One of the most useful green spaces if you want somewhere central without actually being inside Festival Place.
A park paid for by the town
This was once the private grounds of Goldings, the house at the London Road end. Francis Russell bought the house in 1765 and laid out the parkland in the landscape style of the time; the ha-ha from that era is still there.
After the First World War, Thomas Burberry, the town’s most famous businessman, bought the estate for £10,500 and held it until the Corporation could buy it from him for £4,500, raised by public subscription. It was to be kept for the town for good as a memorial to those killed in the war. The war memorial itself, with its bronze Winged Victory, went up at the London Road entrance in 1923.
The park lost a corner to the ring road in the 1970s but still covers about 24.5 hectares, with mature oak, beech and cedar and a tree trail.
What is there
The park is at RG21 4AG, between the town centre and Crossborough Hill, with free parking off Crossborough Hill.
- Cafés: two independents, Park Social Café and Orchard Café.
- Toilets: in the John Arlott Pavilion, including an accessible toilet.
- Play: an all-weather play area in the middle of the park, with a scooter track and inclusive equipment.
- Skate park and pump track: behind the tennis centre, alongside outdoor gym and parkour equipment.
- Odds and ends: a bandstand moved here from Fairfields in 1927, and an aviary added in 1940.
It is also the start of the council’s self-guided walk out to Black Dam Ponds and Crabtree Plantation: about 1.7 miles there and back to the ponds, or 3.5 miles if you carry on to Crabtree.
Location
