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Clissold Park Stoke Newington's back garden might now be a housing estate, were
it not for the efforts of two men. The story is an interesting one.
Clissold House was commissioned in 1790 by Jonathan Hoare a Quaker and merchant whose
family were prominent in the anti-slavery movement and completed in 1793 in what was then
Newington Common. However, Hoare got into debt and his mortgage was foreclosed in 1800,
the house and estate then transferring to one Thomas Gudgeon. The Crawshay family acquired
it from Gudgeon in 1811 and the estate was renamed Newington Park.
In 1835, Crawshay died, and his daughter Eliza took it over and married curate Augustus
Clissold, a union long opposed by her father, now unfortunately unable to do anything
about it. Clissold died in 1882 and the estate passed back to the Crawshay family, who
sold it in 1886 to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for the purposes of building and
development, to the horror of local people.
However, a newly-formed environmental pressure group, the Commons Preservation Society,
who had campaigned across London against building on old common land such as Hampstead
Heath, had other plans for the park. Along with the Metropolitan Public Gardens
Association, they argued for the need to conserve the rare trees and local ecology of the
park, and their campaign was joined in 1887 by a committee headed by Joseph Beck, of the
Council of the City of London, and John Runtz, of the Metropolitan Board of Works
(forerunner of the LCC and the GLC), both of whom were local residents.
Working day and night, holding public meetings and raising a 12,000-name petition, Beck
and Runtz finally persuaded Runtz's employers in the face of stiff opposition from the
developers to accept money from Stoke Newington vestry and three neighbouring local
authorities (South Hornsey, Hackney and Islington) to buy the park. The decision was
validated by a new Act of Parliament the Metropolitan Open Spaces Act which allowed the
land to be kept for public use and access. Beck paid a cheque for £96,000 into the Bank
of England on the morning of 10 January 1889, and the park was saved.
The park was opened on 24 July 1889 by the Earl of Roseberry, Chairman of the
newly-established LCC, and was one of the first parks in London to provide animals and
rare birds.The newspapers of the day described it as 'the finest of London's open spaces'
and concluded that 'for beauty, it cannot be matched for miles around'.
 As a mark of respect and gratitude, a
public subscription was raised to erect a water fountain in honour of Runtz and Beck. The
fountain, on the path from the bridge over the pond to Green Lanes is still there today,
and it carries an inscription, as follows:
This fountain was erected by subscription AD 1890 in grateful recognition of the united
efforts of Joseph Beck and John Runtz as leaders of the movement by which the use of the
park was secured to the public for ever.
The pair were further commemorated by naming two lakes to the north of the park Beckmere
and Runtzmere, although the names have fallen into disuse. Thanks to these two men, and
the substantial support of the local people, Stoke Newington now had its own public space
and one which at least rivalled Victoria Park (the first London park, built in 1845) to
the south and Finsbury Park (1860) to the north. And the developers had to look elsewhere.
The New River
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Newcomers and visitors to the area may be surprised to learn that the
ornamental stretch of water - home to the ducks and terrapins - across from Clissold House
was  until recently part of the New River. This was canal built in the early 17th
century to bring clean water from Hertfordshire into the City of London. Until 1946, when
it was filled in, it ran from the Woodberry Down reservoirs and through Clissold Park in a
loop, entering under Green Lanes and coiling westwards alongside what was Paradise Row,
which became part of Church Street in 1937. The river now terminates at the old pumping
station, which is currently in use as a climbing centre and whose neo-Gothic towers
dominate the northern end of the park.
Interestingly, hollowed-out elm trees were used as underground pipes to
transmit the water through central London, as wet elm does not decay and the tree has a
straight, wide trunk.
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