Princes Gardens, Aldershot

The Princes Gardens is an urban park in the town of Aldershot in Hampshire. A short walk from the town centre on a site bordered by the town's High Street, Wellington Avenue and Barrack Road and opposite the Princes Hall theatre, it has been a public park since 1930. Today the park is managed by Rushmoor Borough Council.

The park is on the site of the former Royal Engineers Yard where a small party of NCOs and men of the Royal Engineers arrived in November 1853 making them the first soldiers to arrive in Aldershot. These engineers were responsible for surveying and making the preliminary arrangements for The Camp at Aldershot. At this time the area was heathland with the only building in sight being the Union Poor House, the former home of the Tichborne family. The military huts erected on the site were demolished in 1929.

The area that is now Princes Gardens was purchased from the War Department by Aldershot Borough Council in 1930 at a cost of £16,500 and the site cleared. Over the next decade two cinemas were built at the lower end of the site, the Empire and Ritz cinemas, while the upper end was used as the Princes Gardens with a car park between it and the cinemas. On 5 July 1945 troops of the Canadian Army Overseas gathered in the gardens before smashing the windows of local shops on the second evening of the Aldershot riot. An ornamental fountain was unveiled in the gardens in 1954 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Army in Aldershot. This was later removed.

Today Princes Gardens is a venue for public events including local celebrations and public concerts. It has a number of ornamental flower beds with grassed areas and seating. In celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Rushmoor Borough Council erected a permanent bandstand in 2012 where brass bands, dancers and solo artists regularly perform. The design was chosen by local people and the bandstand was officially opened in 2012 during the town's Victoria Day Jubilee Celebration. Central to the park is sculpture of a charging horse crossing a section of Bailey bridge which was unveiled in 1994 as part of an Older Urban Area Regeneration scheme and which represents the link between the civilian town of Aldershot and the British Army.

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