Preston Park Café

This is the other café in Preston Park– not the rotunda, the larger house-​like one in the very center of the park. It does in fact look like a large, and perhaps a little scary, private house which opens up its ground floor to reveal a café. On clear days they couple who run the café set out plastic chairs and tables on terraces at the front and round the sides, so you can sit in the sun whilst the kids/​dog play, or round the side in the shade. The interior of the café is not that pleasant to sit in as it is very sparingly decorated and quite cold and echoey but the cakes, ice-​creams, hot beverages and sandwiches they sell are very yummy and welcome. The filter coffee is suprisingly good and strong, despite the horrible styrofoam cups (grr! buy recyclable paper!) and cheap. The ice-​creams have kept many a child and parent happy and the cakes… well! I have returned over and over for the homemade cakes on offer– particularly the apricot or date flapjacks: sweet soft layers of fruit with crumbly buttery oats. So good! They also do a wicked lemon drizzle and a light Victoria sponge. The toilets are also open to all and very clean.

This delightful small, walled garden is something of a hidden secret, situated at the north end of Preston Park and adjacent to Preston Manor.
The garden is laid out as a quadrant, and features a small formal pond, a laburnham archway and extensive formal beds and herbaceous borders. Although maintenance isn’t quite what it might be (and herbaceous borders require a tremendous amount of maintenance in season) it’s still a lovely place to wander, and there is a huge number of plants to admire. It’s a good place to get inspiration for your own garden.
Although parts of the garden walls date to the early 17^th century, the garden was actually laid out in the late Victorian and early Edwardian periods. It is now planted as a ‘Queen Anne’ garden, typical of small 17^th and 18^th-​century gardens.
The south west corner includes a late 19^th-​century pet cemetery, wherein are interred 16 dogs and 4 cats, 3 of which were employed as ‘mousers’ by the local council. The most poignant memorial reads: ‘In memory of dear Soot, who for nine years was our faithful friend and playfellow. He was cruelly poisoned and died in consequence on June 17^th, 1884′.
The garden was restored in 2001 with money from the Heritage Lottery Fund.