10/12/2024 06:11:08 PM
173. Wood Farm Nature Reserve
This nature reserve is in Stanmore, to the north of Stanmore Country Park and close to my favourite swimming pool at the Aspire Leisure Centre with its bath-temperature water and lovely disabled people. The nature reserve is a mixture of rough grassland and scrub with a path running through it, and great views over London. It’s also a haven for birds; kestrel, sparrowhawk, buzzard and red kite all hunt over it.
Once a farm, and then a landfill site, the area was previously inaccessible to the public. It was handed over to the council in 2015, with a small parcel of land being sold off for redevelopment into housing. The proceeds of this went towards funding the transformation of the land into the green space it is today. The Old Dairy on Wood Lane had been used for storing milk for distribution and has been converted to a visitor centre. The nature reserve is now managed by a volunteer warden supported by a management committee comprising council officers, elected councillors and volunteers. It’s open all year round.
The London Viewpoint is a short distance along the path that starts from the car park, and a sign points out what to look for. We made out the tops of the Canary Wharf skyscrapers and the Shard, BT Tower, the London Eye. Closer, Wembley Stadium dominates, but on a really clear day it’s said that you can see the control tower at Heathrow. The line of hills on the far horizon are the North Downs, which mark the southern border of the M25 — so on this high hill not far from the northern side of the M25 you can see across the whole of London.
There’s also a Pond to the right of that path. In summer, dragonflies and damselflies flit over the pond or rest on the waterside plants. In late summer, large numbers of swallows and house martins swoop over the pond to drink as they mass in preparation for their migration south.
When we went, earlier this year, the place was almost empty except for a few dog walkers. Somewhere along the path one of my hearing aids fell off but I didn’t notice till too late. If you go along and find it, I don’t want it back, thanks all the same.
Judith Field
Wood Farm Nature Reserve, 17 Wood Lane, Stanmore, HA7 4LJ
03/12/2024 09:37:06 PM
172. Russell Park
This park is another one that I found by looking at a map. It’s a small green space surrounded by buildings, in the Noel Park Estate area of Wood Green. Noel Park is one of the earliest garden suburbs in the world. It was opened in 1883, to provide affordable housing to working class families who wanted to move out of the city, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was built on what were then the outskirts of the metropolis by the Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings Company (Artizans Company).
In 1929, a long, narrow strip of land near the south of the estate on Russell Lane. The road is named after John Russell, former Liberal Prime Minister 1846-1852 and 1865-1866. The plot was designated as parkland and named Russell Park. In 2003, the Council renamed the park Noel Park after consulting with residents. However, Local people were keen to reduce confusion caused by the park sharing a name with a district and pressed for the name of the park to be changed. So, in 2010, Noel Park became Russell Park again.
Works took place to improve Russell Park in the summer of 2009. The focus of the work was on the eastern seating area which had become very overgrown. Local people were reluctant to use the area because the walls, large shrubs and mounds were creating a visual barrier and further contributing to feelings of being unsafe for park users. The park was first awarded the Green Flag Award in 2010 and has kept it ever since.
The park is the site of community festival each summer. It has trees around the perimeter, grass, shrub beds, hedges and planted areas. There’s a basketball court, a playground (being refurbished at the time of writing this, December 2024), a natural play area, picnic area and an outdoor gym. There’s also a community café with toilets.
Judith Field
Russell Park,114 Russell Avenue, London N22 6PS
26/11/2024 05:59:17 PM
171. Mint Street Park
This park is the largest green park in Bankside, on the southern bank of the Thames, to the east of the South Bank area where the arts venues are. It’s a local play space and venue for community events, with gardens, lawns, a playground, outdoor gym and an open-air performance area. stage. It’s managed by the Bankside Open Spaces Trust.
When Charles Dickens was young, lodging in nearby Lant Street, he passed Mint Street on his way to work. The St. Saviour’s Union Workhouse at Mint Street is thought to have provided Dickens with the model for the scene in Oliver Twist where Oliver asks for more.
Mint Street Park was laid out on the site that the Evelina Hospital for Sick Children occupied from 1869 to 1976, before moving to a new building next to St Thomas’ Hospital. The Evelina had been founded by Baron Frederick de Rothschild in memory of his wife Evelina, who died in premature childbirth in 1866. It was founded to tackle the high rate of childhood diseases prevalent in the crowded streets of Bankside.
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After the hospital closed the buildings were demolished and the site had become a semi-derelict open space, with a reputation for crime and anti-social behaviour. Bankside Open Spaces Trust worked with the council and local people to transform it into the park. Improvements included new landscaping, access and lighting. Raised beds were created and planted by the gardening club working with Putting Down Roots, a project run by St Mungo's Association working with homeless people. There are also a planted rockery and borders and a large stag beetle loggery.
A small area of roughland and scrub dominated by nettles, bramble, hawthorn and dog rose provides shelter and nesting habitat for common birds and invertebrates throughout the year.
Judith Field
Mint Street Park, 14 Weller Street, London SE1 1QU
19/11/2024 06:19:14 PM
170. Verulamium Park
This park, in St Albans, is named after the Roman city of Verulamium, the third largest city in Roman Britain, on which it stands. There had been a settlement there, Verlamion, the capital of the territory of the Catuvellauni tribe that the Romans conquered in CE43. Large sections of the Roman city wall are still intact.
In 1923 the site was the first of its kind in the country to be listed as a Scheduled Ancient Monument and is now protected under law. The local authority acquired Verulamium Park from the Earl of Verulam in 1929.
Archaeological excavations were undertaken in the park during the 1930s by Sir Mortimer Wheeler and his wife Tessa, during which the 1800-year-old hypocaust (underfloor and in-wall heating) and its covering mosaic floor were discovered. The Hypocaust Mosaic is on view to the public in a purpose-built building in the park; it was decided that it was better to leave it where it was rather than try to move it. On the outskirts of the park is Verulamium Museum, open Monday-Saturday, which contains hundreds of archaeological objects relating to everyday Roman life.
The park holds both the Green Flag and Green Heritage Site awards.
A main feature is the ornamental lake created in the 1930s after the excavations, home to many distinct species of water birds and supporting an island heronry. There’s also a model boating lake. Wildlife habitats are enhanced by the use of trees and meadows, which are important for insects, birds, and bats. From the park there’s a good view of St Alban’s Cathedral and Abbey Church, constructed in 1077, in part using bricks from the former Roman town.
The River Ver flows through the park. This chalk stream is a tributary of the River Colne. It’s partly a winterbourne – I had to look this wonderful word up, and it means a river that’s dry in the summer months.
The park has a play area, splash park (open from May to September), golf and crazy golf, café and toilets and a car park.
Judith Field
Verulamium Park, St Michael's Street, St. Albans AL1 3JE
12/11/2024 11:11:56 AM
169. Russell Square
Russell Square is a large garden square in Bloomsbury, laid out in 1804. It’s named after the surname of the Earls and Dukes of Bedford (Russell is the family name), who developed the family's London landholdings in the 17th and 18th Centuries. It was designed by Humphry Repton.
In the centre of the garden is a paved area, with three large, circular fountains (installed 1959-60). They no longer work and they’re topped by large concrete planters, but there is a working fountain in the middle. The fountains are surrounded by further planters and areas of bedding and roses are set in and around the paved area. Around the centre there are areas of lawn with trees (mostly planes), shrubberies and hedges. Over forty species of birds have been spotted there.
A cab shelter, originally built for the drivers of hansom cabs, still stands in the north-west corner. There’s also a café.
Some buildings around the square bear plaques with information on earlier residents.
One plaque that should be there, but isn’t, would be on the intersection where the road Southampton Row meets Russell Square. On the morning of September 12, 1933, Hungarian Jewish physicist (and friend of Einstein), Leo Szilard, waited to cross the road at this very traffic light, or more likely its thirties predecessor. Szilard had just attended a lecture by the physicist Ernest Rutherford (known to many as the father of nuclear physics), who had said that the thought of releasing the energy locked in atoms was ‘moonshine’. Szilard was considering this and as he stepped off the kerb he was struck not by a car, but by the idea of a chain reaction between atoms that could release vast amounts of energy. This was six years before the discovery of nuclear fission and of any idea that anyone could have had about the release of atomic energy.
I stopped there and drank in the atmosphere and the fumes as traffic and apparently oblivious pedestrians passed by. But, actually, Szilard probably wouldn’t have wanted a plaque. He became a pacifist after he’d worked out the consequences of his own discovery and tried unsuccessfully during World War II to meet President Truman to warn him of the inevitability of an arms race if America dropped the bomb. Just another junction, but the place where it could be said that the atomic bomb was born.
Judith Field
Russell Square, London WC1B 5EH
05/11/2024 01:00:11 PM
168. St George's Churchyard and Gardens
Yes! We do go south of the river. This garden is in Southwark, and we visited several in the area.
St George’s is a quiet spot, despite being just off busy Borough High Street. There has been a church on the site since the 12th Century, but the present church of St George the Martyr dates from the 18th. The churchyard closed for burials in 1853 and was converted into a public garden in 1882. When nearby Tabard Street was extended part of the churchyard was lost, and the detached portion was re-opened as public gardens in 1902, now called St George's Garden.
The north boundary wall (shown above left) originally formed the southern boundary of Marshalsea Prison (closed in 1842), where Dickens' father was imprisoned for debt in 1824, and Dickens was aged 12. Dickens, who had to lodge in a house that belonged to the Vestry Clerk of St George’s, used that experience of the Marshalsea as setting for Little Dorrit, and the title character (aka Amy, “the Child of the Marshalsea”) was born in the prison and baptised and married in the church. Her kneeling figure can be seen in the stained-glass east window. He was haunted by the trauma of this period of his childhood for the rest of his life and references to it, and to the abandonment he felt with the sudden loss of his childhood, crop up time and again in his novels.
The garden has been re-landscaped and has a hedged area, gravelled paths and seats. There are mature trees, including a plane tree with seating around the trunk. A number of the original gravestones have been placed in one corner.
While I was taking the air, a man approached, greeted me and inquired after my health. I replied that I did well and hoped that he did too, after which he went on his way. I’d like to say that it was the ghost of Dickens, but I think he was more likely an “early imbiber”.
Judith Field
St George’s Churchyard and Garden, Long Lane, London SE1 4PG
29/10/2024 01:18:44 PM
167. Rosemary Gardens
Rosemary Gardens, in Islington, was opened in 1960. The London County Council had wanted to create a park because, at that time, Islington had the least open space of all London boroughs.
It was built on the site of the pleasure gardens of the Rosemary Branch pub. A tavern of that name has existed there since the sixteenth century. In 1783 a factory making white lead (a component of paint) was built on the site, with two windmills to grind the lead and apparently these were a local landmark. By 1835 the introduction of a steam engine had made the windmills redundant. Most of the workers were women, who were thought to be less susceptible to lead poisoning. Mid-nineteenth century Health and Safety had it that drinking dilute sulphuric acid offered some protection, but this was later abandoned in favour of drinking milk. Knowing about chemistry and pharmacy as I do, I can't see what good drinking sulphuric acid would do, and I’m not sure how efficacious milk would be either.
Production continued into World War II, when the white lead was used in camouflage paint for warships. The Luftwaffe targeted the factory in 1940, but the bomb failed to explode. In 1945, however, a V2 rocket killed two workers and caused enough damage to lead to permanent closure. After the war, less toxic alternatives were found for the lead in paint.
The park has a playground, basketball hoops, a football pitch, two tennis courts, a table tennis table and an outdoor gym. Jack likes these and makes a point of using each machine. Sometimes I join him, but usually I stand and scan the area for troublemakers and gawpers. I have been known to have a go on a swing if nobody is waiting: the first time I slid off onto my rear end because I wasn’t sitting properly but since then it’s been all systems go.
There are also large areas of grass, trees and a mini forest, and fragments of the cobbled streets that used to exist where the park is now.
Judith Field
Rosemary Gardens, 14-18 Southgate Rd, London N1 3DU
21/10/2024 08:21:33 PM
166. The Onion Garden
This garden is in Westminster, down a side street off Victoria Street, not far from Victoria Station.
In 2021, Jens Jakobsen, local florist and philanthropist, transformed it, with the help of volunteers, from a derelict concrete corner between the glass, steel and concrete of office blocks, into a delightful space that the whole community can enjoy. It’s a not-for-profit charity, with any money made from events or selling plants, going back into the running and growth of the garden. You can donate via their crowdfunder.
There are quite a few onions in the garden, some growing, some hanging from branches or used to create sculptures, but the name for the garden comes more from the ancient symbolism of the onion, its layers representing renewal and the circle of life.
There are now over two hundred species of plant in the garden, including herbs, wildflowers and fruit trees, attracting insects, butterflies and bees. Everything is grown organically, and Jens tries to not throw anything away, for example dead leaves are used in compost and twigs are used to create other structures, such as this nest, containing eggshells, again representing rebirth. Eggshells can also be used as an organic snail repellent.
Narrow paths wind through the garden, past corners with chairs where you can relax among the plants and trees. I sat in one and did my daily Duolingo, undisturbed and not disturbing– even the spoken- out-loud German bits. There’s a greenhouse/orangery towards the end of the garden, and a coffee pavilion with a transparent observation beehive. Any profits from the pavilion go back into the garden. Throughout are little signs in and around the plants, with motivational/amusing phrases.
The garden is open 7.30am-4.30pm Monday-Friday.
Judith Field
The Onion Garden, 5 Seaforth Place, London, SW1E 6AB
08/10/2024 11:30:36 AM
165. Woodridge Nature Reserve
This a Site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation on the edge of Woodside Park, London, owned and managed by the London Borough of Barnet. The space was originally farmed as pasture, and the nature reserve it became was designed as a nature trail for local primary schools. I found it on a map, and was surprised it was there. It’s set back from the road, so I’d never noticed it before, when driving around the area. A hidden gem, or at least one I’d never heard of. In fact, there are large areas of green space and farmland in Barnet, as I’ve discovered.
The reserve is set in the Folly Brook Valley, a larger wildlife habitat of woods and meadowsstretchinh between Woodside Park and Totteridge, open to the public as a green space. The reserve includes the Folly Brook (a shallow stream at this point), a tributary of Dollis Brook, which flows into the River Brent and eventually empties out into the River Thames.
There's young oak woodland and rough grassland, in which wild flowers grow, and is a home to for wildlife such as woodland birds, insects and amphibians. Tall hedgerows on both sides of the path create a sense of seclusion. I saw a deer in one hedgerow, but it ran away before I had the chance to photograph it. It was about the size of a dog, so perhaps it was a little muntjac. The nature trails follow unpaved paths, some taking you to open fields with wildflower meadows.
It seems very popular with dog walkers, in fact we were the only people who didn’t have a dog, when we visited. Access is by a gate at the end of a path between numbers 65 and 67 Michleham Down.
Judith Field
Woodridge Nature Reserve, Michleham Down, London, N12 7JL
24/09/2024 10:53:57 AM
164. Harlesden Town Garden
This is an urban pocket park and community garden (in Harlesden), created through the work of volunteers and funded by donations, with the aim of promoting health, well-being and food growing in the community. It was another space I found by looking at a map and, while Harlesden is a bit further from God's own Millhill than I'd realised, it was worth visiting.
It occupies space that had been neglected by the local authority and the community for many years. It was reclaimed in 2013 and further revitalised in 2017 including murals, enabling residents to engage and connect with each other, and has become a space that provides new opportunities for friendship, shared garden skills, well-being, and employability. It won the UCL Public Engagement Award on 2020 and the RHS London in Bloom Award in 2021 and 2022.
The garden has a wildflower meadow, flower beds, trees, children’s playground, multi-use games area and a community meeting place for local people. There’s also an allotment with raised beds to rent. Green Club is held at the garden every Saturday morning year-round, with activities suitable for people of all ages and abilities, to learn how to grow fruit and vegetables.
Some older maps of the garden show an area called the “Corner of Doom”, although the one in the park itself doesn’t. This intrigued me so I emailed the group who run the garden for an explanation. Their very prompt reply told me that the corner in question had been the scene of anti-social behaviour, because it was dark and hidden from view. The volunteers filled it with shade loving plants and in the spring and early summer when there is less shade from the trees, there’s a good show of flowering bulbs - narcissus, tulips, crocus and wood anemone. They top up the bulbs each year and therefore renamed the area the spring garden.
The garden is open from Monday to Sunday, during daylight hours.
Judith Field
Harlesden Town Garden, Challenge Close, London NW10 4AN
