Cutteslowe Park, Oxford

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wild Iris, Cutteslowe Park

Cutteslowe and Sunnymead Park is a public park in the north of Oxford, England, established with the purchase by Oxford City Council in 1935 of farmland belonging to the old Cutteslowe Manor farm, which house still stands at its centre. Further land was acquired in 1937. The original manor house dates from at least the mid-17th century, being shown on a 1670s map by Michael Burghers.

The park is a very traditional form of English public park, with a children's pool, crazy golf, small aviary, duck pond, and tennis courts, to complement the flowerbeds and many Horse Chestnut trees. It also contains some superb examples of White Willow trees, the largest in the county.

More recent purchases of farmland gave the park a very large recreation ground to its east side, used for football and rugby throughout the autumn and winter months. The increased extent of the park enabled the establishment of a "Peace Mile", a running circuit that encompasses most of the perimeter of the park. The Peace Mile was inaugurated in 1985 by world harmony advocate Sri Chinmoy, with the then Mayor of Oxford. The peace mile is a popular location for runners and during the summer short running races are held around the peace mile by Sri Chinmoy A.C.

A very ancient public footpath cuts diagonally across the lower recreation ground; part of the old drovers' path is still visible at its southern extent for a hundred yards or so, bisected by the A40, the northern bypass. This linked Water Eaton and Oxford, and a short section of this path (at the bottom of Harpes Road, Islip Road and Victoria Road, in North Oxford) is called Water Eaton Road. Further south, this becomes a footpath from Lonsdale Road, and it emerges near the Cherwell School. The hamlet of Water Eaton is now the site of a large Park-and-Ride.

To the north and east side of the park lie working farmland, while it is bounded to the south by the northernmost stretch of the Oxford ring road (a recreation area known as Sunnymead Park lies just to the south of this), and to the West by 1960s–70s housing developments of Cutteslowe.

[edit] Community interest

On 21 February 2007, the Friends of Cutteslowe and Sunnymead Park was established, "to promote the access, positive management and enhancement of the park and its facilities for the benefit of the local community and wider general public".