Description: The Arboretum was opened to the public May 11, 1852. It comprised seventeen acres, and presented within itself a landscape, Aviary, a People's Park, and an ornamental Garden. The Nottingham Enclosure Act 1845 enclosed fields and meadows, used by the burgesses of freeholders of the City to graze their animals, and to compensate for the loss of open space used for recreation, allotted space for a series of places of public recreation and public walks. One hundred and thirty acres made up of Queen's Walk and Queen's Walk Park, Victoria Park, Robin Hood Chase, Corporation Oaks, St Ann's Hill Avenue, Nottingham Arboretum (seen here), the General Cemetery, Waterloo Promenade, the Church Cemetery and the Forest were created as public open spaces from the enclosures. This picture shows the water fountain which was presented in 1859 by William and Anne Enfield, whose monogram can be seen on the top. Towns and cities in the mid nineteenth century were very unhealthy places. Water was in short supply and drinking water so heavily polluted that most of the working population drank beer instead. Disease and alcoholism were rife: cholera outbreaks in 1847 and 1858 killed over 58,000 people in London alone. In 1859 the MP Samuel Gurney, a nephew of the social reformer Elizabeth Fry, was inspired by public drinking fountains newly installed by civic authorities in northern cities like Liverpool and Hull, to found the Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain Association. The Association's first fountain was opened on 1859 on the boundary railings of St Sepulchre's in Snow Hill, London, paid for entirely by Gurney himself. Within a short space of time it was being used by 7,000 people a day and by 1865 over 85 fountains had been erected. By 1867 provision of drinking troughs for animals was being included and the Society changed its name to the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association. The cost of the clean water supply was met in some cases by the Association, in others by the local parish. Several ornamental fountains have been provided by private munificence such as the one seen here. Such drinking fountains were typically built in granite or other stone and carved by professional stonemasons. The result is that many have survived to the present day, although sadly neglected and without water supply or drinking cups.