Abbey Park is Leicester’s premier park and opened in 1882.  It includes gardens, lakes, a café, sports pitches and facilities for bowling, tennis and boating.  It is a place for families and lies about a mile north of the city centre.  The River Soar divides it into two distinct parts – a Victorian park with shrubberies, boating lake and miniature railway, and the western part which includes the remains of the 12th century Leicester Abbey, where Cardinal Wolsey died and was buried, and the ruins of the 17th century Cavendish House, a mansion which was Charles I’s HQ before the Battle of Naseby.  It was destroyed and plundered by Royalist troops.