Majestic Cornwall Park entrance restored
The first project in Cornwall Park’s 100 year masterplan has been completed.
Campbell Crescent has now been re-established as a grand entrance to the part, protecting and enhancing important heritage features and natural landscapes.
Nelson Byrd Woltz in collaboration with Boffa Miskell is responsible for the redesign and restoration of the majestic entrance and the Sir Logan Campbell memorial fountain on Auckland’s Manukau Road in Epsom.
The fountain at Cornwall Park.
Campbell Crescent used to be the main entranceway to Cornwall Park, with carriages of visitors to the park often passing through.
Auckland’s electric tram line had a stop nearby. At the time of original construction, the statue was surrounded by open fields of parkland.
As the city grew, the prominence of the statue and fountain as an entrance to Cornwall Park was lost.
The fountain now runs on recycled water.
The fountain had been restored in 1979, largely unsuccessfully. Extensive work was undertaken to re-create a space with a sense of arrival, as it had been in 1906.
Fountain upgrades including original water jet paths have been reinstated. Water consumption is much reduced from the original 45,000-plus litres per hour, and the fountain now runs on 100% recycled water.
An aerial of the crescent.
New heritage lights have been added, and walls and steps constructed from stone, to match the Cornwall Park entrance walls. Widening the paths and bench seating additions has created better accessibility.
To celebrate the diversity of native species which thrive in Auckland, 6000 native shrubs have been planted in surrounding garden beds, including trees, bushes, flowers and mosses. The garden was designed as a biodiversity hotspot for native birds, insects, lizards and lichen.
Cornwall Park is a 172-hectare parkland gifted to the people of New Zealand by Sir John Logan Campbell in 1903. The Sir John Logan Campbell statue and fountain was one of the earliest features of Cornwall Park to be constructed; and it was dedicated in 1906. Campbell Crescent was envisioned by Austin Strong, the original landscape architect of Cornwall Park, as the main arrival to the newly established parkland and the beginning of the approach to Maungakiekie.