LITTLE Mary Birkby must have been getting under her mother's feet, because she told her son George to take the five-year-old girl to Rowntree Park. George, nine years older than his little sister, duly obliged.

But this was no ordinary day at the park. It was July 16, 1921: Rowntree Park's opening day.

"It was a lovely day. All I can remember is it was crowded with people," recalls Mary, now Mrs Grant, 87.

"The bridge was there, and the dovecote. I didn't see many plants, or I didn't take them in."

Mrs Grant soon got to know those 24 riverside acres intimately. "I was more or less brought up in Rowntree Park," she said.

Generations of children have spent countless happy hours at the park since the Rowntree family dedicated this piece of its land to the city in memory of the Great War fallen.

On Sunday, the Friends of Rowntree Park will hold a party for its 82nd birthday. This is a double celebration, as it also marks the official launch of its new look.

Four years ago it was announced that £1.7 million of Lottery money was going to be spent bringing the park back to its best, and that work is now all but complete. The caf has reopened, a statue of Mercury has returned, there are new gates, more play facilities and an events area where the old bandstand stood.

Those who remember the park's early years are thrilled that it has been restored to match its early heyday.

Mrs Grant said it was a wonderful place for fooling around, although "we were banned from the paddling pool which was, according to my mother, 'full of broken bottles'."

The family would go and listen to the music at the bandstand on Sundays, "but I would be a bit bored and read my book".

Trips to the caf were more of a treat. "My brother would send me for a basin full of ice cream. He would put lemonade in. We thought that was wonderful."

Mrs Grant, who attended Scarcroft and Knavesmire Higher Grade schools, was friends with Eileen, eldest daughter of the legendary first park-keeper, Jim "Parkie" Bell.

"He was very strict. I remember once, I didn't realise what I was doing, pulling leaves off a bush. And he came and said, 'did you do that?' He said: 'Out you go!'"

To another South Bank resident, John Gawthorpe, 73, Parkie was Uncle Jim. As a child Mr Gawthorpe would often visit the park lodge where his uncle lived with his family, there to be plied with elderberry cordial in the summer.

He said that Parkie Bell had the Army discipline of an ex-Royal Engineer. "In the park, when he blew his whistle everybody stood still. He had total, complete control of the park."

Mr Gawthorpe, whose family have lived in York since 1646, used to try to dodge his uncle's eagle eye during their regular park escapades.

"We used to paddle in the lake, which wasn't allowed. The best time to do it was at the height of the tennis season.

"There used to be a hut near where the ladies' bowling hut is now, inside the main gates. He would issue the tickets for the tennis and bowls from that point, and couldn't see the lake."

Mr Gawthorpe also solved a mystery. We published a picture in May of an unidentified man pushing a barrow in the park. That was his dad, Harry.

"He worked at Rowntree's in the Thirties. He worked a week and was laid off for a week - you could only claim unemployment pay if you were off a whole week.

"So he would go down and give my uncle a hand."

"I had some marvellous times in the park," added Mr Gawthorpe, and those good times continue to this day. "My wife Molly has started playing bowls for the Rowntree Park Ladies."

Someone else with vivid memories of Parkie Bell is Betty Metcalfe. "He had a navy blue uniform, complete with brass buttons and peaked cap.

"He was very strict. You couldn't bat an eyelid in there. I was told off for catching tiddlers in the lake."

Miss Metcalfe, who attended St Clement's School, said her first memories of the park concerned visiting the children's play area in the mid-1920s.

"It was a very large sandpit. It had a couple of see-saws, and about three or four swings.

"What fascinated me most, although I have never heard anyone mention it since, was something called the Giant Strides.

"It would be something considered potentially lethal nowadays. I was so small I wasn't allowed to go near it.

"It was rather like a maypole, with a revolving cup from which there were long chains dangling, about six or eight. They had a roll of wood for a hand grip.

"The idea was to run around as fast as you could. When you got the thing swinging out, you could lift your feet up and swing round."

Its name came from the larger and larger strides you would make before "taking off".

Miss Metcalfe also remembers the cascade coming to the park. Here, water would flow along the rock garden which sloped down from the Richardson Street entrance.

Originally it was a grass slope. "In it was a horseshoe-shaped bed which was full of bright red geraniums. In the centre it had a little tree of some sort. That was there before the cascade arrived.

"The cascade was set - and I think this is perfectly true - with the stone from the demolished walls of the castle prison."

In war-time summers, the council put on a "holidays at home" programme in Rowntree Park.

"They used to have dances on the concrete around the bandstand, which always struck me as highly unsuitable for dances. It must have been very hard."

Winter brought its own special events. "During the Forties and Fifties, in winter, if the lake froze over, they used to provide free lighting and fairy lights for skating in the evenings. It was quite fun."

Miss Metcalfe also remembered the aviaries.

"One had pheasants in, one had parrots and macaws, that type of thing. The little one had small tropical birds, finches."

But disaster struck: in a great flood in the Thirties "the water was up to 18 inches or so from the top of those aviaries. "The poor birds were trapped. Nobody could get to them to free them. A lot of them just perished."

Another St Clement's School pupil was Syd Heppell, who has become the archivist for the Friends of Rowntree Park. He was never out of the park as a youngster.

Mr Heppell is thrilled its glory days have returned. "The atmosphere was there then, the atmosphere that's returning. The more we can sustain and improve it, the better."

Updated: 12:24 Monday, July 07, 2003