Alexandra Park Conservatory

Alexandra Park was born of a crisis. During the Lancashire Cotton Famine (1861-1865), Oldham bought land at Swine Clough from the Reverend John Cocker on condition that the park be built by textile workers left without jobs. William Henderson, known for Birkenhead Park, won the design competition; the park, named to mark the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Alexandra of Denmark, opened on 28 August 1865, after £18,000 spent on land and £31,000 on works, according to the Parks & Gardens UK register.

The conservatory came some forty years later. Supplied by Messenger, it cost £1,500 including its plants and was opened on Tuesday 2 July 1907 by Councillor J. Ashworth, chairman of the Parks and Cemeteries committee, and the Mayor, Dr Gourley. Built at a time when much of Oldham's population had no access to green space, it was one of the park's main attractions. The listing description of 1993 dates it instead to around 1905.

The building was listed Grade II on 8 March 1993. The park, restored with Heritage Lottery Fund support, reopened in 2004; registered as a historic park in 1995, it was upgraded to Grade II* in 2013. The conservatory itself spent two and a half years closed for a £460,000 restoration before reopening in June 2023, at the age of 116.

The conservatory stands on the western side of the park's lower perimeter path. A brick plinth carries a timber-and-glass structure of three pavilions laid out symmetrically. The large central pavilion has paired central doors with console brackets supporting an entablature, three windows on either side and continuous small-paned glazing above. Its hipped roof is crowned by a lantern with a domed roof set over decorative lights and capped at each end by a weathervane, the two linked by pierced cresting. The flanking pavilions are square in plan, entered from the sides up short flights of steps, and have pyramidal roofs rising to lanterns topped by finials.

The restoration completed in 2023 involved substantial repairs to the timber structure and the weathervanes, renewal of parts of the roof glazing, including the curved glass panels high up in the central pavilion, replacement of the rainwater goods and a complete overhaul of the original window-opening mechanisms.

The conservatory belongs to the era when growing tropical plants was fashionable among the well-off; according to the council's park trail, its three sections frame a hot-house at the centre. Its opening allowed the council to grow exotic plants that would not otherwise have been seen in the borough.

Today the council's environment team displays plants and flowers that it raises on site, many of which are later planted along roads and streets to brighten up the borough. The part of the park just north of the glasshouse has always been the most intensively used for flower gardening; it was redesigned in 1994-1995, and a neighbouring growing area now carries that horticultural role forward.

Alexandra Park covers about 23 hectares in the Glodwick area of Oldham. The conservatory, open every day, fits into a walk suggested by the council: from the King's Road car park it passes the temple-like observatory built in 1899 for weather readings and the statue of Joseph Howarth, known as Blind Joe, then the conservatory and the pergola, before following the boating lake and its 1909 boathouse. Listed statues of John Platt and Robert Ascroft also stand in the park.