WE often take our public open space for granted today, but there was a time when our towns had little park land.

Thompson Park in Burnley, for instance, with its popular boating lake, was only opened in 1930 with an official ceremony conducted by the Mayor of the time Henry Nuttall.

Among the host of VIPs in the crowds was the man who had designed the park - Arthur Race.

It was created with money bequeathed to Burnley Corporation by James Witham Thompson, who died in 1920 at the age of 77 in a motor bike accident.

Much of the site of Thompson Park was formerly farmland, belonging to Lower Ridge Farm which was in existence until 1906, although an Italian garden was also created in Bank Hall Meadow.

Bank Hall was the home of General Sir James Yorke Scarlett, who led the successful Charge of the Heavy Brigade in the Crimean War.

Scarlett, the 2nd son of the 1st Baron Abinger, was born in Londonand educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, In 1818,he entered the Army as a cornet in the 18th Hussars and in 1830 became a major in the 5th Dragoon Guards.

He married Charlotte Anne Hargreaves, a Burnley coal heiress in 1835, the town becoming his adopted home. From 1837 until 1841 he was a Conservative MP for Guildford.

Bank Hall was only demolished in 1993 after a long history.

The Italian garden originally featured a small pond containing goldfish and in the Second World War it was used to grow onions.

One of the major features of Thompson Park, until its demolition in 1975, was the conservatory, which was damaged, during the war, along with some houses in Ormerod Road, when a German bomb fell.

How many remember the pond and waterfall which were built in the conservatory in the early 1960s?

The playground in the park was opened in 1932, although its paddling pool has been there since the very beginning.

The park ranger’s office used to be a very popular cafe and ice-cream shop from 1930 until the early seventies.

Parks were popular in the years when many people neither had a car nor their own back garden so if they wanted to enjoy the outdoors, one place they could go was the park.

This scene shows a very crowded Thompson Park paddling pool in on a summer’s day circa 1930.

Picture courtesy Lancashire County Library and Information Service.