Highbury Park restoration works update - 11th March

Work has begun on cutting back the huge swathe of laurel bushes between Chamberlain House and the Viewing Platform. This is part of a £170,000 investment in the park. For more details on this programme of works, see my previous two blog entries at:

http://martinmullaney.blogspot.com/2012/01/work-begins-on-170000-investment-in.html

http://martinmullaney.blogspot.com/2012/02/restoration-of-historic-viewing.html

The cutting back of these laurels is revealing long lost gardens paths from the former ornate gardens of Highbury Hall – this section of garden would have been filled with rhoderdendrums, annuals and ornamental trees. Sadly the invasive nature of the laurel bushes has smothered out of existence much of this planting.

As well as revealing long lost paths, the reduction in laurels is revealing many attractive trees from the Joseph Chamberlains time....but have over the last few years have been struggling for light under these laurels.

I attach a photo showing some of the cut back laurels by Chamberlain House.

We hope to have cleared all the laurels by the end of next week, which will reveal for first time a lost view of Chamberlain House; namely you’ll be able to see the attractive frontage of Chamberlain House from the Viewing Platform and other parts of the park. To most people, Chamberlain House is the industrial looking building that you see from Yew Tree Road. At the moment it is boarded up. It was never meant to be viewed from this angle, and the boundary wall along Yew Tree Road was, until the 1960s, 12foot high. Where Chamberlain House was meant to be viewed from was Highbury Park. However a huge 30 foot solid green wall of evergreen laurel bushes has prevented this since the early 1980s. Hopefully, at the end of next week, we’ll be able to see it again, as it was meant to be.

In the meantime, the stonemasons has been busy making replica stone blocks of the Viewing Platform that were totally destroyed by vandals last August. See my blog entry for more details on this at: http://martinmullaney.blogspot.com/2011/08/one-of-highbury-parks-historic-features.html

I attach photos showing the stonemasons work.

The stonemasons are hoping to have the restored Viewing Platform back in place within two weeks.

In the meantime, we have cut a vista through the bushes and trees, so at last the Viewing Platform can be once again be seen from the main pond.