Welcome to the Heart of the Park project

After 3 years of planning, the Heart of the Park project at Morden Hall Park begins this summer. The project is an exciting 2 year programme of renovation, conservation, installation, volunteering and activities which will transform the historic heart of Morden Hall Park.

More will be revealed over the coming months but here’s a quick introduction to the project.

The main part of the project involves renovating the 19th century stable yard to provide public toilets, a small café, office space for the National Trust, workshop space for craft artists and a family picnic area. The project will be an exemplar for sustainable building renovation in an urban area and the renovation will use various types of insulation and install different types of solar panels, as well as an air source heat pump and a wood burning stove. Part of the renovated stable yard will become an exhibition space where visitors will be able to see how we have restored the stable yard, discover more about sustainable living and renewable energy and learn about the history of the park.

The stable yard is currently used as our maintenance yard so before any of this can happen, work will start in the next few weeks to build a new maintenance yard for the park.

The remaining waterwheel will be conserved to look like it did between 1825 and the early 20th century when the Snuff Mill was one of the many working mills along the river Wandle which flows through the park. We will not be able to make the waterwheel turn so instead we will install a modern waterwheel - an Archimedes Screw hydroelectric turbine - in the river Wandle just upstream of the waterwheel to generate electricity for the stable yard. We think that ours will be the first in London.

Exciting times…

Our first guest post

Here's our first guest post. George Horton, a Year 10 pupil from Wimbledon College, spent 4 days at Morden Hall Park earlier this month doing work experience.

Hey, I’m George Horton and im writing as a guest on this blog, because I have been helping with the Heart of the Park project all this week, and have done various things to aid the project, like setting up this blog and creating posters to advertise a job placement.
I decided to go for a placement at the national trust for work experience because as a small child I went to Morden Hall Park so I wanted to see how it was run from the inside.
Instead I got involved in the Heart of the Park project, which I found extremely interesting, especially when I was set tasks like interviewing gardeners or writing reports and taking photos
This experience has taught me many things, like how to do basic tasks like photocopying or more complex tasks like creating complicated excel documents.
Overall I have developed useful skills from this work experience and had fun whilst doing it.