Wicksteed Park | The Wicksteed Charitable Trust

Wicksteed Park is wholly owned by Wicksteed Charitable Trust and is a Grade II English Heritage Listed Park & Garden. Our community, education and heritage activities promote the precious historic landscape, heritage rides and provide new opportunities for communities to engage and participate.

The original Wicksteed Trust was set up in 1916 to carry on Charles’ wor k. The trusts main objectives are to provide charitable purposes for the benefit of people resident, but not exclusively, in Kettering and its neighbourhood, in particular the provision of facilities for recreation and other leisure time occupation in the interests of social welfare to improve the conditions of life of the users of such facilities.

From its early days the park catered for free play and contact with nature; photo of paddling in the lake, from Wicksteed archive

Laying the Railway, 1931, Wicksteed Archive

The Trust continues to achieve its objectives by:

• Providing free access to open spaces conducive to health. These open spaces comprise gardens, an arboretum and parkland at Wicksteed Park.

• The operation of a leisure park through its wholly owned subsidary company Wicksteed Park Limited. The leisure park is situated within Wicksteed Park.