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Clissold House in the snow,
Christmas 2001 |
Café society blossoms and flourishes In the fertile ground of Stoke
Newington, with new ventures seemingly popping up monthly. Sadly, In the place where you
would expect there to be the best-tended and most fruitful café, we have had a succession
of failures In recent years which the public have had both to subsidise and suffer the
poor service. Namely Clissold Park.
Surely, with a classic, historical building, the largest service area in N16, the most
heavily used park in the country and constant throughput of customers, this should be a
venue which is phenomenally successful. I was at a private reception recently at Burgh
House in Hampstead, which is run by a trust. This building Is similar in size to Clissold
House, has public rooms and exhibitions, catering, public lectures and delivers high
quality services. Just the sort of thing for Stoke Newington.
Sadly this is not the case in Hackney. The Council has been running the café for the last
tour years and it appears that an operating deficit of £25,000 per annum has been
budgeted into the current accounts alone. Belatedly, the council has now recognised that
it does not have the necessary In-house skills to run the business successfully and is now
acting to reduce this deficit by putting the café operation out to tender early in 2002.
No details of the tender are available yet, but can we hope that comprehensive surveys
done by the now defunct Clissold House Trust and the Park User group will be taken into
account? These clearly demonstrated that the public want a café available to all park
users and open when the park is open, not when it suits management. They also want a range
of freshly prepared food at reasonable prices and not exclusively for vegetarians who only
make up a small percentage of the market even in Stoke Newington.
Fears of sky high prices and pretentious, exclusive food can surely be allayed by the use
of a definitive service contract agreement. The demographic profile of Clissold Park can't
be so different from Finsbury Park which runs a perfectly acceptable cafe. Other London
parks do this too. Look at Friern Barnet, Kenwood, Epping Forest, Waterlow Park, Highgate
Woods. None of the above examples exclude any park user from their operations, and all are
run by private individuals or companies on a secure lease which gives them the incentive
to invest properly. Let us hope that the council and its agents will take note and produce
a tender document which will allow a commercial enterprise both to prosper and to provide
decent services.
By the way, the last three operations mentioned above are run by the Corporation of
London. Now there's an idea - it would be nice to have a bit of Hampstead in Hackney
wouldn't it? Maybe the Corporation would like to 'buy' Clissold and manage the whole park?
Robbie Richards runs The Fox Reformed Wine Bar on Church Street. He is a member of the
Clissold Park user group and was a director of The Clissold House Trust.
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Lunch noon -
2.30pm Monday to
Saturday
4 crowns
Guesthouse
Ensuite |
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Enjoy our
extensive range
of wines
Adnams
Marston's Pedigree
Ruddle's County |
Don't miss our popular Sunday lunches
and monthly quiz nights
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