Our favourite place

St Annes Well Gardens
From a private collection
Pond in St Anne's Well Gardens
From a private collection

Our favourite place is St Anne’s Well Gardens. It’s a great place to hang out with my daughter. We both love it. There’s just so much to do. We often feed the squirrels. And there’s a wild area with lots of birds, fish too and a garden for the blind with herbs and plants with distinctive smells. There’s also tennis, a children’s playground, a cafe, ice creams and bowling and during the holidays there are special events.

Green route to school
My daughter’s school is nearby and we walk through there every day on our way to work and school. They use it for insect finding and nature walks and sometimes the kids make dens in the trees.

It’s very convenient being right on our doorstep so if I can’t be bothered to go to the beach, then I’ll lie in the park. You can watch the world go by there.

And in spring there’s the “pink avenue”- a whole avenue of cherry blossom trees and beneath them a carpet of pink petals. It’s so beautiful.

Comments about this page

  • I am a design student at Brighton Uni. As a design brief we are working with an organiser who is putting together the Brighton Festival in the park for one day in the summer. Our brief is to design an installation for the festival along the festival’s ethnic theme. Any ideas? And wishes? Let me know .

    By Vahakn Matossian (08/01/2005)
  • I’ve lived near this delightful park for nearly 20 years – five minutes from my house. Lovely tennis courts, cafe and people and full of healing greens and vibrant flowers….a thing I don’t value enough!

    By Bernardo (31/12/2005)
  • This park holds so many great childhood memories. From walking through it to and from Somerhill School, to my mum teaching me to ride my big new shiny bike round by the bowling green.
    Playing hide and seek (and kiss chase) in the bushes and trees, and watching the fish in the pond (before it was fenced off). I’m 36 now but it still feels like yesterday.

    By Maria Lanigan (07/11/2008)
  • I worked as a student at the nearby Wardley Hotel in Somerhill Avenue during the summers of 1979/80 circa. The owner at the time was the film actor Terence Morgan who was also on the charitable committee for an animal clinic in Brighton where I worked with the vet Mr L Brown and also Mr Tindall in the office whose daughter Hilary was in the TV serial ‘The Brothers’. At the time I was studying at Varndean VIth form college. The gardens were a lovely place for lunch and meeting student friends.

    By Nina Blount (30/11/2009)
  • I recall all this – I lived in Montefiorie Road. The bowling alley – our mongrel dog, wild ‘n woolley, escaped its lead and rushed across the bowling green, much to the annoyance of the pristine bowlers, nothing was fenced in. My brother had got together a band (everyone did then, didn’t they?) and decided to play an impromptu gig in Montefiorie Road. Needless to say everything in Hove ground to a halt as he and his band decided to play in the street – bottom of Montefiorie and Davigdor Road. Wonderful 1975!

    By Evie Cozens (05/04/2012)
  • When I think about days spent in this park as a young lad in the 60s it always puts me in mind of a quote by Alan Bennett “Were we closer to the ground then, or is the grass emptier now?” Dasies, buttercups, dandelion clocks, green painted chairs with “2d” stencilled on them, making boats from the reeds beside the pond, getting a shoefull of rust-red mud from the stream, and forever parkie- dodging.

    By Mark Thompson (23/05/2012)
  • I lived in Landsdowne Road, Hove as a child from 1946 to 1957 and spent many, many very happy hours in this Park. We didn’t go on holidays in those days but I did not feel deprived – going to the Park was my holiday!

    By Pat Lawrance (25/05/2012)
  • I left nearby Landsdowne Place in 1964 when I was 13 years old, up until then St Anne’s Well Gardens was my world! Does anyone else remember the hill (incline) near the back of the park where we would go tobogganing in the snow?

    By Peter Godwin (01/10/2012)
  • I remember this park. I used to love to play on the swings and often used to go there after school with friends. It was a great place for hide and seek. I remember the tennis court and the cafe.

    By SANDIE WALLER (02/10/2012)

Add a comment about this page

Your email address will not be published.