Chapman’s Green is a small park sandwiched between Perth Road and Lordship Lane, a short walk from Wood Green Tube Station. Local people formed the Friends of Chapman’s Green in 2016 to give this under-used and overlooked green space some love and affection. We organise community events at the park throughout the year and try to keep it tidy with regular clean-up days.

Building on these beginnings, we’re now working with Haringey Council and our partners Inspirit Training and Grow N22 to explore how Chapman’s Green can best serve its community in the years ahead. With Noel Park Bowling Club having made the difficult decision to wind itself up at the end of 2018, the park’s pavilion and bowling green needs to find a new use. And so now, more than ever, we as residents need to get together and plan what sort of future we want for our park.

The Friends are keen that the spirit of the Bowling Club and its history of social activity should be sustained by reimagining and reinvigorating how the whole site – park, pavilion and bowling green – is used in future. Our ambition is to transform the pavilion into a mixed use community hub, suitable for a range of small-scale activities and events; to improve the quality and usability of the park by introducing play equipment; and to partly re-wild the old bowling green – allowing it to revert to a meadow whilst also adding an orchard – so that it can better contribute to the health of the local environment as well as the local community. You can read more about our vision here.