Clissold Park is an open space in Stoke Newington, in the London Borough of Hackney.[1] It is bounded by Greenway Close (to the north), Church Street (south), Green Lanes (west) and Queen Elizabeth's Walk (east); the south-east corner abuts St Mary's Old Church, now an arts venue. The park is 22.57 hectares (55.8 acres) in extent. The main building within its boundaries is the Grade II listedClissold House, run as a cafe and events venue.
The park's facilities include children's playgrounds, sports fields, a bowling green, a skatepark bowl, tennis courts, and a paddling pool. Other attractions include an aviary with assorted captive species, an enclosure of deer and goats, a butterfly dome, and two small lakes hosting wild ducks, geese, swans and other water birds. The park also comprises a short section of the New River, and the Capital Ring has some of its paths running through the park.
Clissold Park received a Green Flag award in July 2008,[2] and was substantially restored soon afterwards.
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.[6][7] Gudgeon sold it in 1811 to William Crawshay I.[8]
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.[9]
Clissold House is a Grade II listed building; it houses a cafe and serves as an event location.[10] In 2007, Clissold Park was voted the Heart of Hackney, in a poll organised by the council. On 30 March 2007 the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) announced the award of a development grant to put forward a bid for a full £4.5 million Park Restoration Grant[11] to restore the park and house to its original 18th-century design. The subsequent bid was successful, and in addition to funds from the HLF and the council, the project also received funding from the Big Lottery Fund. Work commenced in January 2010, and over the next two years an estimated £8.9 million[12] was spent upgrading the house and its surrounding parkland.
Plans[13] included:
Restoring Clissold House
Restoring a section of the New River
Extensive maintenance to the two small lakes
Renovating the animal enclosures
Creating a new play and wheels park area.
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.[14]
^A P Baggs, Diane K Bolton and Patricia E C Croot, Stoke Newington: Other estates, in A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 8, Islington and Stoke Newington Parishes, ed. T F T Baker and C R Elrington (London, 1985), pp. 178-184. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol8/pp178-184 [Retrieved 17 June 2018].
