This largish park near London Bridge is the result of post-WW2 clearance when most of the site was flattened by bombs.
This part of London started to be developed in the 1740s, with the area to the south of the park developed first as Mr Walker’s Glue Manufactury, and b the 1820s, the park site was home to a tannery yard for cleaning leathers, and a number of smaller buildings.
By the 19th century, it was home to a large tannery and several leather warehouses and sat just to the north of the old Bermondsey Leather Market.
In WW2, the southern half of the park area was completely destroyed by bombs, leaving ruins and a surviving tannery building to the northern end. A report into the site says it was used for housing in the 1950s, but photos of the area at the time show a flattened landscape surrounded by earlier housing.
A second block of warehouses to the east was also destroyed during WW2, and when the area was laid out as parkland, the road that used to separate them was covered over to create a single park.
The area was initially laid out as a park in 1958, completed in the 1970s, and partially refurbished in 1999.
Today the park is made up of several zones, with the eastern end as a formal garden leading to open grass lawns at the western end, and a large raised grassy mound which makes it a bit more interesting to look at, if more of a challenge to picnic on.
A playground area in the middle was refurbished last year with new play kit and cleaning up the original concrete sailing boat.
A modest building at the northern end is the Bermondsey Village Hall.
Glue Manufactury – Is Manufactury two words stuck together?
You’d need to ask/find an etymologist to explain the origins of the term.
Yes, but Manufactory is the commoner spelling. A place where things are manufactured. We are more familiar with its shortening = Factory.