British Bandstands

Paul Rabbitts

May 2017 · Amberley Publishing Limited

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About this ebook

Bandstands have been a feature of the British way of life for well over a century – but, after the Second World War, an increasing number fell into disuse and were neglected. Sadly, many were demolished when public parks and seaside resorts went into a spiral of decline in the 1980s and 1990s. However, in 1997 the Heritage Lottery Fund started investing in our public parks and gardens and this has seen the rediscovery of bandstands, one which continues to this day. Former Director of the Heritage Lottery Fund Dr Stewart Harding has described them as ‘wonderfully exotic structures that are at once very familiar and also alien in their strange designs – looking like UFOs, Moorish temples, rustic cottages or Chinese pavilions’. Many have been restored in the last twenty years, with over 120 funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, from Aberdeen to Aberystwyth, Nairn to Nottingham, Watford to Worcester. These restorations mark a rebirth of the bandstands across the nation, a rebirth that is celebrated in this book with images and information detailing imaginative restorations, designs and new usages for one of our most iconic cultural landmarks – the British bandstand.

About the author

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 Regent’s 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.

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