Avondale Park and it's bomb shelter

Avondale Park was once a fetid swamp known as The Ocean, a rather grand name for what was in fact a deep dank slurry and rutting ground within the Piggeries for which this area of North Kensington had become infamous. Potteries, pig farms, slaughterers, light industrial units, rough housing and disease coupled with high-noon property and sporting speculators had made the area synonymous with poverty, crime and undesirables.

In 1889, the authorities and developers began acquiring large swathes of land to clean up the now infamous area. The foul pool of muck was drained filled in paved over and restored as an open space for the local community. The new park called Avondale Park for the Dukes of Clarence and Avondale was formally opened on 2 June 1892.

But what lies beneath is a local secret still largely unknown. In 2009 while tree surgeons were investigating the roots of a large top heavy tree-crown a set of extensive underground passages was discovered. Several stories bounced around as to why the passages were there and for what purpose.

Council Records revealed in fact that the passages made up a municipal air raid shelter constructed in 1939 for the residents of the nearby Henry Dickens Estate and for local grandees.They were sealed up in 1946.

The passages of the shelter were in good condition with a privy area some contemporaneous graffiti and a roof high enough almost to stand. The maze would have held up to two hundred people. As news spread of the discovery several local residents remembered hiding there during the air raids when they were children. They were quite amazed that the shelter still existed.

The records for the shelter remain elusive. There are no future plans for the passageways, the entrances no longer exist and the area has once again been consigned to folklore .

Next time you walk over the play area spare a thought for the layers of history that are never too far beneath our very feet !