A GENTLE stroll through a Worcester park will reveal the important role it played in boosting public health in the early 1900s.

Claire Jones, curator of the George Marshall Medical Museum at Worcestershire Royal Hospital, will lead a walking tour around Gheluvelt Park in Barbourne on Friday.

She will talk about the history of urban parks and how their development was meant to improve people’s health.

Ms Jones said: “Many public health reformers in the 19th century felt that parks were essential to the health and wellbeing of the residents of towns and cities all over England.

“They believed that parks provided the clean air that so many of workers of the period were lacking in the dirty factories in which they worked and the unhygienic back-to-back houses in which they lived.”

Nineteenth-century artist John Ruskin was a staunch supporter of public parks in England. Gheluvelt Park opened in 1922 and takes its name from the Battle of Gheluvelt of October 1914, in which the Worcestershire regiment fought.

The free tour will start from the Pump House Environment Centre at 11am. For details, call 01905 722233, visit worcester.gov.uk/parks or see facebook.com/ worcesterparks.