Hucknall: New exhibition tells Titchfield Park's fascinating 100-year story

The Titchfield Park Story has been put together by the Friends of Titchfield Park group and features images of the past 100 years of Hucknall's ‘beautiful green lung’.

It is on at the library for the whole of June.

John Wilkinson, from the Friends of Titchfield Park, said: “It literally tells the story of Titchfield Park, from 1904, when people first started calling a park, right up to the present day and it’s astonishing just how much it has tracked the community of Hucknall over that time.

"There is also a box and paper there too for people to drop in suggestions for what people want to see for the park for the next 100 years and there are some really interesting comments that suggest that people want the park to remain a central part of the community.

The exhibition also reflects how items from the past are also still there today in a different way.

Examples include the boathouse, which remains even though the boating lake that was once there has gone.

Likewise, the municipal tennis courts are gone but the modern skatepark is there.

Other items like the cricket pitch remain, along with the bowls club.

John continued: “It’s really interesting that when the park was given a certain number of acres by the Duke of Portland, a much larger piece of acreage was provided by the Hucknall Miner’s Welfare committee which was some £12,301 of which the equivalent today would be £856,000.

"Can you imagine a single group in Hucknall today raising that amount of money to do something to give back to the town?”

"So the past is gone and yet it is still reflected today.

”One of the photos shows the park full of children when the park was a destination for children from Bulwell or Mansfield.

”And today, the park hosts a parkrun each week for children from places like Bulwell and Mansfield, so there is that sense of continuation and yet moving on.

"The lovely thing about the exhibition is you’ll see it move as black and white photographs suddenly merge into colour photographs and the colour photographs are effectively all the work of the last 10 years of the amazing Friends of of Titchfield Park group.

"And that shows is that there are people that care about this park and want to welcome people who moved on these new estates at Papplewick Green or Rolls-Royce and tell them they don’t have to go anywhere else, we have this lovely park right here.

“And one of the jobs I think we all have is to reintroduce the park to all these new groups of people who are coming to Hucknall.”​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​