A poet’s town
Sir John Betjeman lived in Wantage from 1951 to 1972, at a house called The Mead on the slope above the Letcombe Brook, west of the parish church. He wrote about the town and the downs in several poems, and in 1972, the year he left, he was appointed Poet Laureate. Wantage marked the new millennium by naming a small park after him on the ground below his old home.
How the park was made
The two-acre plot between the parish church and the Lamb pub had been an allotment garden and had become neglected and threatened with private development. In the mid-1990s a group of residents set up a charitable trust, objected to the building plans, won planning consent for a park and, with a council grant and public donations, bought the land. The garden designer Gabriella Pape, a Chelsea Flower Show gold medal winner, laid out a scheme of meadow, glades and native planting around a central open space. The sculptor Alec Peever carved a poetry trail of Betjeman’s words into stones set along the paths, some of them underfoot. Large sarsen stones link the park to the landscape of the downs.
After seven years of work by volunteers, the park was opened to the public on 18 May 2002 by the Reverend John Salter, president of the Wantage branch of the Betjeman Society. Three interpretation panels about Betjeman, the wildlife and the town were added in 2011 with lottery money.
The park today
The Letcombe Brook and a mill leat wrap round the park on three sides. The brook is a chalk stream, a scarce habitat, and the park is managed for wildlife as well as people. The trust receives no regular public funding; volunteers, including local Scout and Guide groups, the Letcombe Brook Project and Sustainable Wantage, do much of the upkeep, and the park hosts art, music and poetry events. It is protected as a Local Green Space.
Visiting
The park is free to enter and is reached on foot from the town centre near the parish church. Paths were designed to be accessible. There is no parking at the park itself; use the town car parks.
Nearby
The parish church of SS Peter and Paul and the Vale and Downland Museum, which has a bust of Betjeman, are both a few minutes’ walk away.