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Vivary Park
Vivary Park is a public open space in Taunton, Somerset, England.
The Sherford Stream, a tributary of the River Tone, flows through the 7.5 hectares (19 acres) park, which is located near the centre of the town. It contains two main wide open spaces, as well as a war memorial dating from 1922, a miniature golf course, tennis courts, two children's playgrounds, a model railway track which was added in 1979, and an 18-hole, 4,620-yard (4,220 m), par-63 golf course. The park includes trees, rose beds and herbaceous borders, with around 56,000 spring and summer bedding plants being used each year. The rose garden includes the Royal National Rose Society Provincial Trial Ground.
The park is a garden of the European Garden Heritage Network.
The park stands on land that was formerly a medieval fish farm, or vivarium, for Taunton Priory and Taunton Castle. Although nothing remains above ground of these lakes, they are the origin of the name Vivary. Entries in pipe rolls of the 13th and 14th centuries show that bream, pike, and eels were supplied from the vivarium to the Castle and sometimes to the royal household. These sources identify two ponds, the magnum vivarium, or great pond, which probably occupied the low-lying area of the present-day golf-course, and the parvum vivarium or little pond, within what is now the park proper. When a trench for a new sewer was cut through the park and its golf course during the 1970s, archaeologists were able to identify the deposits of silt left behind by the medieval fish ponds.
In 1810 a Mr William Kinglake of Taunton, a lawyer who was also a partner in a local bank, bought the park from the estate of John Hamnett, together with a twenty-roomed house called Wilton House, built in 1705, which is still standing. The gates of the house were at the end of the town's High Street, while its parkland stretched away from the town towards the Blackdown Hills, with chestnut trees and a stream. Kinglake was the father of the writer Alexander William Kinglake, who grew up at Vivary. The Kinglake family called the property 'The Vivary'.
Long before the park was publicly owned, it was known as Vivary Park and was used for some public events. It was lent by William Kinglake to provide the site of the West of England Show of 1852. He was also sympathetic to the Bristol and Somerset Total Abstinence Association and allowed the park to be used for its Public Tea Meeting and Demonstration on 17 August 1852. The first exhibition of the Vale of Taunton Deane Horticultural and Floricultural Society was held in the park on 21 and 22 June, 1855, and in 1883 a ten-day 'Temperance mission' was held in the park, at which "as many as 1,500 new pledges" of abstinence from alcohol were made.
In the mid 19th century, the park contained a Crimean War cannon known as the 'Sebastopol Gun', which was fired on great occasions.
In 1875, a local author wrote with real foresight –
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Vivary Park AI simulator
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Vivary Park
Vivary Park is a public open space in Taunton, Somerset, England.
The Sherford Stream, a tributary of the River Tone, flows through the 7.5 hectares (19 acres) park, which is located near the centre of the town. It contains two main wide open spaces, as well as a war memorial dating from 1922, a miniature golf course, tennis courts, two children's playgrounds, a model railway track which was added in 1979, and an 18-hole, 4,620-yard (4,220 m), par-63 golf course. The park includes trees, rose beds and herbaceous borders, with around 56,000 spring and summer bedding plants being used each year. The rose garden includes the Royal National Rose Society Provincial Trial Ground.
The park is a garden of the European Garden Heritage Network.
The park stands on land that was formerly a medieval fish farm, or vivarium, for Taunton Priory and Taunton Castle. Although nothing remains above ground of these lakes, they are the origin of the name Vivary. Entries in pipe rolls of the 13th and 14th centuries show that bream, pike, and eels were supplied from the vivarium to the Castle and sometimes to the royal household. These sources identify two ponds, the magnum vivarium, or great pond, which probably occupied the low-lying area of the present-day golf-course, and the parvum vivarium or little pond, within what is now the park proper. When a trench for a new sewer was cut through the park and its golf course during the 1970s, archaeologists were able to identify the deposits of silt left behind by the medieval fish ponds.
In 1810 a Mr William Kinglake of Taunton, a lawyer who was also a partner in a local bank, bought the park from the estate of John Hamnett, together with a twenty-roomed house called Wilton House, built in 1705, which is still standing. The gates of the house were at the end of the town's High Street, while its parkland stretched away from the town towards the Blackdown Hills, with chestnut trees and a stream. Kinglake was the father of the writer Alexander William Kinglake, who grew up at Vivary. The Kinglake family called the property 'The Vivary'.
Long before the park was publicly owned, it was known as Vivary Park and was used for some public events. It was lent by William Kinglake to provide the site of the West of England Show of 1852. He was also sympathetic to the Bristol and Somerset Total Abstinence Association and allowed the park to be used for its Public Tea Meeting and Demonstration on 17 August 1852. The first exhibition of the Vale of Taunton Deane Horticultural and Floricultural Society was held in the park on 21 and 22 June, 1855, and in 1883 a ten-day 'Temperance mission' was held in the park, at which "as many as 1,500 new pledges" of abstinence from alcohol were made.
In the mid 19th century, the park contained a Crimean War cannon known as the 'Sebastopol Gun', which was fired on great occasions.
In 1875, a local author wrote with real foresight –