Skating on thin ice at Wardown Park

HEALTH and safety? Never heard of it!

The thought of plunging into the icy cold water below probably never occurred to these families skating on Wardown Park lake.

The Tuesday Pictorial, one of the Luton News’s sister papers, reported in January 1950 that freezing rain had turned roads into “glass-like slipways” and Monday morning traffic came to a halt, with thousands of people late for work. Nothing new there, then.

But hundreds of people flocked to Wardown for some fun on the frozen lake. The ice wasn’t thick enough in some parts though and one man and his dog fell in, said the Pictorial. Many others, however, enjoyed skating safely on the lake’s lower basin.

Luton acquired Wardown in 1904 after two members of the council, Asher Hucklesby and Edwin Oakley, bought it privately for £16,250 and sold it back to the town at exactly the same price.

The council extended the lake to make an open air swimming pool, a suspension bridge was built between the old lake and the extension and boats were introduced. Bowling greens and tennis courts were laid out in the park and the cricket ground added to the many attractions.

> Thanks to readers who identified the mystery shop in the Yesteryear photo (January 11) of Park Street as Perrins’ furniture store. The shop in George Street (Yesteryear, February 15) has been named as Marks & Spencer, although one reader said the building was occupied by a company called Braggins.

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