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.

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.

As a 9 year old kid, this park became the centre of my world in 1970-71. I remember there being a wooden-built cafe that was built on stilts in the very same place where the present one is situated. I would often sit on a deck chair outside the cafe on the green opposite. I recall buying lollies for 2 new pence in this cafe. The children's playground more or less looks the same, although back then it wasn't fenced in as it is today. I recall a snowy Christmas 1970 in this park and sliding on my improvised piece of cardboard on the slope beside the kid's slide. There was an unused concrete hut up from the children's playground - I fell from its roof and I remember being taken to the hospital around the corner from the park to be stitched up. The clock near the bowling alley was there in 1970 as were the tennis courts, the bowling alley, the fish pond and the well. Up from the park as you walk towards Brighton, I remember there being a bottled factory (Corona?) where we often trespassed. I also knew some of the kids who were living in the convent up from the park. During the summers of 1970 and 1971, I spent most of my days in this park as I lived with my father and two brothers in a B&B (one of those out by 10am B&Bs) in Addison Road. Everything seemed much bigger then, even the bushes beside the children's playground which then I could easily hide in. Now I tower over them. This park brings back some good memories in what was a difficult time for my family, having then recently lost our mother.

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!

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.

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!