Parsloes Park is a 58 hectare public park in

Dagenham Dagenham () is a town in East London, England, within the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. Dagenham is centred east of Charing Cross. It was historically a rural parish in the Becontree Hundred of Essex, stretching from Hainault Forest ...

in the

London Borough of Barking and Dagenham The London Borough of Barking and Dagenham () is a London borough in East London. It lies around 9 miles (14.4 km) east of Central London. It is an Outer London borough and the south is within the London Riverside section of the Thames G ...

. It is owned and managed by the borough council. A small area opposite the Wren Road entrance is managed for wildlife and designated as a Local Nature Reserve called Parsloes Park Squatts. The park derives its name from the Passelewe family, who owned the land in the thirteenth century. Paintings of the old manor house are held in the

Valence House Museum Valence House Museum is the only surviving of the five manor houses of Dagenham. The timber-framed museum building, partially surrounded by a moat, is situated in Valence Park off Becontree Avenue, in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, L ...

. The land was acquired by the

London County Council London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London throughout its existence from 1889 to 1965, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today kno ...

in 1923. The park was opened by MP

Christopher Addison Christopher Addison, 1st Viscount Addison, (19 June 1869 – 11 December 1951), was a British medical doctor and politician. A member of the Liberal and Labour parties, he served as Minister of Munitions during the First World War and was late ...

on 13 July 1935, marking the official completion of the

Becontree Becontree or Both pronunciations are given as Received Pronunciation in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, but the form is prioritised (). The dialectologist Peter Wright wrote in 1981 that is the traditional pronunciation in the cockney ...

estate. It has a children's play area, football pitches, tennis courts, a basketball court, a bowling green, and a lake. Parsloes Park Squatts is an area of rough acid grassland with a historic hedge. In the 1930s, the stretch of the Gores Brook which flowed through Parsloes Park was channelled through a pipe and buried. The brook now runs in culvert for approximately 430 meters under the eastern section of the Park. In 2022,

Thames21 Thames21 is a British charity concerned with water improvement projects across London, focused on the Thames and its tributaries. Thames 21 developed from a partnership programme launched in 1994 called ''ThamesClean'', supported by Keep Britain Ti ...

supported by the Mayor of London's Green and Resilient Spaces fund, announced plans to deculvert the stretch of Gores Brook running through the park. There are entrances in Parsloes Avenue, Gale Street and Wren Road. Parsloes is also a ward of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. The population of the ward at the 2011 Census was 9,839.

References

External links

* * * {{Parks and open spaces in London Nature reserves in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham Local nature reserves in Greater London Parks and open spaces in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham