Opened in 1925, it is Grade II listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

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 and commissioned much of the landscaping that can be seen in the park today. laid out between 1761 and 1763.

The other key previous occupant of the estates was Alfred Bean, a railway engineer who bought the property in 1862. Bean was the driving force behind the Bexleyheath Railway Company and envisaged transforming the now 582-acre estate into a residential suburb. Outlying areas were sold off for residential development according to Bean’s will, but the house and 224 acres of the estate remained in Bean’s family after his death in 1890.

On the death of his widow in 1921, when it was auctioned, and eventually acquired by Bexley Urban District Council for £16 000 in 1924. The council spent another £3500 converting the estate into a public park.