05/08/2022 10:24:49 AM
64. Lyttelton Playing Fields
These fields, in Hampstead Garden Suburb, mark the addition to the original part of the Suburb finished in the nineteen twenties, of the section added in the nineteen thirties. Lyttelton Playing Fields were part of the provision of recreational and green areas in the original design of the Suburb and it’s the largest open space there. It’s also one of Barnet’s Premier Parks and a site of local importance for nature conservation. The Playing Fields and Northway Gardens (see number 32) make up a green corridor running behind the shops and flats along the A1, between Norrice Lea and Henley’s Corner.
Most of the site is a large open, grassed area surrounded by boundaries of hedge and trees, and the greenery in the gardens that back onto the space. There’s a lot of room to walk, and plenty of benches. It has children’s playgrounds, tennis courts, basketball and football courts, cricket squares and a private bowls club. It has a pavilion, which is home to a nursery. There are toilets, and a kosher (I suppose it is) café where we bought Israeli ice creams. Eating an ‘Eskimo’ set off a big nostalgia surge in me.
Mutton Brook (which joins Dollis Brook and, eventually, the River Brent) runs along the north of the field through the remains of an ancient woodland with old oak trees, horse chestnut, hornbeam and field maple. This used to be known as Watery Wood and the oak trees in front of the tennis courts are part of it. There are also the remains of a nine-hundred-year-old hedgerow to the south and a children’s Millennium Wood in the northwest corner. There’s a small amphitheatre next to the playground, where am dram productions are staged.
There’s no car park but we found space on the road. Access is from Kingsley Way, Lyttelton Road, Norrice Lea and Linden Lea, N2.
This photo was taken when we visited, in 2020. I’m writing this on a muggy, cloudy Mill Hill morning. If Jack would allow us to visit parks more than once and we went back now, I imagine all that’s green would now be yellow, as far as the eye could see. I hope we get some proper rain soon.
Judith Field
Lyttelton Playing Fields, Kingsley Way, London, N2 0EE
27/07/2022 06:05:52 PM
63. Claremont Park and Exploratory Park
Claremont park, Barnet’s newest, opened in the Brent Cross Town development on June 9th, 2022. It h
as over three hundred new trees including apple, pear and cherry, wildflower meadows, green space with sports facilities, water features including a large pond with viewing deck, sandpits and water pumps for play, and nature trails. Natural materials have been used throughout – for example, the children’s climbing structure uses reclaimed timbers from Pier. There are drinking fountains, a community-run ice cream kiosk, and toilets. There’s emphasis on ecology with bat boxes, and houses for solitary bees; unfortunately, neither are large enough for me to fit inside.
Next to Claremont Park is Brent Cross Exploratory Park, described as a temporary park. It was built on what had been the similarly named Clarefield Park , which we had visited in early 2020 when it consisted of a strip of grass with a few trees. It’s been completely transformed and was opened later in 2020. The space will be available for several years until Claremont Park is completed (I don’t know what more is to be done), when the equipment, trees and spaces will become part of it. The trees in Exploratory Park have been planted in pots for planned relocation.
Exploratory Park has a variety of play equipment for children. It has three main spaces: a paved area for events and games, an open grassy area, and an area with new play equipment. There is also outdoor table tennis, an outdoor gym, basketball court, and places to sit.
Visitors to both parks are ‘invited to walk, cycle or use public transport’, which is all very well for those without mobility issues or who fancy cycling along the Benighted North Circular Road. Parking is difficult and I had to drive round for some time before finding somewhere to park on the street. I asked Brent Cross Town about this, and in fact there’s a car park further along Claremont Way on the right – drive past Exploratory Park and follow the road round.
Both parks are closed overnight. At the moment, they are open from 7am-8pm.
Judith Field
Claremont Park and Exploratory Park, Claremont Way, London, NW2 1AJ
27/07/2022 06:04:27 PM
Park of the week
63. Claremont Park and Exploratory Park
Claremont park, Barnet’s newest, opened in the Brent Cross Town development on June 9th, 2022. It has over three hundred new trees including apple, pear and cherry, wildflower meadows, green space with sports facilities, water features including a large pond with viewing deck, sandpits and water pumps for play, and nature trails. Natural materials have been used throughout – for example, the children’s climbing structure uses reclaimed timbers from Woolwich Pier. There are drinking fountains, a community-run ice cream kiosk, and toilets. There’s emphasis on ecology with bat boxes, and houses for solitary bees; unfortunately, neither are large enough for me to fit inside.
Next to Claremont Park is Brent Cross Exploratory Park, described as a temporary park. It was built on what had been the similarly named Clarefield Park , which we had visited in early 2020 when it consisted of a strip of grass with a few trees. It’s been completely transformed and was opened later in 2020. The space will be available for several years until Claremont Park is completed (I don’t know what more is to be done), when the equipment, trees and spaces will become part of it. The trees in Exploratory Park have been planted in pots for planned relocation.
Exploratory Park has a variety of play equipment for children. It has three main spaces: a paved area for events and games, an open grassy area, and an area with new play equipment. There is also outdoor table tennis, an outdoor gym, basketball court, and places to sit.
Visitors to both parks are ‘invited to walk, cycle or use public transport’, which is all very well for those without mobility issues or who fancy cycling along the Benighted North Circular Road. Parking is difficult and I had to drive round for some time before finding somewhere to park on the street. I asked Brent Cross Town about this, and in fact there’s a car park further along Claremont Way on the right – drive past Exploratory Park and follow the road round.
Both parks are closed overnight. At the moment, they are open from 7am-8pm.
Claremont Park and Exploratory Park
Claremont Way
London
NW2 1AJ
22/07/2022 07:48:51 AM
62. Composers Park
Composers Park (no apostrophe) in Elstree is another hidden gem. It was opened in 1999. Before this it was a patch of wasteland dotted with fly-tipped junk, but this was cleared and two thousand trees, donated by a security company, were planted by local schoolchildren and residents.
The park is next to the Musician’s Estate, so-called because the names of the streets include Sullivan Way, Beethoven Road, and Delius Close - you get the idea. The name Composers Park was a winning competition entry by a pupil at a nearby primary school and it’s a good fit.
The space had originally been a grass meadow historically cut for hay and until recently sheep, cows and horses grazed it. Grazing has now stopped but the annual hay cut continues, to help keep the meadows open and the growth of trees and shrubs in check, and it allows wildflowers to thrive. The park now consists of wildflower meadows crossed with paths and hedgerows, mown grass areas, and there are benches. In the summer, the meadows are home to a variety of insects and birds. A new pond provides habitats for wetland wildlife such as smooth newts and common frogs. There’s a small stream, of which I couldn’t find the name.
At the park’s centre is a children’s play area, with the usual swings and slide, but also natural wooden play equipment and animal sculptures. There is also a basketball hoop and a five-a-side pitch. There are no café or toilets.
There are entrances on Watford Way A411 and Sullivan Way, Elstree. There’s no car park and the Watford Way entrance is on a main road. Here, there’s a gate designed by a sculptor working in metal, inspired by the park, and inside the park are metal sculptures of insects that can be found there. It’s possible to park on Sullivan Way (we parked opposite Elgar Close, right by the other entrance). On some maps the location is named Elstree Hill Open Space, but that’s where Composer’s Park is, trust me.
Judith Field
Composers Park, Sullivan Way, Elstree, Borehamwood, WD6 3DG
14/07/2022 01:44:57 PM
61. Mapesbury Dell
We’ve visited large and small open spaces, some of the small ones are no more than the size of half a tennis court (with a swing and a seesaw). Recently, I found out about an official designation – ‘pocket park’. The elements of such a park vary, but typically it occupies less than 0.4 Hectares. This comes from a Government definition and I can’t visualise the size, although I understand that a tennis court occupies 0.02 Hectares.
One such pocket park is Mapesbury Dell, a peaceful ‘secret garden’ in Cricklewood. It used to be known as the Hoveden Road Play Area and was an unwelcoming, derelict piece of wasteland, covered with graffiti, and only frequented by addicts and gangs. In 2000 local residents decided that this green space was too valuable to go to waste and began a campaign to transform the area. It was opened in 2005, by Bill Oddie.
The Dell is owned by Brent Council but there are legal agreements for the future running of the Dell through a steering committee, and Brent Council entered a binding covenant ensuring that the Dell will be kept as a park for the next eighty years. The maintenance of the park is largely down to volunteer gardeners and the Mapesbury Dell Trust raises money by holding events each year, such as the Midsummer Opera Evening, Wild Day, and Christmas Carols.
It is designed to be wheelchair and buggy friendly and dogs must be kept on a lead. There are no toilets or café. It has a play area for children that doesn’t have the usual items, but instead wooden creations for play: a crocodile, play tepee and pirate ship. There are gardens with a varied collection of plants, an educational pond with wildlife, picnic tables, lawns and a central 'bouledrome’ area for boules and community events. Bird feeders attract all sorts of bird life, and signs to help identify the birds. At the moment, my local Mill Hill birds are eating me out of house and home in fat balls, so it’s good to know they have somewhere else to go.
The park is open from 8am until about one hour before dusk, except for Mondays when it is closed until 12.30 for the gardening club. Parking is available on surrounding streets.
Judith Field
Mapesbury Dell, Hoveden Road (gated entrance between numbers 10 and 12), London, NW2 3XD
05/07/2022 05:04:57 PM
60. Chandos Recreation Ground
We’ve now visited 166 different parks, and we continue to find new ones each week. Lately they’ve been restricted to tiny ones with big lying down swings and, often, little else, and I’m going to do something about that. Here’s a park that had more.
There seem to be several open spaces in and around London called Chandos Park, but we found Chandos Recreation Ground (also called Chandos Park on one of the signs by the entrance) in Edgware/Harrow by passing it on the way from one of the places we’d visited by turning right at the end of the road (Harrow, Borehamwood, Elstree, loud protests).
The park was laid out early in the twentieth century and is named after the Duke of Chandos of Canons. Another Part of the Duke’s eighteenth-century estate is now Canons Park (see 17.) The original gates are still there, and at the entrances are shrubberies and some formal beds. It’s a gently sloping open area with a large field crossed by tree-lined paths, which is the sort of space where I can look into the distance. There weren’t very many other people there when we went, which made me feel even less closed in.
Yet again we found a stream at the northern edge: the Edgware Brook. This used to mark the boundary of Edgware, which name is derived from ‘Ecgi’s weir fishing pool’, so it must have been deeper and wider then. The brook combines with the Silk Stream (see 34) and eventually finds its way via the River Brent to the Thames. Volunteers from the Thames21 organisation are doing scrub clearance events to improve the visibility of the Brook.
The park has two children’s play areas, a skateboard area, football, basketball and cricket pitches, tennis courts, plus an outdoor gym. There are no café or toilets.
There are entrances from Camrose Avenue, Merlin Crescent and Methuen Road, Edgware. There is a small car park at the Camrose Avenue entrance, and you can also park on the surrounding streets.
Judith Field
Chandos Recreation Ground, Camrose Avenue , Edgware HA8 6BX
29/06/2022 05:36:16 PM
59. Woodcock Park
This park is in Harrow. We visited it after I’d given up trying to find Northwick Park, which is said to exist nearby as an open space and not just a hospital. Busy, multi-lane roads made it impossible to slow down and look, and the satnav had given up doing more than repeating “proceed to the route”.
Woodcock Park is a Site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation and received a Gold award in London in Bloom in 2021. It was once part of the grounds of Kenton Grange, built in 1803. The local authority bought the house and the grounds in 1952, turned the house into an elderly care home (now St Luke’s Hospice) and opened the remaining land to the public. As well as being bordered by the hospice, the park is bordered by Kenton United Synagogue, Kulanu Jewish Sport and Community Centre, and two schools.
The park is divided into two by the Wealdstone Brook, a tributary of the River Brent. The area north of the brook has wildflowers, shrubs and many mature native and non-native trees including some rare specimens, for example an ancient mulberry. The area to the south is more open with sports and play facilities, grass, and scattered trees.
The park has tennis courts, an outdoor gym, a children's playground, skateboard area, basketball hoops, bowling club, picnic tables and a small car park. There are plenty of places to sit. The Friends of Woodcock park are working towards bringing café facilities to the park. There are no toilets.
Next to a path leading to the park is a wall which apparently used to be repeatedly daubed with graffiti and painted over in patches. The Friends approached St Gregory’s Catholic Science College, one of the schools bordering the park, asking them to submit designs for a mural on the theme of the park to cover the wall. The school got funding and worked with a mural company to produce the mural. I’m not keen on graffiti, despite one of my English degree modules considering it to be creative, so I was pleased that something had been done about it here.
Judith Field
Woodcock Park, Kenton Road / Woodgrange Avenue / Woodcock Hill / Shaftesbury Avenue, HA3 0YB
22/06/2022 04:36:42 PM
58. Silkstream Park and Montrose Playing Fields
Silkstream Park and Montrose Playing Fields are next to each other, on either side of Montrose Avenue in Burnt Oak. Together, they make up one of the largest green spaces in the area. We visited them separately, but it made sense to write about them at the same time. They’ve got their own distinct “personalities”, but I preferred Silkstream Park because it was the less crowded when we visited, and the landscape is more varied. Both have been upgraded within the last two years.
Silkstream Park, described as a linear park (much longer than it’s wide), is within the Watling Estate, a large council housing estate built in the 1920s. The park is one of a number of open spaces created throughout the estate, following the course of Silk Stream (see 34) and its tributary Burnt Oak Brook.
The park has natural landscaping on either side of the stream, with newly planted trees and mature horse chestnut trees, and some oak and hawthorn trees dating from the time when there were fields and hedgerows there. There are also grass, and ornamental shrubs, seating and a playground. There’s a pond, and new bridges cross it and the stream. It's a Site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation.
The new mini wetland area has its own boardwalk, and the plan is that the wetland will fill with water if the Silk Stream bursts its banks, reducing the risk of flooding to nearby properties during heavy rain.
Montrose Playing Fields is mainly used for organised sport. It’s a wide, open flat grassland, and Silk Stream also runs through it. It has tennis and basketball courts, a skate park, table tennis tables, an outdoor gym, parkour area, playground and a new hub building that includes a café, changing rooms, public toilets, and a multi-use studio. It’s also the site of Unitas, an independent charity and purpose-built youth centre for Barnet’s young people aged 8 to 19, and up to the age of 25 for those with additional needs. Parking is available on nearby streets.
Judith Field
Silkstream Park, Silkstream Road/Montrose Avenue, HA8 0DF
Montrose Playing Fields, Montrose Avenue, HA8 0DP
14/06/2022 04:17:10 PM
57. Mill Hill Park
This park, close to where we live, is one of Barnet’s premier parks (see 51) and holds the Green Flag Award. The designated green belt land the park occupies was once part of Daws Farm, believed to have been named after Thomas Daws, who lived in the area in the fourteenth century. In 1923 the local authority purchased the farmland, and it was opened as a park in 1924.
The park divided into two by the A1. The main section to the east is linked by an underpass to a smaller, mainly grassed area, to the west. The bifurcated nature of the park means that I’ve managed to get away with taking Jack here twice – once to each part. I tried a third time last week, but he remembered, and I got my ear bent, despite there being a playground with two “big lying down swings.”
The eastern part has formal flowerbeds, large areas of mown grassland, a cricket pitch, football pitches, three tennis courts, a basketball court, two bowling greens, crazy golf, playground (see above), a cafe, car parks and toilets. There are many mature trees and a Community Forest Nature Reserve, planted in 1993-94 to commemorate the Queen’s 40th Jubilee. I got lost coming out of the nature reserve while trying to find the car park I’d left my car in. As I stood trying to get my bearings, I realised that it had been some time since I was in such a large, open space, and paused for a moment or two to drink it all in.
The western part was planted with trees to commemorate the coronation of King George VI in 1937 and to celebrate the Millennium. In November 2021 Barnet Council, helped by local organisations and primary schools, planted five hundred new trees in the western section, as a memorial to those affected by Covid-19 and ill health. It also honours those who have been affected by the loss or sickness of a loved one. The tribute is made up of native tree species: field maple, crab apple, wild cherry, hawthorn, alder, and goat willow. It’s open year-round.
There are entrances to Mill Hill Park on Wise Lane, Daws Lane, Flower Lane, and Watford Way, NW7.
Judith Field
Mill Hill Park, Daws Lane, London, NW7 2BD
09/06/2022 02:00:40 PM
56. Hadley Green
Hadley Green is an ancient tract of common land about a mile to the north of High Barnet, bisected by the A1000, the Great North Road. The Green has been in existence since at least 1345, which makes it the oldest public open space in the London Borough of Barnet.
It is said to be the site of a decisive battle in the Wars of the Roses, the Battle of Barnet of 1471, during which the Earl of Warwick, known (by me) as The Kingmacher, was killed. This led to Edward IV’s success over Henry VI. An obelisk commemorating the Battle is sited on the grass further along the Great North Road at Hadley Highstone. The coat of arms of the London Borough of Barnet includes red and white roses, and two crossed swords, to represent the battle. On the western edge of the Green is Livingstone Cottage, the one-time home of the African missionary and explorer, David Livingstone.
The Green was secured for the people of Hadley parish as public open space in 1818 and was a traditional village common, grazed by villagers’ animals until the late nineteenth century. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Hadley Green was the site of a ducking stool and stocks. I don’t know what happened to the stool, but in 1935 the bonfire held on the Green to celebrate George V’s Silver Jubilee got out of control and the stocks burnt down.
The Green is a Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation. It consists mainly of acid grassland, supporting a number of different plant species including my favourite, sneezewort (see 20.), plus tormentil and bladderwort (both named after certain members of my family).
There are some seasonally wetter areas, ditches, and permanent ponds. Among the insect inhabitants are a number of different species of damselflies and dragonflies. The Green is crossed by paths, has a few benches, and some fine trees such as willows and conifers. The London Outer Orbital Path (the “M25 for walkers”), usually known as the London Loop, runs through the land.
Judith Field
Hadley Green, Great North Road, London, EN5 4PT
