Clissold Park


Clissold Park is an open space in Stoke Newington, in the London Borough of Hackney. It is bounded by Greenway Close, Stoke Newington Church Street and Green Lanes and Queen Elizabeth's Walk. It was named by the Metropolitan Borough of Stoke Newington, which was the local authority when the park was established. The park is 22.57 hectares in extent.
Its facilities include children's playgrounds, sports fields, an unkempt bowling green, a skatepark bowl, tennis courts, the café and other attractions including an aviary with assorted captive species, captive deer and goats, and two small lakes hosting wild ducks, geese, swans and other water birds. The park also comprises remains of the New River, and the Capital Ring has some of its paths running through a small section of the park.

History

Clissold House was built, in the latter half of the 18th century, for Jonathan Hoare, a City of London merchant, Quaker, philanthropist and anti-slavery campaigner. The park was created to be his idyll, and the stretch of water which wends its way around the house was once part of the New River, an artificial waterway that supplied London with clean water from Hertfordshire.
Hoare, in financial difficulties, mortgaged the estate, and then lost it by foreclosure to a Robert Pryor. It was sold by Pryor's executors to Thomas Gudgeon, a merchant, who owned it around the beginning of the 19th century. Gudgeon sold it in 1811, to William Crawshay I.
Subsequently the estate passed, through a Crawshay family connection, to Augustus Clissold. When he died in 1882 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners bought the property, intending to profit from development. However, John Runtz and Joseph Beck persuaded the Metropolitan Board of Works to purchase it in 1887, to open it as a public park. The two lakes were named Beckmere and Runtzmere in their honour.

Restoration

Clissold House, the former villa within the park, is a Grade II listed building; the house serves as refreshment rooms and as an event location. In 2007, Clissold Park was voted the Heart of Hackney, in an I Love Hackney Poll organised by Hackney Council. On 30 March 2007 the Heritage Lottery Fund announced the award of a development grant to put forward a bid for a full £4.5 million Park Restoration Grant to restore the park and house to its original 18th-century design.
Work on the Clissold Park and House Restoration Project commenced in January 2010, and over the next two years an estimated £8.9 million was spent upgrading the house and its surrounding parkland. Funding was received from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Big Lottery Fund, and Hackney Council. Plans for the park included:
Clissold Park received a Green Flag award in July 2008. Clissold House was added to the English Heritage 'Heritage at Risk Register' in 1991 but removed in 2012 following the completion of the restoration programme.

Access

There are no nearby tube stations to the park. However, Arsenal, Finsbury Park and Manor House on the Piccadilly line are a mile away. Buses 141, 341 and 393 stop on Green Lanes adjacent to the park.

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