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Finsbury Park is only pre-dated by Southwark Park as London's oldest municipal park which opened two months before. In 1850, a meeting of the inhabitants of Finsbury resolved that a park on the borders of the Borough of Finsbury was "universally admitted to be a public necessity." With this declaration the campaign for the acquisition of Finsbury Park began. It took 19 years, however, and it was on 7th August 1869 that the present park was declared open "to the public for ever." One of the problems had been that the Metropolitan Board of Works did not exist and nor did the legislation which would later allow it and its successor the London County Council to acquire land for public parks.

The first building occupying where the lake is now was Copt Hall in 1649, probably built to house the people coppicing Hornsey Wood. By the 1750s the building had been turned into a very popular tea rooms, visited by Londoners on Sundays. So successful was it that in 1796 the whole site was developed. The house was rebuilt, the lake developed by pumping water up from the New River and the wood reduced to 27 acres to make way for pleasure gardens. By the mid 19th century tea drinking in the tavern gardens had declined to such an extent that one of the first things undertaken when laying out the park was demolition of the old tavern. This took place in the 1860s when the lake was extended to its present shape and a refreshment house and a boat house were built.