Memories of a park called Herbert

The 100-year-old Herbert Park can still keep several generations happy at once. It did so in style at this weekend's birthday celebration, writes BERNICE HARRISON

ON A typical sunny Saturday in Herbert Park you’re likely to come across two very different worlds separated only by a clipped privet hedge.

On one side there’ll be a game of bowls played with quiet gentility – though like all quiet games it’s probably deadly competitive – by older people, members of the Herbert Park Bowls Club smartly dressed in their pressed slacks, box-pleated skirts and lambswool V-necks.

It’s a dignified sight, the kind that makes your heart slow down and stress evaporate just by looking at them. The only sound is the dull thud as the bowls meet each other.

On the other side of the thigh-high hedge there’ll be an open air fitness boot camp. Maybe two dozen lycra-clad twentysomethings doing sprints and painful-looking contortions, red faced and panting while being shouted at by a couple of gym instructors. The two worlds seem to co-exist quite happily, and that’s part of the magic of the place.

The park celebrated its 100th birthday yesterday and I’ve been using it for the best of a quarter of that time. First when I lived nearby in a flat, it was the perfect place to read the papers on a Sunday or just go for a walk to escape the four walls.

Later, I was one of those parents at weekends waiting for the gates to open at 10am – but we’ve been up since 6am! – to get into the brilliant playground. You can spot it from a distance because it has the most child-friendly sculpture in the middle of the all-climbable play equipment – a tall multi-coloured creature that may be a giraffe and looks like it was made of shiny Plasticine.

There were endless hours spent feeding the ducks or trying to spot fish in the pond – in 2006 when it was emptied for a major clean up, carp up to 2ft (0.61m) long were discovered. And there was always the chance of coming across the Irish Model Boat Club, though stopping a toddler from going in after one of the amazingly crafted boats was always a challenge.

The playground phase is over and I’m beginning to see that Herbert Park has something for every phase of your life – replaced now by knockabouts on the tennis courts. An hour – €4 per adult, €1.50 for children – is amazing value and not just because the courts have recently been refurbished and now have swanky posh tennis club surfaces.

The 32-acre park is divided into two, with Herbert Park Road running through it, the larger part being on the southside, and last year a running class brought me to a section I hadn’t been to before.

A full circuit of the park’s perimeter is almost exactly one mile – perfect for runners and distance-conscious walkers – and it takes you to the far corner of the park, where there are fewer flowers and the grass seems scrubbier but there’s still activity because that’s where you will find the three football pitches.

Even with all this going on it’s difficult to visualise the park’s busiest year, 1907, when it was the venue of the Great Exhibition, a massive showcase for the British Empire.

There were purpose-built pavilions, an enormous industrial hall that covered two acres and extraordinary-sounding exhibits such as the replica Somali village.

All that remains of the Great Exhibition is the duck pond and the very Edwardian bandstand.

After the exhibition had been dismantled – it took two years – the Earl of Pembroke gave the 32 acres in Ballsbridge to Pembroke Urban District Council to commemorate the coming of age of his son, Lord Herbert.

Celebrating 100 years of park life

Perhaps the Edwardians who strolled around Herbert Park in its early days experienced the same atmosphere of a community at rest and play as was evoked yesterday during an event to mark the parks centenary.

It was possible to picture the women in their corsets and bustles and the men in their layered suits listening to music by the same bandstand, where yesterday the crowds were entertained by the Army Band, or watching their children feeding the ducks in the pond – two features of the park which have survived a century later.

Yet there was plenty which the Edwardians could probably never have envisaged: children clambering up a climbing wall erected for yesterday's family fun day; remote control speed boats chasing each other around the pond while the ducks floated unfazed nearby; a bare-chested man practising yoga balanced upside down on his arms.

The park is still very much a "living entity", according to John Holohan, chairman of Ballsbridge, Donnybrook and Sandymount Historical Society, who cut a dash in a boater hat, striped cricket jacket and linen trousers to mark the centenary, 100 years and two days after the park's official opening on August 19th, 1911.

The variety of the activities which take place in the park on a daily basis was evident yesterday as locals continued to play bowls, croquet and tennis.

"It always brings back good memories," said Peter Hayden, who is originally from Bath Avenue and whose former school's football pitch was Herbert Park. "There were about 20 of us who would all come up together and play football . . . When we were finished we used to go down to Johnston Mooney, the bakery, and buy meringue cakes on the way home. You used to smell the bread baking down here."

Three generations of the MacAvock family took to the park yesterday for the celebrations. Regular park goers Desmond and Adèle MacAvock who once brought their children to the park to feed the ducks are now bringing their granddaughter down to do the same.

Their son Peter also has fond memories – aside from the two occasions when he fell into the duck pond: "People use it as a garden if you like and that's why it's great and why each of us would have our own memories of things that have gone on here," he said.

He isn't the only one who has good times with the ducks. Although twins Hannah and Zoe (5) and Robin (2) can spend hours in the children's playground, there was only one winner when they were asked what their favourite part of Herbert Park was: "The duck pond", "the duckies" and "ducks", they replied respectively. –

Pamela Duncan