SILLY SATURDAY - IT'S A GORILLA!

Today is my 1,700th Blip without missing a single day, and I was thinking that it should be something different.  Well, the gorilla in Queen’s Park is certainly different.  Whilst wandering around Queen’s Park, I met Bernard, someone I hadn’t seen for many years, but who happens to be a friend on Facebook and sees my daily Blips;  when I mentioned the “orang-utan” was quickly corrected by the man he was talking to, who told me it was a gorilla - so I felt rather silly!

The gorilla originally stood near the Wyvern Theatre from the mid 1980s until it was moved to Queen’s Park in 1994.  It is made of welded steel by Tom Gleeson and I wonder if he would be happy to see it now, scratched defaced and lonely-looking - in fact, I thought it was quite ugly - but thought it would be a good subject for the Silly Saturday challenge.

The park was originally the site of the brick works of Thomas Turner, and examples of his bricks can be seen on a house near the Drove Road entrance to the park. The lake, which is home to many water birds was once a derelict claypit but I noticed was still a place where lots of children come to “feed the ducks”.  I remember walking through this park when we lived on Old Walcot, many years ago, on our way into town - in fact, when our older son was very small, he did just what a little girl did today, ate the bread I had saved for him to feed to the ducks!

The first phase of Queen’s Park, built to commemorate those who lost their lives in the Second World War, was opened in 1950 by Princess Elizabeth, now Queen Elizabeth II, in the year that the Swindon Borough celebrated its Golden Jubilee.  The second phase was opened in 1953 by Sir Noel Arkell, who was then Sheriff of Wiltshire.  Sir Noel (who was, incidentally, born on Christmas Day) was once at the helm of Arkell’s, a famous brewery that owns many pubs in and around the Swindon area.

There used to be a huge glasshouse in the park and I remember going there when our sons were small and marvelling at the banana growing on the tree right in the middle.  In fact, we even have a photograph of the bananas taken by Mr. HCB’s father sometime in the 1970s.  There was also a pond and I remember the boys always used to enjoy looking for the fish before we went to feed the ducks.  Sadly, the glasshouse was declared unsafe following storms in the early 1990s and was therefore demolished, a brick wall being all that remains.

At one time, the area near the lake used to be a gathering point for people with less than savoury habits, but today there were mostly families around.  The wall pictured replaces random graffiti that covered a shelter adjacent to the lake, and was a way of getting the community involved in art - a great idea and it looks wonderful too.

As well as having an abundance of beautiful trees, shrubs and flowers, Queen’s Park is also the site of a Memorial Garden, opened in 2003 and dedicated to those who have died of mesothelioma, also known as the “Swindon Disease” (mesothelioma is caused by exposure to asbestos which was used to build locomotives in the Swindon Railway Works during the first half of the 20th Century.)  The garden was designed as a place where people can go to sit quietly and remember loved ones.  At one end, near the seats is a local sarsen stone that has a plaque with the final two lines from Shakespeare’s 30th sonnet:

“But if the while I think on thee,
     dear friend, all losses are restored
               and sorrows end.”

William Shakespeare
English Poet and Playwright 1564-1616