Campbell Crescent restoration is completed

The redesign and restoration is one of the first projects from the award-winning Cornwall Park Master Plan (2014), developed by Nelson Byrd Woltz in collaboration with Boffa Miskell.

With the intention to re-establish the area as a grand entrance to the park, protecting and enhancing important heritage features and natural landscapes, the redesign and restoration of Campbell Crescent and the Sir John Logan Campbell memorial fountain on Manukau Road, the original entrance to Cornwall Park, was initiated in 2017 and completed in October 2020.

Campbell Crescent used to be the main entranceway to Cornwall Park, with carriages of visitors to the park often passing through. Auckland’s electric tram line had a stop nearby. At the time of original construction, the statue was surrounded by open fields of parkland.

As the city has grown, the prominence of the statue and fountain as an entrance to Cornwall Park was lost.

The fountain had been restored in 1979, largely unsuccessfully. Extensive work was undertaken to re-create a space with a sense of arrival, as it had been in 1906. Fountain upgrades including original water jet paths have been reinstated. Water consumption is much reduced from the original 45,000-plus litres per hour, and the fountain now runs on 100% recycled water. New heritage lights have been added, and walls and steps constructed from stone, to match the Cornwall Park entrance walls. Widening the paths and bench seating additions has created better accessibility.

To celebrate the diversity of Native Species which thrive in Auckland, 6000 native shrubs have been planted in surrounding garden beds, including trees, bushes, flowers and mosses. The garden was designed as a biodiversity hotspot for native birds, insects, lizards and lichen.

The vision of the overall Cornwall Park Master Plan developed by Nelson Byrd Woltz in collaboration with Boffa Miskell is to enhance “the landscape in its many guises; a recreational and scenic space, a working farm, an ecological refuge and above all, a cultural-heritage landscape”.

Find out more

Cornwall Park 100-year Masterplan

See the video here

For further information please contact John Potter or Rachel de Lambert