Queen's Park

Overview
The form of the area is marked by the planned origins of the suburb. Streets are either long and straight or gently arcing. The most striking features in plan-form are the complete oval of Victoria Crescent and the large semi-circular form of St George's Crescent. There is the interesting arrangement of the Victorian houses backing onto the streets (St John's Rear Road and Northern Way) where vehicular access is provided, and fronting onto a pedestrian alley: Victoria Pathway. Bottoms Lane, which leads to Earls Eye Meadow is probably an older pre-existing road, which has an earlier property alongside. Within this street form buildings are generally detached or semidetached and set back from the street behind walls and hedges. They are generally two-storey, although many Edwardian and Victorian properties are two-and-a-half storeys, especially on St George's Crescent. There are also a number of bungalows on the eastern edge of Victoria Crescent.

A Brief History
Queen's Park was planned on a greenfield site immediately south of the River Dee and next to the Earls Eye in 1851 by Enoch Gerrard and others. Some of the impetus for the Queen's Park dvelopment came from the Fielden brothers of Todmorden, a noted Quaker family who had made good profits from cotton spinning.

It was developed in the 1850s and 1860s as a middle class residential suburb. The Duke of Westminster originally intended to have the area laid out as a model industrial suburb but Victoria Pathway remains the only part of this vision that was realised. The residential development of Queen’s Park was slow and only four villas and two semi-detached pairs had been built by 1873. By 1910 the total had still reached only 17, although a further 10 houses had been built on St. George's Crescent to the south. The experience there, and at Curzon Park, suggests that the demand for exclusive property in Chester was smaller than the amount of sites available. On the southern edge of Queen's Park some smaller semi-detached houses had appeared in the mid 19th century around Victoria Pathway. There has since been extensive inter-war and post-war infill and eastward extension to the suburb. The suburb is linked to the city by the Queen's Park Suspension Bridge.

Links

 * Queen's Park on Wikipedia;