I'd been past Old North's Doidge Park on many occasions without stopping to read this monument. Erected by the Historic Sites Committee of the Public Library Board in 2000, and christened with a speech from local heritage advocate Julia Beck, the cairn commemorates the history of this sunken basin at the southeast corner of Wellington and Cheapside.
Two early settlers, Richard Jones Evans and John Anthistle, established lime kilns near this spot, burning deposits of limestone into lime to be used in mortar and cement. Evans, along with London lawyer David Margrave Thompson, subdivided the surrounding land into building lots in 1856.
John's son William expanded his father's business and mined "The Pit," as it became known, for gravel, sand and cobblestones for local building. William made cement blocks and sewer pipes and laid out some of north London's first sidewalks. Many of the cobblestone-clad houses he built still stand, including his own home on nearby Cromwell Street, which dead ends just east of the park.
During the Depression, the gravel pit was taken over by the city, which, with its usual lack of imagination, used it as a parking area for city machinery. But in 1949, local residents formed the North London Community Association and lobbied to have Anthistle's pit converted into a park and playground. Thus it became Doidge Park, named after John C. Doidge, chair of the playground committee of the PUC. The park opened in 1958 with financial help from the Kiwanis Club.
But on a snowy winter day the park becomes the quintessential toboggan slope for children throughout the neighbourhood and beyond ...
... and if they break anything while tobogganing, there's St. Joe's Hospital in the background, ready to come to the rescue. Altogether an excellent example of what the plaque calls "reclaimed urban wasteland." The Pit is still there for the enjoyment of today's residents.
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