Park of the week

214. Goldington Crescent Gardens

This pocket park is in Camden. It’s a small oval garden with grass and mature trees that was once a private space for the houses forming the Crescent. This was built in the 1800s as part of a development by the Duke of Bedford, with an oval garden with a lawn. There was also a urinal at the north end for the public to use and a large water trough provided by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association for horses to use.

The garden was lost as a park because in 1889, the Duke offered to donate the gardens to a Polytechnic college to be built there. However, the London County Council intervened and bought the garden using funding from the Midland Railway, for the garden to be maintained as an open space.

After the garden was opened to the public, it was redesigned with a single path running through the middle, reflecting the reality that people were likely to walk through the middle anyway. The gardens were used for air raid shelters in World War 2, although there’s no trace now.

What there is more than a trace of is the three aluminium sculptures, placed in the garden in 2010.  They’re meant to represent fluffy while clouds but look to me more like illustrations of part of the Bristol Stool Chart. They  weren’t popular when first installed, as residents felt that they were ugly and didn’t fit the surroundings, but have at least added texture to the park, as the formerly flat lawn acquired mounds. Apparently, pupils at local schools had the final say on the sculptures, so that they had the chance to get involved in art and design.

​​​​​​

At the time, a Town Hall spokesperson said the clouds were not just art but doubled up as something for children to play on. They don’t look very comfortable to me, and none of them could double up as a Jack-style “big lying down swing”. My view is that the sculptures suggest that the gardens have been visited by a constipated dinosaur with liver problems.

Judith Field

Goldington Crescent Gardens, 8 Goldington Cres, London NW1 1UA