Hillyfields Community Park

Hillyfields Community Park: The Orchard on the Hill That a Town Refused to Lose

Stand at the top of Hillyfields on a clear morning and the view alone tells you why people have fought for this ground. The Medway glints below, the rooftops of Gillingham stretch out in every direction, and behind you the gnarled branches of old fruit trees — apple, pear, damson — creak in the breeze like they've been waiting for someone to listen. This is not a manicured estate garden. It is something rarer: a working-class hilltop orchard that survived the twentieth century by sheer stubbornness, then was brought back to life by the people who grew up in its shadow.

A Greengrocer's Orchard in the Countryside

Long before the housing estates and primary schools hemmed it in, the upper slopes of Hillyfields were open Kentish countryside — and the orchard that crowned the hill was a commercial operation, owned and tended by a local greengrocer who grew fruit to sell. Kent's identity as the Garden of England was not merely a slogan in those years; it was an economic reality, and small commercial orchards like this one dotted the landscape from the Medway Towns to the Weald. The greengrocer's plot at Hillyfields was one of hundreds, producing apples, pears and damsons for local tables.

As Gillingham expanded through the mid-twentieth century, the countryside retreated. Streets closed in around the orchard. The greengrocer's enterprise ended, and the fruit trees — never grubbed out, never replanted — simply grew wild. But the hill itself remained open ground, and the orchard's memory lingered in the neighbourhood. Years later, when local men — the lads, as they were many years ago — finally admitted to having spent many a happy hour up there scrumping the fruit, only to be chased off by the farmer, the stories unlocked something. Hillyfields was not just derelict land. It was a place where a community's childhood had played out among the branches.

Regeneration: Turning Neglect into Belonging

By the early 2000s, Hillyfields sat in one of Medway's areas of highest social deprivation and unemployment. The hilltop was underused, the orchard overgrown, and the surrounding streets lacked any meaningful green gathering space. What changed everything was a partnership between Medway Council and a determined community group — the Friends of Hillyfields — who saw what the site could become if someone simply cared enough to try.

Between 2005 and 2009, the park was transformed. The regeneration was not cosmetic — it was structural. New entrances were designed to stop vehicles driving onto the site. Surfaced paths and steps were built to connect the park's three distinct levels: the lower play area on Parr Avenue, the middle sports field with its thousand-metre perimeter pathway, and the upper orchard and woodland. Crucially, the plan opened up the old orchard — previously walled off by decades of bramble and neglect — reconnecting it to the rest of the park and making it accessible for community events, foraging and quiet walking.

The children's play area, blending natural and man-made elements, became a focal point for families from the surrounding streets. Nestled between St Mary's Catholic Primary School to the south and Saxon Way Primary School to the west, Hillyfields was suddenly exactly where it needed to be — at the centre of a community that had lacked a proper shared green space for a generation.

The Orchard Reborn

The real soul of Hillyfields has always been up on the top tier. The former commercial orchard, though overgrown for decades, still held many of its original fruit trees — survivors from the greengrocer's era, still producing apples, pears and damsons each autumn. The community restoration effort centred on saving these veterans while planting for the future: new hedgerows were established, gaps in the canopy filled with young fruit trees, and volunteer task days organised for vegetation clearance and dead hedging.

Today the orchard is open to everyone, and visitors are actively encouraged to forage — a far cry from the days when scrumping boys fled from the farmer's shouts. Kent Orchards For Everyone, a county-wide initiative to protect and celebrate Kent's orchard heritage, recognises Hillyfields as one of its registered sites. The orchard is small by county standards, but its significance is enormous: it is living proof that a commercial fruit-growing tradition stretching back generations can survive urbanisation, neglect and economic change if a community decides it matters.

What They Built — and What They Keep Building

The Friends of Hillyfields have raised over £120,000 in community funding over the years. That figure represents not one grand gesture but hundreds of smaller ones — cake sales, sponsored walks, grant applications, volunteer hours. The money has funded the playground, an inclusive basket swing, a table tennis table, new park signage, and the ongoing orchard restoration. They have secured hundreds of free tree saplings, bulbs and plants to green the site further.

But the Friends' most distinctive contribution may be cultural rather than physical. Each February, they hold a Wassail in the orchard — the ancient English tradition of singing to the fruit trees, making noise to ward off evil spirits, and toasting the coming harvest with cider and song. It is a ritual that would have been familiar to the greengrocer who first planted these trees, and it connects the park to a tradition of orchard celebration that runs deep through Kent's history. In January, the group runs an annual Big Bird Watch from the park, and throughout the year, Dawn Chorus Walks draw early risers to the hilltop to listen to the birdsong that thrives in the orchard canopy.

A Green Flag on the Hill

Hillyfields Community Park holds the Green Flag Award — the international benchmark for publicly accessible parks and green spaces, administered by Keep Britain Tidy. It is one of eight Medway parks to carry the distinction, and for a ten-acre site in one of the borough's most deprived wards, it represents something remarkable. The Green Flag is not awarded for beauty alone; it demands evidence of community involvement, environmental management, and a clear long-term vision. Hillyfields has all three.

The park also sits along the Saxon Shore Way, the long-distance walking trail that traces the ancient coastline of south-east England. Walkers arriving from the direction of the disused railway line that once connected Gillingham to Chatham Docks pass through the park's gates on Parr Road and find themselves climbing through one of the most unexpected green spaces in the Medway Towns — a place where the view of the river, the old fruit trees and the sound of children playing all coexist on a single hillside.

Looking Forward

Hillyfields is open at all hours, every day, free to everyone. The orchard still fruits each autumn. The Wassail still rings out each February. Volunteers still turn up with gloves and secateurs to keep the brambles at bay and the young trees growing. In a part of Medway where green space was once an afterthought, this hilltop has become the centre of gravity for a community that built its own park — not from scratch, but from memory, mud and a few dozen old fruit trees that nobody had the heart to cut down.

This article was partly inspired by old photographs and recordings that came to light when someone brought their personal memories to be digitised. It made us wonder what else is out there — in attics, shoeboxes, old cupboards — connected to Hillyfields Community Park. If anyone holds old media connected to this place, services like EachMoment can help preserve them for future generations.