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| Grovelands Park |
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Grovelands Park is a late 18th century landscape park with lake, which in 1913 was made into a public park. In the 18th century the estate was owned by the third Duke of Chandos. It was sold in 1796 to Walker Gray, a Quaker brandy merchant from Tottenham. He had Southgate Grove built in 1797 by John Nash and also brought in the landscape designer Humphry Repton, who reputedly chose the site of the house, laid out gardens and pleasure grounds, carriage drives and entrances, planted the park and created the fine artificial lake and islands which form the main feature of the park, formed by damming the Bourne stream.. After Walker Gray's death in 1834, the house and the estate was then inherited by his nephew John Donnithorne Taylor. He retired to Southgate Grove which he renamed first Woodlands and then Grovelands. He proceeded to purchase neighbouring plots of land as they came up for sale, thereby extending his estate to over 600 acres. Taylor tried to keep Southgate rural, stopping development by refusing to sell land for building. After his death in 1885 the estate passed to his son and grandson. The southern extension of the estate was sold in 1902 and subsequently developed for housing, but the part which contained Grovelands house was not sold. Captain Taylor lived at Grovelands until 1907, but in 1911 64 acres (26 hectares) of the grounds were purchased by Southgate Urban District Council for a public park, thus saving it from housing development. Grovelands Park was officially opened on 12 April 1913 and the park was later extended. Grovelands House was unoccupied from 1907 to 1916 when it became a military hospital during World War I. In 1921 it was purchased by the Royal Northern Hospital and then in 1948 it was adopted by the NHS and used as a convalescent home until 1977, after which it remained unoccupied until 1985. In 1985 the Priory Hospitals Group purchased and restored the house for use as a private psychiatric hospital which it remains, re-named Grovelands Priory, with some new buildings added behind the house. |
