University of Gloucestershire's Park Campus sits in the south of Cheltenham, towards the Park district. This year the campus is our site for the Sustainable Technology module, we have to build an understanding of the existing site including an environmental audit and changing the topography of the site using 'cut and fill' techniques.
During the 17th century, Promenading became a fashionable leisure activity, an opportunity for the social elites parade themselves in order to be seen creating a tourist boom in towns like Cheltenham, having huge positive effects on the towns revenue.
In the 19th century Thomas Billings decided to capitalise the tourist boom by generating plans to build a zoological, horticultural, botanical gardens on what is now Park Campus. The plans for this zoo were being decided as Pittville Park was in development, these two zoological attractions would have been in competition.
Park Campus Gardens plan.
However these plans were short-lived, as Queen Victorian began to visit seaside towns they became more fashionable and as the trends changed spa towns like Cheltenham's previous economic victories were quickly hit with the reality. Funding for the plans diminished and the site was left in stand still. Although there are a few of the original zoo elements which still stand like the Elephant Walk.
Subsequently The Park stands today as a student halls and teaching campus owned by the University of Gloucestershire. The university launched a partnership with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust in May 2009, with the park and grounds becoming designated as a community green space.
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