Victoria Park, Cardiff

Victoria Park is a public park in the Canton district of Cardiff in south Wales at Cowbridge Road East.

As its name suggests, it is a traditional Victorian era park named after Queen Victoria and has retained much of its original charm. The park was created as a municipal recreation ground by Cardiff City Council through a city charter between 1897 and 1898 to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee marking her record sixty years on the throne. The park is located on the a small part of the extensive traditional Canton Cross common lands that had originally been used as a substantial fresh food and livestock trading market six days a week from the medieval period. Victoria Park was the first municipal park established within Cardiff and was one of the first in the country.

The park covers nearly twenty acres and still contains the original model boating and paddling pool which remains a very popular attraction in summer, plus a playpark for younger children. At the very north of the park there are tennis courts and a 5-a-side football astro turf field. The original 1898 bandstand had fallen into disrepair and had been demolished but, in 1998, a replica of the original bandstand was erected on the original site to mark the park's centennial celebrations.

Victoria Park, Auckland

Victoria Park is a park and sports ground in Auckland City, New Zealand. It was opened in 1905 and named after the queen who had died four years earlier. It lies on reclaimed bay land in Freemans Bay, a suburb directly west of the Auckland CBD. However, it does not have direct connection to the foreshore anymore, as the Western Reclamation and the Viaduct Basin quarter lie between it and the Waitemata Harbour. The bay started to be filled in as early as the 1870s although the bulk of the reclamation appears to have happened after 1901. The Park was 'finished' around 1912, the area to the north (called the Western Reclamation) dates from after that.

The artificial creation of the land is why it is very flat and level - it was intended from the start to be primarily a facility for active events augmenting the other public parks; Western Park 1876 and Albert Park 1884 which were for more genteel passive enjoyment. For this reason the park was not laid out in a picturesque manner, neither has it ever had decorative flower beds.

Victoria Park (horse)

Victoria Park (1957–1985) was a Canadian Thoroughbred racehorse. A grandson of American Triple Crown champion Gallant Fox, he was the first Canadian-bred horse to place in an American Triple Crown race. At age two, the colt won the Clarendon Stakes plus the two richest 2-year-old races in Canada, the Coronation Futurity Stakes and Cup and Saucer Stakes, and was voted Canadian Champion 2-Yr-Old Colt.

Victoria Park finished 3rd behind Venetian Way in the 1960 Kentucky Derby. In the Preakness Stakes, he finished 2nd to Bally Ache, whom he had beaten in the Leonard Richards Stakes while setting a new Hialeah Park track record. His owner bypassed the Belmont Stakes to return for Canada's most important race, the Queen's Plate, which Victoria Park won in a record time that stood for more than forty years. He was voted 1960's Canadian Champion 3 Yr-Old Colt and Canadian Horse of the Year.

As a sire

Retired to stud, Victoria Park sired 25 stakes winners, including three Queen's Plate winners: Almoner (1970), Kennedy Road (1971), and Victoria Song (1972). He is the damsire of The Minstrel as well as the damsire of Northern Taste, who led the Japanese leading sires list for ten years, and topped the broodmare sires list a number of times.

Victoria Park (TTC)

Victoria Park is a station on the Bloor–Danforth line of the subway system in Toronto, Canada. It is located at 777 Victoria Park Avenue, one block north of Danforth Avenue. The station can be accessed by pedestrians directly from Victoria Park Avenue; by way of an unmanned entrance from Albion Avenue; through an automated entrance from Teesdale Place; via a walkway that leads to the nearby Crescent Town area. A City of Toronto bicycle station is located adjacent to the main Victoria Park Avenue entrance, providing a paid secure indoor bicycle parking area.

History

Victoria Park Station was opened in 1968. The station was located at the time in the Borough of Scarborough, but the access footbridge across Victoria Park Avenue, built in the 1970s, extended into what was then the Borough of East York.

Until 1973, the buses and the subway trains serving the station were in separate fare zones, and so the turnstiles and collector booths were placed between the bus bays and the subway platforms. When the zones were abolished, the layout was reconfigured to bring the buses inside the station's fare-paid area.

HM Prison Cardiff

HM Prison Cardiff is a Category B men's prison, located in the Adamsdown area of Cardiff, Wales. The prison is operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service.

History

By 1814, the existing Cardiff Gaol was deemed insufficient for coping with the both the scale of demand and quality of building to cope with the quickly expanding industrial town, and so proposals were made to build a new county jail for Glamorgan. Construction commenced in 1827, and the new stone building located south of Crockherbtown opened at the end of 1832, capable of housing 80 prisoners, including 20 debtors.

The three Victorian wings of Cardiff Prison underwent a major refurbishment programme in 1996, and the prison’s capacity was extended by the commissioning of three new wings (C, D and E), with the number of places for life-sentenced prisoners increased also.

In 1997 Cardiff Prison was criticised for chaining sick inmates to their hospital beds after a probe into the death of one of Cardiff's prisoners. Three years later one of Canterbury's Assistant Governors was found dead after an investigation into child pornography. The manager had been arrested at the prison days earlier by detectives investigating the alleged misuse of a personal computer.

Cardiff (surname)

Cardiff is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

Cardiff (UK Parliament constituency)

Cardiff was a parliamentary constituency centred on the town of Cardiff in South Wales which returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons from 1542 until it was abolished for the 1918 general election.

Members of Parliament

MPs 1542-1645

MPs 1645–1832

MPs 1832–1918

Election results

Elections in the 1880s

Elections in the 1890s

Elections in the 1900s

Elections in the 1910s

References

Bibliography