3-046-937 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches in Roundhay Park, Leeds; opened this week by Prince Arthur, 1872. 'Waterfall and Rustic Bridge; The Hermitage; Waterfall & Cascade; The Castle; The Lower Lake...[Views of] a few of the most picturesque and inviting scenes in the new public pleasure-ground...Roundhay Park, which was purchased for £139,000...is accessible by railway; and it is certainly a very beautiful place, well out of the noisome and hideous factory smoke...The Waterloo Lake, nearly three quarters of a mile long..., with an expanse of thirty-three acres, was finished in 1815, at the date of the battle from which its name is derived. A romantic wooded glen connects this with the Upper Lake, and there are two superb and delicious waterfalls, one of which is 57 ft. in height. The groves are filled with singing-birds, and the lakes are stocked with fish. Amongst other diverse features of attraction in this park are the mimic ruin of an ivy-mantled tower, the Hermitage, on a pretty island in the Upper Lake, the terrace commanding a fair view of the grounds, the shady avenues of trees, and shrubbery. The town of Leeds, with a population now amounting to a quarter of a million, is to be congratulated upon its acquisition of this charming place of public recreation'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.