THE GLEN PUBLIC OPEN SPACE

Given to the Borough of Honiton by Major H. H. Lilley to commemorate the Silver Jubilee in 1935 and opened on Coronation Day 1938, the Lower Glen is part of the steep sided valley of the Glen Stream which flows from the hills south of the town. Below the Glen the stream is culverted through urban Honiton. The Lower Glen comprises various paths added over the years, shrubberies, trees and especially the stream and the first section of a historic leat or water channel diverted from the stream and which used to flow along New Street and part of the High Street.

The Lower Glen leat: the closest to the town centre the water now reaches

Major Lilley expressed the hope during the opening celebrations that one day the Higher Glen, not in his ownership, could be added to the land he had given, for the people of Honiton. Almost 70 years later, Major Lilley's hope, which he even offered to partly finance in his will, has come to fruition. The Higher Glen, described as one of the finest examples of a wild garden in the 1930s and long past its heyday of a century ago is now even more wild. Nevertheless much of the structure of a Victorian water garden still survives.

A regional chartered landscape practice acting for East Devon District Council and Honiton Town Council produced a feasibility study, conservation management plan and ecological survey in 2003 and these together with a new road bridge provided by the developer Wilcon Homes, a division of Wilson Connolly plc, to safeguard the water garden, in place of a previously planned embankment and culvert, make restoration possible subject to funding. Restoration that would be made somewhat easier by lantern slides, photographs and picture postcards still surviving from the 1880s onwards. Postcards with postmarks so far traced carry dates between 1904 and 1911.

Two areas have been provided by developers that extend the public open space and one of these includes a play area, the only one in this part of Honiton. Considerable activity is taking place regenerating the Lower Glen: good practice for the bigger challenge of the Higher Glen. Honiton is fortunate to have The Glen running from close to the railway station to the boundary of the Blackdown Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.  

Additional volunteers for work days in The Glen are welcome and anyone interested should contact the Town Council Office from where a leaflet, published in 2008, containing information about The Glen and its wildlife is also available.

Already the recipient of BBC Breathing Places funding, The Glen was specifically registered as a BBC Breathing Place during December 2009 and now has a website (please see Useful Links on this website).