Coulthard Park

Facilities

• Bowling green
• Car park
• Friends of the park group
• Junior football
• Pavilion
• Play area
• Tennis courts

History

The recreation area and the west side of Laburnum Grove occupy the former grounds of Cleadon House.

The grounds were laid out in the picturesque style of the mid to late eighteenth century, decorated by the gothic grotto that overlooked a lake and terraces.

The picturesque style, promoted by Capability Brown and Henry Repton about the time that the house and its gardens were being developed, was dominated by architecture.

The 1862 ordnance survey shows how the house with its principal elevation overlooking the grounds, had open views channelled through woodlands to the grotto, the lake and pastures beyond.

Observed from the south, the house would have stood on the crest of the slope with a sculptured and layered foreground comprising pastures, the lake, the grotto and lawns.

All of these features would have been carefully designed to visually interlink to compose a picture. Some vestiges of the grounds survive, but as independent and unrelated features.

The house was visually detached from its former grounds by gravel excavations in the first quarter of the 20th century followed by later woodland planting that also wraps around the grotto.