The Friends of Burgess Park received £51,500 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) in 2013/14 for an exciting project “Burgess Park: The Bridge to Nowhere?” exploring the history and unusual development of Burgess Park in Southwark.
Led by volunteers from the local community, the project enables local people to find out more about how Burgess Park has been created out of the urban landscape over the last sixty years.
This website is only one of the many outcomes of the project – check out some more under the Launch of the Heritage Trail press release. Check the blogs produced as the project developed – see box on the right. Also listen to memories collected together on our Youtube channel.
Friends of Burgess Park are delighted to have been able to work with Theresa Dhaliwal Davies on the heritage project. Theresa coordinated the year-long project, working with local groups and volunteers, from school children to pensioners, to take part in the various activities in the Bridge to Nowhere heritage project. The results are on display on this website.
The main section of the website covers points in the park on a ‘Heritage Trail’. You can either walk the park and look for the blue plaques with information, or click the menu left of this one – The story of Burgess Park >> Heritage trail. There are so far 22 sites to read about, but we expect to add to them as more information comes to light.
A substantial part of the website covers an additional project, also funded by the HLF, to commemorate the Zeppelin bomb which landed in the park area in October 1917. You can find details of the commemoration and a web version of the public exhibition we organised under the Zeppelin menu above.
We’re eternally grateful to many many people, but especially to the archivists of this world, particularly past and present guardians of the Southwark Local History Library and Archive at the Borough, without whom much of this would not have been possible.
The project has not ended! We want to continue to gather recollections, memorabilia, photographs, ideas, and your comments. Please do get in touch with us: friendsofburgesspark@gmail.com
