Nonsuch Park

The Park remains the same but the café has new management which has changed the offering. The food has improved and they now serve plenty of great food but, because you are a captive audience, the prices are slightly higher than the food deserves. Of course, they have to cover their costs for running throughout the year not just the summer months and so I pay the extra — but if the prices went up much more, I would start bringing food and having more picnics in the house grounds.

Beautiful Park with a lovely café in the mansion. Perfect for dog walkers. Fond memories of this park from my childhood when we would go into the peacock enclosure before strolling around the mansion grounds. Not sure if the peacocks are even there nowadays but this wonderful Park is still as lovely as it always has been.

Absolutely amazing park, with a lovely café at the Nonsuch Mansion! Perfect for dog owners, as lots of other dogs there too when I visited on a Saturday morning.

Denying Nonsuch Park a glittering 5 star review would be like denying my childhood. I am hugely biased when it comes to Nonsuch as my whole life has been so intrinsically linked with it and played out within its parameters.
I don’t want to sound soppy or cheesy but some of my earliest memories were in this very park: learning to ride my bike and walking our family dogs. I went to secondary school right here in the park (Nonsuch High School) and had our ball (or ‘prom’ as the new kids call it these days having stolen it from Glee and other American programmes) in the Nonsuch mansion house. Don’t tell anyone but it’s also where I had my first kiss!
In the 16^th century Henry VIII, the old rogue, built Nonsuch Palace here, which is where the park gets its name. It stayed in royal hands until Charles II gave it to Barbara Villiers sometime in 1670 and she demolished the palace and sold off the parks to pay off her gambling debts — hmmm, perhaps not the kind of person you should be handing palaces out to, eh Charlie-​boy? Only remnants of the palace are left today.
This is a HUGE and beautiful park with big open spaces great for dogs, a few dog-​free cordoned-​off picnic areas, a big mansion house where you can get ice-​cream in the summer months or a cup of tea when it’s chillier and even a big pond (if you can find it) where as kids my sister and I would come to look at the frog spawn (I have no idea why we found it so fascinating). Round the back of the mansion house there are some beautiful landscape gardens making it a popular spot for weddings. I’ve also attended a classical music evening in these gardens where you take your own picnic along and it was lovely!
Well worth a visit if you’re in the area and should be a regular feature if you’re a local. I’m telling you, there’s ‘none-​such’ like it!

This park is absolutely gorgeous and massive considering it is so close to London. There are many different areas to explore on a walk and it offers an incredibly impressive ramp park for bike riders. The Manor house has dog free areas, so you know you are not going to sit in anything you don’t want to whilst having your picnic. Once a year they have a band in the park evening which is great entertainment.