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In 1995 I went to university, so came back to London in 1999 and then I didn’t live in Finsbury Park any more until I moved there with my girlfriend in 2005. And we didn’t go to Finsbury Park! If we wanted to go somewhere, we would go to Hampstead Heath or go drive off somewhere and go for a proper walk. We never spent any leisure time in Finsbury Park – and I don’t know if that’s because I didn’t associate it with a place you would ever spend time. You know, ‘If you’re going to spend the time going to Finsbury Park, you should go somewhere else’. But then, in 2008 my son was born and of course suddenly Finsbury Park was on the menu again! It was something else to do. And suddenly Finsbury Park was really full of – and I hadn’t really spent any time there for, let’s say, ten years – middle class parents, clutching cups of coffee, nice newly renovated playgrounds, a sandpit – which nobody had smashed glass in or vandalised, pooed in! It was suddenly really nice! And there was a nice café. The whole place had been completely transformed, and our son loved going there – he still does, he still asks to go to ‘the big park with the sandpit’, which is Finsbury Park. The transformation – between when I first moved there in the early ‘80s, and the sense you had of it being in decline, compared to the sense you had now, in the last five years, of it being a really nice park.



The area which is currently a sports ground – near that sports ground there is a bowling green. And this bowling green feels like it’s been transported there from both another place and another time. It is one of the least changed bits of Finsbury Park. It’s always been there and I’m not sure recently whether I’ve seen anyone on it or whether it’s just been overgrown because they don’t play bowls in winter. But I remember even at the time [when he was younger] thinking it was very odd – there are all these old people playing bowls, fenced off. It looked like it was a picture from Middle England somewhere. It looked like a picture from the countryside – something you might see in Kent – but plonked right in the middle of Finsbury Park, an area synonymous with decay and abandonment. I’ve always found that quite interesting – you go past the bowling green and you think, ‘Well, who are the bowlers  of Finsbury Park? Who are they? Where do they come from?’. Because they’re not anywhere else! You never see people carrying bowling balls there!



I think I get a bit annoyed about having to pay [for music events in the park]. I remember when the Fleadh was on… in one of the fields… just south of the footbridge as you come into the park from Oxford Road. There was a big festival there, and I remember, when Bob Dylan was on… If you stood on the on the little hill, like lots of people had done, you could look over the fence and just about see a tiny, tiny Bob Dylan. Actually, he was the real Bob Dylan – he was just a long way away! This area, I used to sometimes come up here with a kid who lived near me and we would play golf on there. We put golf tees down on the little hill bit. And I suppose we would have been golfing off across the park. It was like a massive driving range. This bit was all overgrown and unkept. And we would stand on the slope which now leads up to the basketball courts and drive golf balls – why not? And I remember thinking, ‘But that’s my driving range – why should I pay to go and see Bob Dylan in my own driving range?’. So I never go to festivals in Finsbury Park ‘cos I kind of take umbrage at the fact that I should have to pay to go to my own park.











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They [Haringey Council] spent £5million on it [the park]. You can see nothing was done to this [pathway by new the New River] except cover it with this gravel. But you can see in the park, nothing’s mended here – this is in need of work. The only bit that they were interested in was from the Endymion Road entrance down to where they held the concerts, ‘cause that was the way they could make their money. And these roads were falling apart with the massive trucks that would come down. Not only the concerts, but also the funfairs. So they spent £0.5million of the £5million - £0.5 million went on that concrete road from Endymion Road entrance down to the festival site, as they call it. Half a million was spent on the road. And the company they got to do the work – the £5million contract – was a company famous for building roads and tarmacking – primarily that’s what they did.



But they did do a few good things! They put in The Avenue. I think they put in the poplars to make The Avenue. And that was original and all died – it was nobody’s fault, but they’d grown old and died, the original ones. Not like the plane trees, which last for much longer. And they repaired the gates - which was a very good thing – which are original to the park. They cleaned out the lake. They built a new café, which was probably necessary, and moved it slightly to be in a better position by the lake. They cleaned out the lake, which was very necessary, and they restored the tennis courts – so another tarmacking job. That’s about it, really – that was £5million [laughs].

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There were a lot of things that people wanted. Paddling pool was one, which they refused to give us. And, after bitter fighting, they finally allowed us [The Friends of Finsbury Park] to have the waterspray in the play area, where they switch it on just on hot days and kids can press buttons and run about and it sprays them. We fought for that – that’s our one triumph, really, during the ‘Heritage Lottery battles’. They wouldn’t let us have anything else, but we did win that. Finally agreed to have a water feature in the play area. But apparently it just gets full up with leaves and the pumps are destroyed and then they don’t replace them ‘cause they can’t afford to. So there’s a fault.

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[Manor House Lodge, by the Manor House Gate] is now the Community Garden. The front of it isn’t – this is still run by Haringey – but behind is the Community Garden, which meets once a month and runs gardening courses and is very nice… The idea is that it’s like a model garden of what you could do locally with your garden, There’s sustainable gardening, there’s a wildlife pond, there’s a lovely hedge for wildlife, Mediterranean area... some fruit trees…When Haringey got the money to repair the Manor House Lodge, which was in a terrible derelict state – had been for about fifteen years – in around 2002, they got money because there was this local SRB money. £27million was spent on the area, which had been fought for by local people again, and the way it had been split up, most of the money was going to Islington, some to Hackney and the park just fitted into the area, plus a bit more of Haringey – not much. Haringey weren’t very interested… They wanted to spend money so the Parks Department officially applied for money to repair the Manor House Lodge, and it was – I think £200,000 was spent on it – and it was repaired. And at that time they didn’t know what to do with the garden because there were areas that the staff worked and areas that weren’t in their remit. And the garden of the Manor House [Lodge] was the private garden of the person working for Haringey or whoever owned the park. It was private. So we applied and said, ‘Well, can we run it?’, and they said yes – they were very relieved, I think, that they didn’t have to look after that as well, given their shortage of staff. So that’s how it came about.

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Underneath [the football pitch] is an 1860s brick construct, which was a reservoir. Now, apparently, it’s an overflow for Thames Water, so they don’t want to lose it because, if there was a problem, they would use it. I think Haringey Council should ask for it back and do something about it. I mean, what’s that? £100,000-worth of land? No, more than that! If you built houses on that, think… It’s probably a couple of million, isn’t it? If you sold it to a builder. It just seems a complete waste [at the time of interview the area was all fenced off] that no one can even go on it. Something has to be done! At least repair it so that you can play football on it… We were always told, ‘You can’t drive trucks on it – you can play football on it and so on but you can’t drive trucks on it’. No doubt over the years the brick has – what are we talking about? 1860 – I mean’s it’s getting on for 170 years, isn’t it? Brick doesn’t last… Underneath, they filmed Sherlock Holmes – the one that Guy Ritchie directed. They filmed some of it in there. Just recently – two years ago… Like a cavern… Brick cavern. I’ve never been.

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The festivals we [The Friends of Finsbury Park] ran were really very, very good. They were just such high-points – especially if the weather was good. We’d have 10-15,000 people here, all having a good time, from all over the community. All free, local bands, local dance. Just really, really nice. I was very proud to be part of the team that put those on.



I very much enjoyed doing the research for the book [A Park for Finsbury] and learning all about it. I did it, really, to say to Haringey what a nice park this is. And I didn’t realise how important… The first thing I suddenly realised was… I was part of a 150 year history of people who’d been fighting for the park – who’d fought politically on the park, since it had been built, and then more recently had again started fighting for it. So it was very interesting. I’m just one of the long line of hundreds or thousands of people who wanted the park to exist and fought for it once it did exist.