Haggerston Park

About

Haggerston Park is an open space in Haggerston, in the London Borough of Hackney. It is bounded by Whiston Road (to the north), Hackney Road (south) and St Saviour's Priory, Queensbridge Road (west) and Goldsmith's Row (east). The park was originally created in the 1950s and extended in the 1980s.

It was carved out of an area of derelict housing, a tile manufacturer, and the former Shoreditch Gasworks, which had been hit by a V-2 rocket in 1944 and badly damaged. Today, it occupies 6 hectares (15 acres) Haggerston Park contains a small but luxuriant nature reserve and a number of football pitches. The park, one of the few formal landscaped gardens in Hackney, was laid out in 1956.

Also dating from the 1950s is a long arcade walk on the north side of the park with a mature wisteria. In the 1980s the park was extended to the south to include a Hackney City Farm, on the site of a former brewery, a children's playground and playing fields. At first, Hackney Council buildings in Haggerston Park attracted little opposition - most locals approved of a new SureStart building on the West side of the park.

The long-term lease handed to Bridge Academy for the Astroturf was highly unpopular, and...