Princes Gardens, Aldershot

[5] The Aldershot Gazette and Military News welcomed the new Princes Gardens which had turned land that had been “an almost desolate waste” into “a beauty spot” which would be “more restful to the eye than the old barren promontory” left after the removal of the Royal Engineers’ Yard.

On 5 July 1945 troops of the Canadian Army Overseas gathered in the gardens before smashing the windows of local shops on the second evening of the Aldershot riot.

In celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Rushmoor Borough Council erected a permanent bandstand in 2012 where brass bands, dancers and solo artists regularly perform.

[6] Central to the park is a sculpture of a charging horse crossing a section of Bailey bridge titled “The end is where we start from” which was unveiled in 1994 as part of an Older Urban Area Regeneration scheme and which represents the link between the civilian town of Aldershot and the British Army.

More than 2,000 former and serving Airborne Forces soldiers led by the Band of the Parachute Regiment paraded at the celebrations followed by a drumhead service in Princes Gardens.

[9][10] On 25 September 2021 a life-size bronze statue of Kulbir Thapa carrying a wounded British soldier from the Leicestershire Regiment off the battlefield during World War One was unveiled in Princes Gardens in Aldershot in Hampshire.

It was unveiled to coincide with the day on 25 September 1915 when Thapa performed the heroic action which was to win him the first Victoria Cross to be awarded to a Gurkha soldier.