Queens Park, Longton

Queens Park is located approximately 260 metres from the centre of Dresden in Stoke-on-Trent and covers an area of 18.9ha.

The Northern Perimeter is fronted by Grand Edwardian and Victorian Housing with Victorian terraced housing to the rear, whilst the North West boundary is adjacent to 1970’s housing. Running along the southern boundary is the old mineral railway line which linked Florence Colliery and Hem Heath Colliery. The former railway line makes the boundary to Stoke-on-Trent. To the South of the Railway line is open countryside.

The highest ground in the Queen's Park is along its northern edge; from here it slopes gently down to the two large ponds which drain via a weir at the west corner of the park.

Queen’s Park was the first of the Potteries municipal parks to be established. Its origins are linked with the third Duke of Sutherland’s speculative development of land on his estates south of the Borough of Longton in the late 19th century. The park project was first conceived in 1879 and was viewed by the Duke as an amenity for the denizens of a proposed ‘new town’ comprising Florence, Normacot and Dresden.

The appearance of the park today still owes much to the creative talent of three people -
John Garrett, its designer (who received no formal training as a landscape architect and had initially trained as a mining surveyor); Peter Blair, the Duke’s head gardener at Trentham Hall who advised and supplied many of the 15,000 trees and shrubs direct from the Trentham Conservatories; and John Taylor, a Longton architect who drew up plans for the lodges and boundary walls free of charge.

The three main gates, two with lodges, lie along Queen's Park Avenue. They were designed by J Taylor. At the north corner of the park is a large, two-storey lodge in the half-timbered Queen Anne style, originally the home of the Park Superintendent. To one side is a toilet block in similar style, and to the other an impressive entrance with tall brick gate piers, main iron gates decorated with the crests of the Duke of Sutherland, the Mayor and the Borough of Longton, pedestrian side gates, and splayed walls with elaborate iron railings. The other lodge is at the east corner of the park, a two-storey brick building, its upper storey tile-hung.