Eskvale, Longtown 29/5/34
The weather has been cold until to-day; it is now certainly warmer. You will know this bridge very well - 'the Gateway to Scotland'. You would have a busy time last week.
Cheerio!
Very kind regards to you all
I've been prompted to post this particular postcard today after reading that the Eden Bridge Gardens have been vandalised and daubed with graffiti and somewhat contradictory symbols of Nazism and anarchy. It's highly unlikely that those who were bored enough to do this have any idea of the meaning of their scribbling, let alone the history of the gardens.
The card above is the earliest I have in my collection which shows the gardens. The photo was clearly taken just after completion as there is very little to see in the way of foliage or decoration. It was sent in May 1934, five months after the gardens were officially opened by the Mayor of Carlisle, E.B. Gray, on 21st December 1933.
Eden Bridge Terrace
In 1932 a scheme to widen the existing bridge over the Eden, known by all (and this sender) as "The Gateway to Scotland" was finally, after over 10 years, completed. Where the gardens stand today there was a row of terraced houses, Eden Bridge Terrace, which were demolished to make way for the new, wider bridge and in their place the council decided upon a grand entrance to Rickerby Park, designed by Edward Prentice Mawson and executed by Percy Dalton. The workforce was made up of local unemployed men and much of the materials were recycled from the old bridge and the houses which once stood on the same spot. There's a fantastic description of the site from the original report which you can read here. I have spent many a contemplative hour or two here but I didn't know that one of the buildings was once a rest room for those unfortunate to be caught out in the rain, or that the other was a 'retiring room for ladies only'. I've always thought this was one of the city's best kept secrets, this place of solitude so close to thousands of passers-by each day and yet so far away from the rush.
One of the mysteries of these gardens is the name itself - originally they were called simply the 'Eden Bridge Gardens'. Over time they came to be known to locals as the Italian Gardens, due to their Italianate style, a regular feature of Mawson's designs. Less obvious is how, by the time I was playing there in the 1970s and 1980s, they had become known as the Chinese Gardens - there is nothing Chinese about them!
It's ironic that these gardens should be daubed with Swastikas now, opened, as they were, in 1933, the year of the Reichstag fire and the year that Hitler began his rise to power. It's telling that the unemployed men who laid the paving stones and erected the pergolas chose to use their time to create this space for others to enjoy, whilst those in a similar position today appear to have chosen to destroy it. A sign of the times?
Postcard info
Publisher: Valentine's
Postmark: 30th May 1934
