Thousands of pounds are needed to restore a historic garden that was severely damaged last week.

The Rookery Gardens on Streatham Common - a Grade II listed garden - was brutally vandalised, leaving nine of its 15 benches needing fixing or replacing altogether.

The incident occurred after the gardens were locked up last Wednesday (September 15). The garden's staff came into work on Thursday morning to discover the vandalism, as well as the vodka and beer bottles that were left behind.

One week on from the incident and there has been another case of vandalism. The most recent incident was not as extreme, however, benches were dragged around again which was a kick in the teeth for the small team who are doing their best to make the gardens look as good as possible for all of its users.

Alex Gerard, the CEO and park manager for SCCoop (Streatham Common Co-operative) - the nonprofit organisation that runs and maintains the park - told us that what happened last week was a "proper assault" on the benches, and has asked for people to donate if they can so the park can be returned to its former state.

The damage was so severe that it's going to take months to return to how it once looked. While Alex and his team are still assessing the overall cost of the damage, around £3,000 will need to be raised to fix the benches, as well as be able to bolt them into the ground to hopefully prevent this from happening again.

Alex, whose team had worked so hard to keep it in great condition for a fundraising event that was on last weekend, spoke of the damage that was caused.

"It was a proper assault on the benches," he said.

"We locked up on Wednesday night and it was fine, and then when the gardeners came to open 12 hours later all of the benches on the top tier had been dragged or thrown onto both sections of the lower tiers.

"There's a bank of five benches - and they're really heavy these, it takes about four people to move two of them - which had the back slabs kicked in with numerous arms which had been smashed.

"Out of the 15 or so, nine have had to be taken out from the gardens. Some have lost a foot, others have had their backs kicked in.

"These are memorial benches - emotionally charged items.

"It's the worst vandalism we've seen since I've been here.

"The extent and the degree of the damage done - it's a lot of damage. It would've required a lot of work and a lot of people to do it.

"There are only five or six of us that work here and we were preparing for fundraising on a Saturday.

"It was a big celebration of the park and it was a real kick in the guts after all we had tried to do to run a park for people to enjoy."

Despite all of the negative feelings about what had happened, Alex says that the response from the community has been incredible.

He said: "On Saturday it became a focal point for fundraising.

"It was a wonderful flip from devastation to seeing what a wonderful community we have.

"There was a lot of shock and anger. Many were concerned and hope we catch and people stop doing this stuff. It's come as life is returning to normal and for locals it has been so important."

With each bench being made from solid oak, they are worth around £800 each, and that's before you consider the ones which have had memorials etched into them.

Alex says it will be months before the gardens are looking how they were. The benches need repairing, painting and bolting into the floor on top of the fundraising.

However, given the response from the community, as well as other groups such as Friends of Streatham Common and Lambeth Council, he is hopeful that they will be able to sort it, and even go a bit further to prevent it happening again in the future.

To donate directly you can do so via this PayPal link . Any money will be going towards getting the garden back in shape and anything excess will most likely go towards fundraising for CCTV for the area (costing £20,000), so every penny is worthwhile.

If you would like to become a member of SCCoop or even help volunteer, you can do so by going to the SCCoop website.

The Rookery is usually open from 7.30am until 15 minutes before sunset.

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