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The original seed of Surrey Square Park is traceable back to 1793, when the distinguished architect Michael Searles built the still extant terraced housed.
It was a time of rapid urban expansion and speculative building in, at the time, town periphery promised assured profits.
I could not find any evidence that before that, anything else but fields.
A century of sustained development completely urbanised the entire area and by 1896 all the main features of Surrey Square, church, school, etc were already in place. The maps are freely available from the excellent Council website "Old Maps Southwark" and show the layout of the buildings foundations covered by the park. Many of the present and sometimes problematic underground structures, for instance the sewage ducts and pipes crossing the park, stem from these forgotten edifices.
<- 1915 1938 -> By 1952 the Kinglake Estate had already present and the Aylesbury Estate only ten years away.
In the 70's till the early 80's the construction of Burgess Park brought a new green emphasis in the reconstruction and slam clearances in London,
Albridge Street was demolished in the seventies (CPO 1976 under part 3 of the Housing Act 1957) and acquisitions completed in 1981.
Political changes and financial constrictions halted however a smooth progress toward the creation of a green area and for few years the area was a site enclosed by corrugated iron sheets and metal nets, occasionally cleared by Local Authorities of the excess flytipping and discarded items from the neighbouring estates.
<- circa 1982 still in 1983 ->
The site did not became immediately a a fully fledge park. It was partially turfed in the late 80's and a a fenced wild life space, with a small pond, constructed for the Surrey Square Primary School, on the site that is now the Peter martin Memorial Garden. In addition the paved sport ground was built at this time.
In the middle 90's the park took a better shape with the completion of the turfing, the removal of the school (by now disused) wild life enclosure and the erection of the wooden post and berdmouthed fence.
The place was still a rather grim open space surrounded as it was by an estate like Kinglake that retained hight confining walls that closed the south side of the park.
With the renovation works that took place on the estate in the middle of the 90's and the first renovation of the sport ground new interest was expressed by the local Tenants and Residents Association for the improvement of the only green open space available for the densely populated surroundings. This also echoing a general trend toward the improvement of the lives of neglectedinhabitants that blamed the high level of antisocial behaviour on the lack of facilities for youth to play and meet.
In 1988 the charity Groundwork Southwark, that had been responsible together with the local T&A for successfully fund-raising to renovate the sport ground, managed to obtain a large grant from the National Lottery Charity Board to start the renovation of the grounds.
Things started to take shape and in 1999 a steering group in collaboration with the charity proposed the reshaping of the park with the creation of a memorial garden and a playground. Projects were also made for a WildLife Area. The publication and distribution of the pamphlet "An Action Plan For Rivitaliasation" catalysed the call for deciding how the park was to be completed.
The next year the publication of the booklet "The Grand Hope" in conjunction with an exhibition on the project and a wide consultation, boosted the chances to win future bids for the funding that was necessary to follow the initial phase of the works.
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