|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
| Home | Pictures | See & Do | Community | RAs | History | Site Index | ||||
|
||||
|
Epsom and Ewell - Our parks in the past
Nonsuch Park was laid out in 1538 as a killing ground. Hunting was the favourite sport of the increasingly obese Henry VIII, and he preferred it to be laid on in easy reach of London. Nonsuch Palace was to serve as a grand hunting lodge, and the workmen who evicted the villagers of Cuddington set about turning their fields into a game preserve. A thousand fallow deer were penned in two areas - the Little Park around the Palace between London and Cheam Roads, and the Great Park covering the fields which now form Stoneleigh. They browsed below the old pollarded oaks of abandoned hedges while in selected areas kept free from their nibbling, young trees grew up and were maintained as valuable future timber. A massive fence of cleft oak pales kept the deer in the parks and away from the cornfields of Ewell. The Little Park was much more thickly wooded than Nonsuch Park, its modern descendant. Apart from the downland turf cropped short by rabbits at Warren Farm, the land reverted to a thin forest divided by grassy rides. Only two areas were kept clear, one on each side of the great avenue of elm and walnut trees leading to the Palace. One was a meadow where the deer could graze (and be shot) while the other was kept level in readiness for the tents in which junior courtiers would find their uncomfortable lodgings when the king was in residence. The Little Park had always been rented as a grazing ground for cattle, which could co-exist with the deer. After 1687, with the palace destroyed, it reverted to farmland and was split into fifteen fields: the oldest of the trees now standing were planted for hedgerows then. The deer vanished and their keepers' lodges became farmhouses. One of these, on the site of the present Mansion House, was developed as a gentleman's residence in 1731 with an orchard flanking a disused chalkpit. Thomas Whateley saw that this site had the potential of a typical English garden and surrounded it with a ha-ha or invisible fence so that the view could extend over the Great Mead. This was planted up with tree clumps, and an entrance avenue of trees was arranged to run over the ruins of the Palace. By the 19th century, when the Farmer family made Nonsuch into their country estate, the core of the park had been returned to grass and trees. Only Warren Farm and Cherry Orchard farm at its periphery were let to tenant farmers. In the 1930s much of this land was bought for housing, and a through road was begun across the park, restoring the direct mediaeval route to Cheam. Faced with this threat from development, the Council combined with Sutton and the London County Council to secure the park as a public open space. Bourne Hall stands on a gentle hill rising above a lake fed by the sources of the river Hogsmill. Originally divided up into plots of pasture, the land was acquired in 1490 by Henry Saunder who laid it out as the garden and orchard of his new house. The lake was created by his son, who dammed the course of the river and walled it off from the Horse Pond; fishing parties took place from a banqueting house beside the water. This old house was demolished in 1770 by a London winemerchant called Philip Rowden, who cleared the site for the present lawn and built a Georgian mansion at the crest of the hill. The grounds were developed by Thomas Hercey Barritt of Jamaica, who rerouted the entrance through the Dog Gate (decorated with his coat of arms) and over a superfluous bridge skirting the edge of the lake. At the Horse Pond corner he built an ornamental dairy, the Turrets, in the style of Nonsuch Mansion House. Beside the lake a waterwheel, flanked by allegorical statues, pumped water up to the greenhouses: further on the lake was dignified by a Gothic arch overlooking the Horse Pond and a bathing hut thinly disguised as a temple. Between the stable block and Spring Street, concealed by trees, lay an icehouse. Barritt called the property Garbrand Hall, after his Jamaican in-laws. In 1860 Bourne Hall was acquired by George Torr, an engineer with factories at Whitechapel. The gardens were developed to give an illusion of spaciousness. Banks were raised to diversify the view and the old kitchen garden was knocked down, making way for another lawn at the north. Further on, where the orchard had been and the Health Centre is now, coal-heated greenhouses were lined with chrysanthemums, orchids and vines. A rose garden and Dutch garden with brick paths and yew hedges were formed within the old walls. Mrs.Torr and her gardener, James Child, had a fondness for conifers and were responsible for great cedars on the lawn, a swamp cypress by the waterwheel, giant redwoods on the north lawn, and yews everywhere. When Bourne Hall came on the market again in 1926, it had lawns lined with statues, a clear lake fringed by willows and poplars (with a punt floating ready to clear the weed) and garden buildings in styles ranging from Ionic Greek to Gothick stucco. For thirty years the house was leased out to a school, and substantial neglect after the War went unchecked; for ten years more the property lay untenanted until it was ripe for demolition. During this time all the early buildings apart from the lodge and gate were lost. But fragments of the old Bourne Hall can still be encountered in the modern park. The Epsom worthies who celebrated Queen Victoria's Jubilee had much to be proud of. Their home had grown from a sleepy hollow to a thriving town of 9000 souls - but in the process its rural roots had been lost. The pastures on which the village youth had played were in demand for housing. A field off Hook Road was rented for public use by charitable subscribers, but in 1885 this too was acquired by builders. A petition by 110 young men who wanted somewhere to play football without trespassing galvanised the Council into action, and in 1898 the market gardener's grounds off Alexandra Road came on the market. The Council needed a central government loan for money to purchase the grounds, and this was only forthcoming after a heated public debate over Epsom's recreational needs. The supporters of Alexandra Road Rec. saw it as a sports field for the working classes rather than an ornamental park. It was in the heartland of the new, cramped housing area - precisely 553 yards from the Co-op, someone calculated - and its use by 1000 people a day (in summer) was expected. Young labouring men needed to play cricket and football, 'those health-giving games which have had so much to do with placing the Empire in its present proud position'. Defeated, the doubters moved on to oppose electric light and secondary education. In 1913 the Council received an offer of land skirting Woodcote Hall from Lord Rosebery as 'proof of my deep and abiding affection for Epsom'. Ulterior motives were suspected, since the new public status of the land would prevent a proposed road scheme across it: still, the Council expressed their gratitude, and the last 11 acres of Epsom's mediaeval common fields became Rosebery Park. Emboldened by the provisions of the Public Health Act (1907) the Council called in a gardener from Hyde Park to design their new treasure. It was to be bordered by trees and shrubs, with clumps of trees and gravel paths. A pond was enlarged and stocked with fish from the ornamental lake at Woodcote Park. It froze solid in January and was soon covered with bricks and old tin cans: litter is nothing new. In the summer came the first protest from an adjoining householder, who noted that young nurses were sitting on an adjoining bench with babies who cried. Wearily, the councillors sent their youngest member - James Chuter Ede - on a tour of inspection. He found 83 children peaceably playing around the pond. Lord Rosebery - who had stipulated that no steam roundabout or other noisy entertainment should be allowed - viewed the summertime performances of the Ebbisham Military Band with disfavour, but by then it was too late to retract his gift. In September 1914 Epsom was overwhelmed by 3000 young men from the University and Public Schools Brigade, who took over every available open space for drill. Rosebery and Alexandra Rec. were made freely available. By the next summmer the enchantment was starting to wear off, and the Brigadier was asked to mitigate the effects of their enthusiasm on the turf. After the departure of the UPS their place was taken by convalescent soldiers from the Woodcote Park Camp, who were given free use of the putting and bowling greens, plus permission to bathe in the Stew Pond as long as decency was preserved. A Promenade Dance held in Alexandra Rec. with tickets at 3d raised funds for the camp. A Patriotic Public Meeting filled Alexandra Rec. for an evening in August 1916, and it was unanimously voted to continue the war to a victorious end. How to do it was another matter. Once all the young men of the parks staff had gone to nourish poppies in Flanders, their places were taken by a task force of ladies and young children who tended the flower borders. Miss Ede drilled the Girls Life Brigade in First Aid procedure, in case of a Zeppelin raid. In 1917, with food shortages starting to bite, the football pitch at Alexandra rec. was ploughed up for potatoes, and next spring Rosebery was divided for allotments. Peace was greeted with relief by everyone, except the allotment holders, who had to be transferred to Christ Church. The Council felt prepared for World War II, and within three months 229 allotments had been opened up in the borough's eight parks. Nothing came of a request from a deafened resident that Poole Road playground be pulled down too and converted into allotments. People had already had warnings of what was to come: during the Munich crisis air raid trenches were dug in Rosebery, and an anti-aircraft company came in from London to use the area for training. In 1940 a byelaw allowed the park gates to be left open at night for access during raids. By July the gates had vanished anyway, along with three tons of other railings 'serving no useful purpose'. Parks were enlisted for the war effort. The 56th Surrey Home Guard were authorised to use Court Rec. Pavilion as regimental First Aid post in the event of a German invasion. Other pavilions were in the hands of Civil Defence, who managed somehow to lose all the deckchairs, while the Auxiliary Fire Service trained at Ewell Court. After 1942 sports and entertainments in parks formed part of the Holidays At Home programme for the workers: temporary staging was put up at Poole Road Rec. and Rosebery for country dancing, and another Home Guard battalion ( the 51st) transformed itself into a military band. The staging was already booked for Victory celebrations by April 1945. Local sports were traditionally a vent for the surplus energies of working-class youth. Cricket was being played to recognisable rules on Stamford Green in the 18th century, but football remained anarchic for long after that and consisted of an annual scrimmage in Epsom and Ewell High Streets until the 1890s. After teams and rules had been established, both games acted as a focus for communal identities. By 1923 Alexandra Rec. was hosting cricket clubs from the British Legion, the Ebbisham Brotherhood, the Baptists, the Gasworks and the Post Office. Demand outstripped supply; there were only two football pitches at Alexandra Rec. and the Town Clerk had to juggle bookings so that all clubs got a fair share. A pitch was laid out at Rosebery in 1922, but this was really an imposition on an ornamental park and the goalposts had to be taken down after each game. Football pitches were easily laid out - at the Warren, the Council simply put up two goalposts and let players get on with it - but cricket required more attention. The pitch at Gibraltar Rec. was commissioned as a work project for the unemployed in 1933, and a Barnardo's boy was formally commended for his contribution. By 1933 hockey and netball were also on offer, and Epsom's one and only baseball fixture was played by Canadian troops up at the Warren in 1941. After the First World War, the social character of sport began to change. Team sports, with a following from the crowded streets east of the town, started to share space with more upmarket pastimes. A kind of tennis had been played in the gardens at Nonsuch and although the game had changed dramatically by 1918, when Lady Mountain gave three dozen balls for use in Alexandra Rec., it still had a social cachet - something reflected in the fees charged for the use of courts. By 1927 the three hard courts at Alexandra Rec. were raising three times as much revenue as all other sports at the ground. Bowls had also been played at Nonsuch Palace, and a mossy green was one of Lord Berkeley's pleasures at his mansion at Durdans. Now parks made it available to all. Golf, the sport of the new professional incomers to Surrey, was less easy to fit into urban spaces, but at least 18-hole putting greens could be laid out as they were at Court Rec. in 1929 and Alexandra Rec.(by the unemployed) in 1931). Part of the new suburban lifestyle, these sports broke the monopoly in which recreation issues had been decided by men, for men. Ladies' teams were accepted as part of the social mix, although groundsmen viewed them with caution: after a wet season, high heels had to be banned on the Alexandra putting green. Parks form natural enclaves in which wildlife can survive, historic buildings are preserved and archaeological features are safe from development. Often by accident, they preserve landscapes which would otherwise have vanished. Chamber Mead, lying along the Hogsmill at the foot of Green Lanes, is the only field to survive from mediaeval Ewell. Originally Cherlesmannes mede, the peasants' meadow, it survived until the 18th century as a charitable bequest to the poor of Ewell. Then it was sold off to defray the rates, and would have disappeared with other land as part of the Fitznells estate had the Council not acted to save the Hogsmill from being boxed in by housing. The most extensive historic landscapes in the borough are the Common, the Downs, and Horton Country Park; they have also squeezed through into the present century by being classified as public open space. The Common was nearly sold off to builders in 1863, but its recreational use by London day-trippers (as well as the expense of draining its soil) won the day. The Downs, long preserved through the collusion of the Lord of the Manor and the racing world, were made over to the public in 1936. Horton survived fortuitously as an empty space around the great mental hospitals, themselves now empty: when the land was no longer needed by the health authorities in 1972 it came to the Council. Archaeological discoveries of all kinds, from Neolithic flints to Saxon jewellery, have been made in Epsom and Ewell's parks. The oldest standing monument is the Banqueting House on the outskirts of Nonsuch Park. This was an informal room for light refreshments during hunting or festivities, built for Henry VIII on top of an octagonal mound overlooking Ewell. After the bypass cut it off from the village in 1931, this was preserved as a link between Ewell and Nonsuch, just as the area of early industrial sluices around the Upper Mill now survives as part of the Hogsmill open space. The best-preserved landscapes to be found in parks are those Victorian gardens which have come to the Council. The house at Ewell Court, built in 1879, was dignified by a lake and a series of ornamental bridges across tributaries of the Hogsmill. The grounds at Mount Hill were intended as a backdrop for the big house there, and part of Court Rec. formed the gardens of West Hill House. Two gardens at opposite ends of the borough - the Elizabeth Welchman off Burgh Heath road, and Shadbolt Park off Salisbury Road - were bequeathed to the Council by their creators, who wanted to think that some of their pleasure in natural beauty would be shared by future generations of local people.
|
|
|
||
| Top
of page | Sponsors
| About Epsom and Ewell on the Internet is operated by Internetworks Ltd of Epsom as a service to our community. It is supported by local businesses who have banners appearing on our home page which is a cost-effective way of promoting your services to our community. We appreciate your feedback. Kindly notify any problems to the webmaster. Last updated |
||
|
|
|
