Scuffletown Park
Fish in Scuffletown Park
One of the great things about the Fan is the variety and abundance of parks. This morning we took the kids over to Scuffletown Park (located in the 2300 block of Stuart Avenue behind buildings on Stafford and Strawberry Streets and Park and Stuart Avenues). After we told my son where we were going, he became obsessed with the name of the park and kept saying it over and over again. That made me curious as to how it got its name. I looked up this article when I got home and legend has it, the area was the site of a “scuffle” between the British and American troops during the Revolutionary War. And while my children loved the name, they were underwhelmed by the park itself at first. But, by the end of our visit it was the adults who had to convince the children it was time to leave.
As I sat on a bench watching my kids think of things to do in a park with “nothing to do” (no playground equipment or sandbox), I started realizing how peaceful I felt. Long, narrow stretches of grass are surrounded by beautiful shrubs and plants and interspersed among the plants are various bird baths, garden decorations, and benches. High up in a tree that will be great at providing shade in the summer is a set of wind chimes that were quite soothing (which is saying a lot because I’m not usually a wind chime kind of gal). What seemed like it didn’t fit was the concrete running down the middle of the two long, narrow stretches of grass. According to the aforementioned article, in the 70’s (and, trust me, you can tell it was the 70’s), the city decided to turn the area into more of a “park” and added concrete benches and walls. The kids made use of the donated chalk and left their own form of graffiti behind.
It would be a great place to bring a picnic, a book or small children not yet accustomed to fancy playground equipment. It seems like a great place for children either stuck in strollers, just starting to get around (fences surround the grassy areas), or prone to eating the mulch and sand at other parks.
While I started wondering aloud with my mother-in-law how long the park had been there, what the evolution of it was, and who was responsible, along came a very friendly man with his dog. Turns out this man is named John Patterson and his dog is Maggie Mae and they are the ones to thank (along with the Friends of Scuffletown Park) for much of the upkeep of the place.
After John replenished the bags used to pick up after dogs, we got a chance to ask him all of our questions and he told us some interesting facts. He said when he moved to the Fan in 1965 the park was already there. A barn in the middle of the park was used to keep horses for Richmond’s Mounted Patrol but once that barn was no longer needed for horses, many homeless people used it as shelter and, as a result, the city tore it down. He has contributed the plants in pots, birdbaths, windchimes, trellises, and the lantern pictured below (using a monetary gift given in thanks). Now that his arthritis is bad and he has had a quintuple bypass, he’s convinced the city to mow the grass and pick up the trash. But most other chores are handled by him and other volunteers.
I’m glad I learned about this spot and I’ll definitely be back – maybe with some more chalk and a ball or two for the kids to play with.
Scuffletown Park Lantern
Cool. This definitely makes me want to explore some of the alleys in the Fan a bit more.
Greetings:
The Revolutionary War “scuffle” legend is, well, just that. When Benedict Arnold led his traitorous raid into town in January 1781, he (as I understand the event) didn’t get that far west at that point.
The little marker placed at Mulberry and Grove by a Rev War veteran aggrieved because he didn’t get enough of a pension, that mentioned driving in “Arnold’s picket” is, well, an apparent fabrication.
“Scuffle” may refer to the few residents of that quarter in the late 18th century and their hardscrabble living conditions.
The article you referred to makes note of the Westham “Scuffletown” Pike that roughly tracked along Park Ave., but leaves out the most important part. Scuffletown Tavern stood on the site of the park. Images of it are in his book on pages 18-19.
As Drew St. J. Carneal mentions in his Fan Disrtrict book, the name was getting used by developers of the land early as 1791.
The tavern began operating there at least by 1792. The wonderfully chatty historian Samuel Mordecai writing before the Civil War, described a sign of a globe in front of the place “the head of the proprietor protruding at the north and his feet at the south pole, with the legend, ‘Help a scuffler through the world.’” It’s a great image.
The tavern seems to have converted to a residence after 1800. As what became the Fan District evolved throughout the late 19th and early 20th century, what must’ve been a sagging, splintering wooden 18th century building became an impediment to progress. It was demolished around 1918 — perhaps for that horse barn.
The house, built around that time, at Strawberry and Park on the southwestern corner, seems to have tried to honor the building in its design.
Seems a shame to have lost such an old structure — imagine the bed and breakfast! — but otherwise, we’d not have the park. And I enjoy taking lunch there on warm days.
And I remember the concrete embellishments from the 1980s when they became frequent marks for graffitists and useful for skate board practitioners.
Why these things were built, when a scraped knee would send a kid wailing or worse, is beyond me. Paradise Park resembles how Scuffletown used to look.
P.S.
I should say, for accuracy, that the Benedict Arnold led raid into Richmond in 1781 DID get farther west than Mulberry and Grove — Thomas Jefferson, then governor, placed papers at the Westham Foundry for safekeeping, where they were burned. But, no organized resistance of merit occurred during that time. Thus, no advance pickets of Arnold’s would’ve been “driven in.”
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