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In this issue
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The Fringe...
...the Festival
Martin Rowson
News in Brief
Readers Letters
Park Life
News in Brief
Dissent
Tapas Time
Back to the Fringe
Straight to the Point
Royal Bengal
Handy Contacts
Summertime Blues
Summery Justice
Up the Junction
Books/Poetry
The Factory
Summer Allergies
Farmers Market
The Arts
Away Days
A Royal Visit
Coffee Corner
Surfing N16
Man in North Bank
XWord
View from the Lane
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Issue 1
OnLine Edition
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p6
‘as many as 5,000 people use the park in a single day at weekends.’
A heatwave early this summer has already brought record crowds to Clissold
Park, one of the most popular and muchloved parks in London. The ‘StokeFest’ in
June
managed to revive the spirit of the original Stoke Newington Festival, mostly organising
its activities in the park for one very successful day.
There
is no doubt that the park is looking better than it has done for a number of years. There
are new tennis courts thanks to the ‘City Tennis Clubs’ initiative of the Lawn
Tennis Association and the hard work of the Clissold Park Junior Tennis Club. There are
new fountains in the lakes, the rose garden is looking better than ever, and a higher
standard of tidiness and grounds maintenance in general. A lot of this is due to Park
Manager, Mark White, and his staff, who have to get by on an inadequate budget for a park
of this size.
There is a revised bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a sum in the region of £3.5
million to completely restore the house and its landscape setting, while retaining many of
the more recent and popular features of the park such as the children’s playground,
deer enclosure, rose gardens and open sports fields. This is due to be resubmitted by
Hackney Council in September, 2003.
The bid is likely to be given added impetus by another very good piece of news: the
successful leasing - after competitive bidding - of the park café to Ayhan and Nur 
Aksu, the people who run the New River Café nearby. The ground floor of the
house is being completely refurbished, with new kitchen equipment installed, and should
re-open by the end of July.
Given how well used the park is by parents, children and young people, Clissold Park User
Group members have been involved in negotiations with the Hackney Learning Trust to extend
the hours of the ‘One O’Clock Club’, opening the facilities in the mornings
as well as in the afternoon. Likewise, a number of local parents and volunteers have been
given the go-ahead to help convert the current (largely disused) bowling green and
pavilion into a new dog-free, childfriendly area, with a programme of activities for
children during the summer school holidays.
There are still some problems of course, notably the late opening of the Paddling Pool, a
sore subject for many people, and which has become something of a symbol for the
Council’s misplaced priorities (sitting empty, as it does, only a hundred yards away
from what is probably one of the most expensive-to-build-and-maintain municipal swimming
pools in the world). Still, there are several possibilities for raising the money to
completely refurbish the pool currently being explored. At the time of publication, the
paddling pool is awaiting Health and Safety clearance before it can open for the school
holidays.
There is also concern at the recent news that Thames Water is
negotiating with the Council over their statutory right to lay a new pipe-line across the
park as part of the London-wide project to tackle rising groundwater: if this is given the
go-ahead then close attention will need to be given to avoid any damage to the trees, and
in seeking compensation for the upheaval caused. The CPUG is keeping a close watch on this
matter.
There are other problems as well. The lakes are suffering badly from green algae and
blanket weed, but then so are many other ponds in London (including the swimming ponds at
Hampstead Heath). There are still occasional incidents of bullying and theft amongst young
people who use the park; yet it is a testament to the popularity of the park how much it
is used by teenagers, who have few other (noncommercial) facilities catering for them
locally. The CPUG is still pressing the council to provide more park rangers, particularly
at weekends, to provide a more visible presence of public stewardship.
Given that as many as 5,000
people use the park in a single day at weekends when the weather is fine, Clissold Park
serves the community very well. There are still moans and groans about the state of the
toilets, the condition of some of the fences, the unnecessary presence of cars, but
generally most people seem to get what they want, and enjoy their hour or two under open
skies in what is still a very beautiful, landscaped park.
If people do have complaints to make, it helps to make them directly to the park manager
(a note left in the Rangers’ Office will help focus attention on which issues matter
most to people). Or you can turn up to open meetings of the Clissold Park User Group which
are held roughly every six weeks on a Saturday morning (with a crèche), which the Park
Manager attends. Details of these meetings are posted on the park notice-boards as well as
on our website. Summer in the city would be intolerable if we didn’t have such
wonderful places as Clissold Park.
Ken Worpole, Chair,
Clissold Park User Group
www.clissoldpark.com