the University of East Anglia. He lectures frequently on all things parks and can be contacted via his website www.paulrabbitts.co.uk . He lives in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire.
