The years from 2012 to 2016 began with Clissold Park and House emerging from their major restoration and moved into a new phase for CPUG.
We continued to represent park users on the operation of Clissold House, the café, facilities and activities across the park. These years also saw a growing programme of heritage work, fundraising and community events, including celebrations for the New River’s 400th anniversary and Clissold Park’s 125th anniversary.
Our work also included dogs, cycling, biodiversity, volunteering and questions about how improvements to the park would be maintained after the restoration funding period ended.
After the restoration
Clissold House reopened in January 2012 following the major restoration of the park and House.
For CPUG, completion of the building work did not mean the end of our involvement. Attention increasingly turned to how the restored park and House would operate for the people using them.
During 2012 we raised concerns about issues including public access to Clissold House, café prices and facilities. These were brought together in detailed correspondence with Hackney Council, which responded to the points we had raised.
We also continued discussions about the New River, tennis lighting, events and other aspects of the restored park. CPUG representatives took part in discussions about the arrangements that would follow the restoration, including the development of a successor Park Development Board.
Clissold House and the café
How Clissold House was used following its restoration remained an important issue.
We wanted the House to function as a genuinely public building within the park while recognising its use for events and private functions. Questions about access, the café and facilities therefore continued to feature in our meetings and discussions with Hackney Council.
CPUG also supported activities in the House, including tours and community events.
The café would remain a recurring subject for the group in subsequent years, reflecting its importance as one of the park’s most heavily used facilities.
Celebrating 400 years of the New River
In 2013, CPUG took part in activities marking the 400th anniversary of the New River, which had first brought water to London in 1613.
The New River has played an important part in the history and landscape of Clissold Park. Although it no longer flows through the park, part of its former course remains as the water feature beside Clissold House.
The anniversary provided an opportunity to explore this history and bring it to a wider audience.
Heritage activity during this period formed part of a developing programme of talks, tours, displays and other projects connecting the park as people experience it today with its history.
Dogs in the park
Dogs and the way different people shared the park were recurring subjects during these years.
In 2013, CPUG contributed to the Lead by Example campaign encouraging responsible dog ownership.
Following continuing discussion about dogs in the park, we held a special public meeting on the subject in 2015. This provided an opportunity for different views to be heard and for concerns to be discussed with those involved in managing the park.
Dog-related issues continued to form part of our representative work alongside the needs of families, runners, cyclists and other park users.
Clissold Park at 125
One of the largest community activities of the period came in 2014, when Clissold Park celebrated 125 years since opening to the public on 24 July 1889.
CPUG organised a family celebration in the park on 21 June as part of the anniversary programme.
Our heritage activities included recreating historical photographs of the park, bringing together present-day park users to reproduce scenes captured many decades earlier.
The anniversary became an opportunity not only to celebrate Clissold Park but also to explore the people and events that had made its survival as a public park possible.
Restoring the Beck and Runtz Memorial Fountain
The 125th anniversary also provided the setting for one of CPUG’s most significant heritage projects.
In 2014, we helped restore the Beck and Runtz Memorial Fountain, which commemorates Joseph Beck and John Runtz, the two leading figures in the campaign to save the land that became Clissold Park from development in the 1880s.
The fountain had lost the decorative orb from the top of its canopy. As part of the restoration, a replacement orb was created and installed, returning an important feature of the memorial.
The restored fountain was unveiled on 24 July 2014, exactly 125 years after Clissold Park opened to the public.
Fundraising and supporting activities
Fundraising helped CPUG organise activities and pursue projects during these years.
Activities included fundraising quizzes and events, alongside the sale of items connected with the park.
In 2015 our heritage activity expanded further through historical images and postcards, displays and talks. Children’s activities also formed part of the programme.
These projects demonstrated the different ways a volunteer user group could contribute to the park, from raising concerns and participating in discussions to organising activities and funding projects directly.
Representing different park users
A continuing part of our work was providing a forum in which the experiences and concerns of different people using Clissold Park could be raised.
Alongside the special meeting about dogs, our discussions during this period included cycling and running in the park.
We also helped communicate information about proposals to eradicate and later restock fish in the park’s ponds, an issue that generated considerable interest and discussion.
Not every issue raised by CPUG resulted in the change we requested. Our role included putting concerns and ideas to Hackney Council, following developments and providing opportunities for park users to discuss proposals affecting them.
Facilities and maintenance
We continued to raise practical issues affecting everyday use of the park.
In 2014, a litter bin was installed by the Queen Elizabeth’s Walk gate after CPUG had repeatedly requested one.
We also raised issues concerning repairs to the woodland track and skatepark.
Other requests did not result in the outcome we sought. CPUG pursued the possibility of opening the park earlier in the morning, but the proposal was ultimately rejected because of the additional cost involved.
These examples reflect both sides of our representative work: some concerns contributed to changes while others remained unresolved or were rejected.
Heritage in the park
Heritage activity continued beyond the 125th anniversary.
In 2015 we used historical images in displays and postcards and organised heritage activities including talks. Ken Worpole, a former CPUG Chair and the group’s Honorary President, gave a talk connected with his work on the history and landscape of Clissold Park.
In 2016, our heritage work included interpretation of material relating to Joseph Beck and the campaign to save the park, as well as activity associated with Open House.
This growing body of work established park history as a continuing part of CPUG’s activities rather than something confined to major anniversaries.
Biodiversity and volunteering
The natural environment also became an increasingly visible area of CPUG’s work.
In June 2012, CPUG representatives joined landscape architects for a biodiversity familiarisation walk in the park. This provides an early example from this period of the group engaging specifically with biodiversity and the park’s natural environment.
We explored ways of creating smaller volunteering opportunities in the park during 2015. These were still at an experimental stage and attracting volunteers proved difficult.
In 2016, CPUG requested the preparation of a paper examining biodiversity in Clissold Park and contributed to the discussion around it.
Volunteers also took part in bulb planting. Around 2,000 bulbs were recorded as having been planted by volunteers as part of a wider planting programme.
This work built on CPUG’s earlier involvement with trees and the park’s natural environment and anticipated the more extensive biodiversity and habitat activity that developed in later years.
Looking beyond the Lottery-funded period
By 2015 and 2016, an important question was what would happen as the period of revenue funding associated with the major restoration came to an end.
CPUG discussed the implications for the maintenance and management of the park and continued to raise concerns about standards and resources.
In 2016, we also submitted evidence about parks and organised fundraising and music activities.
The restoration had transformed Clissold Park and House, but maintaining those improvements was becoming an increasingly important part of the conversation.
CPUG during 2012–2016
These five years marked a transition from the major restoration project to the continuing challenge of how the restored park would be used, managed and maintained.
Our work ranged from detailed representations about Clissold House and everyday park facilities to community celebrations, heritage projects, fundraising, biodiversity and volunteering.
The period also demonstrated the different forms CPUG’s work can take. We organised and funded some projects ourselves, contributed to others alongside Hackney Council and other organisations, and continued to raise issues on behalf of park users even where the outcome was uncertain or the change we sought did not happen.