Archive pictures from the 1970s.

 Here are some scanned 35mm colour slides taken of the Park in the 1970s.

The first one is a view looking north towards Nursery Wood. On the sledging slope there was a landscape Elm and a Horse Chestnut in full bloom. In the distance you can see the large Cedar of Lebanon and Nursery Wood.

Now the Horse Chestnut has fallen over. It died because the bark was eaten off by horses which used to graze on the Park. The Elm tree has gone because it caught Dutch Elm disease. Nursery Wood has disappeared because all the Elms have been cut down and in the next picture you can see a herd of black-and-white cattle in the distance which used to graze on the Park.

As ever, the Park was a popular place for sledging. You can see snow on the roofs of houses in East Park.

Here are some landscape Elms near to the bridge and ditch. The bridge was not there of course. The Park lost a lot of landscape trees at this time. The next picture shows a huge tree that has been felled in the South East corner of the Park and the sawn trunk. The timber was perfectly sound but the trees had all died because of the fungal infection spread by the bark beetles.

This is the spring area which at this time was completely open to the cattle and was surrounded by large Poplar trees.

And finally, here is the newly constructed car park when the Park was purchased by East Herts District Council in 1980.