Wicksteed Park, is wholly owned by Wicksteed Charitable Trust and is a Grade II English Heritage Listed Park & Garden. The park was founded in 1921 as part of the extraordinary legacy of Charles Wicksteed which extends beyond the Recreation Park he created. As an entrepreneur and innovator Charles was also an inventor and respected successful engineer.
Our community, education and heritage activities promote the precious historic landscape, heritage rides and provide new opportunities for communities to engage and participate.
The Park was founded by Charles Wicksteed, the son of a Unitarian minister of the same name and his wife Jane Lupton. The couple met when Charles Senior arrived in Leeds in 1835 to lead Mill Hill Chapel, at the heart of that industrial city, and two years later they married. The Lupton family was long-established there, and the Wicksteeds’ children were born into a prosperous, socially active, politically involved dynasty, including educationalists, philanthropists, factory owners, and businessmen. In 1841 Charles Senior’s sister Elizabeth married Jane’s brother Arthur (c1817-1881), also a Unitarian minister; Uncle Arthur was, according to a family history, “The Achilles of the Leeds Complete Suffrage Association”- in other words, a tragic champion of the fight for universal suffrage.