Victoria Park, London

It is the largest park in Tower Hamlets and one of London's most visited green spaces with approximately 9 million visitors every year.

The park is home to many historic artifacts and features and has decorative gardens and wilder natural areas as well as open grass lands.

[6] The UK Parliament passed the York House and Victoria Park Act 1841,[7] which enabled the Crown Estate to purchases 218 acres (88 ha) which were laid out by notable London planner and architect Sir James Pennethorne between 1842 and 1846.

There is a gate named after Edmund Bonner, and guarding the main entrance at Sewardstone Road are replica statues of the Dogs of Alcibiades, the originals of which stood here from 1912 to 2009 until vandalism led to their being removed, restored and rehoused elsewhere in the park.

The park occupies much of the space between Tower Hamlets — experiencing poverty in the 19th century and with a tradition of socialist and revolutionary agitation — and Hackney, more genteel, but heir to a legacy of religious dissent and non-conformism that led to its own brand of reformism.

This description by J. H. Rosney, correspondent for Harper's Magazine (February 1888) evokes a scene: On the big central lawn are scattered numerous groups, some of which are very closely packed.

Almost all the religious sects of England and all the political and social parties are preaching their ideas and disputing [...] On this lawn the listener, as his fancy prompts him, may assist on Malthusianism, atheism, agnosticism, secularism, Calvinism, socialism, anarchism, Salvationism, Darwinism, and even, in exceptional cases, Swedenborgianism and Mormonism.

On 26 June 2014, a campaign to revive the Speakers' Corner at Victoria Park was launched at a democratic theatre event held in Shoreditch Town Hall.

Hosted by The People Speak,[15] a participatory campaign and events group, 66 audience members deliberated over how to use the pooled cash revenue from their tickets,[16] and eventually voted to recreate the well-known tradition of free speech and debate in Hyde Park in East London's Victoria Park.

During the Second World War, Victoria Park was largely closed to the public and effectively became one huge Ack-Ack (anti-aircraft) site.

The gun emplacements conveniently straddled the path of German Luftwaffe bombers looping north west after attacking the docks and warehouses further south in what is now Tower Hamlets, and so the park was of some strategic importance.

Prisoner of war camps were erected along the north eastern edge parallel to Victoria Park Road and were used to house both Germans and Italians.

More controversially, anti-aircraft activity in the park has been implicated in the crowd panic that caused the Bethnal Green tube disaster of 1943.

Some eyewitness accounts have led to the suggestion that, after several air raid alerts, the panic run for shelter was caused by a gigantic explosion of noise from the direction of the park.

The concert was played by The Clash, Steel Pulse, X-Ray Spex, The Ruts, Sham 69, Generation X, and the Tom Robinson Band.

London International Festival of Theatre presented pyrotechnics company Group F in 2001 and again in 2004, led by acclaimed pyrotechnician Christophe Berthonneau.

[21][23] Plans included a new building, the Eastern Hub, comprising a cafe, public toilets, community rooms and adult play facilities to promote healthy living.

With the park's refurbishments that began in 2010 it was decided to restore the island to its former glory; the lake was extended back around the original area, the pagoda was replicated through the use of many photographs and eye-witness information and then, to complete Pennethorne's unfinished vision, the plans for his original bridge were discovered and the bridge built after over 100 years.

As a finishing touch, pedalos and row boats were brought back on to the West lake, a feature which had been missing from the park for decades.

Visitors can either download the tracks from the council's website and put them on their own device, or they can get a pair of pre-loaded headphones from the hub in exchange for a small refundable deposit.

As part of the 2012 Summer Olympics, the Romanian Cultural Institute commissioned artist Ernö Bartha to produce two sculptures Bird and Skyscraper in the West Lake.

[24] Despite both being made of hay enforced with steel frames they still remain in the park and have become a prominent feature of the lake receiving their own plaques in 2015.