A very early image of Corporation Park.
The cannons are already in place, so it's after 1857, as they were a gift in that year.
Not sure where I got this from, but I do remember seeing the same image in the museum a few years ago, so I'm going to credit it to them.
COURTESY OF THE LOCAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT OF BLACKBURN MUSEUM.
What were the cannons for?
ReplyDeleteThey were for pounding the people of Burnley with, if ever their football team beat the Rovers. But as you can imagine, that rarely happened, so they were rarely used.
ReplyDeleteThey were just ornamental Jemma (though they were real cannons), captured from enemy forces during the Crimean War. Maybe a way of showing our might as a nation. Quite a few towns had them in their parks. Darwen did, Burnley did and I think Preston did as well. So possibly lots of other parks and recreation grounds up and down the country had them as well.
After the First World War, Queens Park had a German tank on display for a couple of decades. There's a photo / postcard of it on here somewhere. Just type tank into the search in the top left corner and it should appear.
Regards.
Colin