Grosvenor and Hilbert Park awarded £2.5 million
The new year of 2014 brought with it some good news for Tunbridge Wells Borough Council and the Friends of Grosvenor and Hilbert Park, with the announcement that the bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund for Grosvenor and Hilbert Park had been successful. An award of just under £2.5 million of lottery funding had been secured meaning that plans to improve and develop the park can go ahead. It’s been two and a half years since the Friends group formed to support the council with the bid. Since then it’s been an eventful time. We have liaised with the local community, passing onto the council not only feedback on the lottery plans, but also general issues within the park. We have also held our own events, and helped with the community art piece, ‘Grosvenor Rocks’.
For what happens next, it was interesting to look back on the reports of the Friends of Dunorlan Park. In February 2003 they received their news of the HLF approval of a grant of £2.1 million for restoration. The on-site work commenced in September 2003, and mostly completed by the end of 2004, with the official re-opening in June 2005.
We are probably looking at a similar time scale in Grosvenor and Hilbert Park. It’s unlikely any on-site work will start before October this year, but we should expect all the work to be completed during 2015. We guess that makes our big party day sometime during the summer of 2016!
The Friends group will carry on assisting the council during these final planning stages, and we also have events lined up, including Easter Egg rolling on Sunday 20th April, and a big Community Day on Bank Holiday Monday 5th May. The park was originally opened 125 years ago, as Tunbridge Wells’ first public park, so we are thinking about bringing a bit of Victorian Magic back on May Day. Let us know if you’d like to be involved with the running of the day, or to join the Friends group as a way of keeping up to date on all the restoration work.
A big local event on Saturday 8th February will be the Winter Lantern Parade along Camden Road. Starting in Civic Way at 5.30pm, colourful lanterns can be made in advance at workshops and carried along the route – or just watch from the pavement as the parade passes by on it’s way to St Barnabas School. The Assembly Hall will be making a special giant lantern to mark it’s 75th anniversary this year. Look at websites for camdenroad.org or winterlantern.org for up to the minute details. Further celebrations in the town this year include 25 years since Tunbridge Wells twinned with Wiesbaden, and also 40 years since creation of TW Borough and Borough Council.
Look at fogh.org.uk or facebook Friends of Grosvenor and Hilbert Park -FoGH. We also continue to collect old photos and memories, so please contact us if you have anything to go in the archives.
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