BANDSTANDS: Pavilions for Music, Entertainment and Leisure

This special history book describes the importance of music in parks and open spaces, the growth of the brass band movement, the legacy of the pleasure gardens movement, the impact of the great foundries, through to the decline and subsequent revival of the bandstand, and so much more. Packed with hundreds of archive and colour photos, beginning with a general prospect of Vaux Hall Gardens circa 1715 and the crowded opening of the bandstand in Congleton Park, Cheshire 1914, the commentary begins with the Registrar General of Tower Hamlets writing in 1839 'A Park in the East End of London, would probably diminish the annual deaths by several thousands... and add several years to the lives of the entire population.' The early Victorians recognised rapidly industrialising centres across the country and until this book there has been a clear gap in the understanding of the social impact of parks on local communities. Parks were often developed by a combination of local authorities and wealthy benefactors including Nash, Paxton, Gibson, Milner, Kemp and Loudon and great designs were often produced as recreation evolved. With many parks soon seeming to have a bandstand, what defined the role of music in parks and the effect on dissipating social divisions in society, music at seaside resorts, we begin to understand that in their heyday there were over 1500 bandstands in the country attracting the likes of crowds of over 10,000 in the Arboretum in Lincoln, to regular concerts in most of London's parks up until the beginning of WWII. Little is really known about them from their evolution as 'orchestras', the music played, the intricate and ornate ironwork or Art Deco designs and the impact of the great foundries, to the decline during post-Second World War and revival in the late 1990s, the book tells the stories of these pavilions made for music and their history, decline and revival. The brilliant Gazetteer lists town, location, date erected and manufacture or foundry where known and model by existing bandstands from Aberdare Park to the Promenade Youghall, County Cork and then the lost bandstands, covering all 1500 and with dozens of beautiful sepia postcards and images and modern sunny day blue skies colour photos. 236 very large pages in softback published by Historic England.
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