Carr Ellison Park

The park was donated in 1897. The main entrance is on Canning Street. It had tennis courts and glasshouses to the east and the grounds of Hebburn Infirmary on the left. A memorial to the men who fell in the Boer War 1899-1902 was built on a mound adjacent to the Dell. The space is divided with small groves of trees and lawns leading towards a larger lawn where a monument was situated, the drinking fountain was at a junction of winding paths. Looking south the islands of trees provided a backdrop to the bandstand and a huge lawn on the south west. It appears the park was designed to give plenty of spatial diversions. Access was available to Hebburn Cemetery. Three bowling greens were positioned west of the vicarage. Cuthbert Ellison died in 1868 and left his estates to his nephew Ralph Carr. In 1897 the Carr Ellison family gave a large proportion of the grounds of Hebburn Hall (HER 1951) to the community of Hebburn for a park. In 1920 Colonel Carr-Ellison donated a war memorial for the park. The gate piers may be contemporary with the hall but the gates and railings are later. An area described as a fishpond on the 1854 Ordnance Survey remains as the dell. It may have been a small pleasure garden. The dell contains a number of retaining walls and a network of paths and steps set under trees. Attempts at restoration and adaptation have made the area difficult to interpret. The most dominant feature is a tier of three walls, the highest curves up on either side to a ball finial. Terraces, retained by stone walls curve round the south side of a mound. Steps lead down to a flat open area - the former pond? The paths divert into little walled semicircular alcoves. Hebburn Hall had a very large walled garden to the west. The Carrs and Ellisons were great gardeners and when Carr moved to Cheshire circa 1740 he wrote a letter concerning gardening and mentioned the Ashton pear which he had discovered and was sending to be planted at Hebburn. LOCAL LIST