Public park, forming part of a housing estate. The layout of the park was initially designed by Neave Brown as part of Alexandra Road Estate in 1968-1969; Brown revised the layout somewhat in 1974 with detailed drawings and planting plans by Janet Jack; the park was completed in 1979. Jack was a consultant in the 2015-2016 restoration of the park by J and L Gibbons with Erect Architects.
LOCATION, SETTING, LANDFORM, BOUNDARIES, AREA The park occupies a linear site running west/east between the terraces of the Alexandra Road Estate. The core site is three acres/1.243 ha, but connecting paths raise it to four acres/1.7ha, the figure most commonly given. It is bounded to the west by Abbey Road, to the north by the pedestrian Langtry Walk (included in the registration) and to the south by the rear access way behind Brown’s three terraces of houses along Ainsworth Way. South of Ainsworth Way are the relatively tall 1950s blocks of the London County Council Ainsworth Estate. To the east the park ends in a raised bank crossed by diagonal paths leading to Brown’s tenants’ hall, described by him as ‘The Knuckle’. The original soil is London clay. The park opens out at grade to Abbey Road and Langtry Walk, but rises to the south and east, built up on soil excavated for the building of the block of flats to create a bank crossed by paths leading to the upper terrace level by the tenants’ hall and the terraces of houses to the south. Other parts of the design, notably the play areas, are sunken to give shelter and confine ball games. Wind is funnelled by the surrounding housing, and the walls and planting were designed to provide shelter.
ENTRANCES AND APPROACHES The main entrance is from Abbey Road, at the north-west corner of the park, where a drive leads to the games pitch and ‘The Hive’ nursery. A secondary entrance to the south-west adjoins the car park serving the terraces of houses. There are two bridges over the access road behind these terraces, at the south centre of the site (giving access from the Ainsworth Estate as well as the terraces of Ainsworth Way) and at the south-east corner adjoining the tenants’ hall, where the raised walk links to the upper level of the estate accessed from the north-east. There is continuous access to the park from the north at the lower estate level along Langtry Walk, with access at the ends and at two points in the middle of the terrace of maisonettes to Rowley Way, the main pedestrian thoroughfare through the estate (the two walkways leading between Rowley Way and Langtry Walk are included in the registration).
PRINCIPAL BUILDINGS The park’s walls are included within the Grade II* listing of the housing estate, as are other structures forming part of the original 1974 construction, including inset seats, planting boxes, ramps and steps. Brown also designed the listed school and tenants’ hall building which adjoins the park to the east. The Hive nursery to the west, opened in 1982, was designed by Kisaburo Kawakami, one of Brown’s assistants on Alexandra Road.
LANDSCAPE Just as the street is the dominant element in the design of the Alexandra Road Estate, translated into a modern context, freed of traffic, the park develops the idea of a street as a sequence of incidents, tracing a loose zigzag through the confined space to connect a series of spaces or lungs and maximise the tight urban form. Jack described the park as ‘one uninterrupted walking environment and conceived as a continuous playground’; the relative informality of the layout and undulating levels is given architectural definition by the structural elements: Brown’s site-cast white-painted concrete walls are smooth or board-marked with chamfered edges; blocked circles formerly contained lights (like those also lost from the housing estate). The walls contain the distinct spaces and the pathways leading from one to another, the visitor being both conducted between the spaces, and exercising choice as alternative routes present themselves; each space is entered obliquely, introducing an element of gentle surprise. The compartmenting of the park is enhanced by its changes in level and by its planting, the visual separation providing calm relaxing spaces in a landscape designed to be used by a large number of residents from the dense surrounding housing. There are seats incorporated into walls, and low walls which can be sat on, as well as benches with concrete bases and slatted timber seats – some have been restored and some replaced. Jack’s planting was intended to be low-maintenance, with tough plants which would appeal to the senses, reflect the changing seasons and attract wildlife. The very lush and large-scale use of plants was consistent with contemporary modernist approach to planting in relation to hard architecture. By the time of the 2015-2016 restoration, the trees and shrubs had grown to such an extent that visibility into the park was obscured; the restoration has stripped back the planting to approximately the intended scale, with numerous trees retained from Jack's original scheme, included birch, ash, lime, London planes, holm oak, Norway maple and flowering cherries. Lower structural planting includes Cotoneaster ‘Cornubia’, Pyracantha ‘Orange Glow’, Fatsia japonica, and broom. Fences are planted with climbers and ivy is used as groundcover.
At the north-west entrance is a plan of the park in concrete, installed as part of the restoration work. Progressing from west to east the park narrows slightly, with paths linking sunken play areas (one being a fenced ball park, and the other four being irregularly-shaped polygonal walled playgrounds) set between landscaped banks and open spaces. Adjoining The Hive at the west end of the park is the ball park, with new metal fencing on low blockwork walling. To either side are banks planted with plane trees, and with a line of wild cherry trees along the top of the southern bank. At the eastern end of the northern bank, terracing in railway sleepers recalls two stepped timber slide structures which formerly occupied the site. The next space is The Bowl, its yew hedging backed by ash trees, originally enclosing a sunken bowl, later replaced by a circular lawn because of drainage problems. The enclosed stage area survives to the east, paved with granite setts, and framed by Cotoneaster, with planting boxes behind. This leads up to walled playgrounds 2 and 3, separated by a diagonal path. Intended for children aged 8 and over, the northern playground is marked for ball games, and the southern playground contains a 2016 climbing frame inspired by the triangular structural bars of Jack’s much smaller original geodesic dome. Next are the two largest open areas, The Meadow and The Mound, with a diagonal path and walled enclosure between them, The Mound being skirted by a raised ‘woodland walk’ along the south side of the park. A low concrete seat runs along a retaining wall to the south of The Meadow, and to the north a long bench is enclosed by a high wall separating The Meadow from The Mound. The Meadow is planted with lime, cherry and plane trees, with a large eucalyptus to the south. The highest point of The Mound contains a fenced clearing, with a grove of Norway maple planted at its centre. The eastern side of The Mound is planted with holm oak, with Norway maple to the north. Towards the east the banks and woodland walk are planted with ash and silver birch. On the north side of the park, at the east end, are playgrounds 4 (for children aged 3 to 8, now with swings set between low mounds), and playground 5 (for children aged from 2 to 5, where Jack created a slide ramp, reinvented by Erect) before paths and steps lead up to the tenants’ hall. At the east end of playground 5 is a spreading plane tree.