South Park Gardens *

Site on The National Heritage List for England, Parks & Gardens, for Register Entry see https://www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list. The Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England was established in 1984 and was commonly called English Heritage. In April 2015 it split into 2 separate entities, Historic England (HE), which continues to champion and protect the historic environment, and the English Heritage Trust, whose role is to look after the 400+ historic sites and monuments owned by the state. HE manages the National Heritage List for England (NHLE) that includes over 400,000 items ranging from prehistoric monuments to office blocks, battlefields and parks, which benefit from legal protection.

The area in which South Park Gardens is situated was starting to be developed for residential housing in the late 1880s. The second edition Ordnance Survey (OS) map, 1898, shows a piece of land slightly larger to the south than the actual site of the completed park beginning to be enclosed by housing. In 1889 Wimbledon UDC purchased, for the sum of £19,000, the freehold of the land which became South Park Pleasure Grounds. The third edition OS, 1913, shows the housing development completed and the gardens laid out with perimeter shrubberies, serpentine paths, scattered trees, a drinking fountain, and a bandstand. 

As originally laid out, the Pleasure Grounds had a series of circular features that remain linked by asphalt paths, with a straight east/west path across the centre. Judging by early C20th postcards, the beds were sumptuously planted with roses and annual bedding plants and later photographs probably taken between the two world wars show extensive shrubberies, shrub and cut beds, trellis decorated with roses and a wooden bandstand. The bandstand had been erected in 1913 and took the place of a portable stand. It was an octagonal open-sided timber building on a brick base with a thatched roof, and was used for public concerts in the summer. It was demolished in 1959. A granite Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough now used as a planter remains, as does the marble drinking fountain of 1888, which was erected at Ellen Rearden's bequest in memory of her father, mother and sister. The four entrances have Victorian style wrought iron gates, which were erected in 1994 to replace the original ones that were removed in WWII along with the railings. Among fine trees in the gardens are a large cedar of Lebanon, evergreen oak and contorted beech.

By the 1990s, South Park Gardens had become increasingly neglected and subject to vandalism. New ornamental gates installed in 1992 did little to improve the situation and in 2001 the main entrance gates were stolen. This led to the establishment of the Friends of South Park Gardens in 2002, a registered charity, which since then has actively lobbied and raised funds for the maintenance and restoration of the gardens. A Heritage Lottery Fund grant was successfully applied for and South Park Gardens re-opened in June 2009, following restoration undertaken by Hortech Landscapes, the same contractors that undertook the refurbishment of Battersea Park and Southwark Park (q.q.v.). The first part of the HLF funded restoration took place in 2007, with the perimeter fencing replaced with replica railings to match those that originally surrounded the gardens. The work has included much renewal of planting, restoration of the drinking fountain and horse trough, with the latter re-sited near its original position. New path surfaces, seating, park furniture and signage have been installed, and new features have been added, such as a mini-beast sanctuary in the north-east corner and a wild flower meadow around the cedar tree. Security has also been addressed to discourage access to the park at night.