Battersea Park is a 200-acre (83-hectare) green space at
Battersea
Battersea is a large district in south London, part of the London Borough of Wandsworth, England. It is centred southwest of Charing Cross and extends along the south bank of the River Thames. It includes the Battersea Park.
History
Batter ...
in the
London Borough of Wandsworth
Wandsworth () is a London boroughs, London borough in southwest London; it forms part of Inner London and has an estimated population of 329,677 inhabitants. Its main named areas are Battersea, Balham, Putney, Tooting and Wandsworth, Wandsworth ...
in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
. It is situated on the south bank of the
River Thames
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the The Isis, River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, se ...
opposite
Chelsea
Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to:
Places Australia
* Chelsea, Victoria
Canada
* Chelsea, Nova Scotia
* Chelsea, Quebec
United Kingdom
* Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames
** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...
and was opened in 1858.
The park occupies marshland reclaimed from the Thames and land formerly used for market gardens. The park is Grade II* listed on the
Register of Historic Parks and Gardens
The Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England provides a listing and classification system for historic parks and gardens similar to that used for listed buildings. The register is managed by Historic England ...
.
History
Prior to 1846, the area now covered by the park was known as Battersea fields, a popular spot for
duel
A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two people, with matched weapons, in accordance with agreed-upon Code duello, rules.
During the 17th and 18th centuries (and earlier), duels were mostly single combats fought with swords (the r ...
ling. On 21 March 1829, the
Duke of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was an Anglo-Irish soldier and Tory statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, serving twice as prime minister of ...
and the
Earl of Winchilsea
Earl of Winchilsea is a title in the Peerage of England held by the Finch-Hatton family. It has been united with the title of Earl of Nottingham under a single holder since 1729. The Finch family is believed to be descended from Henry FitzHerb ...
met on Battersea fields to settle a matter of honour. When it came time to fire, the duke aimed his
duelling pistol
A duelling pistol is a type of pistol that was manufactured in matching pairs to be used in a duel, when duels were customary. Duelling pistols are often single-shot flintlock or percussion black-powder pistols which fire a lead ball. Not all fin ...
wide and Winchilsea fired his into the air. Winchilsea later wrote the duke a groveling apology.
Separated from the river by a narrow raised causeway, the fields consisted of low, fertile marshes intersected by streams and ditches with the chief crops being carrots, melons, lavender (all the way up to
Lavender Hill
The A3036 is an A roads in Great Britain, A road in London, England, running from Waterloo, London, Waterloo to Wandsworth.
Route
It starts at the southern tip of the County Hall roundabout where the A302 road, A302 Westminster Bridge, York ...
) and the famous 'Battersea Bunches' of asparagus.
Running along the riverside from the fields were industrial concerns and wharves, including a pottery, copper works, lime kiln, chemical works, and, increasingly, railways. The site of
Battersea Power Station
Battersea Power Station is a decommissioned Grade II* listed coal-fired power station, located on the south bank of the River Thames, in Nine Elms, Battersea, in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It was built by the London Power Company (LPC) ...
was partly occupied by the famously bawdy Red House Tavern, patronised by
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
. Access was via the rickety wooden
Battersea Bridge
Battersea Bridge is a five-span arch bridge with cast-iron girders and granite piers crossing the River Thames in London, England. It is situated on a sharp bend in the river, and links Battersea south of the river with Chelsea to the north. Th ...
or by ferry from the Chelsea bank.
In 1845, spurred partly by the local vicar and partly by
Thomas Cubitt
Thomas Cubitt (25 February 1788 – 20 December 1855) was a British master builder, notable for his employment in developing many of the historic streets and squares of London, especially in Belgravia, Pimlico and Bloomsbury. His great-great-g ...
, the builder and developer, whose yards were across the river in the still marshy and undeveloped area of
Pimlico
Pimlico () is an area of Central London in the City of Westminster, built as a southern extension to neighbouring Belgravia. It is known for its garden squares and distinctive Regency architecture. Pimlico is demarcated to the north by London V ...
, a bill was submitted to Parliament to form a royal park of 320 acres. The Battersea Park Act was passed in 1846 and £200,000 was promised for the purchase of the land. The Commission for Improving the Metropolis acquired 320 acres of Battersea fields, of which 198 acres became Battersea Park, opened in 1858, and the remainder was let on building leases.
The park was laid out by Sir
James Pennethorne
Sir James Pennethorne (4 June 1801 – 1 September 1871) was a British architect and planner, particularly associated with buildings and parks in central London.
Life
Early years
Pennethorne was born in Worcester, and travelled to London in 1 ...
between 1846 and 1864, although the park which was opened in 1858 varied somewhat from Pennethorne's vision.
The park's success depended on the successful completion of the
Chelsea Bridge
Chelsea Bridge is a bridge over the River Thames in west London, connecting Chelsea on the north bank to Battersea on the south bank, and split between the City of Westminster, the London Borough of Wandsworth and the Royal Borough of Kens ...
, declared open in 1858 by Queen Victoria. In her honour, the road alongside the eastern edge of the park was called Victoria Road, linked to Queens Road by Victoria Circus (now Queen's Circus). Victoria Road and Queens Road later became Queenstown Road. Prince of Wales Road (now
Prince of Wales Drive
Prince of Wales Drive ( Ottawa Road #73) is a road serving Ottawa, Ontario, named after the eponymous road in Battersea, London, U.K. The northern section is a low-speed street running along the west bank of the Rideau River, while southern por ...
) was laid out along the southern boundary and Albert Bridge Road constructed along the western side. The park came under the management of the newly formed London County Council in 1889.
The park hosted the first exhibition
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
game played under the rules of the recently formed Football Association on 9 January 1864. The members of the teams were chosen by the President of the FA ( A. Pember) and the Secretary (
E. C. Morley
Ebenezer Cobb Morley (16 August 1831 – 20 November 1924) was an English sportsman. He is regarded as one of the fathers of the Football Association (FA) and modern football.
Early life
Morley was born at 10 Garden Square, Princess Street in ...
) and included many well-known footballers of the day.
From the 1860s, the park was home to the leading amateur football team
Wanderers F.C.
Wanderers Football Club was an English association football club. It was founded as "Forest Football Club" in 1859 in Leytonstone. In 1864, it changed its name to "Wanderers", a reference to it never having a home stadium, instead playing at v ...
Eric Kennington
Eric Henri Kennington (12 March 1888 – 13 April 1960) was an English sculptor, artist and illustrator, and an official war artist in both World Wars.
As a war artist, Kennington specialised in depictions of the daily hardships endured by s ...
was unveiled by Field Marshal
Lord Plumer
Field Marshal Herbert Charles Onslow Plumer, 1st Viscount Plumer, (13 March 1857 – 16 July 1932) was a senior British Army officer of the First World War. After commanding V Corps at the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915, he took command ...
and the
Anglican Bishop of Southwark
The Bishop of Southwark ( ) is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Southwark in the Province of Canterbury.
Cyril Garbett
Cyril Forster Garbett (6 February 1875 – 31 December 1955) was an Anglican bishop and author. He was successively the Bishop of Southwark, the Bishop of Winchester and the Archbishop of York from 1942 to 1955.
Early life
Garbett was born in ...
. It commemorates the over 10,000 men killed or listed as "missing presumed dead" whilst serving with the 24th East Surrey Division. It is now Grade II* listed.
During both wars, anti-aircraft guns and
barrage balloon
A barrage balloon is a large uncrewed tethered balloon used to defend ground targets against aircraft attack, by raising aloft steel cables which pose a severe collision risk to aircraft, making the attacker's approach more difficult. Early barra ...
s were installed to help protect London from enemy air raids. Shelters were dug, part of the park was turned over to allotments for much needed vegetables and a pig farm was also set up. Maintenance of the park was reduced as the
war effort
In politics and military planning, a war effort is a coordinated mobilization of society's resources—both industrial and human—towards the support of a military force. Depending on the militarization of the culture, the relative si ...
took priority.
On 16 September 1978, Battersea Park hosted a big punk rock concert featuring
The Stranglers
The Stranglers are an English rock band who emerged via the punk rock scene. Scoring 23 UK top 40 singles and 19 UK top 40 albums to date in a career spanning five decades, the Stranglers are one of the longest-surviving bands to have origina ...
and several guests, among them
Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950) is an English musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and activist. He rose to fame as the original lead singer of the progressive rock band Genesis. After leaving Genesis in 1975, he launched ...
and
The Skids
Skids are a Scottish punk rock and new wave band, formed in Dunfermline in 1977 by Stuart Adamson (guitar, keyboards, percussion and backing vocals), William Simpson (bass guitar and backing vocals), Thomas Kellichan (drums) and Richard Jo ...
. "The Stranglers booked some strippers to up the show's visual aspect," recalled photographer Barry Plummer. "But some of the lads in the audience got a bit carried away and also stripped completely naked. Eventually the
police
The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and t ...
were called and took down all of the young ladies' particulars."
British artist
Marion Coutts
Marion Coutts (born 1965) is a British sculptor, photographer, filmmaker, author, and musician, known for her work as an installation artist and her decade as frontwoman for the band Dog Faced Hermans. In 2014 she published her critically acclaim ...
Hyde Park
Hyde Park may refer to:
Places
England
* Hyde Park, London, a Royal Park in Central London
* Hyde Park, Leeds, an inner-city area of north-west Leeds
* Hyde Park, Sheffield, district of Sheffield
* Hyde Park, in Hyde, Greater Manchester
Austra ...
as a set of asymmetrical
ping-pong
Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...
tables for her interactive installation ''Fresh Air'' (1998–2001).
The 1996 film '' 101 Dalmatians'' was filmed at Battersea Park; it stands in for St James Park.
The Festival Gardens
In 1951 the northern parts of the park were transformed into the "Pleasure Gardens" as part of the
Festival of Britain
The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair that reached millions of visitors throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. Historian Kenneth O. Morgan says the Festival was a "triumphant success" during which people:
...
celebrations. As well as a new water-garden and fountains, new features included a "Tree-Walk", which consisted of a series of raised wooden walkways linked by
tree house
A tree house, tree fort or treeshed is a platform or building constructed around, next to or among the trunk or branches of one or more mature trees while above ground level. Tree houses can be used for recreation, work space, habitation, a han ...
-like platforms suspended between the branches of a number of trees.
Popular attractions included the Guinness Clock, designed by Jan Le Witt and
George Him
George Him (4 August 1900 – 4 April 1982) was a Polish born British designer responsible for a number of notable posters, book illustrations and advertising campaigns for a wide range of clients.
Biography
Him was born Jerzy Himmelfarb in 190 ...
, and the
Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Branch Railway
The Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Branch Railway (or Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Railway) was a gauge miniature railway created by Rowland Emett. A whimsical view of British rural life and embodying his typical fanciful mechanics, it echoed th ...
.
Battersea Funfair
Another part of the transformation was the addition of Battersea Funfair, with
roller coaster
A roller coaster, or rollercoaster, is a type of amusement ride that employs a form of elevated railroad track designed with tight turns, steep slopes, and sometimes inversions. Passengers ride along the track in open cars, and the rides are o ...
s, swings, roundabouts and other attractions.
The funfair's leading attraction was the roller coaster ride, known as The Big Dipper, which opened in 1951. It was of wooden construction and suffered a major fire in 1970. It was closed after five children were killed and 13 injured in the
Battersea Park funfair disaster
The Battersea Park funfair disaster happened in Battersea Park, London, on 30 May 1972; five children died and thirteen others were injured when a wooden roller coaster train came off its tracks. The ride manager and engineer were subsequently tr ...
on 30 May 1972 when one of the trains became detached from the haulage rope, rolling back to the station (the anti-rollback mechanism having failed) and colliding with the other train.
After the closure, the "Jetstream" ride was sold to Trusthouse Forte, the then owners of
Belle Vue Zoological Gardens
Belle Vue Zoological Gardens was a large zoo, amusement park, exhibition hall complex and speedway stadium in Belle Vue, Manchester, England, opened in 1836. The brainchild of John Jennison, the gardens were initially intended to be an entert ...
in
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
. A night scene at the funfair, which was ghostly and empty, featured in the opening title scene for the 1960s television series ''
Pump House Gallery
Pump House Gallery is an art gallery in Battersea Park, London. It is both located in and owned and managed by the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is a former pump house for the adjacent boating lake, and is the only Grade II listed buildi ...
, which is housed in a four-storey
Grade II listed
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...
Victorian tower. It is owned by Wandsworth Council.
On the western side there are two cricket pitches, home to th King's Road Cricket & Social Club The club, whose members wear distinctive orange caps, can be seen playing on Saturdays and Sundays.
The park is the site of the London Peace Pagoda, erected in 1985. A Buddhist monk looks after the pagoda on a daily basis. A replica of the bronze statue of a dog that was the focal point of the historic vivisection-related
Brown Dog affair
The Brown Dog affair was a political controversy about vivisection that raged in Britain from 1903 until 1910. It involved the infiltration of University of London medical lectures by Swedish feminists, battles between medical students and th ...
was erected here in 1985. It was moved in 1994 to the Woodland Walk, near the Old English Garden.
In 2002–4 the park underwent a £11 million refurbishment funded in part by the
Heritage Lottery Fund
The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom.
History
The fund's predecessor bodies were ...
and was re-opened on 2 June 2004 by
Prince Philip
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, later Philip Mountbatten; 10 June 1921 – 9 April 2021) was the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. As such, he served as the consort of the British monarch from E ...
.
In 2007, a Dog Walk of Fame was inaugurated in the park.
The Winter Garden, next to Albert Bridge Road, was commissioned by the Friends of Battersea Park and designed by Dan Pearson Studios. It was opened by Mayor Boris Johnson on 3 March 2011, at which he unveiled a plaque designed by Steve Bunn of the
RCA
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...
Sculpture School.
In 1871, James Robert Pulham constructed "Waterfalls, Rocky stream, nd aCave for shady seat on the penisula and in other parts of the Park" in his patented anthropic rock Pulhamite. It was the first example of this unique rock landscape in a London Park. The waterfalls have not been running into the lake since the 1980s due to natural degradation and difficulties with providing energy to the pumps.
In 2011, a sculpture commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, ''After 9/11'', was unveiled by the Mayor of London,
Boris Johnson
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (; born 19 June 1964) is a British politician, writer and journalist who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2019 to 2022. He previously served as F ...
.
In 2012, the park hosted one of the seven national Foodies Festivals on 17–19 August. Masterclasses were performed by chefs such as Levi Roots and
Ed Baines
Edward "Ed" Baines is an English chef best known for being a judge on ''Britain's Best Dish'' and for being an alternate chef on ''Sunday Feast'' with Paul Merrett. He trained in The River Café in London and his flagship restaurant is Randal ...
, with
burlesque
A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.
shows, restaurant tents, city beaches and pop-up cinemas.
Battersea Park Nature Areas
A narrow strip along the eastern edge of the park and two smaller nearby areas have been designated the Battersea Park Nature Areas Local Nature Reserve, with an area of three hectares. They have a variety of woodland bird species including blackcap and bullfinch. There are 20 species of butterfly and several of stag beetle. Other invertebrate species include the hoverfly ''
Volucella zonaria
''Volucella zonaria'', the hornet mimic hoverfly, is a species of hoverfly. These flies are capable of buzz pollination.
Distribution
This species is present in most of Europe, in Tunisia, Iran, Russia (to Far East) and in Mongolia.
In Great Br ...
''.
Nearby railway and underground stations
*
Battersea Park railway station
Battersea Park is a suburban railway station in the London Borough of Wandsworth, south London. It is at the junction of the South London Line and the Brighton Main Line (although the physical connection between the lines has been removed), me ...
Battersea Power Station tube station
Battersea Power Station is a London Underground station in Battersea, London, which forms the terminus of the Northern line extension to Battersea.
Partially funded by the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station, the station serves the redevel ...