Locals in Waddon and Broad Green are challenging the Croydon Mayor to keep his promise to re-open the café in Wandle Park.
A river runs through it: Wandle Park has been neglected for the last five years, its café remaining closed
Wandle Park, wedged in alongside railway and tram tracks, on the western edge of the borough close to the Purley Way, is among the oldest public open spaces in Croydon.
Civic-minded Victorians laid out the public park on the site of Stubbs Mead and Frogs Mead, low-lying land through which ran the River Wandle. With the creation of a boating lake, Wandle Park was officially opened in 1890, on a day when 30,000 people turned out for the occasion. There probably wasn’t much on the telly.
There was a bandstand, a bowling green with pavilion and tennis courts. According to an official history of the park, by the 1930s Wandle Park had become “the venue for the borough’s Summer Show, there were pony rides, hoop-la, boat-swings and roundabouts”. Sounds like a scene from Half A Sixpence…
“In the summer children fished in the Wandle or paddled through the culvert downstream of the park to arrive at Waddon Ponds. Rowing boats could be hired on the lake for 6d per hour [that’s 2½p in today’s coinage] or a boatman would take 30 children at a time for a punt around the lake, in a boat covered with an awning, at one penny per head.
“In the winter the lake froze over and was used for ice-skating. Traders sold roast chestnuts and baked potatoes on the island in the middle of the lake.”
In the winter of 2025, there’s nowhere for anyone to sell as much as a cup of hot tea…
Bleak house: Wandle Park’s café has been shuttered for almost five years. And so has the park’s toilets
The park’s café was built in 2013 and opened a year later, as part of a multi-million-pound restoration of Wandle Park which also saw the culverted river brought back to the surface, the bandstand restored, and instead of the Victorian ornamental lake, a wildlife pond was dug out and more modern amusements, a basketball court and skate park, created.
The park was formally declared re-open in July 2013, and the café opened a year later.
The optimism and hopes of a decade ago around this revived community facility have slowly, quietly, been eroded. Lockdown saw the café closed up and it has not re-opened since.
Unwittingly, the council’s website highlights the fundamental problem they have created: “Café – Currently closed,” it reads. “Toilets in café.” Oh.
The shuttered front of the café is “bleak,” Rowenna Davis, one of the local councillors, says in a letter to Mayor Jason Perry.
“There is nowhere to rest, change a baby, go to the bathroom or buy a hot drink in the winter.”
The council has run two rounds of bidding for people to take on the park café’s franchise – the thriving and bustling café in Lloyd Park demonstrates the potential for hard-working, enterprising businesses.
Park life: Labour councillor Rowenna Davis wants action from the Mayor
But under the terms of the lease offered by Perry’s council, the café tenants also have to undertake maintenance and cleaning of the public toilets, which comes with other issues in a town centre park with a recent reputation as a venue for drug dealing and some anti-social behaviour.
Local residents and members of the Friends of Wandle Park maintain that having a functioning café open throughout the week will help draw more families to the park and also help deter some of the less welcome visitors. It is a view supported by the Metropolitan Police.
Inside Croydon understands that one successful bidder for the café licence pulled out at a late stage.
Another round of bidding was conducted that restricted offers to traders based in Croydon, a short-sighted imposition which immediately ruled out dozens of potential bidders from nearby in south London.
Mayor Perry had first said that the Wandle Park café would be re-opened in March 2023 – almost two years ago. Yet despite all of Mayor Perry’s bluster, the café remains closed.
“If he’s incapable of getting the Wandle Park café re-opened, how are we meant to believe he’s capable of ‘fixing the finances’, like he promised?” said one resident, their patience with the under-delivering Mayor having worn thin.
Labour councillor Davis’s latest letter to the Mayor was sent yesterday, accompanied by a petition with more than 100 signatures demanding the re-opening of the Wandle Park café.
There in black and white: from the council’s own website. The park’s toilets remain closed as long as the café remains closed
They “desperately” want to see the café reopened, Davis said.
“At the end of December, residents gathered to turn this round. They ran their own ‘Pop Up’ café in the park, decorating stalls with fairy lights and offering hot drinks and home-baked muffins to passers-by.
“In just two hours, we managed to collect almost 100 signatures from people calling to have the café reopened, proving that there is wonderful demand for a local business there.
“A café would provide sustenance and community to local people, particularly during our fantastic festivals in the summer, as well as a source of employment and business rates. Local police have also said they believe reopening the café would deter the anti-social behaviour that has been growing in the park.
“We know you have committed to the café reopening this spring. But please understand this is hard to trust after years of being let down. We were originally told that the café would reopen – at the latest – in spring 2023. Delays, failed bids and poor communication have been our experience here.
“Residents were also disappointed to hear that, in the last bidding round you set up, only established café providers in the borough were allowed to bid to run the café. This has let down local people, many of whom had ideas for regenerating the café themselves.
“It may be that experienced providers could win the contract, but not even giving local people the chance to have their bids considered and compared seems oddly unjust.”
Formally presenting the petition, Davis concluded her letter to Mayor Perry with two requests: for the Mayor to keep his promise to open Wandle Park café this spring, and to allow individuals and community groups to bid for contracts like these.
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