01/07/2021 10:11:15 AM
25. Oxhey Park
This large Green Flag Award Park is on the edge of Watford. It was formed in 1924. It is a peaceful and quiet place, despite being next to a main road.
It includes a skate park and two large children’s playgrounds, one of which has the giant swings Jack likes. A boy aged about ten, waiting for his turn, asked me whether Jack was in his thirties (I’m guessing because of signs saying the equipment was for children under 14). I told him Jack was twenty-four and explained that, even so, he likes to go on swings (and that he wouldn’t take long). This was a refreshing change from the teasing and staring I am always on guard for. Most of the equipment looks to be ideal for those with disabilities of any age.
There are toilets, and a large, airy café which has a drinking fountain and bowl outside just for dogs, which are welcome on leads. There are tarmac footpaths throughout. The river Colne meanders through the park, and we walked along it. There are also woodland walks with mature horse chestnut trees providing shade. I like to tell Jack about plants and birds that we see, such as trying to get him to learn words like “convolvulus” (constant repetition seems to work) and explaining the difference between “petal”, “pebble” and “pedal”. I pointed out the “baby conkers” growing and we found one that a squirrel had opened and discarded, so you could see the inside. Sometimes we bring things home and put 
them on the living room mantelpiece.
There are steep slopes, apparently popular for tobogganing in the snow, and the footpaths above and below the slopes are linked by a set of steps in the middle of the park. At the top of the steps is a conker that’s anything but a baby – it’s a two-metre-high wooden sculpture, the “Oxhey Conker”, placed there for the park’s centenary in 2014.
There's a car park next to the Eastbury Road entrance and you can also park on the main road and nearby side streets.
Judith Field
Oxhey Park, Eastbury Road, Watford WD19 4RD
24/06/2021 04:19:08 PM
24. Long Lane Pasture
The trust that manages Long Lane Pasture calls it “The Wild Heart of Finchley”. It’s another hidden gem, meadowland bounded by the Benighted North Circular Road, the Northern Line, Pointalls Allotments and Long Lane. You can access it by a pedestrian gate off a footpath at the end of a short access road (opposite Finchley Fire Station), just by the bridge over Long Lane. The Pasture is open every day, from 10am to dusk.
It’s a small remnant of Finchley Common, and is looked after by volunteers, on a lease from Barnet Council who don’t fund it – it’s supported by donations and grants from funding organisations. Under a management plan agreed with the Council, the site is managed to protect its wildlife value and maintain and enhance its biodiversity.
It was once used to grow feed for horses, but the Council purchased it in 1912 “for public enjoyment and recreation”. It has never been built on and has been a public green space for centuries, apart from a small area that was cultivated during World War 2. In the early 1980s it was closed to the public because of proposed road works and in 1999, after years of neglect, the Council decided that the land was surplus to requirements and to sell it for housing development. After a public campaign to keep the Pasture as green space, this decision was overturned and in 2006 the land was designated for community use. In 2012 Long Lane Pasture was awarded a Green Flag Award
It’s a bit rough in places and can be very wet after rain. It took us about three quarters of an hour to walk round, including time spent sitting in th
e gazebo overlooking the pond. There’s a short hard surfaced footpath that could be used for wheelchairs and buggies, but the rest of the paths are grassy. There are benches to rest on to try to spot birds, butterflies and wild flowers. Some areas are closed off, being kept as undisturbed areas for wildlife. Dogs are not allowed and there are no toilets.
The Pasture provides a home for bees – the hives belong to one of the plot holders from the allotments next door. You can see the bee enclosure, but you can’t go in.
Judith Field
Long Lane Pasture, Long Lane, London N3 2RN
17/06/2021 10:46:36 AM
23. Studio Way Woodland and Potterswood Park
This park and woodland, to the north of Borehamwood, used to be part of the backlot of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios, used to save having to film on location. The site was used to create huge standing sets for major films, including a medieval castle for Ivanhoe (1952), a Chinese village in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), and a French château in The Dirty Dozen (1967). Many other films, as well as television productions including The Prisoner (presumably not the Portmeirion scenes) and UFO, were shot in and around the area. After the studio closed in 1968, much of the backlot was redeveloped for housing, but a 14-acre space was kept as parkland.
There’s a reminder of the former studios in the local street names; for example Grace Close (Grace Kelly), Balcon Way (Sir Michael Balcon), and Lion Court (the symbol of MGM Studios). There are a few actual remnants, including a mound in one of the children’s play areas.
Around the woodland are areas of cut grassland with benches scattered around the site, and two play areas – including Jack’s favourite “big lying down swing” (the one like a giant round net).
The woodlands are a mix of mature oak trees (some of which made cameo appearances in films) with the remains of old hedgerows running through them. There are small patches of bluebells, and the undergrowth of hawthorn, blackthorn and bramble provides a home for small mammals and birds. Flowering plants provide a source of nectar for bees and butterflies.
The entrance gate features different films at the top: The Prisoner, Ivanhoe, 633 Squadron, MGM Clock Tower, Inn of the Sixth Happiness, 2001 - A Space Odyssey, Where Eagles Dare, the symbol from the end of a film reel. Animal and plant species are featured at the bottom: an oak leaf, great spotted woodpecker, bramble with blackberries, speckled wood butterfly, hawthorn leaf and haw, squirrel, acorn.
This gate leads to a small car park, but it was locked when we visited. Parking is available on the nearby streets.
Judith Field
Studio Way Woodland and Potterswood Park, Denham Way, Borehamwood WD6 5DA
10/06/2021 06:39:27 PM
22. Pymmes Park
This large park is in Edmonton and, although my satnav kept calling it “Pimes Park”, it’s pronounced Pimms (l’chaim). I know that because a website called Pronounce London told me so.
The park is next to the Silver Street part of the Benighted North Circular Road but there’s no traffic noise once you’re inside. The area is a site of Local Importance of Nature Conservation, and of Archaeological Importance because it’s the site of a medieval house, and apparently a Roman road. Maybe this is one of the straight paths – there are many to follow. We visited in April this year. There are plenty of benches and this was the first time we could sit and relax while out on a park trip, without freezing or being blown by the wind.
The area of the park dates from 1327 when William Pymme built Pymmes House there. The estate changed hands several times until 1906, when the Council purchased it to provide public open space following an increase in the population. During World War II parts of the park were converted to allotments.
There are many mature trees round the edges of the park and the planting of the park has been chosen to encourage wildlife such as butterflies and bees. Jack likes to stroll around lakes looking at the birds, and Pymmes Park has a large lake supporting a wide range of waterfowl -we saw swans, ducks, coots, and Canada geese. This photo shows the way that in any gaggle of geese, one will always keep watch while the others eat (they get their turn later). It seems this happens even when there are only two of them.
There’s also a bowls club, tennis courts, games areas and football pitches, a small pond. There’s a walled garden open on “summer afternoons” (not defined), so we didn’t see it. There are two children’s playgrounds, and toilets. It’s suitable for walking (with or without a dog), and a weekly park run is held there. There’s no car park but it’s possible to park on the surrounding streets.
Pymmes Park, Victoria Road, London, N18 2UG
03/06/2021 12:01:11 PM
21. Windsor Open Space
This informal open space used to be Groats Farm, where sheep grazed. In 1907, part of the land was bequeathed as a play area for poor children. The Council acquired more land in 1922 for public enjoyment and recreation. In 1938 more land was donated.
It’s a hilly site and quite varied, rather than just an open field. Some parts are wooded, and these are home to woodpeckers, jays, and tawny owls. There are also large, grassed areas, some mown and others left uncut for the benefit of wildlife, especially butterflies.
There are lots of benches to sit on and dog walking is allowed. While we were there, the local branch of the Small White Dog Club (I can just about tell a chihuahua from a poodle) appeared to be having a get-together.
Dollis Brook runs through the space, where we saw ducks and moorhens. On sunny days you can sometimes see dragonflies, although we didn’t. The brook provides a habitat for sticklebacks, which kingfishers feed on.
Himalayan Balsam grows on the banks of the brook. Apparently, it’s also called Nuns and Jumping Jack, as well as Policeman's Helmet, Bobby Tops and Gnome's Hatstand. It was introduced to this country in the mid-nineteenth century and it’s attractive, but it’s now an invasive weed of riverbanks and ditches and it’s an offence to plant or grow it in the wild. The plant shoots its seeds over an area of up to twelve feet and if these fall into a stream, it spreads further. Bees like it and the flowers are meant to be good in a salad (I don’t think I’ll try it). The stems are hollow, so I might sneak back to Windsor Open Space and get a few for my attempts to create wind instruments from natural products.
Jack sometimes complains if we visit an open space that isn’t a park, and he trudges along behind me grumbling that we’ve come to the wrong place because “there’s no slide or swing”. Windsor Open Space has both, so he didn’t complain, even though he never goes on slides and the swings were all for young children.
We used the entrance at the end of Windsor Road, N3, having parked further up the road.
Windsor Open Space, Windsor Road, London N3 3SS
25/05/2021 05:12:45 PM
20. Arrandene Open Space
This week I’m writing about a place in Mill Hill, close enough to our house for us to go there on foot. We visited in May 2021, as you can see from the photos (especially the one of what Jack, Mill Hill’s answer to David Attenborough, called a “red bug”), the weather was much drier and sunnier than this May has been – though things are looking up at last.
Arrandene is a site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation. It’s surprisingly rural, for a place surrounded by residential streets. The Council purchased it in 1929 to preserve it for public recreation, when there was a lot of local suburban development going on. It’s on a hilly site and contains mixture of open space (rough grassland divided by ancient hedgerows) and woodland. It contains a traditionally managed hay meadow dating from the Victorian times and the need to feed horses (see also Sunny Hill Park below). There’s a network of footpaths with some benches, and a horse ride. In one of the open parts is a row of trees, each with a plaque commemorating a Mayor of Barnet.
The plants spotted there are apparently uncommon, but characteristic of unimproved grassland. Some of these have wonderful names: adder’s-tongue fern, ragged robin and, in particular, sneezewort (which has a smell that is meant to makes you sneeze). Some words have an appealing sound to me, if pronounced the right way, and sneezewort is one. I’ve been repeating it while writing this, and it’s most efficacious in keeping the “where’s the”/ “I want” mob out of the room. It's home to various birds, such as woodpecker, tawny owl and kestrel, and animals such as squirrels, foxes, rabbits and muntjac deer.
There are two small ponds. One is served by a tiny stream that had dried up when we visited. The other is overshadowed by trees and can only be seen from Mill Hill School because it’s otherwise cut off by a dense bramble thicket (more blackberries for us!).
Arrandene seems popular with local dog walkers, particularly the professionals who turn up with van loads of dogs to walk at the same time. There are entrances in Wise Lane, Milespit Hill and Wills Grove, all NW7 and there are spaces to park on the street.
Judith Field
Arrandene Open Space, Wise Lane, London NW7 2RS
20/05/2021 10:49:54 AM
19. Hendon Park
This large hillside park was originally part of a medieval estate, the Steps Fields. In 1903 the Council opened it to the public. It’s one of Barnet’s Premier Parks, a Site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation and it won the Green Flag Award in 2009-10.
Many mature trees survive from the original planting and the landscape includes one of the largest specimens of Japanese maple in London, which was recognised as one of the Great Trees of London in 2008. These are sixty one trees listed by Trees for Cities after the Great Storm of 1987, following suggestions from the general public.
The park includes a Holocaust memorial garden enclosed by large hedges. It contains a pond, many plants and an arch was installed there in 2000, with a plaque next to it explaining that the Hebrew word is pronounced ‘lezikaron’, referring to remembering the past and looking forwards.
The Children’s Millennium Wood planted in 2000 is a native tree and grassland area. The rest of the park is mainly informal parkland, with mown grass and mature trees, especially London plane and lime. There are benches to sit on and relax – Jack seems to be very good at spotting them and will charge away to an empty one to stake his claim, leaving me to stagger along and join him as soon as I can.
If you go at the right time of year, you’ll find wild blackberries. Part of our ritual last year was to pick a berry and eat it whenever we saw them and we’ll be doing that again this summer, assuming we get one.
The park has tennis and basketball courts, exercise machines and five a side football pitches. There are children’s playgrounds and a bowling green. Next to the park entrance is what may be the only Kosher park café in London. There’s a small car park next to the café on Queen’s Road, where it’s free to park for the first 30 minutes. Otherwise, Hendon Central Station is a short walk away.
Hendon Park, 17 Queens Rd, London NW4 2TL
13/05/2021 11:55:15 AM
18. Big Wood and Little Wood
I’m writing about two places this week, because although we visited them on separate occasions, they’re almost next to each other in Hampstead Garden Suburb. We went to Big Wood first, and then happened across an entrance to Little Wood a couple of weeks later on our way to somewhere else.
Together, the two woods make up a Site of Borough Importance for Nature Conservation, Grade 1, and a Local Nature Reserve. Like Coldfall Wood (see my very first post, below), they’re remnants of more extensive woods that used to cover the area over a thousand years ago, gradually reduced in area as new fields were made. Because of this, the plants and animals are the same in both woods. The trees are mainly oaks, but there are also holly and hazel, and the wild service trees and wild crab apples that are characteristic of ancient woodland. There’s an undergrowth of bramble and ivy and bluebells (but not when we were there in January and February). Birds include tawny owl, nuthatch, woodpecker, and treecreeper. Cuckoos visit, but later in the year.
Big Wood seems to be popular, considering how many people were there late on a January afternoon, walking with and without dogs and jogging. It’s crossed by tarmacked main paths (with benches), which would make it possible to take a wheelchair or buggy. Cycling is not allowed.
Little Wood was a lot quieter when we were there – we didn’t see anyone else during our walk. The paths there are not tarred. It has an open-air theatre, built in 1920 and restored in 1997. The picture shows all we could see, but the Garden Suburb Theatre put on performances there regularly and the next one is due in July. There are no cafés or toilets in either wood.
You can access Big Wood from Temple Fortune Hill, Northway, Oakwood Road and Denman Drive South (all NW11) and to Little Wood from Denman Drive North and Addison Way (NW11). There are no car parks, but we easily found a space to park in nearby streets.
Big Wood: Temple Fortune Hill, NW11
Little Wood: Addison Way, NW11
06/05/2021 08:23:52 PM
17. Canons Park
This large park, Between Edgware and Stanmore, is described by the London Borough of Harrow as the jewel in the crown of their parks.
The name comes from the former landowners, the canons of the Priory of St Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield, who were granted six acres of land there in 1331. Following the dissolution of the monasteries, the land was sold into private hands. Canons Park is mainly located on the site of the early eighteenth-century country house, Cannons, built in 1725, by the 1st Duke of Chandos. The house was demolished in 1744. North London Collegiate School is next to the park, built on part of the same land.
The park has received the Green Flag Award and is also Grade II listed. It includes a number of listed buildings, including a nineteenth-century mock temple. Inside the park is the walled King George V Memorial Garden, which was converted in 1937 from part of the Duke’s kitchen gardens once the park was opened to the public. This garden was closed when we went last August owing to Covid restrictions, but I believe it’s now open again. It has a pond that’s home to frogs and newts.
Jack and I liked Canons Park a lot – there is plenty of space, woodland walks, trees, and flowers. It’s not just a flat landscape like some of the places I’m not going to write about. There’s a café, a children’s play area and exercise machines. A flat pathway runs around the park making the whole space accessible. It also hosts a 5km park run.
Jack had been there before, without me, but I managed to get away with this second trip for him and the first for me. It’s the site of the Shaw Trust Foundation Horticulture Enterprises, where he had attended several times while at college. He likes gardening.
There are entrances to the park from Canons Drive, Donnefield Avenue, Howberry Road and Whitchurch Lane. There isn’t a car park, so you’ll need to find a space on the nearby streets, but some have restricted parking hours. It’s close to Canons Park Underground station.
Canons Park, Howberry Road, Edgware, HA7 4SD
29/04/2021 08:45:26 PM
16. Stationers Park
This little park is in the eastern part of Crouch End, and it was another one of our random places to visit that I found on a map. I was glad I chose it because it’s small but sweet. It was built on the site of the former Stationer’s Company’s school in 1987, which is how it comes to be surrounded by residential streets. It has been a Green Flag Award winner since 2011 and was refurbished in 2012.
It’s next to a primary school and we turned up just as the kids were shooting out like champagne from a Formula One winner’s bottle, only louder, but even so it wasn’t too busy except in the older kids’ play area. That has some amazing equipment, including a massive wooden fort with slides, and one of the giant swings Jack likes. There is also a play area for younger children, tennis and basketball courts and a concrete table tennis table. It’s too small to host any sort of park run but, I read that a circular walk on the paths around the park is just over 300m in length and five circuits is close to a mile.
The park has two ponds, although one of them has dried out and is in the process of being restored. For such a small park there are a lot of different areas: large trees to sit under, green spaces laid out with picnic tables and there are benches throughout. There’s a good food kiosk selling home -made cakes. I got Jack a lolly ice and we sat for a while. It was a chance for some people watching.
There are four public entrances into Stationers Park, two from Denton Road and two from Mayfield Road. You can park on nearby streets but be careful because the parking is residents’ only between 12 and 2 from Monday to Friday. Nearby public transport within walking distance includes Finsbury Park underground station, Harringay mainline station and the W5 bus.
Judith Field
Stationers Park, Mayfield Road, N8 9LP
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