This substantial park runs along the Grand Union Canal and sits on land cleared of slums in the 1970s, then saved from developers.
After what is today the Grand Union Canal was completed 220 years ago, housing quickly lined its banks, with back gardens facing the canal, and the area around it slowly filled in. Because the canal was for industrial use and not the pleasant landscape we have today, the surrounding area was fairly working-class, with cheaper homes.
With urban decline after WWII affecting much of Inner London, this part of North Paddington was eventually designated as slum housing and in the early 1970s, a programme of slum clearance and rebuilding in large blocks of flats took place.
Ironically, had that been delayed by just a few more years, those Victorian slum houses would have been snapped up as restoration projects and would today be exceptionally expensive homes with back gardens overlooking the canal.
But they weren’t saved, and the land was cleared.
Then, local resident Jamie McCulloch started a campaign to save some of the cleared land as a public park instead of being sold to developers. The matter went to court, and in the meantime, the council issued a Meanwhile Permit, which is temporary permission to use the land until a developer is ready to build on the site.
(You may often see the same today with temporary markets or parks using land set for development)
As it was born out of a meanwhile use permit – in 1976 they named it Meanwhile Gardens, and 50 years later, the temporary park is still here, and very much not at all temporary anymore.
The locals laid out the park without funding, but with design support from the GLC, which later funded additions such as a BMX bike area, London’s first skateboard pit, and some small buildings.
A wildlife garden was created around 1990.
In 1994, council boundary changes moved the park from Westminster to Kensington and Chelsea, and K&C turned the meanwhile use into a permanent park by granting a long-term lease. However, the park nearly shrank in 2007 when someone tried to develop the western end, but the proposal was rebuffed.
Today, it’s a long park running alongside the canal, with plenty to explore. The substantial amount of planting makes for a very shady space and the winding walkways snaking around the space making it seem much larger than the narrow plot should suggest.
A big chunky wooden footbridge leads to a deep pond with a lovely walkway around its edges, creating a more wildlife-rich environment than the manmade canal next door.
A Moroccan garden opened in 2007 features a tiled fountain and paving, while elsewhere, an open space filled with raised bedding plants sits on the site of a small former factory.
The eastern end is more conventional, with open lawn spaces, but it still has plenty of trees and mounds from the old housing clearance that give it character.
It’s also here that you can find the skateboard bowl and some more plant corridors leading to Westbourne Park tube station.
It’s a large park, and entirely down to the local community that saved the land from developers and then turned it into the wildly varied space.
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