Gwyn’s Café and Pavilion
Brooke Park
Derry
@gwynspavillion
IT’S around about a year now since it reopened, Brooke Park, restored to new glories after too many years of neglect. The park, which slopes down the banks of Rosemount, on the west side of Derry, was purchased with money bequeathed by Victorian benefactor James Brooke, and the land at the time was the site of an orphanage financed by local businessman, John Gwyn. Both men had in mind the improvement of lives much in need of it.
Wide paths, deep green lawns, long-established trees, a stately pond, and flashes of spectacular colour: it’s a beautiful place. And it’s made all the more beautiful for being at the heart of a perfectly ordinary area, hemmed in by huddles of everyday terraced houses. It is both a destination and a route, and either way offers freshness, solace, vibrancy, shots of joy, restoration, and resolve.
It is wonderful to see how the park has been restored and refreshed with such consideration and empathy. Design matters. It matters because good and thoughtful design improves lives. It makes tasks easier; it enhances old experiences and creates new ones.
That good design should be for everyone is clearly a tenet of whoever worked on Brooke Park. So much is obvious not just from a look at the land itself, but also from the pavilion, which, I think I’m right in saying, was built on the site of the old orphanage.
I think this is one of the loveliest buildings in Derry. It is sleek, long, and narrow – landscape rather than portrait – single storey but with a high ceiling. Built in steel, concrete, and glass, painted in white and grey, with a living sedum roof, it is simple, elegant, and inviting. Its beautiful form follows its important function.
The front and back walls are made almost entirely of floor-to-ceiling glass. One wall provides a stunning view down the park and across the city, so you can see Derry’s fall and rise up to Altnagelvin Hospital on the horizon. The back window allows parents to keep an eye on the buzz of activity in the play park behind the building, and to see up the hill to the old Rosemount shirt factory topped with the illuminated declaration of A Stitch in Time.
Discreet and reserved from the outside, inside the building is light, airy, open, with the consideration given to good design continuing in the form of the beautifully simple chairs and tables, not to mention the Eames replicas.
The café here, like the pavilion itself, is named after John Gwyn, and, like the work on the park as a whole, has kept the best of the old and added new, fresh strokes. So, when the four of us, with two babies in tow, went, we found the freezer full of tubs of ice cream ready to be crammed into cones, and the counter stocked with chocolate bars ready to be crammed into mouths.
But that was as far as the old familiar park café staples went. Gone were the curling cheese sandwiches, replaced by bruschetta with brie and red onion, and wraps and paninis with all manner of fillings.
I couldn’t resist the homemade sausage rolls – one traditional, one chilli and cheese, both big, meaty truncheons wrapped in light and crisp pastry. My companions’ tastes run to the more exotic. The turkey and bacon panini was delicious, absolutely packed with tender turkey and salty bacon, melting cheese and sharp red onion.
The blackened Cajun chicken panini was just as good, with a lovely charred, smoky flavour to the meat, complemented by the salad and the sweet balsamic glaze. The chicken salad was excellent – a real jumble of lettuce, sweetcorn, onions, and tomatoes, freshened and kicked with a bit of chilli heat.
Everything about the café and the beautiful surroundings screams care and thought. It was known as the People’s Park and should be still. It’s clear the people who redesigned it and run it believe that people matter.
THE BILL
Turkey and bacon melt panini £4
Blackened Cajun chicken panini £4
Cajun chicken salad £5.95
Sausage roll x 2 - £2.20 x 2 £4.40
Cone of chips and dips £2.50
Banana £0.50
Caramel square x 2 (£2 x 2) £4
Cupcake £1.50
Latte £2.40
Coffee £1.80
Sparkling water £1.20
Diet Coke x 3 (£1.40 x 3) £4.20
Total for four: £36.45
