The Walks Project and History
"These indications of feeling on the part of the inhabitants ought to cause the Walks Committee to hesitate to take further steps in the process of annihilation of the ... magnificent lines of trees ... really treasures too precious to be lightly and hastily tampered with"
-- from the Lynn News and County Press, 1891
The Borough Council is bidding for money from the Heritage Lottery Fund. As you would expect, a lot of their argument is directed at justifying the heritage value of restoring the park.
Many of the plans are excellent in this regard. For one, I think the Red Mount Chapel restoration is long-needed. However, the essence of the current plans for the trees is to clear-fell the avenues and replace them with an imitation of original planting. This has at least three serious flaws:
- It destroys heritage trees instead of restoring and conserving them, in a drastic and risky strategy that has failed once and never succeeded in the Walks.
- It fails to address long-known historic problems properly.
- It replaces the walks with a mock-historic park that never existed. This contradicts part of the grade II listing, and puts modern fakes in place of the Walks.
We can preserve our history and learn from it. There are signs in the stage one bid that some of the consultants tried to direct the council along that path. Sadly, new landscape consultants were involved in the final bid and have not considered the history.
Please ask the council to learn from history, conserve the heritage trees and introduce a tree risk assessment and management system (TRAMS). Ask them to take appropriate measures to address vandalism and plan for the future, because the ones in the bid haven't worked in the past.
Walks clearances always opposed
"Forty years ago this job was funked. Somebody has got to do this unthankful work and it is up to us to do it."
-- a borough councillor talking about Walks conservation in the Lynn News and Advertiser, 1945
The bid clearly states that replacement is normal practice for avenues all over Europe. As you may have noticed, the Walks planting often alternates left-right, rather than being paired, so doesn't meet the strict definition of an avenue. More about this on the heritage page.
Total avenue replacement is not normal all over
Europe, as seen here in
Vienna's Schillerpark.
More importantly, clearance is not normal in the Walks! I bought a copy of the Kings Lynn Civic Society's "History of the Walks" and looked through it. The only avenue clearance mentioned is the Red Mount Walk removal because of Dutch Elm disease in the 1970s. The Borough Council's 1998 leaflet about the history of the Walks doesn't mention other avenue clearances either.
Next, I reviewed the large volume of historical research reported in the stage one lottery bid. I extracted the timeline below from the bid. It doesn't mention any more avenue clearances. Historically, healthy trees are conserved, not felled. The claim in the autumn 2004 Your Council about "major phases of replanting" in the Walks seems unsupported to me. As far as I can tell, the proposed avenue clearance is unprecedented in the Walks' history.
More than that, whenever unnecessary or debatable felling has been proposed, there has been strong public opposition. The Walks Action Group is just another example of a tradition that is over a century old, as you can see from the 1891 quote at the top of the page or the timeline below. Opposition to felling healthy trees is a historic Lynn tradition - help preserve Lynn's historic heritage with us.
If you have visited the Walks recently, you may have noticed that most trees are missing from Red Mount Walk. After the elms were felled, they were replaced, but few of the replacement trees remain. Despite advances in planting, it is still very risky to replace an entire avenue at once. Even if most trees survive, will they be cleared again to avoid having any "inconsistent age structure", which seems to be the planners' motivation for felling the mostly healthy Extension Walk?
Finally, I noticed that the bid's tree management plan jumps immediately to replacement when conserving the Walks is mentioned. Conservation of heritage trees is not even considered. Even the approach to replacing trees is described as a "recent regime". Replacing trees only as they fall has been practised here since 1861! The "as-needed" replacement strategy is not a recent regime.
Please tell the council if you want the historic management practices to continue. The historic strategy is conservation and replacement only of diseased, damaged or dead trees. Tearing out healthy trees is what they do elsewhere. In Norfolk, we do things different.
Historic Problems Unsolved: Tree Preservation
A few times in the history of the Walks, trees have been transplanted or removed because they were "crowded out" by neighbouring trees (1911, 1970, 1992). In 1890, a forestry expert recommended trying a transition to "interplanting" of all the Walks.
Interplanting is either replacing every other tree before the end of their lives, or starting an avenue by planting two alternating species with different life spans. It has the advantage that you are not faced with an entire avenue dying at once. This is especially important for the Walks, as it has been known for nearly 200 years for its mature "lofty trees".
The proposals for the Walks include planting four single-species avenues. It looks like these will be so close that it will prevent later planting between them. This is amazingly short-sighted and will leave entire avenues bare again when the new trees reach the end of their lives.
Unhistoric Imitation
We are told that the plan values "the heritage and aesthetic value of tree avenues of consistent age in keeping with the historical landscape structure and character of the site." (stage 2 section 2.11)
So, the plans are to replace Broad Walk with lime trees, Extension Walk with alternating lime and horse chestnut, plant new limes for Seven Sisters, replace Terrace Walk with lime and horse chestnut and plant Red Mount Walk with beech. Later, replace St John's Walk with alternating lime and horse chestnut.
Superficially, this looks historically appropriate: all are the original species except Red Mount Walk and you can't replant elms where there has been Dutch elm disease.
Look at the timeline, though! Broad Walk was all limes in 1753: by 1843 when Extension Walk was planted, alternating trees were replaced with horse chestnut. The Seven Sisters were planted in 1760 and were 40 years old when the nearby Walk was started, possibly over 60 when it reached them. St John's Walk was planted over a century later than Broad Walk, not just fifteen years. (You can see this from the official history summary too.)
Historical anachronisms like this exist all over the plans for the trees. If we can have something never seen before in the Walks's history, we could just as well let the Walks continue to evolve naturally. These avenues are making history and it is wrong to replace them with a mock-historic collage of their original states. They never looked like that together and never will naturally, if managed properly in the historic way. The current plans will destroy the heritage age structure of the Walks trees.
You can see what the Walks used to look like by searching Norfolk Online Access to Heritage and Picture Norfolk for old pictures. You may prefer to search for King's Lynn, as "the Walks" doesn't find all results.
Timeline
Most of the following information has been taken from the stage one bid, section 3, appendix 2 and appendix 5. You can refer to that in Juniper House, King's Lynn. Some dates are from the listing on the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest. There are disagreements between the two sources, marked with *. It only describes work done on the Walks trees and any public statements about them. The different Walks are coloured differently below: gold for Broad Walk and Extension Walk; red for Red Mount Walk, Seven Sisters and Terrace Walk; green for St John's Walk and St James Park. The full appendix 2 contains information about all aspects of the Walks parks and related issues.
- 1713
- New Walk (now known as Broad Walk) established, possibly one side only (according to listing) *
- 1753
- New Walk established (according to bid) *
- 1760
- Seven Sisters planted (according to both)
- 1762
- New Walk is two-sided (listing)
- 1770s
- New Walk is 11 yards wide and 340 yards long (listing)
- 1794
- Extension Walk path exists (listing)
- 1800
- First Town Wall Walk section (now Red Mount Walk and Terrace Walk) (bid)
- 1827
- Seven Sisters replaced (listing)
- 1834
- Approval for hospital, noting "none of the trees on the land north of the hospital to be cut down" (bid)
- 1835
Extension Walk established (listing) *; Broad Walk described as "lofty trees with recessed seats" (bid)
Red Mount Walk exists (listing)
- 1841
- St James Park is a burial ground (listing)
- 1843
- Extension Walk established (bid) *; in September, report of "some wanton young rogues" vandalising trees (bid)
- 1844
- Report of vandals "offering considerable annoyance" to Walks users (bid)
- 1851
- St John's Walk established up to present Red Mount Walk (register) *
- 1853
- Report of regravelling the paths (bid)
- 1854
- Gravelling of Extension Walk (listing)
- 1857
- Start of works which created St James Park (both)
- 1861
- Bad winter kills many trees and shrubs in the plantation: replaced as needed (bid)
- 1866
- Fences removed from around the Red Mount Field (bid)
- 1868
- St John's Walk established up to present Red Mount Walk (bid) *
- 1870
- Bridge over railway line removed, cutting Red Mount Walk off from northern section of Town Walk (listing)
- 1871
- Lopping of trees near St John's terrace for cosmetic reasons refused (bid)
- 1887-1929
- St John's Walk planted east of Red Mount Walk (register)
- 1888
- Possible replanting of 20 trees in Broad Walk (bid)
- 1890
- Proposed replacement of 20 trees in Broad Walk, with much objection; interplanting suggested in Lynn News article (bid)
- 1893
- Decision to fell Seven Sisters (bid)
- 1896
- Seven Sisters replaced (listing)
- 1902
- St James Park opened (listing) *
- 1903
- St James Park opened (bid) *; Fountain presented (bid)
- 1906
- St John's Walk extended to Tennyson Avenue (both)
- 1911
- Some limes transplanted from St John's Walk to Tennyson Avenue (bid)
- 1922
- Two trees between hospital and rivulet removed (bid)
- 1945
- Tree survey reported in February; opposition to felling in Lynn News and Advertiser (bid)
- 1946
- Eight elms, limes and planes destroyed in a gale (bid)
- 1954
- Start of Mayors Avenue with seven Indian Bean Trees (bid)
- 1956
- Schoolboys plant second line of chestnuts in Broad Walk (bid)
- 1966-71
- Second line of chestnuts removed or transplanted some time in this period (bid)
- 1970
- Mayors Avenue failed to grow, suspected too near Red Mount Walk elms, and is removed (bid)
- 1971
Red Mount Walk elms cleared due to Dutch Elm Disease; Red Mount Walk planted with Indian Bean Trees, possibly with no restoration work (bid)
New Walks restoration project plans golf course west of the Red Mount and bird sanctuary near waterways (bid)
- 1980
- "Steps are being taken to tidy up the old Walks swimming pool, which has become an eyesore in Lynn over the last few years. Contractors have been briefed to take down the remaining fences and buildings around it within the next month. A list of ideas for the future use of the site will be considered by members of West Norfolk Council." - Lynn News
- 1992
- Up to six trees to be felled because they were planted too close together (bid)