16/11/2022 03:11:19 PM
73. Springfield Community Park
Springfield Community Park, in Bounds Green, was created in 2000 as part of a redevelopment of the area, giving people access to a local green space and play facilities. It seemed popular when we were there. I haven’t been able to find out what the land it occupies had been before it was established, except for one source that said it and the space opposite which is now occupied by housing had been the site of a primary school (which wasn’t called Springfield, and I’ve not been able to find out what the park’s named after. Maybe The Simpsons). It's a small open space, with trees around the edge and a wildlife and nature area at one end. On a visit, there’s space to walk and look into the distance, but also a place to be surrounded by trees.
I found this park by looking at a map, then homing in to see whether there was a playground, preferably with a basket swing (I recently found out that’s the real name for “big lying down swing”). It has both, and after the usual wait for little kids to get off Jack got a turn. My reward for hanging around was to walk in the nature area, with Jack trudging along behind me.
The nature area is a small patch of woodland with cherry and mature oak trees, a pond, and a rockery. It’s run by a group of local volunteers, the Friends of Springfield Community Park Nature Area, who maintain it every second Saturday of the month. They plant trees donated by the Woodland Trust, and hold other events, some involving local children.
As well as the playground, the park has a picnic area, but no café or toilets. It’s wheelchair accessible. There’s no car park but there’s space to park on nearby streets.
Springfield Community Park, Park Road, London, N11 2LQ
09/11/2022 04:12:12 PM
72. Silver Jubilee Park
We found this park, in Kingsbury, by driving past it on the way back from another one. It was re-named for the Jubilee of King George V in 1935. Before this it was known as Townsend Lane Open Space. It seems that the local authority had wanted to call it King George V Park but for some reason permission had been refused. “Jubilee Park” was considered not to be specific enough as people might think it was named for Queen Victoria. At that time there was little housing development apart from the village at Kingsbury Green, but the area expanded rapidly between the two World Wars. There had been an anti-aircraft gun site in the park during the Second World War and some of the site was used for temporary housing afterwards.
The park has some of its earlier trees, including oak and poplar, mainly on the slopes and round the edge. At the northern end are shrub beds and conifers. The rest of the park is mainly playing fields and it provides a lot of green space in a built-up area. The Silver Jubilee Park Charitable Foundation works to promote community participation in healthy recreation.
The east side of the park is next to West Hendon Playing Fields. These fields are in Barnet (we’ve visited here, but I don’t have much to say about them), and the boundary between Brent and Barnet runs between the two spaces. Silver Jubilee park has a playground, outdoor gym, but no café or toilets. It contains Silver Jubilee park football stadium, home of Hendon FC and Edgware & Kingsbury FC.
There are good views of the Welsh Harp Reservoir (another one of my favourite visits) from the top of the park, and also of central London, for example the BT Tower and The Shard. You can also see the top of the nearby the Hindu temple Shree Swaminarayan Mandeer. This last word, translated form Sanskrit, means “where the mind becomes still.” I like that concept and would love to find such a place.
There’s no car park, but we found space to park on the road.
Judith Field
Silver Jubilee Park, Northgate Drive, London, NW9 7RD
02/11/2022 05:29:38 PM
71. Queen’s Park, West Kilburn
The area now partly occupied by Queen’s Park was a showground created for the International Exhibition of the Royal Agricultural Society, opened by Queen Victoria in 1879. Some of the land was built up as a grid of terraced housing and the remaining open space was originally called Kilburn Recreation Ground. It was renamed in honour of Queen Victoria in 1887.
Like several of the parks we’ve visited, it used to belong to the Church Commissioners, but this one was acquired by the City of London Corporation in 1886. In 2020 it won Green Flag status for the twenty-fourth year in a row, and an additional Green Heritage Site award for its care and conservation of open space and facilities. It’s also a site of local importance for nature conservation.
Designed without any straight paths, the park has bold tree planting, shrubberies with natural outlines, and large open areas of lawn. There are tennis courts, a pitch and putt course, a woodland walk, children’s playground with paddling pool and a small children’s farm (by which I mean, aimed at children rather than displaying them). I assume this, anyway, because it closes at 4pm and we got there too late (I hadn’t realised it was there when I planned the visit). There’s a café, and toilets.
A landmark in the park is the bandstand, was completed in 1887. In the late nineteenth century, bandstands were considered to be essential in parks of all sizes. Music was seen as an important moral influence, and as part of the reforming potential of parks. The bandstand has a timber roof with wrought-iron scrolled devices to each facet, and a central wrought- iron lantern. It was restored in 1992 and Grade-II listed in 2000. 
At the southeast corner is a small formal quiet garden, created in 1966 to keep the design of the original late Victorian formal planting, in contrast with the rest of the park. At the end of the garden, by the original park entrance (now closed) is a lych-gate with seats, built in 1936. There’s no car park but there is parking on the surrounding streets.
This park is among my favourites, of the 177 we’ve visited.
Queen's Park, Kingswood Avenue, London NW6 6SG
27/10/2022 06:15:46 PM
70. Ravenscroft Gardens
This relatively small open space in Wood Street, Barnet, is also known as Ravenscroft Park. It’s part of the Wood Street Conservation Area - identified by the Local Planning Authority as having special architectural or historic interest. The gardens are formally laid out with shrubs, bedding, winding paths, and a rock garden, all surrounded by recently restored iron railings with an ornamental gate.
The space has mature trees including horse chestnuts, and evergreen trees such as fir and monkey puzzle. I like to pick up acorns and conkers as souvenirs, but the squirrels got to this park first so there were none to be had. I also like to collect tree cones and was tempted by one of the monkey puzzles, but theirs are viciously spiked and I’m sure you’re meant wait till they’ve fallen rather than pulling them off the tree. Although the gardens are on a busy road, they have a quiet feel; the trees help muffle the traffic sound.
The land they occupy was originally part of Barnet Common that had included a pond often used by cattle drovers on their way to Barnet Fair. The space, converted from open land in the late nineteenth century when a new road and housing were developed, was originally called Barnet Recreation Ground but the name was changed to Ravenscroft Gardens, after local benefactor, James Ravenscroft.
During the Second World War at the start of the blitz, there was often a shortage of water to fight fires. In some areas the mains were damaged, in others demand outstripped supply, and local authorities were told to provide standing supplies of water for emergencies. In Barnet, a tank was built from bricks at the west end of Ravenscroft Gardens. After the war, the wall was removed making it into a pond area. There used to be two ornamental ponds, but these were drained in the 1990s – there are sunken, grassed over areas where they used to be.
There are no café or toilets, and there is no car park. We found room to park on a nearby street.
Judith Field
Ravenscroft Gardens, Wood Street, High Barnet EN5 4ND
21/10/2022 12:27:44 PM
69. Watling Park
This space, in Burnt Oak, is one of Barnet’s Premier Parks. It takes its name from the nearby A5, which was as an ancient trackway known as Watling Street. The A5 formed one of our pre-M1 London to Liverpool routes and my main memory of it is that there were very few places along it to stop and eat. I was in the first car on the northbound M1 – yes, really - would anyone like me to write about that?
Anyway, Watling Park is an open, hilly area, mainly mown grassland with a rose garden, and more natural areas of undergrowth at the edges and along the Burnt Oak Brook, a tributary of the Silk Stream, which runs through the park. It’s within the Watling Estate, a large council housing estate built in the 1920s. The park, opened in 1931, is one of a number of open spaces created throughout the estate, following the course of the Silk Stream (see Silkstream Park, no. 34) and the Burnt Oak Brook. The area was formerly farmland and the oak trees on the hill are reminders of its rural past. It’s a site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation.
We’ve als
o visited some of the other nearby open spaces on the estate: The Meads, an unlandscaped, natural area and Lyndhurst Park, a small open grassland area dominated by old hedgerow trees in the middle .
The Thames21 volunteer group, who working with communities to improve rivers and canals, regularly do conservation work in Watling Park on the Brook, for example cleaning it up and getting rid of Himalayan Balsam (an invasive non-native species – see no. 21).
Watling Park has a children’s playground and an outdoor gym, but no café or toilets.
The main entrance is at the corner of Watling Avenue and Orange Hill Road, and there is also access from Fortescue Road, Cressingham Road, Abbots Road and Colchester Road. There is no car park, but we managed to find a space on one of the nearby streets.
Judith Field
Watling Park, Cressingham Road, Edgware, HA8 0RW
16/09/2022 12:25:48 PM
68. Nightingale and Avenue Gardens
These two ornamental gardens, in Bounds Green, are linked by a section of former railway embankment. Together, they form a Site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation and are home to mature trees, including ash, poplars, cherry, oak, false acacia, whitebeams, and lime. There are three large poplars over a hundred years old at the south end.
A hamlet known as Woodleigh existed here from Saxon times. Bounds Green Road existed as an old route from the fourteenth century and the land in the area probably formed part of the large Bowes Farm Manor Estate, granted by Henry IV to the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral in 1412. Wood Green remained largely farmland until the mid-nineteenth century, when the area began to be built over to house the growing population.
The gardens were laid out on former rural rough pasture between 1894 and 1913 and in 1956, the formal rose garden with rough artificial stone walls and crazy paving paths was created. The land is owned by Thames Water because the New River runs under here. That’s why no houses have been built on the land. The New River, which the local authority class as an Ancient Monument, is an artificial waterway constructed in 1609-13 to bring fresh drinking water into London from springs near Ware in Hertfordshire and later from the River Lea and other sources.
I found, tucked away on a neighbourhood forum, a claim that Lloyds Bank filmed one of their television ads in the gardens last December. I have always thought those black horses were CGI and I think I must be right because, had they been real, I think there would be more about it – probably including complaints about the ground being churned up by stampeding horses.
There are benches in the gardens, but no café, toilets or playground. We could hear children playing and went to look, couldn’t find the source of the sound, and Jack got cross with me for making him come out to such a place when ‘Shark Tale’ was on television (for the umpteenth time). But I thought it was a pretty, restful spot and would go there again if Jack allowed repeat visits.
Judith Field
Nightingale and Avenue Gardens, Bounds Green Road, London N22 8DW
09/09/2022 11:17:32 AM
67. Bruce Castle Park
This large, historic park is in Tottenham and its use as parkland dates back to the early eleventh century. It was created from the remains of the ancient Bruce Castle family estate, bought by the local authority in 1892, when it became the first park in Tottenham. It won the Green Flag Award in 2003 and has kept it ever since.
A huge ancient oak tree dominates the northern side of the park. It’s over 450 years old and came runner up in the Woodland Trust’s Tree of the Year award in 2018. There is a downloadable tree trail through the park for children to follow and identify ten different trees.
The park is home to a Holocaust Memorial Garden, created by young offenders as part of their rehabilitation. Apart from a small plaque with gold letters carved into a piece of black stone, there is a sculpture made from six wooden railway sleepers, representing the murdered six million Jews. Each has a single name carved on it: the first names of the six offenders who created the memorial. At the edge of the garden sculpture represents prison bars and barbed wire.
In the park, there are also basketball and tennis courts, table tennis tables, a multi-use games area, picnic area and a children’s playground. There’s also a paddling pool, open at weekends during the summer months and all day during the school summer holidays.
Bruce Castle Museum, located in the park and opened in 1927, is a Grade I listed sixteenth century manor house rather than a castle. It houses Haringey’s local history collections and archives, and the history of the Royal Mail, because the 19th century the manor house became a school with Sir Rowland Hill, the man who invented the postage stamp, as headteacher. The museum is open from Wednesday to Sunday, 1 to 5pm.
The ghost of a lady is alleged often to be seen wandering the grounds of Bruce Castle Park and it’s believed that the ghost is that of Lady Constantina Lucy, who lived in the house in 1680. We didn’t see anything looking like a ghost, and as I don’t believe in them anyway, I wouldn’t have seen it if it had been there.
The park also has a café, and there are toilets in the museum. There is a car park behind the museum, reachable via Church Lane, N17. We found space to park on the road, for which we had to pay.
Judith Field
Bruce Castle Park, Lordship Lane, London, N17 8NU
02/09/2022 12:27:09 PM
66. One Tree Hill Open Space
This park in Wembley is so named because, when the land it occupies was first bought by the local authority in 1921, it comprised a hill with a single tree. That’s thought to have been an ash tree but since felled. It’s nothing to do with the teen-drama TV series.
Since then, the park has been landscaped with trees and shrubs, and the local residents’ association holds annual tree planting. The hill itself is steep, with wooded slopes where a variety of flowers grow, including bluebells. Walking to the top, where there’s open grassland, is a good workout for the legs and from the highest point there are impressive views of Harrow on the Hill, Wembley Stadium and towards Central London. People sometimes fly kites from the top, but the air was still when we visited, and we didn’t see any.
A wildlife area has been created in the southern part on a former allotments site and the park was declared a Local Nature Reserve in 2007. A community garden was recently opened in the park, as the result of a collaboration between residents (who will manage the garden) and the Local Authority.
There are no formal pitches but there’s plenty of room for ball games and for walking. There’s a children’s playground and an outdoor gym, but no café or toilets.
I often look at the British Newspaper Archive when writing these posts, and was intrigued to find that in 1950, a woman was fined ten shillings (fifty pence, but apparently the equivalent of £10 today) for breaking a local by-law by cycling in this park. The police officer who stopped her pointed out the people walking and children playing in the area. Her reply was that she had had very little time and couldn’t see any children nearby. The by-law was repealed in 1921, so bring your bikes along.
Entry is from Norton Road, St James Gardens and Bridgewater Road, HA0. There is no car park but there is room to park on nearby streets.
Judith Field
One Tree Hill Open Space, 108 Norton Rd, Wembley, HA0 4QR
11/08/2022 05:04:53 PM
65. Bethune Recreation Ground
Bethune recreation ground, also known as Bethune Park, is in Friern Barnet.
The site was acquired by the local authority in 1924 and opened as a park in 1926. Most of it is mown grass, although Bethune Park was one of those in which Barnet Council left the grass uncut in No Mow May, which feels like a long time ago.
It also includes a large nature reserve area with trees and wildflowers, a children’s playground (built on a former pitch and putt area), a basketball court and a tennis court. It’s popular with runners and there’s a pre-plotted 1 kilometre Marked and Measured Route around the park, over soft ground and grass all the way. We, didn’t try it, not even walking, because the weather was so hot on the day of our visit. On that day the park was quiet and peaceful. There are no café or toilets.
The entrance has benches. I understand that Friern (originally Freren) in Friern Barnet refers to the lordship of the knights of the Hospital of St. John, and that Barnet means a ‘place cleared by burning’. I could well believe the meaning of the name Barnet when I sat on one of the metal benches that was in the full blaze of the sun and immediately got up again. There didn’t seem to be that many benches in the large open area, so we sat on the dry, scratchy grass. All this may look as though I didn’t like the park much, but I did enjoy it, and the open space. Sitting on the ground somehow makes it seem larger, perhaps it’s to do with the level of your eyes. Or perhaps it’s just an effect of stir-craziness.
There is access from the corner of Manor Drive and Gresham Avenue, from Beaconsfield Road and from Bethune Avenue N11. There’s no car park but there is space on the nearby streets.
Bethune Recreation Ground, Beaconsfield Road, London, N11 3AU
