Northbrook Park in Lee, in the Borough of Lewisham in South East London, is a tidy park with good exercise facilities. The park proudly flies its Green Flag Award, one of fifteen Green Flag Awards in the Borough in 2020. This park is just down the road from another surprising green space, the Grove Park Nature Reserve, which I visited last week.
History of Northbrook Park
The Baring family owned land in Lee, including a field known as Ten Acres Field. In 1898 Lord Northbrook offered the field to the LCC for public use to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. A sundial in the Park advertises Lord Northbrook’s gift. This plinth might have been a drinking fountain.
Sundial in the background – empty plinth in front? 
Sundial in Northbrook Park
Northbrook Park was designed by Lt Col J J Sexby, the Chief Officer of Parks of the LCC, and a trained surveyor, and opened on 14 March 1903. Lt Col Sexby also designed Deptford Park and Hilly Fields in Lewisham. Sadly he doesn’t, write about this little park in his book ‘The Municipal Parks, Gardens, and Open Spaces of London’, which was published in 1905 after the park had opened.
Northbrook Park in Lee today
I visited on two different occasions – what a difference some sunshine makes!
Exercise facilities
The centre and main body of the park is dedicated to sport. Inside the iron railings there is a football pitch, a junior football pitch, a trim trail, an outdoor gym, and a children’s playground. Outside the railings is a running track, or path for walking, and at the far end of the park there is a multi-use ball court.
Multi-purpose ball court 
Multi-purpose ball court 
Football pitch 
Children’s playground 
Children’s playground 
Trim Trail 
Trim Trail 
Outdoor gym
Forest School and Wildlife Area
One corner of the park is called the Forest School, and this part of the park is regularly used by a local school to teach its children a wide variety of skills – about nature and about themselves.
Nature Area
This is called a ‘Nature Area’ but I am not sure what it means, not what happens here. At this moment (December) it looks very bare. This part of the park backs onto railway buildings and land which is fenced off but seems to be ‘wild’ and cannot be accessed
Dog Exercise area in a green flag park
Like many parks today Northbrook Park in Lee has a separate, fenced-off area for exercising dogs off the lead. Dogs and their owners were enjoying the space on all my visits, and it was also spotlessly clean.
Iris foetidissima 
Choisya 
Neatly pruned hedging around the area
And in this area a seemingly dormant tree, which I can’t identify, seems to be ready to burst into life!
General views of Northbrook Park in Lee
Northbrook Park in Lee is a well-functioning and practical green space in South East London which is well-patronised by local people of all ages. It also has an active and involved group of supporters, the Northbrook Park Community Group.
- Sources
- Lewisham Council: https://lewisham.gov.uk/inmyarea/openspaces/parks/northbrook-park
- Northbrook Park Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/115728568455197
- Lewisham Drinking Fountains: http://mdfcta.co.uk/lb_lewisham.html, with thanks to Forest Hill Society
hi Candy, enjoying your posts, I know many but not all the parks in Lewisham and a couple of the South African ones too. I’m in Forest Hill.
I just had a look at the opening ceremony press reports from March 1903 and there was no mention of a statue. In May 1903 permission was given for the sundial to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee and to acknowledge the gift of land by Northbrook. But no statue mentioned, so the statue plinth (?) remains a mystery for now.
Tim
Thank you for kind comments – appreciated! This is very helpful; might I ask where you found the press reports? If there had been a statue at the time it would certainly have been mentioned. Nevertheless the ‘plinth’ is an odd thing to find. What I really need is some old photographs. Lewisham Library, including the Archives, is thoroughly closed at the moment, but I have a growing list of queries for when they open! If you notice anything else, particularly in the Forest Hill comments, I would be most grateful.
I’ve been trialling British Newspaper Archive – the article was in I think the Kentish Mercury, and in previous years to 1903 there were other articles documenting the history of the field and the gifting of the land.
Having found no reference in the press to a statue, it strikes me that the plinth was more probably a water fountain, which would have been commonplace in park design at the time? See for example the elaborate granite one in Mayow Park. I’m not saying it would have been as nice as that, but it seems plausible that it would not have seemed remarkable to the press at the opening ceremony. We’d have to see the plans for design for the park to be sure, but also from 1903 to present someone must have photographed the site – I wonder if Lewisham has photos of the opening ceremony.
regards
Tim
Again very helpful. I need to get into Lewisham Library as soon as it opens. A water fountain is good thinking, and this was quite a common ‘celebratory’ feature of public parks.
I think this site probably settles it. A web link picture list of former water fountains in Lewisham parks, to which the Northbrook one should be added? What a shame they are all lost.
http://mdfcta.co.uk/lb_lewisham.html
Gosh! You are brilliant! I am writing to you privately!
[…] close to nearby busy main roads. This little pond is in an area which is rich in green spaces. Northbrook Park and Grove Park Nature Reserve are close by, and Hither Green Cemetery is just across the railway […]
I believe the plinth near the sundial was for a drinking fountain. I have just wrote a Wikipedia article on the park, for this I found and uploaded a section of a detailed Ordnance Survey Map that shows Northbrook Park from 1949. This map labels two drinking fountains in the park, one near the sundial were the plinth is I believe, and another in the northwest corner in the old playground, now the wildlife area. I remember using the one in the old playground, it was still in use in the 1980s when I was a child, but I never remember seeing the one at the front of the park being there. hope this helps. Map is here
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/NorthbrookPark1944OSmap.jpg
article is here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northbrook_Park,_London
Thank you – very helpful. It is good to keep this information as accurate as possible, and to remember the past. The entry in the book, Green Lewisham, is quite limited so it is good to have the blogsite as a more detailed outlet.