Peel Park, Salford

Peel Park is a public urban park in Salford, Greater Manchester, England, located on the flood plain of the River Irwell below Salford Crescent and adjacent to the University of Salford. It was the first of three public parks to be opened on 22 August 1846, for the people of Manchester and Salford, paid for by public subscription. The park was the main public venue for the 1851 royal visit of Queen Victoria to Manchester and Salford and has been the subject of a number of paintings by the Salford artist, L.S. Lowry.

Peel Park fell into disrepair during the latter part of the twentieth century but is presently undergoing a £1.6m refurbishment after a successful bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Early 19th-century reformers had become concerned about the consequences of enclosure and thought that public walks and gardens were the solution. Richard Walker, the Member of Parliament for Bury had spoken in Parliament about the lack of areas for recreation in his home town and in 1833 the Select Committee on Public Walks was set up to look at the problem. The committee noted that, owing to urban development and rising property values during the previous fifty years, "many inclosures of open spaces in the vicinity of Towns had taken place, and little or no provision had been made for Public Walks or Open Spaces, fitted to afford means of exercise or amusement to the middle or humbler classes". They gathered witnesses from dozen or so of the large manufacturing towns to try to establish remedies. One of their conclusions was that "having a place to which they (the humbler classes) might resort on a Sunday Evening would tend to promote that self-respect which is so advantageous to all classes". Although there were a number of parks in the UK, most of them were royal parks or privately owned estates, and the landowners could exclude those they did not approve of, as is illustrated by the following letter published in The Times on 10 July 1846:

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