Buile Hill Park Buile Hill. After the end of the war, and an amount of refurbishment, the park reopened to the public in 1948. In 1963, a garden for the blind opened, and in 1972 Pets Corner. People noted to have visited the park include Pendlebury artist L.S. Lowry, a local rent collector, and author Frances Hodgson Burnett who wrote her classic children's novel "The Secret Garden" during one of her many visits to the estate house. In 1975 the Lancashire Museum of Mining opened in the house, closed in 2000, after which the house was proposed to be renovated as a conference
Frances Hodgson Burnett overcrowding and poverty that "defied description", according to Friedrich Engels, who lived in Manchester at the time. Frances had an active imagination, writing stories she made up in old notebooks. One of her favourite books was Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin", and she spent many hours acting out scenes from the story. Frances and her siblings were sent to be educated at The Select Seminary for Young Ladies and Gentlemen, where she was described as "precocious" and "romantic". She had an active social life and enjoyed telling stories to her friends and cousins; in her mother she found