This site was bought by Brent in 1979 and has been used as a public park ever since. The whole area used to be owned by All Souls College, Oxford. In the 15th century the college was endowed with what was then farmland by its founder, Cardinal Thomas Chichele Archbishop of Canterbury.
From about the mid 1870s until 1905 the area was developed as an area of suburban residential housing, now known as the Mapesbury Estate.