Out of Bromley’s many parks, Kings Meadow’s Recreation Ground has been the most recently refurbished during lockdown.
The playground has not only greatly expanded in size, but has also been revamped with numerous new swings, slides, a climbing frame and even a zip wire.
The idea to renovate the playground came three years ago from the group “Friends of Parks”. They approached the council, asking for improvements to the park to be made.
Initially, the group took it upon themselves to begin to develop the park by planting a community flower bed, creating a wildlife garden and repairing surrounding fences.
The objective of the new park was to make it more inclusive and available to children of all ages and abilities, with additional seating and picnic tables, resulting in a large, free space for children to play in.
The £80,000 raised to build the new park came from community funding and council investment. Specifically, a campaign was launched to collect over £5,000, another £50,000 was donated by The National Lottery Community Fund and finally, £25,000 was provided from council funding.
The refurbished playground has now been opened to the public for locals to enjoy. However, despite there already being a significant improvement made to the playground, more planting will continue to take place and more seating will be installed to complete the park’s transformation throughout the upcoming weeks.
Some may say that the money used to fund the park could have been better spent elsewhere, like on supporting healthcare. However, Caroline Navin (Chair of Friends of Kings Meadow) claims that “This play area and the local park can have and has such a positive impact for our children and benefits us all and future generations too.” She also states that this project has “[improved] local play facilities for local children” and that she is “really pleased [they] have managed to successfully achieve this.”
