East Park: Hull's Most Underrated Green Space
Splash park, boating lake, animal enclosure and 130 acres of Victorian parkland — and most people outside the east of the city have never been.
East Park sits about two miles from the city centre, in a part of Hull that doesn't often make it onto visitor itineraries. That's the first thing to know about it, and the first reason it's worth going: it is a proper Victorian municipal park, large and unhurried, used by the people who live near it rather than the people who write about Hull.
The park opened in 1887 and the bones of the original layout are still there — the boating lake, the formal gardens, the long sight lines that Victorian park designers were so good at. But East Park has also accumulated things over its 130-odd years: a small animal and bird enclosure where children can see wallabies and meerkats, a Splash Park that runs through the summer, a newly renovated café, and the Khyber Pass — a rockery feature that children have been climbing on for generations.
In summer the park fills up quickly on hot days and the splash park queue gets long. The better visiting time, if you're not bringing children specifically for the water, is a weekday morning in June or September when the park is quiet and the café is reliably open. The boating lake hire runs on warmer days and is exactly as leisurely as it sounds.
East Park is free. It always has been. In a city with a lot of pay-to-enter attractions, that still feels significant.
