Auction Catalogue
Create new listTHE PRESTON-MORLEY BUCKINGHAMSHIRE COLLECTION, Opening of Wolverton Park, 1885, a gold medal, unsigned, Britannia seated with trident and shield, locomotive pulling train on viaduct in background, london & north-western railway company around, rev. in celebration of the opening of wolverton park by the directors of the company, etc., in 9 lines, 31mm, 20.07g (Moyaux –; BHM –; Ratcliff, History & Antiquities of the Newport Hundreds, p.288; Swan –). Light scuffing, otherwise very fine and extremely rare, the only specimen known to the cataloguer (£200-250)
This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Preston-Morley Buckinghamshire Collection: Commemorative Medals.
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Collection
Provenance:
D.W. Grey Auction, 14 January 1971, lot 59.
Wolverton Park, known as the Recreation Park and now the town’s Sports Ground, is situated between the division of the ‘old and new’ railway lines running through Wolverton and bounded at one end by the Grand Union Canal. The park, originally about 7 acres, “is well laid out in lawns, borders and athletic course, making a great contrast to its former state as ‘Hell’s Kitchen,” according to Ratcliff. The park was a gift to the town of Wolverton by the London & North-Western Railway Co on 3 August 1885, when the company granted their employees a day’s paid holiday and provided them with a dinner, and the schoolchildren a tea. Wolverton was “so decorated that it was one mass of flags and bunting,” and in the evening “Mr Thomas Baker of Victoria Park, London, gave a good pyrotechnic display, after which the festivities concluded by [sic] a ball.” The gold medal was presumably presented to a director or senior official of the railway company, or possibly a Wolverton civic figure. Further details are sold with the lot
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