Abbey Park, Leicester

Abbey Park
Bridge over River Soar, Abbey Park
Location	Leicester, UK
Coordinates	52°38′49″N 1°08′10″W / 52.647°N 1.136°W / 52.647; -1.136Coordinates: 52°38′49″N 1°08′10″W / 52.647°N 1.136°W / 52.647; -1.136
Area	89 acres (36 ha)
Opened	May 29, 1882 (1882-05-29)
Operated by	Leicester City Council
Open	Open all year
Status	Grade II* (Register of Historic Parks and Gardens
Water	River Soar & boating lake
Designation	Green Flag
Website	leicester.gov.uk

Abbey Park is a public park in Leicester, England, through which the River Soar flows. It is owned and managed by Leicester City Council. It opened in 1882 on the flood plain of the River Soar, and expanded in 1932 to include the area west of the river that had formerly been the medieval St Mary's Abbey, still bounded by large medieval walls. The park includes the archaeological sites of the Abbey and the ruins of Cavendish House, along with a wide range of decorative and recreational parkland features.

In 1876 Leicester town council bought 57 acres (23 ha) of marshy ground between the river and canal from the Earl of Dysart in order to develop flood prevention plans. Planning for this first incarnation of the park was underway by 1879, as part of designs by the borough surveyors for the relief of flooding in the area. However the design for the park itself was opened up to a competition. The winning design, with its bandstand, rustic bridges and planted gardens, was the work of William Barron, a celebrated landscape designer. It was Leicester's first public park of significant size, and was opened on 29 May 1882 by the Prince and Princess of Wales, an event commemorated by an ornate plaque at the Abbey Park Road entrance. The park was created in an area that had previously been described as "marshy ground in a poor district" at a cost of over £40,000. The works included the widening and deepening of the river over a length of around a mile, with the excavated earth used to create mounds within the park, as well as the construction of stone weirs and locks. Three new bridges were constructed crossing the river. An artificial lake was created and over 33,000 trees planted. Excavations as part of the work discovered remains of animals including elephants and rhinoceros. The resulting park occupied 57 acres of land between the River Soar and the Grand Union Canal. Two lodges designed by architect Mr. J. Tait were built at the Abbey Road entrance to the park.

Although the new park was called Abbey Park, the site of the abbey itself, bounded by substantial medieval masonry and brick walls, was not within the park, but was in agricultural land on the other side of the River Soar. The exact location of the Abbey was unknown, with no standing remains other than the boundary walls and the ruins of the sixteenth century Cavendish House. Archaeological investigations of a limited nature began in the 1920s, and popular enthusiasm was fuelled by the 1912 discoveries in Egypt of Tutankhamun's tomb, and a hope that Cardinal Wolsey's tomb might be similarly discovered. After assorted modest excavations, the 32 acre Abbey Grounds site was donated to the city by the Earl of Dysart at the end of 1925. Several years of preliminary works, and sporadic attempts to pin down the site of the Abbey buildings, were followed by more thorough work undertaken in 1929-30. With the rise in unemployment culminating in the Great Depression the city council attempted to alleviate local poverty by employing a team of workmen to clear pernicious weeds from the overgrown site, and the architect W K Bedingfield was able to utilise this process to also search for, and then uncover the buried foundations of the Abbey buildings. A variety of graves were found, but no magnificent tomb of the sort popularly hoped for. Having exposed and mapped the extent of the Abbey Church and a variety of monastic buildings, the workforce built low walls to mark out the foundations and pier bases. They also carried out extensive repairs to the stonework and brickwork of the medieval boundary walls particularly along the north and western sides of the site, traditionally ascribed to Abbot Penny and Abbot Cloune. Paths were laid out across the grounds, tennis courts were built, a large oval was levelled for use as a cricket pitch, and a new stone bridge in a classical style, was built across the River Soar to link the two parts of the park.