Judith and Jack's Park of the Week
16/06/2025 10:51:37 AM
200. Ripon Park
Ripon Park, also known as Ripon Way Park, is an 11-acre parkin Borehamwood.
The land that it now occupies was originally owned by St Albans Abbey, given by Offa, King of Mercia. The builder John Laing purchased a large amount of land in Borehamwood and built estates, with Ripon Park being one such recreation area. The council purchased the land from the British and Dominions Film Corporations in 1955 and established it as a public park.
The park has a children's play area, basketball hoops, and football goals. It has a seven-piece outdoor fitness area including a recumbent bike, treadmill, pull up station, chest press/row combo, and more. Whenever we visit parks that have such equipment, Jack insists on using each piece of equipment once, even those things like flat benches (he usually sits on them). I mainly stand and watch, although occasionally I’ll have a go on a bike as long as nobody else is looking.
There are large areas of mown grass for informal sports and relaxation, tree planting, and a managed wildflower meadow which blooms annually after seeding, enhancing biodiversity. It’s a County Wildlife Site, supporting a diverse range of plant species.
There are also two walking and cycling routes, a shorter “easy access” stroll of 0.1Km and a fitness trail of around 0.6Km. There’s a free car park but no café or toilets. Next to the park is the Three Ways Community Centre, which does have toilets.
Judith Field
Ripon Park, Ripon Way/Arundel Drive, Borehamwood WD6 2ND
10/06/2025 10:58:39 AM
199. Highbury Fields
Highbury Fields is the largest open space in Islington and is mainly a recreation area. It’s triangular and on sloping land. It was opened in 1885 but the idea for a much larger park at Highbury was first proposed in 1850, to be called Albert Park. However, the campaign failed to raise the necessary £200,000 to purchase the land and by the end of the 1850s much of the area was built over with villas and terraced houses. Highbury Fields is on the little of the land that was left.
In 1905 the Boer War Memorial by Bertram McKennal, featuring a wreath, cannons and the captured standards of defeated enemies, was unveiled at the southwest corner of the Fields. It represents Glory holding a figure of Victory in her right hand and a laurel wreath in her left. It commemorates the 101 Islington residents who fell in the war.
In 1924 the Fields, apart from a shrubbery at the margin, were laid out in grass with gravelled walks with a dry playground at the northern end. From 1921-79 there was an open-air swimming pool. Air raid shelters were built here in WWII.
The Fields are divided into two halves by Highbury Crescent. There are many notable plane trees, oak, horse chestnut and lime trees, with planes lining the perimeter of the park and its main walks.
In the north of the park are football, tennis, hockey and other sports facilities. There’s also a table tennis table, children’s play area and a bandstand. There are toilets and a café. The park is home to a weekly 5K parkrun.
In 2009 conservationists launched a campaign to boost London's sparrow population, which had significantly declined because of deteriorating conditions such as traffic increase, paving over gardens and development over green space. The three-year scheme led to the creation of meadows in areas of over twenty London parks, including Highbury Fields, which have been sown to provide seed-rich habitats. Each site is managed using three different planting schemes of grass seed, wildflower meadow and wildlife seed mix, and it also aims to encourage butterflies and moths, other birds and bats.
Judith Field
Highbury Fields, Highbury Crescent, London N5 1AR
02/06/2025 09:09:08 PM
198. Holland Park
Holland Park is in Kensington and is the largest park in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is within the Holland Park Conservation Area and is an Area of Metropolitan Importance.
It’s spread across 54 acres of what used to be the grounds of Cope Castle, a large Jacobean mansion hidden in the woods. Sir Walter Cope built it in the early 17th century. He became Chancellor of the Exchequer under King James I. It was renamed Holland House after the Earl of Holland’s wife Lady Rich inherited the property.
The house was badly damaged during World War II. One wing was saved and is used as a youth hostel. A section of the front terrace was saved. This is used for the park's summertime open-air theatre productions and classical concerts, such as those staged by Opera Holland Park, a summer opera company which produces an annual season of performances.
The park includes the most extensive woodland in much of central and west London. Although of planted origin and dominated by non-native trees, the woodland supports an unusual variety of wildlife. Breeding birds include tawny owls, coal tits and bullfinches, while resident mammals include bank voles, rabbits and hedgehogs.
The northern half of the park consists of semi-wild woodland with a central section of formal gardens, while the southern section is mainly used for sports: there are netball, cricket and football pitches, tennis courts, cricket and golf practice nets and an outdoor gym.
The central area has an ecology centre, outdoor gym, two playgrounds, toilets, a café and two Japanese gardens. The first is the Kyoto Garden, created to celebrate the Japan Festival in London in 1992. It has peacocks, Japanese maple trees, tiered waterfalls and a lake with enormous koi carp.
The second is the nearby Fukushima Japanese Garden, a quiet space for contemplation, built to remember those affected by the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
There are several sculptures in the park, but I found this the most eye catching.
It’s by Andrew Burton, made of various metals, placed in the park in 2000. It’s called ‘Annunciation’, but I named it ‘Tekiah gedola on wheels’.
Judith Field
Holland Park Ilchester Place, London W8 6LU
27/05/2025 11:22:20 AM
197. Whittington Garden
Whittington Garden, a pocket park in the City of London, is named after Lord Mayor Richard Whittington, the inspiration for the character "Dick Whittington" in the children's story and pantomime "Dick Whittington and His Cat”. He rebuilt the nearby church of St Michael Paternoster Royal at his own expense in 1409, also founding a college and almshouses. He was buried in the church in 1423. The church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and was rebuilt by Wren by 1694.
The site of the public garden was on the riverbank in Roman times and later was the site of buildings connected with the fur trade. These were demolished after bomb damage in WWII and the Corporation of London acquired the site in 1955, for “the enjoyment of the workers”. The garden was laid out in 1960 with a largely paved area in the west and grass, flower beds and trees in the east. A small fountain was constructed in the west section in the late 1960s.
The garden was refurbished and redesigned in autumn 2005, and in the same year, two bronze sculptures of lone caped horsemen, were presented to the City of London by the Italian President on his state visit to the City. These sit on granite plinths in one corner. They are titled “Magister equitum” and were sculpted by Dutlio Cambellotti in 1924. I’m afraid I had trouble working out what the statues represented.
The east section of the garden is now surrounded by hedge, and mainly contains grass, shaded by trees. There are also hedges, planted beds and benches.
Judith Field
Whittington Garden, Upper Thames Street, London EC4R 2RH
20/05/2025 12:12:08 PM
196. Woodhouse Urban Park
This pocket park was opened 2016, as part of the regeneration of South Kilburn.
It was built on the site of a demolished set of flats called Wood House, owned by Brent Council. When the old houses were cleared and replaced with tall blocks of flats, of which Wood House was one, a small park was created. At the time, the park was a plain lawn with trees and a small low rise brick wall around the edges. Following a major redevelopment of the area, the pocket park got more space. The old park had been open all around, but this revamped version has bedding plants around the sides with metal railings including defined gateways into the park.
The design of the park had input from the local community and features play provision, concrete seating, a diverse landscaped scheme and new trees, a “stage” and new paths. This cost £475,000, with part of the cost attributed to the discovery of lead-contaminated soil, which needed to be removed.
I found the park on a map and looked at online, to see if it had a “big lying down swing”. It did, so we visited one on-off drizzly day. Imagine my irritation when we found that, since the photo on Google Maps from 2022, the big lying down swing had been removed. I hope they’ll replace it, but I won’t know if they do because, according to Jack’s rules, we are only allowed to visit a park once. There are two sets of ordinary swings and Jack did his best to fit onto one of those, also slides and a wooden climbing structure. The park also has picnic tables and a table tennis table.
Judith Field
Woodhouse Urban Park, Albert Road, London NW6 5DR.
12/05/2025 09:34:57 PM
195. Stanmore Recreation Ground
This park is in Stanmore. It’s mainly a large open space big enough for a football pitch, with paths around the edge, benches, shrubs and trees, including old and very large oaks. This is one of my photos, I've been messing about with it instead of writing.
The site the park occupies was probably once part of the estate of Stanmore Hall, built by the Duke of Chandos in the 18th Century. In 1889 the estate was purchased by William Knox D'Arcy, who had made a fortune in Australia. He lived in the house until his death in 1917. The house was then used as an assize court and during World War II it was used by US troops. From 1947 until 1971 it was a nurses' home for the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. By the 1930s the grounds were already being built over by new houses.
The park was opened in May 1932. The Hendon & Finchley Times reported on it, with the headline “A Stanmore Lung” and described the park as “all that could be desired”. The name originally suggested had been The People’s Park, but Stanmore Recreation Ground was preferred.
In 1939, trenches were dug in the park, for people to use for protection during air raids if they were away from home or a shelter.
In 1950, a local paper reported that a special gate had been opened to enable a disabled boy aged 10, who had difficulty walking to the entrance, to get into the park. It cost £l2 7shillings and 9 pence (worth about £380 today) and the boy’s father agreed to pay have the cost plus a yearly fee of £1. The gate was meant to be for the boy’s use only, but there’s no information on how this was to have been enforced.
The park has an outdoor gym, playground and a bowls club. There’s a car park, but no café or toilets.
There are entrances on Stanmore Hill and Dennis Lane.
Judith Field
Stanmore Recreation Ground, Stanmore Hill, Stanmore HA7 3DS
06/05/2025 10:17:21 AM
194. Acton Green Common
Acton Green Common, in Ealing, is a triangular area of open land, laid out with perimeter planting, paths and mature trees. It’s an unusual shape as it’s split into two, with a road and crossing in between the two parts. It holds a Green Flag Award. Acton isn’t an area I know, but we are moving farther away from Mill Hill in our search for urban parks and Ealing has quite a few.
Acton Green Common is identified as an “Archaeological Interest Area” within the Ealing Plan for the Environment. There was a medieval hamlet around the Green, the edge of a Roman Road used by legionaries and a Roman settlement in the south.
The name Acton means Oak Town and is Anglo-Saxon, suggesting that there was a settlement at Acton in Saxon times. Acton’s existence was first recorded in 1181 when it appeared in the Domesday Book. At that time most of the land came under the Manor of Fulham which belonged to the Bishop of London. where it remained until the Reformation. when Henry VIII redistributed the land to the Earl of Bedford.
The common was part of the site of the Battle of Brentford during the Civil War when, on 12 November 1642, the Royalists under Prince Rupert surprised and overcame the Parliamentarian army under Lord Essex. The battle took place on part of Acton Green Common, Turnham Green and on an area once called Chiswick Common Field.
In the late 1880s, horses grazed on the Common, provided the owners had been given the “copyright” to do so. There had been a complaint to the Council in 1888 when an uncopyrighted horse had knocked a child over.
Acton Green, the residential neighbourhood named after Acton Green Common (or perhaps it’s the other way round), was once home to many small laundries (170 by the end of the nineteenth century) and became known as "Soapsuds Island".
The Common has a children's playground but no cafe or toilets.
Judith Field
Acton Green Common, Hardwicke Rd, London W4 5LG
28/04/2025 11:17:40 AM
193. Trinity Square Gardens
This small garden, near to Tower Hill, has lawns, mature trees and ornamental planting and a good view of the Tower of London and The Shard. It’s ringed by important buildings (such as the headquarters of Trinity House, topped with a ship's weathervane and housing the General Lighthouse Authority for England and Wales), and bits of London’s ancient Roman wall. It currently holds a Green Flag Award.
The Gardens were created by an Act of Parliament in 1797 as a setting for Trinity House. In 1931 the garden was scheduled in the London Squares Preservation Act, listed under the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney.
The focus of the garden is its memorials. There are two that make up the Merchant Navy Memorial: The First World War section, unveiled in December 1928 to commemorate those of the Merchant Navy and the Fishing Fleet who died in WWI, and the Second World War section added in 1955.
The First World War section is in the form of a white stone pavilion, inside which are metal plaques inscribed with names of the dead. From here, steps bordered by figures of an officer and a merchant seaman lead to a sunken garden, which is the Second World War section. This is surrounded by stone walls set with bronze plaques. At the centre is a mariner’s compass. The garden also holds a memorial to merchant seamen who lost their lives in the Falklands conflict.
The garden was also the site of the Tower Hill scaffold, where some 125 people were executed, including St Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell. In a small, railed area of the garden there is a stone set in the paving marking its place.
Judith Field
Trinity Square Gardens, Tower Hill, London EC3N 4DJ
21/04/2025 12:44:48 PM
192. Natural History Museum Gardens
In July 2024, two new gardens opened on either side of the main entrance of the Natural History Museum on Cromwell Road, replacing plain lawns and serving as “outdoor galleries”. Their opening was part of the Urban Nature Project, the Museum’s response to the pressures of urbanisation, climate change and biodiversity loss. They’ve added five acres of green space in the process.
Each garden has a different purpose. The one on the right, as you look at the front of the Museum, is the Evolution Garden, designed to tell the story of life on Earth. The rocks, pants and sculptures represent what was happening at a particular time from the 2.7 billion years ago to the present day, geological era by era. There’s an ammonite pavement, featuring fossilised sections of former seabed, from Lyme Regis.
The fossil tree is 330 million years old, predating the time of the dinosaurs. It lived during the Earth’s Carboniferous period, growing in Scotland where it was found, which was then a tropical, swampy forest.
Local schoolchildren named this bronze Diplodocus in the Evolution Garden Fern, and she’s surrounded by ferns and horsetails like those her real life counterpart would have lived alongside. She’s 22m-long, 4m-high and is a replica of a famous Diplodocus, Dippy, that stood in the main hall as the star attraction until 2017, when he went on tour. Dippy is on loan to the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry until February 2025, and now a massive blue whale skeleton hangs above the main hall.
There’s also this replica skeleton of a Hypsilophodon, a dinosaur about the size of a large dog, which was native to the UK.
The garden to the left is the Nature Discovery Garden, where visitors and scientists can identify and study wildlife. Habitats range from wetlands to scrub and urban meadow and are monitored through an environmental data collection programme to support the understanding and recovery of urban nature. It’s home to tadpoles, toads, frogs, newts, mandarin ducks, dragonflies, lily pads and duckweed. A network of sensors gathers environmental and acoustic data – such as underwater recordings in the pond, the buzz of insect wings and bird calls to traffic noise – to help them understand how urban nature is changing and what can be done to support its recovery.
Judith Field
Natural History Museum, Cromwell Rd, London SW7 5BD
14/04/2025 09:09:21 PM
191. Hollickwood Park
When I wrote about Halliwick Park (see 183), I mentioned Colney Hatch asylum, originally sited near that park. Hollickwood Park, the subject of this post, is on the former site of the hospital itself, later named Friern Hospital.
This park, in Haringey near Muswell Hill, was originally landscaped by Barnet Council, using compensation money for widening the adjacent benighted North Circular Road. It was was created as a result of efforts by the Friends of Hollickwood Park, a community group. The park contains a time capsule put in by residents and council officers to commemorate the opening in 1963.
The park is named after Hollick Wood, which was 160 acres in the 1650s, and joined with Tottenham Wood in 1623. It was cleared for the Colney Hatch Asylum in 1852. The place name Colney Hatch was first mentioned in 1409, the 'hatch' perhaps being a gate of Hollick Wood.
It combines both formal and informal areas, including meadows, shrubberies and a pond, although that badly needs maintenance. It has a children's playground but no cafe or toilets. I found this formation of paving slabs, I imagine it's meant to be a giant chess board, but it's not mentioned anywhere that I could see.
The meadow areas support common wildflowers, and the shrubberies provide nesting sites for birds, including the house sparrow, of which numbers are generally declining.
There’s no car park, but we found space of park on a nearby street. Although it is close to a large main road, it’s a quiet place, with benches to sit on and paths to walk on.
Judith Field
Hollickwood Park, Alexandra Road, N10 2RT
