Pasley Park Festival (Sergeant Stubbs Fete) 2025

On 6 Sep, 12-5 pm, FUN will see the whole of the ‘Pasley Park’ transformed with a FREE community festival fete for all the family.

Our Pasley Park is a little park with a big history. Sited between Kennington and Walworth Road, it provides the local community with a centre where people can come and relax, sit on the benches, play games, walk under its beautiful trees, or admire its plants.  It began life as the Royal Surrey Zoological Gardens, one of the first zoos London, where some 170 animal species attracted 8,000 visitors a day.  Now two stone ostriches remind people of some of these exotic animals.  The Gardens were eventually built over, but a small park was created within the housing developments.  Some years ago, the Park was awarded a Green Flag for excellence, with the pole decorated in giraffe colours to reflect the first place in the UK to show these animals.  

On 6 Sep, our FREE community fete opens at 12.00 and runs until 5 pm and will include many exciting elements:

• The famous dog show at 1:15-2:15 (Registration 12-1 pm)
• Music, and dance.
• Free activities for the kids, including face painting
• Foods of the World.
• Market Zone.
• Arts and Crafts.
• DJ
• Art workshops

This year we are theming the event around Sergeant Stubbs:

Sgt Frank Stubbs, VC-Memorial based in the park (https://pasleypark.org/feature/sgt-frank-edward-stubbs-victoria-cross/)

On 25 April 1915, Sgt Frank Stubbs’ platoon stormed a beach on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey.  Cutting through wire entanglements and under heavy hidden machine gun bombardment, Frank led his men up the cliffs, but fell short of the rendezvous point, the solitary tree, on the South side of Hill 114, when he was killed by a bullet to the head.  He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his many acts of bravery that day.   Frank was 27 years old.

A Walworth boy, Frank joined the 1st Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers at a very young age.   Having served in India, Frank was an experienced soldier when his Battalion was posted to the Dardanelles in 1914. His Platoon achieved their target during the battle where he fell, and all his men were in agreement that his courageous actions to scale the heights were worthy of the Victoria Cross.

The Friends of Pasley Park and Southwark Kaleidoscope have joined forces to present this event and have been fortunate to receive funding from Southwark Council Neighbourhood Fund, North Southwark Environmental Trust and St Saviour’s charity to put on this FREE ‘Sergeant Stubbs’ community fete.

Peta Steel, the Co-Chair of the Friends of Pasley park said, “Pasley Park is proud to stage this event bringing our community together and reminding people of the bravery of one of our own local heroes Frank Stubbs who lived in Chapter Road”.