Park of the week

149. Downhills Park 

This park is in South Tottenham. It’s surrounded by residential streets, enclosed by iron railings, and is a Site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation. 

The park is named after an Eighteenth-Century house that had stood on the land. In 1901, in response to a campaign by local residents worried about the loss of open space (as the site was earmarked for housing), the council bought the land, grounds and adjoining fields. The council demolished the house and incorporated its gardens into a new park, opened to the public in 1903. They kept many features of the house grounds and also built several new features such as a bandstand and conservatory. The park was extended in 1904 on the recommendation of the District Medical Officer following a smallpox epidemic.

The park's facilities, especially tennis, were very popular in the nineteen thirties and in 1934 the borough introduced a giant draughts board, “the first in the Metropolis”.

I often check the British Newspaper Archive when writing these posts, and according to an article from the Daily Mirror of 7th August 1942, as part of the Council’s holiday-at-home week about three hundred babies were entered into a baby contest in the park, instead of the anticipated fifty “for three hours we struggled through the list, judging the babies in batches of a dozen”. Some of the babies got separated from their mothers and had to be offered from the stage for claiming, but eventually a winner was chosen.

The article mentions that an official had said, “with apprehension,” that there was to a dog show the next day.

After the Second World War the older features of the park were gradually lost. From the nineteen eighties onwards, Haringey Council built new children's play facilities and planted the bandstand site with trees. The old playground became a wildflower meadow, and a cafe was built on the site of the former bowling club. There are a variety of trees in the park, including some of the original cedars and a hornbeam avenue from the grounds of the house. 

The park has a woodland area, open space, a rose garden, tennis and basketball courts, football and rugby pitches, an outdoor gym, playground, a café, and toilets. There’s no car park, but we found space on one of the surrounding streets.

Judith Field

Downhills Park, Downhills Park Road, London, N17 6PE.