BRIGHT skies, happy families and a silver band provided the perfect ingredients at Beaumont Park's fifth summer gala.

An estimated 1,000 people visited the park for the quintessentially English day out.

While organisers were hoping for better weather, they were thankful at least the heavens did not open.

Primarily set up as a fun day for all the family, the fete also offers the Friends of Beaumont Park group the opportunity to talk about their restoration work.

Member Alan Owen said it was important people used the amenity as much as possible.

The Friends have worked tirelessly over recent years cutting back vegetation and tidying up the jungle that had spread over the vast grounds.

Long rhododendron-lined paths are interspersed with view-points and stepped terraces. The extensive stepped plateaux are on three levels.

"We want to focus on restoration, but not just by putting stones back. It's the regeneration of the park socially as well as physically," said Mr Owen.

While parents browsed numerous stalls and listened to the Holme Silver Band during the gala, children played on rides or tried out traditional games.

Deputy chairman of the group Dennis Edwards said days like yesterday helped inject life back into the area: "We want to put it back to what it was before."

The grounds went into decline for virtually 70 years before the Friends of Beaumont Park was formed.

A castle-shaped tea room was demolished in the 1960s because it was deemed unsafe while a shelter was knocked down in the 1990s.

The Friends feared if they did not act, there would soon be no structures left.

Since then they have helped breathe life back into the splendid Victorian landscape with a busy itinerary of events.

The next activity day takes place on Sunday, September 12.