What Three Words: ///embellish.files.achieving
OS Grid Reference: SX105599
This land was given to the town under a trust that provides playing fields in perpetuity for the use of local people
The area once known as Hick’s Moor was a long meadow used for grazing and covering what is now the playing field and Second Island. Bullocks were driven over from Lanivet to graze here and to await slaughter at the abattoir adjoining the railway sidings on the other side of the river. This land was cut in half by the construction of the A390 in 1939, but it continued to be used for grazing until the town council acquired the southern half of the meadow to designate, in 1961, as the King George V Playing Fields. The entrance gates from the car park, built from local materials, display the name of the field and there are heraldic panels on the stone gate posts.
The fields were acquired under a foundation set up to memorialise the late king. The foundation provided the money for the Town Council to acquire the land and place it in trust with the National Playing Fields Association (now Fields in Trust). The field in Lostwithiel was one of 471 playing fields across the country set up under this scheme. The Trust limits the use of the land to ‘outdoor games, sports, and pastimes’, and specifies that it cannot be used for purely ornamental gardens.
The park playground in 1965 looking towards the entrance gates from the river