Celebrating 150 Years of Mr Milner’s Pleasure Gardens
As part of the 150th anniversary celebrations of the Pavilion Gardens, we are delighted to offer our promenades with our character guide, Edward Milner, on Saturday 25 September at 11am and 2pm, in support of the Rotary Club of Buxton’s Autumn Fair
These tours must be booked in advance – call 07530 457755 – or at our booking office inside the main entrance of the Pavilion Gardens off the promenade. Please do not book through the website. These special anniversary tours cost £10pp (normally £15pp) and last approximately an hour.
Our promenades with Edward Milner are full of fascinating information and give a better understanding of this important man who has virtually disappeared from the history books.
Visitors to the Pavilion Gardens, Buxton, queuing with their children for a ride on the miniature railway (pictured below), may well be puzzled by the name on the little steam locomotive which is to pull the train: Edward Milner – who is or was he? Apart from this literally moving tribute, posterity has largely consigned Mr Milner (pictured below) to obscurity, but he was much celebrated in his day as one of the finest and most successful Victorian landscape architects and designer of most of what visitors to the Pavilion Gardens see around them.
His origins were humble enough. He was born in Darley Dale, the son of a sawyer and gardener on the nearby Chatsworth Estate and nothing was more natural than he should join his father there to begin earning a living. His natural ability and diligence caused him to be noticed by Joseph Paxton, the famous resident landscape architect and confidante of the 6th Duke of Devonshire, and he was parcelled off to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris to further his education – an extraordinary privilege in those days. The record is silent on how he coped with the language!
In 1851, Paxton was busy designing and building the Crystal Palace which was to house the Great Exhibition to showcase the technological and imperial achievements of the age. The magnificent edifice was never meant to last for longer than six months, but it had become so popular that it was decided to dismantle it from its Hyde Park location and rebuild it at Penge Park, Sydenham. This was Milner’s great opportunity. He was given the task of overseeing the reconstruction and the layout of the magnificent Crystal Palace and its gardens. So successful was his design (which departed significantly from Paxton’s original) that the building stood as an iconic London landmark until it was destroyed by fire in 1936.
When it came to choosing a designer for the Buxton Pavilion Gardens, the Buxton Improvements Company looked no further than Edward Milner who brought his considerable experience to this ambitious project.
The concept of the “Winter Garden” was born: a miniature Crystal Palace where the upper strata of society could “promenade” in all weather and enjoy the displays of exotic foliage and flowers while listening to palm court music. The pavilion was completed in 1871 and has evolved since Milner’s day while retaining the spirit of the original concept.
The keen observer will notice the stag heads in the wrought ironwork and the ducal coronets which adorn the exterior – a nod to his late wealthy patron, the 6th Duke.
The gardens were Milner’s masterpiece – an Alice in Wonderland creation of lawns, arbours, shrubberies, streamlets, cascades, lakes and jutting crags – to delight the eye and lead from one sublime vista to the next. Today’s gardens, though still pleasant, have been much modified in response to the enormous visitor pressure. In the old days, one had to pay to get in! Children were forbidden to play and were not admitted unless accompanied by a nurse. One had to “Keep off the Grass” and servants were allowed on payment of a five shillings per annum subscription.
Edward Milner attained the peak of his profession. On his death in 1884, he left an estate of £720,000. His busy practice of Milner White Landscape Architects lasted until the retirement of its last director in 1995.
If you would like to join our special guided tours of the Pavilion Gardens on Saturday 25th September, don’t forget to book by calling 07530 457755 or see us at our booking office inside the main entrance of the Pavilion Gardens off the promenade.
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