AN end-of-the-pier comic performing in Redcar noticed a preponderance of nannies pushing their perambulators to the seafront bandstand where they would gather for a gossip while feeding their babies from a bottle.
It was, he said, a “tittybottle park”, and everyone giggled.
But the name stuck – not necessarily in Redcar, where the bandstand has long since disappeared and been replaced by the famous vertical pier, but in many other places.
Usually it is a nickname. For instance, Victoria Park is officially the name give to a little burst of greenery in Eaglescliffe. It used to be a level crossing where the 1825 path of the Stockton & Darlington Railway crossed over what is now the A135 Yarm Road.
A noticeboard in the park says: “As late as 1870, the crossing gates were still in use here. With the railways came the early residents of Victorian Eaglescliffe, whose nannies used this park to walk their charges in their perambulators and it became affectionately known as ‘Tittybottle Park’.”
In 2011, Durham County Council went – bravely some might say – one step further in Bishop Auckland. In Cockton Hill Road, near the hospital, there was a little corner of greenery that had no official name, although it was widely known as “tittybottle park”. When the council restored the park, it placed a label on the fence making that its official name.
It looks to be in a typical location for a tittybottle park. They are usually within perambulating distance of the sort of houses whose residents could afford nannies – just a stroll away are the remarkable Cradock Villas.
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There is another Tittybottle Park in Masham, and Normanby Park, laid out in the suburbs of Middlesbrough in 1929, is known unofficially by the nickname. There used to be Tittybottle Parks in Guisborough and Loftus, and an older generation apparently knew Friary Gardens in Richmond as Tittybottle Park.
Shildon goes one better and has a Tittybottle Bank. However, it is in different places for different people: some say it is the sharp hill up from Redworth; others that it is the slopes leading down from All Saints Church.
And the Echo’s legendary former columnist Mike Amos once wrote how West Auckland even had a Tittybottle Nursery.
The titular tittybottle is not a phenomenon peculiar to this neck of the woods, though. Otley, in West Yorkshire, seems very proud of its Tittybottle Park, which is the official name for a short, narrow walk along the banks of the River Wharfe, and, unofficially, there are tittybottles in Leeds and Birmingham.
In Victoria in Australia, there’s a Tittybong, but that is probably something very different.
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L If you can tell us anything about any of our Tittybottle Parks, please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk
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