Grovelands Park
Directions
Return to Grovelands Park and continue down the hill towards the lake. There is an accessible café and toilets on the left.
Description
Grovelands Park is a late-18th-century landscape park with lake, which became a public park in 1913. Architect John Nash built Southgate Grove (1797-98) in neo-classical style for Walker Gray, a brandy merchant from Tottenham. Gray also employed landscape gardener Humphry Repton, who reputedly selected the site of the house, laid out carriage drives, gardens and pleasure grounds, and created the fine artificial lake and islands which form the main feature of the park, by damming the stream, known as 'Whappooles Bourne'. The grounds featured a walled garden, graperies and heated pits for growing pineapples, while the park was home to a herd of deer.
The estate was re-named Grovelands by John Donnithorne Taylor, who inherited in 1835. He bought as much of the surrounding land as he could to prevent other houses being built close to his own and increased the size of the estate from 250 to 600 acres. The entrance to his estate was in Alderman's Hill, and his carriage drive once extended from the house all the way to just above where Palmers Green station now stands. Much of the land was eventually sold off for development after his death in 1885, with 60 acres being preserved by Southgate Urban District Council as a public park. The house was adapted as a military hospital in World War I and is now a private psychiatric hospital.
Further information on LGT Inventory
