30/01/2024 09:27:57 PM
130. Wray Crescent Open Space
This is a small green space in Islington, containing the only cricket pitch in the borough. It holds the Green Flag award, which it was first awarded in 2018. It has also received Islington in Bloom awards. It’s a relatively small space; plans to double its size were rejected by local residents in the nineteen eighties. As far as I can tell, there used to be housing on the site, which was bought by the local authority during the nineteen seventies. The buildings were demolished to make space for a park.
The park also has a tarmac court with basketball hoops and football goals. There are a playground, outdoor table tennis table and picnic tables. A source of the underground Hackney Brook runs under the park. it also includes a community garden named in honour of local resident Yvonne Conolly, the first Black female headteacher in the UK.
The Friends of Wray Crescent Open Space, started in 2018, are a group of local volunteers who work together to improve the park. In 2021 they set up a tree nursery, to address locally the shortage of native trees in the UK. The Friends sourced one hundred trees including hazel, crab apple, rowan, dog rose and blackthorn. The trees were cared for three years and, starting in November 2023, they have been distributed within the park and to groups and businesses in Islington. The next step will be to plant more saplings this spring, to continue the project. Also, local residents have donated a small number of home-grown oak trees to the park. The Friends also rebuild the wood chip path in the park every year.
There are toilets, but no café. We parked on a nearby street.
Judith Field
Wray Crescent Open Space, Wray Crescent, London, N4 3BH
23/01/2024 09:28:32 PM
129. Bush Hill Gardens
This tiny park, in Enfield, shouldn’t be mixed up with Bush Hill Park (that’s post number 31). I found Bush Hill Gardens by driving past it on our way back from another park in the area, and we stopped to have a look. It’s a small public garden laid out on land purchased by Enfield Council in 1925 and opened to the public in 1928. The delay was probably caused by an unsuccessful attempt to get the landscaping work carried out by local unemployed people, for which grants were available.
Much of the area was once part of the Old Park Estate, a Royal property. The park has lawns with benches, rose beds and it’s all bordered by a path with a set of rustic steps in the middle. It’d take about five minutes to walk all around. Trees and shrubs are planted round the edges. Near the entrances on Bush Hill Road there’s a rock garden and there’s also a pond (overgrown when we visited) and a small stream with a bridge.
A noticeboard inside sets out activities subject to a fine of £20, if done in the park. These include beating a carpet, leading cattle to pasture, erecting a pole of any size, and letting your greyhound off its lead. It’s an old notice but do be careful as the regulations may still be in force.
There is no café. Despite the original Ladies' and Gentlemen's entrance gates set into the railings (padlocked shut in any case), the toilets were demolished many years ago.
Judith Field
Bush Hill Gardens, Bush Hill Road, Winchmore Hill, EN1 2HA
16/01/2024 09:12:38 PM
128. Queensbury Park
In 1920 Geoffrey de Havilland established his aircraft company at Stag Lane, in what was then called Edgware. De Havilland manufactured numerous famous planes here, including several varieties of ‘Moth’. In 1934 the company moved to Hatfield and much of present-day Queensbury was laid out on the site of the disused airfield. A newspaper competition was held to suggest a name for the new suburb. ‘Queensbury’ acknowledged the neighbouring Kingsbury.
Queensbury Park was originally part of Little Stanmore Farm. It was purchased in 1936 by the local authority to ensure that the local residents had an open green space preserved for them. The park was developed in the nineteen fifties, to provide drainage, paths, and a playground.
In 2014, the local began restoration works on the site. Kenton Brook was widened and diverted through the park, winding a course through natural banks and connected to a new wetland with a water feature.
The renaturalised brook and the wetland provide new habitat, as well as acting as natural flood storage. The site was officially opened in 2016.
There is a large open space to walk in, and this is often home to events such as funfairs, and last December’s three-day Romanian festival. Even though it’s said to be one of Harrow’s busiest parks, we didn’t find it crowded on a Sunday afternoon. There are trees and shrubs, and a path runs round the park so it’s not like some we’ve visited, which were too waterlogged to walk far. There are benches, picnic tablets, an outdoor gym, football pitch, basketball and tennis courts. There are no toilets or café, and it doesn’t have a car park. We found space to park on a nearby street.
One entrance is on Honeypot Lane, which sounds like something from Winnie the Pooh. In fact, it’s a dual carriageway, but allegedly, at the time when it was a beaten track, in wet weather the damp clay used to stick like honey.
There are also entrances in Honeypot Lane, Ruth Close and Clifton Road, Harrow.
Judith Field
Queensbury Park, Clifton Road, Harrow HA3 9PD
09/01/2024 09:43:42 PM
127. Roe Green Park
Roe Green Park occupies two former farms, taken over during the rapid development of the area in the 1930s. Some of the original trees and hedges of one of them, Valley Farm, are still in the park today. The manor house of the other, Roe Green Farm, survives as Kingsbury Manor House. It still has its original walled kitchen garden, which been adapted as a demonstration wildlife garden, Roe Green Walled Garden. The site is managed by volunteers from the Barn Hill Conservation Group and is open three days a week. It caters for a range of school and community groups.
In 1928 the television pioneer John Logie Baird rented the Coach House and the stables. Here he undertook his television experiments, receiving the first television signals from Berlin in 1929. He moved to other premises elsewhere in the early 1930s. At the beginning of World War 2, the two 80ft aerial masts were removed in case they could be used as landmarks by German bombers, and all that remains is the concrete base with its metal fixings.
During the winter of 2021-22 The Association of Jewish Refugees planted trees around the UK to mark its 80th anniversary, to thank all the British people who helped Jewish refugees find safety in Britain from Nazi Europe, and to celebrate the contribution that the Jewish refugees made to every walk of British life. A tree was planted at Roe Green Park, in March 2022. We saw one before, at Preston Park (number 110).
Roe Green Park is part of the Fields in Trust historic protection programme and has been protected since April 2013 under the Queen Elizabeth II Fields protection type. It’s also a Site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation.
Large sections of the park are now planted as a meadow area. The park contains a number of parkland oaks, younger flowering and specimen trees, beds of conifers, and roses along the main road boundary. There are sports pitches, tennis courts, an outdoor gym and a children’s playground. There’s a small car park.
Judith Field
Roe Green Park, Kingsbury Road, London, Brent, NW9 9HA
02/01/2024 08:50:10 PM
126. Laycock Green
Laycock Green is a small park in Islington. It’s just around the corner from busy Highbury Corner with its Tube station and shops, and provides a relatively quiet green space, except for at the end of the school day as it’s near a primary school. It’s a good place to relax if you happen to be in the area. It was opened in 1977 by Marie Betteridge, former parliamentary communist candidate and a well-known tenants’ leader, local resident and campaigner.
We visited the green because it’s on a list I’ve pulled together of parks in Islington with Jack’s favourite “big lying down swings”. We’ve visited over half of them already – oh dear. It had gone 4pm and was raining by the time we arrived, so this post includes photos taken in daylight at in soggy darkness. But we were the only people there, which suits me. Fortunately, it is open 24 hours a day.
Two hundred years ago, the green was the site of Laycock’s Dairy, home to seven hundred cows. From the sixteenth century, Islington had been known as “Cow Town” and “the place where growthe creame”. Apprentices journeying to Islington on a day out were known as the “cream and cake boys”. Until the nineteenth century, Islington was farmland and pastures, with only a few small dwellings and dirt track roads. Islington was then the dairy capital of London because the rich soil produced the best grasses on which the cattle fed.
The space offers a green area for relaxation, a children’s playground outdoor gym, basketball/netball court. There are also wildflower meadows and cherry trees. There is no café or toilets.
There are entrances on Highbury Station Road and Laycock Street, N1.
Judith Field
Laycock Green, 49 Highbury Station Rd, London N1 1SY, United Kingdom
20/12/2023 10:35:03 AM
125. Harrow Weald Recreation Ground
This park, in Harrow, is also called Boxtree Park, named after the box trees that used to grow there.
The land it occupies was once part of a larger estate owned by the Archbishops of Canterbury and used for hunting. The area that is now the park was donated to the parish in 1895, by local benefactor Thomas Francis Blackwell, the son of Thomas Blackwell of Crosse and Blackwell. He made the donation in recognition of the loss of common rights suffered by local people through the Land Enclosure Act. In 1896, an advertisement appeared in a local paper for a “caretaker” for the park, to work from 7-8 am and from 5pm till dusk, from April to October. The job paid 15s per week (equivalent to to 75p).
The recreation ground was extended in 1937 when Harrow Council purchased nearby land. The neighbourhood Home Guard trained there during World War II, using the park’s fields and open areas for exercises and manoeuvre practice.
A neighbourhood organisation, the Friends of Boxtree Park, was established in the early 2000s with the purpose of repairing and enhancing the park. A public golf course that had been installed in the park was removed in 2002. It had been fenced off but the area is now accessible to all. Throughout the year, the park is the setting for community gatherings, such as festivals, charity runs, and concerts in the summer.
The park has raised beds and formal planting and a lot of open space. It includes football pitches, a pavilion with changing rooms, cricket square, bowling green, a children's play area, tennis courts and basketball hoops and exercise machines. There are a Café and toilets. There are entrances on High Road, Boxtree Lane, Maricas Avenue and Weighton Road, Harrow. There’s a car park, and room to park on nearby streets.
Judith Field
Harrow Weald Recreation Ground, High Rd, Harrow HA3 6EJ
13/12/2023 10:18:28 AM
124. Seething Lane Garden
This garden, in the City of London, was renovated in 2018, replacing a classic old, enclosed garden with a modern open style that includes a lawn, trees and a pergola. The cylindrical structure at one end is a lift entrance to an underground car park. I love the name, thinking that perhaps you’d be seething if you couldn’t find it, but it seems to originate from the medieval word ‘sifethen’ meaning ‘full of chaff’, called after a corn market on nearby Fenchurch Street.
The garden has a long association with the 17th century diarist Samuel Pepys, who lived and worked in the Navy Office which once stood on the site. There, he wrote much of his diary and witnessed the Great Fire of London. The garden includes a bust of Pepys; the music carved on the plinth is the tune of 'Beauty Retire', a song he wrote.
There are also thirty carved stone paving slabs illustrated with symbols linked to his life. One portrays the parmesan cheese and wine Pepys is said to have buried in the garden during the Great Fire. Another shows a plague doctor accompanied by a cheeky rat, another a flea, and yet another shows the surgeon’s forceps used to remove Pepys’ bladder stone (I haven’t included a photo of that one).
The rose beds in the garden commemorate a land dispute in 1381. Sir Robert Knollys’ wife Lady Constance bought the land, a threshing ground at the time, turned it into a rose garden and had a footbridge built over the lane to avoid the mud - it was the bridge for whichthe Authority hadn't granted permission. In the end the City agreed that it could stay, but imposed a symbolic fine of one red rose, to be paid annually on the Feast of St John The Baptist. The occasion is still marked each June in a ceremony overseen by the Company of Watermen and Lightermen of the River Thames in which a red rose is plucked from the garden and delivered to the Lord Mayor of London at Mansion House.
The garden is close to Fenchurch Street station and is within walking distance of Tower Hill, Bank, Aldgate, and Aldgate East Underground stations, and the DLR link at Tower Gateway.
Judith Field
Seething Lane Garden, Seething Lane, London EC3N 4AT
05/12/2023 10:33:31 PM
123. Howard Park and Garden
This park, in Letchworth, is the farthest away from our Mill Hill home that I’ve written about. I would usually only write about those closer to north London, but Jack and I were in Letchworth and drove past this one. I decided to stop and take a look.
It’s a green space in the heart of the town, surrounded by mature trees and formal gardens. It was opened in 1911 as a central part of Letchworth, the world’s first garden city, a new town founded in 1903 based on principles first put forward by Ebenezer Howard in ‘Tomorrow: a peaceful path to real reform’, published in 1898. Garden Cities would contain proportionate areas of residences, industry, and agriculture, as a way to capture the primary benefits of the countryside and the city while avoiding their disadvantages. The park is listed Grade II in Historic England's Register of Parks and Gardens and was awarded its first Green Flag in July 2013.
A statue of the poet Sappho was presented to the park in 1907 to commemorate the historic link between the garden city and women’s suffrage: Ebenezer Howard headed the Letchworth branch of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, founded in 1912. The original statue was stolen in 1998, the current statue in place in Howard Park is a reproduction, placed there in 2011 when the park was renovated.
The park and gardens are divided by a road. The more formal Howard gardens, with seasonal wildflowers and a bowling green on one side and the more informal Howard Park with paddling pool (opened in the nineteen thirties) with splash fountains, and play areas, on the other. The park is also home to an over sixties’ social centre, which we didn’t visit as one of us is too young.
There are plenty of benches, also a refreshment kiosk and toilets. There’s a pay and display car park next to the park, and room to park as we did, on a nearby street.
Judith Field
Howard Park and Garden, Norton Way South, Letchworth Garden City, SG6 1NY
28/11/2023 08:54:41 PM
122. Reveley Lodge
Reveley Lodge is a Grade II listed Victorian house and public gardens in Bushey Heath. It’s managed by the Reveley Lodge Trust, which was set up to preserve the house and gardens and to provide an arts and education resource for the local community. It also has a gallery, and I got the idea of visiting the garden after a friend put on an art exhibition there.
The house was built between 1842 and 1845 as a ‘gentleman’s cottage’ – a small country house within easy reach of London. The property included a chaise house (for a carriage) and stable.
The gardens are open to the public six days a week all year round and entry is free. There is a formal terrace and listed conservatory, lawns, rose garden, kitchen and flower garden, pond, woodland walk, summer meadow, herbaceous borders, medicinal plants, and beehives. There’s also a ‘human sundial’ - you stand in a marked place on one of the lawns and move your arms to set positions. However, I went at the beginning of October and there wasn’t any sun.
World War II impacted the lives of the owners of Reveley Lodge, and information boards about the war, based on their diaries and letters, are on display on the terrace. Towards the end of the war, the Nazis deployed V1 flying bombs and V2 rockets. The rockets travelled at supersonic speed and there was no audible warning. The nearest a V2 rocket landed to Reveley Lodge was between Harrow and Pinner. I don’t know if that’s the reason why there’s a rocket tucked away among the trees that looks like a half-sized V2. It was put in the garden in August 2022, and you can step inside it.
A time capsule was buried close to the roots of an oak tree in the garden in January 2022 to mark the 80th anniversary of The Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR). The Association planted trees around the UK to thank all the British people who helped Jewish refugees find safety in Britain from Nazi Europe, and to celebrate the contribution that the Jewish refugees have made to British life.
There’s a tearoom and café, and toilets. Parking spaces for disabled visitors can be pre-arranged, otherwise there is space to park on nearby streets.
Judith Field
Reveley Lodge, 88 Elstree Road, Bushey Heath WD23 4GL
21/11/2023 10:04:29 PM
121. Waterfields Recreation Ground
This park, which I found by looking at an online map of the area, is a Green Flag-winning open space situated on the River Colne, just to the north of Watford Town Centre. The land it occupies used to be pasture. The park was laid out in 1901, with lime trees planted around the boundaries.
The park was refurbished in 2015 and has a playground, football pitch, table tennis and plenty of green open space, with some wild areas for biodiversity. The River Colne, a tributary of the Thames, runs though the grounds and visitors can walk along a riverside path on either side. The banks are lined with lime, willow and alder trees, and natural vegetation. This section of the river is designated as a ‘Local Wildlife Site 84/014 for Flowing waters (rivers and streams).’
Near the bridge over the river is an obelisk: a Grade II listed historical coal marker. The city of London placed these markers on coal transport routes to mark the places where tax had to be paid. At first the money raised was used to help pay for the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire in 1666. The legislation was renewed in 1861 and the Marker in Waterfields dates from this time. The London Coat of Arms is marked on the southeast face of the obelisk.
Just inside the park is a small garden featuring a sculpture of a swimmer on a plinth, about to dive into the water. He wears a stripy Edwardian bathing costume, with his head covered with a knotted handkerchief. In the early nineteen hundreds this was the site of a freshwater lido, and in the nineteen thirties it was the home of the Watford Swimming Club. The statue is part of the Colne River Sculpture Trail, a series of five sculptures set up in 2014 to celebrate Watford’s cultural and social heritage.
There’s a small car park. Spaces are also available to park on nearby streets.
Waterfields Recreation Ground, Shaftesbury Road, Watford WD17 2RG
