Danson Park is a public park in the London Borough of Bexley, South East London, located between Welling and Bexleyheath. At 75 hectares, it is the second largest public park in the borough (the largest being Foots Cray Meadows at 100 hectares), and the most used by the community. Opened in 1925, it is often considered the finest green open space in the borough, and is Grade II listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. The park also gives its name to the electoral ward that covers the park and the surrounding area. The park is located at . The southern boundary of both the park and the ward is delineated by Rochester Way, the A2 road. History The area now occupied by the park had previously been part of the church and then crown estates, before being occupied by John Styleman and then Sir John Boyd, 1st Baronet, both senior figures in the British East India Company. In the 1760s, Boyd built Danson House, a Grade I-listed Georgian mansion that stands in the centre of the park, and commissioned much of the landscaping that can be seen in the park today. The landscape was designed and laid out between 1761 and 1763, by either Capability Brown or his assistant Nathaniel Richmond. At its centre is a large and picturesque 12-acre (49,000 m2) lake, described by Edward Hasted in his History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent of 1797 as "a most magnificent sheet of water so contrived as to seem a beautiful serpentine river, flowing through the grounds". A small house with a spire, named Chapel House, was constructed to the south of the lake, which is now separated from the rest of the park by a motorway, but can still be seen today near the roundabout at Blendon. By the time of Boyd's death the Danson Estates comprised over 600 acres (2.4 km2) of pleasure grounds and agricultural estate. In 1773, a mock ancient Greek temple was built near to the lake by Sir William Chambers. This was disassembled and moved to the gardens of St Paul's Walden Bury in Hertfordshire in 1961, and is today a grade II listed building. There was also a statue of the Roman goddess Diana in the park. The other key previous occupant of the estates was Alfred Bean, a railway engineer who bought the property in 1862.