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• Valentines Park

Valentines Park is one of the flagship parks in the London Borough of Redbridge providing an extensive and diverse green space with a range of recreational facilities. Valentines Park has achieved the prestigious Green Flag Award for the last three years which means it achieved a national benchmark standard for the best green spaces in the country.

The park contains many features of historical and environmental interest such as:

• the recently Heritage Lottery funded restored Mansion and Gardens
• prestigious mature trees
• ecologically important water bodies and
• wide expanses of grassland.

The park is important for local people and wildlife because of its heritage landscape, local recreational resource and diversity of habitats.  

                                                                                                                                             
How to find Valentines Park

Valentines Park on our map. 
Main entrance on Cranbrook Road, Ilford
Vehicle entrance Melbourne Road, Perth Road and Cranbrook Road

This award-winning park is next to Valentines Mansion & Gardens, and was once the parkland to the house. It offers a wide range of activities for all including:

What's on in the park

• Outdoor Theatre - Oddsocks Productions perform 'The Comedy of Errors' in June 2013
• Running - weekly sessions for Us Girls or weekly 5km timed run for adults and children 8 yrs+
• Tennis Coaching - every Sunday for children 10-16 yrs part of Active Young People.
• Walking - Organised walks part of Walk to Health or if you prefer a self guided walk in and around the park at your own leisure.
• Valentines Mansion and Gardens events and activities all year round!

Facilities

• Bandstand 
• Basketball Court
• Bowling Green
• Cafe by the bandstand and Gardener's Cottage Cafe by the Mansion 
• Cricket pitch for hire
• Diverse tree collection including a 300 year old field Maple
• Guided tours
• Lake (Rowing boats for hire)
• Nature/wetland
• Ornamental Gardens and Flower beds
• Outdoor gym
• Play tennis for free
• Spring and Summer flowering meadows
• Two Children's Play Areas

Opening times

The park is open from 8am to dusk throughout the year.

For more details of exact closing times please download our Parks Closing Times under related pages or alternatively please check time boards at the entrance of each park.

Parking Charges

From 1 October 2011 the following car parking charges apply:

• Up to 1 hour - 70p
• 1-2 hours - £1.30
• All day - £3.00

History of Valentines Park

The park was once the parkland of Valentines Mansion a gentleman’s residence built in 1696. The landscape reflects the changing tastes of the last three hundred years and the main elements surviving today relate to the changes made to the Mansion itself in the 1720s, the 1810s and the 1870s. During all these periods, the house was in private ownership. The greatest change was from 1912 when the whole estate became a public park and began to be used by greater numbers of people than ever before.

The heritage value is of great importance in terms of the survival of formal Rococo features in a suburban park near the Central tube line, the M11 and the main London to Norfolk trunk road.

• Find more information on Valentines Mansion here.