Saturday 19th of November we welcomed the opening of the new Studio Hardie play area at our South Cliff Gardens National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) and National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF) restoration project. It marked a major and much anticipated milestone for the project and gave the team and local community the chance to meet and celebrate the hard work that has gone into the project over the past 5 years.
In 2017 NLHF and NLCF approved a Stage 1 bid for the restoration of the Victorian pleasure gardens. Southern Green successfully tendered for developing the Stage 2 Conservation Management Plan and Masterplan working with Scarborough Borough Council, South Cliff Community Group, Friends of South Cliff Gardens and other stakeholders to develop proposals. In 2018 NLHF and NLCF awarded a record combined £4.99M for taking forward proposals into detailed design and implementation, and the project eventually started on site in the spring of 2021 being delivered by family owned Hull based Contractor PBS Construction.
The project is an exciting one, on a landscape scale, with the gardens stretching 1.5km along the cliffs to the south of the south bay in Scarborough. South Cliff Gardens are home to the Scarborough Spa, a National Entertainment and Conference Venue and the catalyst for the original development of the Victorian pleasure gardens. The Spa itself was discovered in 1626 by a local woman who encouraged visitors to drink the water as a medicinal aid. Scarborough developed as a spa resort and by the early eighteenth century was operating in fierce competition with The Spa at Harrogate. In conjunction with The Spa, the seaside resort grew in popularity during the 18th-century and is thought to be the first recorded place in England to offer bathing machines in 1735. The first phase of landscaping around the spa was carried out by George Knowles (1776-1856) who laid out paths and pleasure grounds on the cliffs west of The Spa buildings. The company employed Henry Wyatt (1769-1862) to enlarge The Spa Pavilion from 1837-9 and he built a castellated structure known as The Spa Saloon, this was set behind an improved sea wall which was also battlemented. By the 19th century there was a saying ‘The Spaw is Scarborough and Scarborough is The Spaw’, demonstrating the enormous economic importance of The Spa to the town.
In 1856 the company took advantage of Sir Joseph Paxton (1803-1865), the foremost public park designer in the country, who holidayed in Scarborough. They asked him to provide a design for the Spa Gardens and alterations to the Saloon. Paxton’s plans were submitted by his assistants Edward Milner and G.H. Stokes and included a Music Hall, Viewing Tower, Italianate terrace and steps, shrubberies, and circulatory footpaths which extended Knowles’ layout. In 1875 the first passenger funicular railway in the country was installed on South Cliff which still operates today.
In 1909 the Corporation purchased the majority of George Lord Beeforth’s private gardens, located to the south of the Spa and funicular Railway, but he retained a small area accessed by way of a tunnel from his house on Esplanade, running beneath the roadway! The Borough Engineer, Harry Smith added more paths, the Italian Gardens, the Clock Cafe and beach huts, a new Floral Lounge or Rose Garden, shelters and seats. Smith’s improvements to South Cliff Gardens during the early 20th-century continued to reinforce the spirit of the seaside resort at one of the first ‘seaside’ venues. However, the gardens seaside location have also proved the primary risk to their longevity. Due to coastal erosion the gardens have been subject to periodic collapses and urgent stabilisation measures were carried out in 2018 – 19 comprising re-grading, soil nailing and piling to ensure stability of the cliff and the future safety of The Spa and properties on the Esplanade.
All of this has formed the backdrop to what has proved a fantastic yet challenging restoration project for Southern Green and our team of subconsultants comprising Artis Consulting, Mosedale Gillatt Architecture, Alan Wood and Partners Engineers and Link MEP. The restoration works have included:
- 2km of regrading and resurfacing works to create a continuous step free route that runs the length of the gardens.
- Restoration and adaptation to improve accessibility of 13 historic shelters.
- Reinstatement and replanting of the Lost Shelter rockery and seating area.
- Development of branding, signage and interpretation to create a unified identity for the gardens.
- Restoration of the Italian Gardens and Rose Garden.
- Stabilisation and re-opening of the Victorian tunnel that runs beneath the Listed Cliff Railway, reconnecting north and south gardens.
- Construction of the new Beeforth’s Hive Operations Hub, a base of operations for the South Cliff Gardens grounds team and new community facility with outdoor classroom.
- A new bespoke play area above the much loved Clock Café.
The latter of these interventions has been a real labour of love for the team working with our long time award winning and incredibly skilled collaborators at Studio Hardie. Time and again they have delivered a bespoke and sensitive vision for us in a variety of sensitive historic settings including Canons House and Grounds in Mitcham, London; Seaton Deleval Hall in Whitley Bay, Newcastle and are currently working on a dramatic intervention at Belsay Hall and Gardens at Morpeth, Northumberland.
The play area at South Cliff Gardens is a real triumph of creativity and logistics navigating a steep wooded slope and capitalising on the dramatic views along the Scarborough coastline. The brief from the outset was to have a mix of play for all ages and abilities that maximised use of the sloping landscape. The themes were to draw strongly on the heritage of the site with inspiration from: the delicate Victorian architecture of the Shelters; Joseph Paxton’s design for the former viewing tower at the Spa; Italianate design and the concept of the Tuscan alpine village and the beautiful coastal setting of Scarborough’s South Bay. Studio Hardie developed designs for a tiered play experience that stepped down the slope. At the top a dramatic Tower with internal maze that aesthetically responded to Paxton’s former viewing Tower with slide exit (certainly a missed opportunity for Paxton!). This led across the Most Accessible Route to a secondary tower and bridge unit ‘The Victorian Tower’ heavily inspired by the architectural themes evident in the 13 shelters of the Gardens with a second slide exit. Adjacent to this across the connecting steps is a dramatic adventure trim trail navigating the steep slope and providing more challenging play and at the bottom of the slope a sand pit with timber climbing features and a quiet area with circular story telling bench for younger explorers.
We worked closely with Studio Hardie and the team at Scarborough Borough Council to move the play area from concept to construction in an extraordinary 7 month period and benefitted from Studio Hardie’s attention to detail and the workmanship of their team of incredibly skilled carpenters. The resulting play area is a real gem of the Gardens responding aesthetically to the character of the landscape and architecture of the gardens. The play area sits well within its setting and has created some incredible elevated viewing points with fully accessible areas on a challenging sloped site. It provides a good level of challenge and adventurous play to appeal to all ages as was in full evidence at the opening day with the play area teaming with explorers both young and old.
Play is such a vital part of our growth and learning it gives us the opportunity to experiment and expose ourselves to risk in a managed way. We’ve come a long way in terms of research and our understanding of play and it’s thanks in no small part to the pioneering spirit of our Local Authorities, willing to push the boundaries of play and create truly engaging and challenging spaces accessible to all in our public parks and gardens, and our creative and innovative play designers always striving to create new features and forms to allow us to experiment with our bodies and minds. With Scarborough Borough Council, National Lottery Heritage Fund & National Lottery Community Fund and Studio Hardie we have created an adventurous and sensitively designed play area at South Cliff Gardens that we hope will provide a place to explore and to grow for many years to come and providing a new way of understanding and interacting with the heritage of Scarborough’s incredible cliffside gardens.
