page_title: Rivington
section_title: Lever Park
hierarchical_section_title: Rivington / Landmarks / Lever Park
caption_attribution_description: English: Liverpool Castle. The replica Liverpool Castle (folly) built by Lord Lever sits on the bank of the reservoir in the extreme southeast corner of this square. The view is to the east with Rivington Pike in the distance
context_page_description: Rivington is a village and civil parish of the Borough of Chorley, Lancashire, England, occupying 2,538 acres. It is about 6 miles southeast of Chorley and about 8 ¹⁄₂ miles northwest of Bolton. Rivington is a rural area consisting primarily of agricultural grazing land, moorland, with hill summits including Rivington Pike and Winter Hill within the West Pennine Moors. The area has a thriving tourist industry centred around reservoirs created to serve Liverpool in the Victorian era and Lever Park created as a public park by William Lever at the turn of the 20th century, with two ancient barns, a replica of Liverpool Castle and open countryside. Rivington and its village had a population of 109 at the 2011 Census.
context_section_description: Lever Park is a public park created by the Liverpool Corporation Act 1902 now owned by United Utilities, it is a designed landscape adjacent to the Lower Rivington Reservoir and behind Rivington and Blackrod High School toward Rivington Hall Barn created from farm land once belonging to The Crosses Farm, Great House Farm and Rivington Hall. The park is named after William Lever, Lord Leverhulme, who bought the land in 1900, in 1901 he proposed the creation of a public park of 364 acres (147 ha) on land he then owned as a gift to the people of his native Bolton. Leverhulme sold the remaining areas outside the park to Liverpool Corporation in 1905 with a covenant on the land preventing building without his or his heirs consent, other than by farms and for operation of the water works. Under the terms of a Liverpool Corporation Act 1902 the act also enabled him to continue plans proposed to Bolton Council in 1901 for a public park to be completed at his own expense.
  The act also obliged Liverpool Corporation and its successors to maintain and keep open the park for the "free and uninterrupted enjoyment of the people of his native town of Bolton". Two pillars commemorating the gift of Leverhulme mark the entry to the area named Lever park and are located at the junction of Scholes Bank and Lever Park Avenue, Horwich, inscribed with the words “William Hesketh Lever 1st Viscount Leverhulme. Lever Park the gift of William Hesketh Lever 1st Viscount Leverhulme born at 6 Wood Street, Bolton, September 19, 1851 died at Hampstead, London, May 7, 1925. For the benefit of the citizens of his native town and neighbourhood by act of parliament in 1902 the ownership and care of the park were vested in the Corporation of the City of Liverpool”. The park opened in 1904 and contained a boating lake, a zoo, tree-lined avenues and a network of footpaths. A dedication ceremony took place to dedicate the park to the people of Bolton on 10 October 1911.
caption: A replica of Liverpool Castle in Lever Park
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