The first part of Handsworth Park was laid out to the west of the original London and North Western Railway and was opened on 25 December 1890 despite initial opposition. At a public meeting in the council offices off Soho Road on 11 January 1887, the Rector of St. Mary's Church, Handsworth Dr. Randall, who could be seen as the voice of receding rural Staffordshire against the spreading metropolis of Birmingham, rose amid the uproar to make what the Handsworth News reporter, with irony, called the speech of the evening: "Allow me to say that from my heart I am the last man in the parish to stand between any object which is for the welfare of the people of the parish. It is because I don't think it is for the well-being that we should have the park that I lift up my voice against it. We have an agricultural parish, and we have some of the finest air in the kingdom, and I believe that the park will be more for the benefit of the roughs of Birmingham." This view was described by the reporter as being received with "a perfect howl of dissent, uproar for at least a minute and cries of 'shame' followed by alternations of groaning and cheering". (Baddeley 1997)