St. Ann’s Well Gardens

It took me a while to discover this lovely park! Well, it’s a lovely tiny, and often very busy place :) It’s another place in Brigton, where you can play tennis, table tennis, or lawn bowling, as particular space for that is provided.
There is also a café, where you can get some cool lunch, from variuos salads to fish and chipsk as well as tea and coffee. Let’s say, there is some healthy choice for lunch, as well as unhealthy. Also, ice cream, very relevant for kids.
The park is very well maintained, hedges trimmed, lawns are mowed, etc.
I love, that st. Anns well gardens’ visitors are very different; from kids and their mums, enjoying green space and fish in the pond, to elderly, often making friends at lawn bowling; from workers, coming here on the lunchbreak, get some snacks and play table tennis, to passers by, walking their dogs.
I’ve noticed occasionally small fairs are held there, selling handmade crafts.
We’ll, I should say, that its a safe and enjoyable environment for children and other ‘classes’ of people. Worth coming here for a lunch, to get some rest from city-​life. Place, worth of discovery, if undiscovered yet.

A gem. Off the 7 bus route and near Western road Nice Café There is also an important LGBT memorial and during the festival there are special events. There is also a sensory garden for all but esp Blind persons. The best park in Brighton, apart from Hove Park The council staff should be praised for this expect not. Cheers Review By Mr Dog: great park for squirrel hunting and sniffing my owner takes my waste home too! Fido Age 8

Lovely gardens with a grand gated entrance, leading to a wonderland of all things green.
Celebrating a long history, the gardens were first opened to the public in 1908, and now boasts 8 tennis courts, a bowling green, a childrens playground, a sensory garden, and most famously the iron bearing spring, now known as St Anne’s Well.
My first visit to the park was just this weekend, having stumbled upon it whilst cycling around on my new bike. There’s a café selling food and drink, and most importantly ice cream, and plenty of little nooks and crannies for kids to climb trees and friends to wander.
A lovely place to chill out and enjoy the summer sunshine.

It has a sensory garden. This in itself should be reason enough to make anyone want to pay a visit. Located quite near to the Hove seafront, this beautiful and romantic garden has more to offer than tranquil space. Besides offering a bowling green, tennis courts, a playground, café and a «well-​stocked fish pond» they have an «iron-​bearing» stream that is interestingly the beginning of a ley line that continues up through the South Downs. The park is beautiful and is always well maintained and looks so picturesque in the summer you will be beside yourself.

There are people who live in the Brighton/​Hove area for many years and never visit St Ann’s Well Gardens. They are missing the «jewel within the crown» as St Ann’s Well is a haven, not to be missed
There are beautiful gardens well layed out with plenty of open space for cgildren to play. There is a bowling freen and tennis courts. At the centre of the gardens there is a lovely café where you can get snacks and lunches.
But for me, and many others, the real joy of the gardens lies in the nature consrvation areas and the wildlife attracted to the gardens and is a favourite place for bird and squirrel watching.

Somewhere along the way during the development of our fair city, someone, probably wearing a stovepipe hat and whiskers, said «Gentlemen, we need a park that has everything!» That is at least what I think happened shortly before the development of St Ann’s Well Gardens. Despite being a little smaller than its counterpart, or counterpark if you will, it really seems to have it all save a boating lake or space program. The Park has several entrances, the main one from Somerhill Road being a grand Victorian affair with four large red brick pillars. You pass through these along a wide asphalt path with two tennis courts on your left followed by a bowls green and small café and toilets to your right. Then it’s either off into the beautifully maintained terrace gardens or hang a left onto one of the many winding little footpaths that meander through the copse of mature trees and even over a small brook. Beyond the garden element of the park there is a large children’s play area with one of the largest slides I’ve seen since my own childhood back in the mid 1980s (and it’s not just that I’ve grown either), the usual fort with rope nets set up and even a zip line.
The best time to visit is definitely in summer as the park then takes on a joyous sense of community that you might normally expect to find relegated to a book of sepia toned images of the 1950s. That’s not to say that winter is entirely without charm, the tall trees on the southern side of the park have a wistful majesty that justifies a detour on any dull November day.

This is a lovely and much underrated park, easily accessible from the Seven Dials and Montpelier areas.
It came as quite a suprise to me to find this wide, green open space here, in the middle of the built up inner suburbs, and there’s always a very calm and comforting kind of feel. It’s large, but easy to find a nice corner under a tree to read a book, and the undulating curves of the place mean it never really feels as large as it is.
As well as plenty of open green space, there’s all the facilities you’d expect, including sports facilities and a kids playground.

When I lived in Manchester, the only activity that took place in my local park was junkies shooting up and kids on BMXs looking for trouble.
By contrast, my new local park — St. Ann’s Well Gardens — is a little piece of paradise. Accessible from Furze Hill, Somerhill Road and Nizells Road, its a peaceful and well maintained park with a special woodland area for flowers, squirrels, birds and other animals. There’s a bowling area, tennis courts, a large kids playground with swings, slides and climbing frames and a cute café selling hot drinks, snacks and ice-​cream.
People walk their dogs and grab 5 minutes of peace and quiet here all year round whilst in the summer, it becomes a favourite with families for picnics and days out. There’s clean public toilets and occasional community events too, like the forthcoming Halloween extravaganza at the end of the month.
I know, I should have moved sooner!

Great park and café, tennis courts are usually available too. Public loos always handy to know about.

This park is somewhere we still travel back into Hove for. We moved to Worthing from Hove in 2006 and instantly regretted not having somewhere as lovely as this within walking distance!
Our children never tire of the extensive playareas with the biggest slide they know of.
The café is always good for tasty wholseome food at very reasonable prices.

St Ann’s Well Gardens is an attractive and traditional park bounded by Somerhill Road, Nizells Road and Furze Hill in Hove. There are entrances to the park from each road.
Opened in 1908, the compact gardens have something for everyone: There’s a wild woodland area, popular with dog walkers and wildlife enthusiasts, with different species of trees, birdlife and squirrels; two play areas for children (one for toddlers); a small pond; 8 tennis courts and a bowling green; an accessible sheltered ‘sensory garden’ with lots of scented plants, plenty of seats and a handrail around the perimeter; traditional lawns and flower beds; and a café, open 9 – 16.30h (depending on the weather — ring ahead on (1 273) 735 187). Tennis courts can be booked on (1 273) 292 704 or online via the web-​site.
The gardens are named after a ‘Chalybeate’ (iron bearing) spring, famous for its health-​giving waters. The well is supposedly known from Saxon times, although the dedication to Ann may reflect the popularity of dedicating wells to her after the return of Crusaders from the Holy Land from 1150 onwards.
The iron-​rich waters — which emerged with some force — were recommended as a tonic by Dr Richard Russell (1687 – 1759) and by Mrs Fitzherbert (1756 – 1837), the friend of the Prince regent, later George IV. Around 1800 an imposing pump room was built over the spring to accommodate the substantial number of visitors who came to ‘take the waters’.
Towards the end of the 19^th century, artesian wells sunk locally meant that the flow of the waters had considerably declined and the enterprise closed. The Pump House on the site was demolished in 1935, and a small ‘Wishing Well’ now marks the spot. A small (and rather unreliable) spring now feeds a stream through the park.
The gardens are busy all year round with families and dog owners, and especially so in summer. They were awarded a Green Flag in 2006 for their quality and the Council’s commitment to nature conservation on the site.
It’s a favourite spot for mine for a walk, fresh air and a cup of coffee!