Broomfield House UPDATE
Emerging plans to memorialise Broomfield House
An update on Broomfield House (February 2023)
Late last year, Enfield Council announced that would be bidding for Lottery funding for a project titled
“Unlocking Broomfield Park for the Community” to
“kick-start the rejuvenation of Broomfield Park by . . . reconnecting the park and House through memorialisation, interpretation, and landscaping. Heritage engagement activities over 2 years will involve the community and result in a shared vision & memorialisation of their memories of Broomfield House.”
We felt that the project title is positive and reflects the significance of the site and its relationship with the park and the Stableyard. We welcomed the planned Heritage engagement activities with the community over two years, which will be critical to a successful outcome of the project. We hope that this will ensure that the proposed design creatively embraces archaeology, heritage, landscape, and community aspects of the House.
The Council has set up a Working Group for the project, which includes Ward Councillors, representatives of The Enfield Society, The FoBP and the Broomfield House Trust. The Working Group met in December and discussed the vision, aims and scope of the project and what will be needed for the first stage bid, which will have to be submitted by the end of August 2023. If the bid is successful, we hope that this will the first stage of a programme of heritage improvements to the park over the next ten years, including the Stable Yard and the lakes and wider landscape.
Members of the Working Group have met with LBE officers to discuss ways to engage with the local community and to ensure that the voices of school children and especially of young girls and teenagers are heard alongside those of older people with memories of the House and Park. The Sub-Committee has also produced a consultation list of stakeholder groups beyond the Broomfield House Trust and Friends of Broomfield Park.
The Working Group has visited the inside of the House and Stable Block, and we were interested to see that there appears to be the potential to retain some of the structure of the House and to re-use some of the building materials such as bricks in the memorialisation project. The extent of this would require an assessment by a conservation engineer.
We will provide a further updates on the FoBP website and our Facebook page.
David March 25/02/2023
David March • February 26, 2023
