Now it’s been a while since a bandstand featured on the blog, which is a shame given that they are one of those wonderful inventions.
They owed much to the 19th century’s fascination with the Orient.
The basic design may have been copied from “the raised –platform kiosks seen in Turkey and across the Ottoman empire” but was overlaid with influences from Indian palaces and temples.*
The French had shown one of these Turkish stands off at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1855 and what followed was a succession of developments over here with the first unveiled at the Royal Horticultural Show in South Kensington and later moved out to parks in Southwark and Peckham where I came across them as a young boy in the 1950s.
By then many were in a state of disrepair, victims of years of neglect and changing fashions.
But not so any more.
Location; Middleton
Picture; the bandstand Jubilee Gardens, 2020, from the collection of Andy Robertson.
*A Walk in the Park, Travis Elborough 2016, pages 155-56
The basic design may have been copied from “the raised –platform kiosks seen in Turkey and across the Ottoman empire” but was overlaid with influences from Indian palaces and temples.*
The French had shown one of these Turkish stands off at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1855 and what followed was a succession of developments over here with the first unveiled at the Royal Horticultural Show in South Kensington and later moved out to parks in Southwark and Peckham where I came across them as a young boy in the 1950s.
By then many were in a state of disrepair, victims of years of neglect and changing fashions.
But not so any more.
Location; Middleton
Picture; the bandstand Jubilee Gardens, 2020, from the collection of Andy Robertson.
*A Walk in the Park, Travis Elborough 2016, pages 155-56
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