Park of the week

52. Centenary Park

This park is in Stanmore – we went there when I could turn right at the end of the road without Jack shouting “I told you to turn left” for the rest of the journey. The park is spacious and on a slight slope, and there is plenty of room to walk. This contrasts with some places we’ve visited lately, which comprise playgrounds (the reason I chose them) but little else. So, although we’ve now visited 153 parks, I won’t be writing about all of them, especially those on my list where I’ve commented “bleak”. Now that the days are longer and, I hope, the weather is improving, I am going to have to insist on our visiting places where we can walk, whether there’s a “big lying-down swing”, a “chair swing”, or not. 

Centenary Park was added to the area’s public open space in 1934 when the local authority acquired the land. It’s called after the centenary of local government. Although the park is mainly a large open space, it has the remains of a formal layout with a tree set in a circular lawn near the main entrance and another bed planted with heather and conifers. A path around the edge is planted with London plane trees.

Centenary park has two floodlit football pitches available for hire, bowling green, tennis courts, pitch and putt golf course, exercise machines, and playgrounds for younger and older children. There are benches to rest on and paths for walking. This was good for us as quite a few places we’ve visited didn’t seem to have any paths and we have had to squelch our way across mud and waterlogged grass. But not at Centenary Park, where the paths are also wide enough for wheelchairs. Dog walking is allowed.

The park has a café, with space to sit outside. There are toilets. There is no car park but it’s possible to park on nearby streets. There are entrances from Burnell Gardens, Crowshott avenue and Culver Grove, Stanmore.

Judith Field

Centenary Park, 135 Culver Grove, Stanmore, HA7 2NW
 

50. Whitings Hill Open Space and Whitings Wood 

This large open space is in Chipping Barnet. It’s dominated by a rounded, grassy hill, which gives a good view over the surrounding area. The rest of the habitat consists of clumps of trees, and there are bramble patches. Part of Jack’s and my park visiting ritual is that, if we see blackberries growing, we always eat one each. Here, we found enough to fill a handkerchief to take home.

It was quiet when we visited – we only saw about two other people there. There’d be plenty of room for dog walking and general running around (by people of any age who feel up to it). A small stream, a tributary of Dollis Brook (see Park of the Week 49), flows through the site. There are no snakes living in the stream, but I thought this branch looked like one. 

Whitings Hill had previously been scruffy pastureland until Barnet Council turned it into a public open space in 1996 and invited local groups to plant trees there. The Barnet Society created two plantations on the south-west side of the hill, to mark the Society’s fiftieth anniversary. They made sure that all the trees in the plantations were native species. Whitings Hill School also planted trees on the north-west side.

Whitings Wood is next to the open space and was also created in 1996. It’s part of the Watling Chase Community Forest project. Community Forests are not continuous areas of closely grown trees but are instead meant to be ‘a rich mosaic of landscape, within which land uses include farmland, woodland, villages, leisure enterprises, nature areas and public open space’. Watling Chase covers an area in Hertfordshire and the northern edge of London, including in Barnet and Harrow. Local people engaged in the woodland creation from the outset. Whitings Wood contains a mixture of native broadleaf trees and woody shrubs. Blackthorn hedgerows are spreading out and natural regeneration is developing.

There’s access from Greenland Road, Shelford Road, Quinta Drive, Brett Road and Hackforth Close, all in Barnet. There’s space to park on the surrounding streets.

Judith Field

Whitings Hill Open Space and Whitings Wood, 9 Greenland Rd, Barnet EN5 3BL

48. Waterlow Park

This park is in Highgate Village. It’s on a steep hillside and has some of the best views over London. 

The land the park occupies has been laid out as gardens since the seventeenth century. It was formed from the combined grounds of five houses, including the poet Andrew Marvell’s cottage, and Lauderdale House. Sir Sydney Waterlow, businessman and Lord Mayor of London bought the properties and their grounds and in 1872 he leased them to St Bartholomew’s Hospital for patients who were convalescing. It was used for this until 1883. Waterlow gave it to the local authority in 1889, as a ‘garden for the gardenless’, as he put it. The park, described in the Illustrated London News as a ‘munificent gift of delightful pleasure grounds’ was officially opened in October 1891.

Lauderdale House still sits at the edge of the park and is now used as a tearoom and for functions and arts events. On the terrace is a large wrought-iron sundial with the hours marked by surrounding bedding plants.

The park has paths throughout and is landscaped with three ponds, one of which is designated as a restricted nature area. There are borders, grassy slopes, and a wide variety of trees. There are barbecue areas, and tennis and netball courts. Writing this takes me back to my Liverpool schooldays and memories of netball, running pointlessly up and down the playground in gym skirt and t shirt (tights not allowed) while the PE teacher stood shivering, anorak hood up, hands in pockets, shouting commands like ‘mark your partners’, through chattering teeth. I still think netball is a stupid game. The park also has an area for pétanque, which is more to my taste. I like to play boules – and to write it.

There are toilets in the park, and a café in Lauderdale House. There is also a children’s play area, with equipment for young children. This lack of large swings put Jack in a bad mood so we headed for home, which involved walking up a very steep hill. As Jack is not very fit and, when we visited, I was recovering from illness, before we reached the top we both sounded like Darth Vader. Luckily, there are plenty of benches to sit on.

There is parking on surrounding streets, although I imagine this could be hard to find. We were lucky enough to find a space on Highgate Hill. The nearest station is Archway, about a 10 minute walk away, or you can get a bus from there to the park.

Judith Field

Waterlow Park, Highgate Hill, London N6 5HG

47. Hilly Fields Park

I often find that people add a superfluous S to the end of my surname so I made sure that This park in Enfield really is called Hilly Fields rather than Hilly Field, who sounds like she might be a character in Malory Towers. Hilly Fields Park is a natural park in Enfield with fields, meadows, and woods. It’s been described as one of the most interesting grassland areas in the borough.  There are many mature large old, pollarded trees and oaks. These are scattered over rough grassland, which contains a large range of plants and is home to butterflies.

The northern boundary of the park is formed by the Turkey Brook, which rises at Potters Bar, and eventually reaches the River Lee Navigation (a canal incorporating the River Lee) at Enfield Lock. The banks of the brook are dotted with hornbeam and scrub trees. Towards the east end of the park, at the top of a slope planted with trees that include oaks and conifers. The park is a Site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation.

The area it now occupies used to be known as Park Farm. The local authority bought 62 acres of the farmland, as part of their policy of acquiring land for public open space as the area was being developed for housing and they opened Hilly Fields as a public park in 1911. In 1921, because brass bands were becoming very popular. a wooden bandstand was built. Audiences fell to much lower levels in the nineteen thirties due to competition from cinema and radio and in the Second World War, bandstand entertainment was not promoted at all. Eventually the bandstand became derelict, but it was restored in 2001, using funds from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Bandstand events are held in the summer. 
It is quite hilly and it’s a popular place for sledging when the snow comes. 

The London Outer Orbital Path, usually known as the London Loop, runs through the park. This is a 150-mile signed walk along public footpaths and through parks, woods and fields around the edge of Outer London, sometimes described as  “the M25 for walkers”. 

Hilly Fields Park doesn’t have toilets or a café. Nor does it have a playground, but for once Jack didn’t seem to mind. There was so much space to walk in that I had to take note of landmarks, so we didn’t get lost. My sense of direction hasn’t improved since we got lost at the Hill House Pergola (see Park of the Week 3). I think that might make a good T shirt slogan.

Judith Field

Hilly Fields Park, Phipps Hatch Lane, EN2 0AG

46. Copthall Railway Walk & Copthall Old Common

This nature reserve starts at a bridge under Sanders Lane NW7, near Bittacy Hill, and finishes at Page Street. However, there is an entrance five minutes’ walk away from my house. You turn left (so no Jack complaints) at the end of my road (Salcombe Gardens), cross over Devonshire Road NW7 so that you’re on the same side of the road as Canada Villa Youth Centre, turn left and walk over the bridge. At the end of the railings on the bridge is a set of steps leading under the bridge. This is shown as a red pin on the map.

There, you come to a grassy footpath, the Copthall Railway Walk, following the route of the old railway line from Mill Hill East to Edgware. This line was meant to be incorporated into the London Underground system in the nineteen thirties, but it was only partly completed when war broke out. Afterwards, plans to make the rest of the line part of the tube were scrapped. Here and there you can see crumbling concrete posts which would have carried the cables for the railway if the electrification of this stretch had taken place.

Apparently, the existing stretch from Finchley Central to Mill Hill East was only completed because of the latter’s closeness to an Army barracks. That site has been recently redeveloped, but I do remember visiting the Garrison Nursery to get supplies of baby formula, over twenty years ago.

The nature reserve runs for just under a mile of the old line. Copthall Old Common is to one side, here the path broadens, then narrows again to follow a green lane. The habitats on the site include a mixture of re-grown woodland, scrub, and rough grassland as well as a small pond on the common, where there are older oak trees. Among the hedges grow oak, sycamore and silver birch trees and there are areas of bluebells. The site is also home to several species of birds and invertebrates, including slow worms and glow-worms, a scarce and declining species (we didn’t notice any). 

There are no toilets, café, or playground with “lying down swings”. But you can’t have it all.

Judith Field

Copthall Railway Walk and Copthall Old Common, Off Pursley Road, London NW7