The House in the Park . . .

Renovations on the house in Clissold Park is now completed and it is beautiful. I had lunch there today with my sister - wonderful!!


Clissold House, the park's Grade II-listed building, was built for Jonathan Hoare, a Quaker merchant and anti-slavery campaigner, in the 1790s. (His brother Samuel Hoare Jr was one of the founders of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade.) The park was his front lawn, and the stretch of water that winds around the house was once part of the New River, a canal that supplied London with clean water from Hertfordshire.

The estate eventually fell to Reverend Clissold; when he died in 1882, developers closed in, but activists John Runtz and Joseph Beck convinced the authorities to open it as a public space in 1889. A fountain was erected in 1890 commemorating these heroes; later, the park's two wildlife ponds were named after them too. (Wikipedia)