FROM SOLID ROCK

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 328, 13 April 1928, Page 14

FROM SOLID ROCK

MT. EDEN TO HEW PARKS CROQUET AND CRICKET

Hewn out of solid rook and j screened from the chill south j winds, the spacious greens of the Mount Eden Croquet Club are the j admiration of followers of the game in Auckland, and were ! classed by Sir Francis Colchester ■ Wemyss, the English champion, j who recently toured New Zealand, i as the finest greens he had ever j played on. rfHE scheme for this handsome recreation ground, so boldly conceived, was energetically carried into effect by the Mount Eden Borough Council, and is but part of a bigger and bolder plan, for in the near future bowlers „ will be coquetting with “Kitty” 'where the gorse flowers in golden patches on twisted lava flows poured out from the once fiery crater of Mount Eden, and cricketers will have three acres of fiat into which a stony walled ravine is being converted. The carrying out of the improvements has been deputed by the borough to Mr. W. W. Woolley, chairman of the Works Committee. When the scheme is finished Nicholson Park will be an ornament to the borough and to the city, for the city has some slight interest in the former waste that comprised .the Mount Eden and Epsom Domain. The Normal School and Training College have been erected on part of the old Domain, and the city is to erect a war memorial there overlooking the new park. The croquet greens are walled in by a picturesque wind-screen of rock, 1 with nooks and cosy seats, and eastward is a group of tennis courts above which a splendid promenade is being formed for the convenience of visitors. The lava has had to be hewn foot by foot to give room for the play ' fields and paths, and beyond the tennis and croquet areas a crumpled patch of rock, an acre in extent, is to bo 1 levelled off to gladden the eyes of ; bowlers. A 15ft. wide walk will encircle the greens and access to them 1 will he by flower covered ramps ’ carved from rock, the modelling of i, which is now nearly completed, so that Mount Eden will look down on terraces framed in paths of white shell ‘ embroidered with gay flowers and carpeted with green turf where now the ■ weathered volcano-rock is hidden by a sympathetic nature with wild scrub.

More determined, however, was the effort to give the game of cricket an opportunity. With scarce a square yard of level surface anywhere and an ugly gully following a tortuous* route toward the south, a plan was adopted of gouging out the gully sides, using the rock in road work and making three acres of level ground. The rock walls shielding the flat will be roaded and terraced to form a natural grandstand, where artistic shrubbery will replace the wild growth now clinging to the stone. A more uninviting site for a park could not have been imagined, but when the work has been completed It will be a monument to the energy, enthusiasm and vision of the Mount Eden Borough Council.