Brent today: A tale of two parks. Would you help set up a Friends of King Eddie's Park?

 Guest post by Jaine Lunn

What a difference Brent Council has been made to Sherrins Open Space, this year it is in full bloom as a wild flower meadow with lots of different species, sporting a rainbow of colour,  some I don't know the names of but daisies, poppies and sunflowers. At the beginning of the year special attention was given to the area designated for meadow with some radical maintenance turning over the soil and reseeding and it has made all the difference.   On Saturdays this park benefits from a group of people who have been given Community Service, who not only empty bins but make an effort to pick up all debris around the whole of the park, and sweep the car park.  A good job has been done by all and let's hope it stays this way.

 

Which brings me on to the state of the park locals fondly nickname “King Eddies”  - King Edward VII Park, now a shadow of its former glory,  

 

It was once the premier Green Flag Park  in Wembley. This year is the anniversary of its opening on 4th July of 1914 by Queen Alexandra in memory of her late husband King Edward VII.  It was laid to compensate Wembley residents for the loss of park land of Wembley Park which was being developed as a high class residential garden suburb (this is description is quoted  in a book titled Images of Wembley by Geoffrey Hewlett- a planning officer for Brent Council for most of his career)

 

 The band stand and rather grand looking Park Lane School, 2014

 

 View over King Edward VII Park, 1920

The flower beds

In 2012 for Queen Elizabeth's Jubilee this park was designated protection from "Fields in Trust" one of only three parks in Brent with that protection. The others are Mapesbury Dell and Roe Green Walled Garden in Kingsbury, it obviously has not made any difference here.  Why has Brent Park Forums not intervened?

 

 

The once beautiful flower beds have been replaced by perennial plants, low maintenance plants, or should I say devoid of any maintenance whatsoever, are not attended to at all, are now unloved and not deserving of any merit.

 

The area designated as wildflower meadow and celebrated by Brent Council as a "Bee Highway" is no more, just long unkempt grass, devoid of any flowers, full of plastic and glass bottles, a danger for any children or dogs who choose to venture in.

 

 The footpaths around the park could do with a complete makeover, full of cracks or water bubbling up when it rains hard as the drains can't cope.  Especially the footpath between Collins Lodge and the children’s play area which has been churned up and now houses a huge crater which anyone walking along needs to pay special attention especially mums with pushchairs or anyone who has a mobility issue.

 

 

 

A manhole cover which has been installed has a foot deep gap surround that if anyone was to accidentally step into would surely succumb to a serious injury let alone break an ankle, whether child or adult.

 

 

Bins are left unemptied for days on end.

 

 

Remains of a portable BBQ - which is against the by-laws that  nobody pays any attention to.

 

 

Football area strewn with plastic bottles which are never picked up or deposited in the bins by the users of the pitches.

 

 

It is very sad to see that for our cricket obsessed Asian residents the demise of the cricket pitches that were once marked out during the summer. Now they are only marked out for football and cricketers are resigned to using the MUGA cage or the periphery of the football pitches which is not ideal as it leaves other park users at risk of being hit by a cricket ball!

 

The children’s play area leaves a lot to be desired in comparison to what is on offer in other boroughs close by. 

 

This is now a very well used park, especially by all the residents who now live in all the flats that have been built around Wembley with no outside space, this park is in serious need of upgrade and why can't the council use some of its millions £££ NCIL money to upgrade this park to its former glory.  After all isn't that what Community infrastructure Levy is for?

 

It desperately needs the same as Roundwood Park in Willesden:

 

·      New benches and more seating.

·      A picnic area with tables and benches

·      Larger bins

·      A cafe

·      A water fountain for all users

·      Toilets

 

Whilst I note that planning permission was granted for SBC Boxing Club to build a new pavilion that would house a cafe and toilets this yet remains to be seen whether it will come to fruition.

 

We also don't have a "Friends of King Eddies" association like many other parks in Brent, any chance we could get one going?  I'd be happy to join and help set one up.

 

 

If you would like to help write to Martin at wembleymatters@virginmedia.com with your contacts and I will pass on to Jaine.

 

 

 

 

King Eddies park in better days

Guest blog by Philip Grant
 

A recent blog LINK  told of the sad decline of Wembley’s King Edward VII Park, but this reminded me of some information and old photos that I could share with you from the park’s early years.

Wembley as a place has existed since Saxon times, with the first documentary record of “Wemba lea” (Wemba’s clearing in the forest) dating from AD825. My late Wembley History Society colleague, Len Snow LINK  was fond of saying that football fans, singing their way to Wembley Stadium, had actually got the name right! But it was not until 1894 that Wembley became a separate local government area, splitting off from Harrow as Wembley Urban District, and although small in population (only around 4,500 people lived here in 1901), it had some big ideas.

One of the schemes to provide a better place to live for its residents was to open its own municipal public park, and in 1913 it bought 26 acres of farmland in Blind Lane (not far from its developing High Road) for £8,050. By the next summer the park was ready, and on 4 July 1914 it was officially opened by Queen Alexandra (by then the Queen Mother), and named King Edward VII Park in memory of her late husband.

These first two photos were taken on the day of the opening, with many of Wembley’s citizens there in their “Sunday best” clothes to enjoy the event. The musical entertainment from the bandstand was almost certainly provided by the Wembley Town Band, which had been set up in 1910, with its smart green and silver uniforms paid for by local benefactor, Titus Barham. The school next to the park had opened in 1911 as Blind Lane Council School (the first set up in the area by Wembley Urban District Council, rather than Middlesex County Council), and with the change in the name of the road to mark the opening, it became Park Lane Primary. Like every good park, King Eddie’s had a children’s playground!

Some WM readers may recognise these photographs from Geoffrey Hewlett’s  “Images of London” book on Wembley (Tempus Publishing, 2002), and they are from a remarkable collection built up by Wembley History Society from the 1950’s onwards, including many donated by an important local photographer before he died in 1958, which is now held at Brent Museum and Archives.

These pictures were almost certainly taken by that photographer, Kuno Reitz, who was born in Munich in 1876, but moved to England in 1911, spending most of the rest of his life as a freelance photographer in Wembley. Just a month after King Edward VII Park opened, and these excellent photos were taken, England declared war on Germany, entering the “Great War” a week after it had first begun, because Germany had invaded neutral Belgium. Reitz was classed as an enemy alien, and spent at least part of the war years building roads, possibly for army camps and training grounds, in Northumberland.

Luckily, he returned to Wembley after the war, and the last photo is one he definitely took, for a “Wembley Guide” booklet published by the Urban District Council in 1930. The clothes may have changed a little by the inter-war years, but it was still a great place for children to play. Let’s hope that, despite the decline caused by cost-cutting and contracting out, the people of Wembley can still enjoy King Eddie’s Park for another century or more.