Birkenhead Park in Merseyside has been placed on the government’s ‘tentative list’ for an application to UNESCO World Heritage Site status. There are now seven potential sites on the list from the UK and Overseas Territories, including York city centre and an iron age settlement in Shetland.
Birkenhead Park opened in 1847, and was the first publicly funded municipal park in the UK. It has Grade I listed status and contains several listed buildings. The BBC reports that the area could benefit from a major tourism boost if the bid is successful. The park is said to have been the inspiration for the world famous Central Park in New York.
Graham Arnold, chairman of the Friends of Birkenhead Park, told the news website: “The status would show both nationally and internationally the great importance of Birkenhead Park, both as a landscape design and a piece of town planning but also as a progenitor of parks worldwide.”
He added: “It was designed for the local population and people didn’t have to pay to visit, which you often did have to previously in the early 1800s. It was truly a pioneering public park that provided a relatively unpolluted environment, a lung, in a Victorian town.”
David Armstrong, assistant chief executive at Wirral Council, said Unesco status would “bolster the wider regeneration of Birkenhead.”
He added: “For several years, it has been an ambition of Wirral Council and partners including the Friends of Birkenhead Park to seek Unesco’s recognition of the park. To be included on the UK tentative list for potential nomination is fantastic news and shows we are one step closer to achieving that ambition.”
The park underwent an extensive regeneration process during the 2000’s, after falling into decline during the later years of the 20th century.
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