Garth Park, Bicester

Garth Park is the town park of Bicester: about 9 acres of lawns, specimen trees and formal beds round Garth House, a Victorian hunting lodge on Launton Road, a few minutes' walk east of the Market Square. The town has owned it since 1946, and it keeps the bell that once called the town to the old Town Hall and Shambles.

The story of the Garth

The house began in the 1840s as the Poplars, according to the Oxfordshire Gardens Trust and the town council. In the 1870s it was remodelled and enlarged as a hunting box. By 1876, Bicester Local History Society says, it belonged to Baron Adolf Deichmann, a London banker of German origin, who renamed it the Garth and kept horses there for coach driving. In 1891 the Keith-Falconer family, also keen followers of the Bicester Hunt, bought the house and 17 acres on both sides of Launton Road for £8,000.

In the Second World War the army requisitioned the house and grounds, and the Bicester Home Guard had its headquarters at the entrance lodge. After Mrs Williamina Keith-Falconer died, the estate was bought for £6,500 and handed to Bicester Urban District Council in May 1946, much of the money coming from local donors. The history society names Lord Bicester, the Hon. Arthur Child Villiers, Major Adrian Keith-Falconer and Major Philip Fleming, and a plaque on the left gate pier records the gift. The park opened to the public in the early 1950s, and in 1972 it passed to the new Bicester Town Council, which has its offices in the house.

Land was sold over the years, including Langford Farm in 1997 for the New Langford housing. The house had declined by the end of the century, with its top floor unusable. The council re-roofed it in 2012, and in 2014 a government grant paid for insulation and double glazing in part of it.

What to look for

Beyond the play areas and the café, start with Garth House itself, which Pevsner calls a rambling gabled mansion: brick below, fish-scale tile-hanging above, barge-boarded dormers, and a Jacobean-style oriel window. In front of it stands the bell cast by Edward Hemins at the Bicester foundry in 1732. The town council says it was the call bell of the old Town Hall and Shambles in the Market Square until they were demolished in 1826; the history society says it later went to the workhouse.

Among the specimen trees are a giant redwood, a cedar of Lebanon, a blue Atlas cedar, a tulip tree and a black mulberry. The bandstand is from the W. A. Baker foundry; the history society says it was first put up in a Barnsley suburb and was bought from scrap and restored by the town council.

Smaller things are easy to pass. A German telephone box was given by Bicester's twin town, Neunkirchen-Seelscheid, in May 1990. On the southern boundary is a small pet cemetery, where the Keith-Falconers buried their dogs and horses. A metal seat round a yew is for local people who served in the First World War, and a rowan is for a soldier killed in Afghanistan in 2010.

Visiting Garth Park

The park is free. The Oxfordshire Gardens Trust described it in 2022 as open to the public in daylight hours; check the town council's site for current times and closures. There is a café, with public toilets outside it (the café's own are for its customers), a play area the council counts at more than 45 pieces of equipment for children aged 2 to 14, a skate park opened in 2019, an outdoor gym, and a six-rink bowling green and a tennis court leased to local clubs. The café, Garth Park Kitchen, serves breakfast, lunch and Sunday roasts; check its own site for hours. The park has hosted concerts and events such as the Bicester Festival, and the county council's Bicester ceremony room, for civil weddings of up to 48 guests, is at the Garth.

Getting there

The main gates are on Launton Road, postcode OX26 6PS, with two smaller pedestrian gates on Launton Road and one from London Road through Garth Court. Parking on site is limited, so use a town car park: see parking in Bicester. Bicester Village station is on London Road, a short walk from the Garth Court gate, and getting to Bicester has the trains and buses.

Nearby

The Market Square is a few minutes west, and St Edburg's Church just beyond it. For wilder green space, Bure Park Nature Reserve is on the north side of town.