Barnard Park and Barnard Park Extension

Barnard Park is a large park in west Islington with numerous facilities including a new sport pitch laid out in 2024 for 9-aside football and rugby, a children’s playground with a seasonal water play feature and an adventure playground with a climbing wall, zip wire, tree houses, forest area, and an amphitheatre. Other amenities include Swash & Jones takeaway café. Footpaths link the facilities and grass areas, and benches are located throughout the park. Barnard Park hosts numerous community events, such as Christmas carol singalongs and summer pop-up parties, organised by the Friends of Barnard Park. In 1996, according to the Daily Mirror, the rock/pop band Space Chickens performed in the park.

Adjacent to the main park to the west, across Hemingford Road and next to St Andrew's Primary School, is an additional public open space known as Barnard Park Extension, which as a favourite for dog owners has gained the nickname 'Dog Park'. A perennial meadow has been planted here. 

The area has a rich history. Prior to 1800, Barnsbury was largely pasture and pleasure gardens. White Conduit House, once situated at the south-east of the current park along the present Barnsbury Road, was a place for Londoners to enjoy leisure and entertainment overlooking the city. Barnsbury is also important in the early history of cricket: White Conduit Field, which extended over part of what became Barnard Park, for a short period from 1782-88 hosted a gentleman’s cricketing club known as the White Conduit Club. One of its members, the bowler Thomas Lord renamed the club Marylebone Cricket Club, moving it to Marylebone and then in 1814 it was established in St John’s Wood as Lord’s Cricket Ground. Barnard Park is located within the Barnsbury Conservation Area, designated for its important late-Georgian and early-Victorian residential development, and some of the surviving buildings are listed. Richmond Avenue to the north of the park has distinctive gaps between the detached and semi-detached villas that are not permitted to be infilled as this would 'block the glimpses of green and open spaces through them and spoil the special character of these streets.'

Vanished streets that are beneath the park's landscape, including Pulteney Street, named after the four-time serving Lord Mayor of London Sir John de Pulteney, Reid Street, Boxworth Grove and Gainford Street in the main park and Everilda Street and Shirley Street in the western extension, once housed aspiring middle class and artisan families. Institutions such as St Thomas’s Church and St Thomas’ School on Everilda Street are today beneath the Dog Park extension of Barnard Park. Some remnants of these streets still exist in the park such as the cobblestones of Pulteney Terrace, which dated from at least 1828. However, as the C19th progressed, the streets in the area rapidly became overcrowded; there was no leasehold covenant allowing one family per dwelling as applied to the great squares of Barnsbury, and this and the lack of fresh air caused by fumes from factories on Caledonian Road and the gasworks at St Pancras led many families to move out of the area, which by the 1850s was in severe decline. 

In 1936, the LCC had begun to build the red-brick Barnsbury Estate to address the housing problem and 3 acres of the early terraces here were cleared. However, in December 1940, the streets between Copenhagen Street and Richmond Avenue were seriously damaged by bombing and until clearance took place in the 1960s this area remained rubble, damaged buildings and temporary housing, and this defines the outline of the park today.

Barnard Park was developed in two main stages. To the north, the old football pitch was set up as an extension to the park’s open space. To the south, land alongside Copenhagen Street was levelled and a paddling pool near the Lark in the Park and the amphitheatre of the current Adventure Playground were built. The park opened in 1975 (as Barnsbury Park Open Space, to check); it was later renamed in honour of Islington Councillor George Barnard’s dedication to sport. Barnard had wanted to level as much housing as possible for football pitches and his original plan designated a larger area dedicated to football created by destroying the Cloudesley Estate to the east, or Richmond Avenue/Ripplevale Grove to the north. However, local conservationists successfully resisted this.

The park is currently undergoing major redevelopment, the first phase of which was completed in August - December 2023, which led to the construction of the new 3G football pitch. The second phase, taking place between March 2024 - March 2025 will lead to further improvements; the existing One O’Clock Club has been demolished and the park keeper’s hut will be taken down, with a new community hub due to be built to house public toilets, a park manager’s office and a community room and kitchen. Other improvements include a flat grassed area for recreation, improved circulation with all weather paths and biodiverse planting including more trees and a fruiting orchard. In addition an entrance will be built at Sheen Grove and an outdoor gym and new seating will be added.

Barnard Park Adventure Playground is protected by Fields in Trust by deed of dedication. The park is also a local Site of Importance for Nature Conservation, with the extension area supporting a wildflower meadow.