Judith and Jack's Park of the Week
21/04/2025 12:44:48 PM
192. Natural History Museum Gardens
In July 2024, two new gardens opened on either side of the main entrance of the Natural History Museum on Cromwell Road, replacing plain lawns and serving as “outdoor galleries”. Their opening was part of the Urban Nature Project, the Museum’s response to the pressures of urbanisation, climate change and biodiversity loss. They’ve added five acres of green space in the process.
Each garden has a different purpose. The one on the right, as you look at the front of the Museum, is the Evolution Garden, designed to tell the story of life on Earth. The rocks, pants and sculptures represent what was happening at a particular time from the 2.7 billion years ago to the present day, geological era by era. There’s an ammonite pavement, featuring fossilised sections of former seabed, from Lyme Regis.
The fossil tree is 330 million years old, predating the time of the dinosaurs. It lived during the Earth’s Carboniferous period, growing in Scotland where it was found, which was then a tropical, swampy forest.
Local schoolchildren named this bronze Diplodocus in the Evolution Garden Fern, and she’s surrounded by ferns and horsetails like those her real life counterpart would have lived alongside. She’s 22m-long, 4m-high and is a replica of a famous Diplodocus, Dippy, that stood in the main hall as the star attraction until 2017, when he went on tour. Dippy is on loan to the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry until February 2025, and now a massive blue whale skeleton hangs above the main hall.
There’s also this replica skeleton of a Hypsilophodon, a dinosaur about the size of a large dog, which was native to the UK.
The garden to the left is the Nature Discovery Garden, where visitors and scientists can identify and study wildlife. Habitats range from wetlands to scrub and urban meadow and are monitored through an environmental data collection programme to support the understanding and recovery of urban nature. It’s home to tadpoles, toads, frogs, newts, mandarin ducks, dragonflies, lily pads and duckweed. A network of sensors gathers environmental and acoustic data – such as underwater recordings in the pond, the buzz of insect wings and bird calls to traffic noise – to help them understand how urban nature is changing and what can be done to support its recovery.
Judith Field
Natural History Museum, Cromwell Rd, London SW7 5BD
14/04/2025 09:09:21 PM
191. Hollickwood Park
When I wrote about Halliwick Park (see 183), I mentioned Colney Hatch asylum, originally sited near that park. Hollickwood Park, the subject of this post, is on the former site of the hospital itself, later named Friern Hospital.
This park, in Haringey near Muswell Hill, was originally landscaped by Barnet Council, using compensation money for widening the adjacent benighted North Circular Road. It was was created as a result of efforts by the Friends of Hollickwood Park, a community group. The park contains a time capsule put in by residents and council officers to commemorate the opening in 1963.
The park is named after Hollick Wood, which was 160 acres in the 1650s, and joined with Tottenham Wood in 1623. It was cleared for the Colney Hatch Asylum in 1852. The place name Colney Hatch was first mentioned in 1409, the 'hatch' perhaps being a gate of Hollick Wood.
It combines both formal and informal areas, including meadows, shrubberies and a pond, although that badly needs maintenance. It has a children's playground but no cafe or toilets. I found this formation of paving slabs, I imagine it's meant to be a giant chess board, but it's not mentioned anywhere that I could see.
The meadow areas support common wildflowers, and the shrubberies provide nesting sites for birds, including the house sparrow, of which numbers are generally declining.
There’s no car park, but we found space of park on a nearby street. Although it is close to a large main road, it’s a quiet place, with benches to sit on and paths to walk on.
Judith Field
Hollickwood Park, Alexandra Road, N10 2RT
08/04/2025 10:25:02 AM
190. Bittacy Hill Park
Bittacy Hill Park, also known as Bittacy Park, is a small park in G-d's Own Mill Hill. It’s the closest park to where I live, just a ten-minute walk, and is a hilly open grassland bordered with mature trees. There are also gardens, a multi-area sports court, tennis court, and a children’s play area. We used to visit fairly often until I got worried that Jack shouldn’t be using the play equipment, when he was about 13. Recently, the playground was refurbished, it has now has a “big lying down swing”, Jack is 28 and I don’t care. The park has benches and a few paved pathways cross the grass, good for a walk although the slope is steep.
Bittacy Hill was the original name for the area now known as Mill Hill East. The change of name occurred in 1935, shortly before the railway became part of the Northern Line in 1939. Bittacy House and Bittacy Farm were the main estates until the 1860s. The farm continued until 1908 and the park is situated on the land it previously occupied.
It seems that there was at least one air raid shelter in the park, removed in the early nineteen seventies, with ones at six other local parks, because they were considered eyesores and a danger to children. The work cost £6,227.
I make lots of different soups, and when we visited Bittacy Hill Park there were plenty of nettles growing. I managed to pick a shopping bag-full, but only had surgical gloves with me, left over from the Covid days. Should you decide to do the same, do note that the surgical gloves aren’t thick enough but that the saying about “grasping the nettle” is true – squeezing them tight does seem to reduce the number of stings.
Once I’d blanched the nettles to remove the formic acid, I ended up with a passable soup that tasted like spinach. I was reminded of the Irish rebel song, Down by the Glenside: ‘Twas down by the Glenside, I met an old woman, A-plucking young nettles, she ne'er saw me coming’ And nobody saw me coming, but Jack. It was a calm and quiet place to walk.
There is access to the park from Bittacy Hill and Brownsea Walk, and by a footpath from between 27 and 29 Bittacy Rise – this is the entrance we use as it’s the next street to ours.
Judith Field
Bittacy Hill Park Sanders Lane, London NW7 1BU
31/03/2025 10:50:50 AM
189. Soho Square
Soho Square is a garden square, providing a small oasis behind Oxford Street, in the densely built up West End. It is in the heart of Soho which used to be a hunting ground attached to Westminster Palace.
The Soho area, its name coming from an old hunting call, was largely developed from the late 17th century onwards as London expanded, following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.
Built in the late 1670s, Soho Square was in its early years one of the most fashionable places to live in London. It was originally called King Square after Charles II, and a statue of the king has stood in the square on and off since 1681 – it was finally placed there permanently in 1938.
A 200-person air raid shelter was built under the park during the Second World War, one of dozens in central London.
The garden was restored and reopened to the public in April 1954. New iron railings and gates were put up in 1959.
At the centre of the square is a mock “Tudorbethan” building. This was built in 1926 to appear as an octagonal market cross building, incorporating 17th or 18th century beams to hide the above-ground features of a contemporary electricity substation. It’s Grade II listed and is described by English Heritage as a “garden arbour/tool shed”.
The Square is mainly paved, interspersed with four symmetrical lawn areas, with mature trees and shrub planting.
This 2-metre-high tubular rainbow in the square, titled “OHelloSunshine”, was created by London-based artist Graham McLoughlin, and is said to reflect both the local gay community and the NHS rainbow. The rainbow only includes six colours; indigo is missing. Sir Isaac Newton, whose experiments with prisms demonstrated that white light is composed of a spectrum of colours, originally identified six. However, the number seven had long been considered mystical, denoting perfection and completeness. This sort of mysticism fascinated Newton; there are seven days in a week, seven natural notes in most Western music and, in Newton’s time, only seven planets had been discovered. So, he thought there must be seven colours in the rainbow and split purple into indigo and violet. It’s not always easy to differentiate between the two by eye.
Judith Field
Soho Square, London W1D 3QE
24/03/2025 08:56:04 PM
188. Maygrove Peace Park
This park, in Kilburn, opened in the mid-nineteen seventies. It’s on land that, 200 years ago, belonged to Hall Oak Manor Farm. Following the extension of the Midland Railway into St Pancras in the 1860s, the site became used as a railway siding. It has lawns, benches, shrubs, a children’s playground and a games pitch.
In April 1983, Camden Council agreed to designate Maygrove a Peace Park. The opening of the park on 9th August 1984 was timed to coincide with the 39th Anniversary of the date the atom bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Nagasaki Day is on 9th August 1984. The Mayor of Nagasaki replied, “We hope your Peace Park will be remembered long as a symbol of Peace”, and a thousand white balloons were released into the air.
Following several Peace Festivals in the mid 1980s, the park fell into decline during the 1990s. However, from 2004 a group of local enthusiasts campaigned to refurbish the park, with redesigned landscaping and planting and improved play and sports facilities.
The park includes several peace symbols and features. There’s a cherry tree, which commemorates the one that continued to bloom after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.
At the Maygrove Road entrance, this statue of a peace crane is inspired by the story of Sadako and her paper cranes. She was Japanese girl who survived the Hiroshima bombing but who was diagnosed with leukaemia nine years later. She set out to make 1000 paper cranes for good luck. Unfortunately, she died before completing the task.
Winding up through the park is the Peace Walk, with seven stones inscribed with messages of peace.
At the top of the park sits Antony Gormley’s Grade II listed welded bronze statue titled Untitled (listening). Underneath it is a glacial granite boulder which symbolises “part of the old deep history of the planet… sculpted by time”.
The park was awarded Green Flag Status in July 2010.
Judith Field
Maygrove Peace Park, Maygrove Road, London NW6 2DX
17/03/2025 09:23:15 PM
187. Gunnersbury Park
Gunnersbury Park is a large, attractively landscaped park in Ealing, in which there are two interesting wildlife areas and a historic manor house.
The name Gunnersbury derives from Gunylda, the niece of King Canute, who lived there until her banishment from England in 1044. The manor later belonged to the Bishop of London.
The park is on the site of the former 18th Century estate with formal gardens, developed by Princess Amelia (the second daughter of George II) in 1761, as her summer residence. It was extended by Baron Lionel de Rothschild and his family in the 19th and early 20th Centuries when it was renowned for its gardens.
In 1925, part of the estate, including the large and small mansions and garden buildings, were purchased by the boroughs of Acton and Ealing. It opened to the public in May 1926 and although its horticultural features were kept, there was a growing emphasis on sports and recreation and the facilities including a bowling green, golf course and playground. In 1929, the mansion house was converted into an exhibition space for local history and archaeology, costume and fine art, as the Gunnersbury Park Museum. A number of earlier landscape features are still there, including three ponds, Princess Amelia's Bath House, the Japanese and Italian Gardens.
The site contains two spots of nature interest. The Potomac Pond is fringed with trees and has a wooded island. The area around Princess Amelia's Bath House provides rough grassland, scrub and tall flowers, and ferns grow on the walls. Mature trees in other parts of the park support breeding birds such as goldcrest, nuthatch and treecreeper.
The park is the site of a sports hub. There’s also a community garden, playground, café, toilets, football and rugby pitches, cricket square, tennis courts, athletic track, bowling greens, 9-hole golf course, children's pitch & putt, and car parks.
The Round Pond has been used for boating since the 18th century. The temple on one shore was built for Princess Amelia, who used it as a place of entertainment.
At one time, the Rothschilds kept flamingos on the pond, as part of their collection of exotic animals. There are pedalos at the pond for hire in the summer months.
Judith Field
Gunnersbury Park, Popes Lane, London W3 8LQ
10/03/2025 09:12:39 PM
186. Brook Farm Open Space
This large, grassy open space is in Whetstone and is part of the Dollis Valley Green Walk. This is a footpath route, set up in the London Borough of Barnet in the nineteen thirties. It runs for about 10 miles between Moat Mount Nature Reserve (in Mill Hill) and Hampstead Heath, passing through many green spaces and wildlife corridors along the way. The route mainly follows the course of Dollis Brook.
During the 18th Century, because the clay-based fields that make up the space were too heavy to plough, they were used to grow hay to feed horses travelling up the Great North Road. Now the old meadows are left uncut until the end of summer, allowing a wide variety of grasses, wildflowers and butterflies to thrive. The fields feature several ancient oak trees and old farm hedgerows which, no longer needed for containing livestock, have been left to grow.
In 1918 the local authority agreed that some of the site should be ploughed up for allotment use as a temporary wartime measure. It wasn’t until 1936 that the authority realised that the allotments, still in use by then as they are today, were occupying land that was meant as public open space. Eventually it was agreed that they could stay.
The space has trees, footpaths and picnic tables and it's a nice place for a walk, enough room that we weren't on top of other people. Two paths run through it, I read somewhere that one is for pedestrians and the other for cyclists but we walked along both without getting run over. Dollis Brook does run through the space, with woodland along most of the bank. The stream is mainly shallow and most of it gets too much shade for aquatic plant growth.
A play area was opened at the Totteridge Lane end in 2022. The equipment still appears fresh and lacks graffiti, at least as of the time of writing this. It doesn’t have a basket swing, but does have one that’s a chair, and it’s large enough to accommodate even Jack’s not inconsiderable width.
There’s a pavilion at the northern end of the space with a car park, but we entered from Totteridge Lane. There are a few parking spaces outside the shops next to Totteridge and Whetstone station but we parked in a nearby side road.
Judith Field
Brook Farm Open Space, London N20 8QL
04/03/2025 12:26:51 PM
185. Lincoln’s Inn Fields
Lincoln's Inn Fields is the largest public square in London. Before the 17th century it was used for grazing cattle. It was laid out as a square. in what was then a fashionable area, in the 1630s by Inigo Jones and were private property until it was acquired by the local authority, and opened to the public, in 1895. It takes its name from the adjacent Lincoln's Inn, one of the four Inns of Court (professional associations for barristers and judges) in London. This itself dates back to 1422, the year before mayor of London Dick Whittington died.
Sometime after 1735 the Fields were enclosed within cast iron railings, on account of the then Master of the Rolls, Sir Joseph Jekyll, being ridden over by a horse. An alternative version of the story claims that Jekyll was attacked for his support of an Act of Parliament raising the price of gin. The railings were removed during the Second World War and later replaced with steel ones.
The grassed area in the middle of the Fields contains a tennis and netball court and a bandstand. It was previously used for corporate events, which are no longer allowed. Cricket and other sports are thought to have been played there in the 18th century. The square includes many different trees: London plane, tree-of-heaven, ash, holly, holm oak, pedunculate oak, false acacia and flowering cherry. Shrubberies and a planted hedge line the perimeter, providing nest sites for common birds, including blackbird, song thrush, magpie and blue tit.
Prominent buildings around the square include Sir John Soane’s Museum, the LSE and the Royal College of Surgeons. This includes the Hunterian Museum, and I visited there as well. It contains the 18th century surgeon John Hunter.’s fascinating collection or specimens, equipment and objects. Among the items that caught my eye was a ribcage and spine, the latter S-shaped like mine, which made me fidget just looking at it (I’ve spared you a photo) and Winston Churchill’s upper partial denture. There's also a set of dental tools that wouldn’t have been out of place when I worked as a dental nurse in the summer of 1972 (which left me with a fondness for writing fiction involving dentistry). That makes two reasons why I’m a museum piece.
Judith Field
Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3ED
25/02/2025 11:49:00 AM
183. Halliwick Recreation Ground
This is a small park in Muswell Hill. It was probably purchased with the nearby allotments in 1927. It contains has grassed open space, a tennis court, table tennis playground and two playgrounds. There are plans to renovate the playground for use by those up to age 14, including those with special needs. I hope that it will include a basket swing.
The park has undergone other improvements in recent years, including landforms (hills in this case) created from excavated materials, gravel footpaths, planting native and ornamental trees. There are also gabion baskets with seating on top. This was a new term to me. A gabion is a wire basket looking like something we’d use to take the cat to the vet, which can be filled with stones and used for things like erosion control and landscaping. I’ve seen them before and wondered what they were.
A new wetland area with a viewing platform was opened in the relandscaped park in 2024. This is part of a sustainable urban drainage scheme designed to capture and store surface water runoff from the park and surrounding streets. This system diverts rainwater away from overburdened sewers and directs it into a newly constructed basin, significantly reducing the risk of downstream flooding. Specialist plants that reduce pollution have also been installed in the new wetlands to help treat as rainwater. It has creating new habitats for wildlife.
I wondered why there were several nearby places named Halliwick. There’s a block of flats, a road and the park. There was Halliwick Hospital, opened in 1958 as a “neurosis unit”, part of Friern Hospital. It eventually it became a unit for newly admitted patients and those convalescing from Friern Hospital. This was formerly the Colney Hatch Asylum, built in 1851 in the style of an Italian monastery, with its own gasworks, shoe¬makers, brewery, bakery and farm Both were closed in 1993 and later demolished.
I’d thought these places were named after the hospital, but in fact all were/are named after the Manor of Halliwick, one of two historic manors in the parish of Friern Barnet. The Halliwick manor house was built around 1602 and located on the corner between Colney Hatch Lane and Woodhouse Road. The other manor was Friern Barnet Manor, whose manor house was the predecessor of the house in Friary Park.
There isn’t a café or toilets. We parked on a nearby street.
Judith Field
Halliwick Recreation Ground, 66 George Crescent, London N10 1AN
18/02/2025 10:15:18 AM
182. Harrow Recreation Ground
The names of open spaces in Harrow confuses me a little. I’ve already written about Harrow Weald Recreation Ground (no. 125), and West Harrow Rec is on my list to visit, but this post is about Harrow Recreation Ground. Perhaps the Local Authority ran out of ideas: it seems that over 20% of the land in the Borough is either a park or an open space.
Harrow Recreation Ground is close to the centre of Harrow and is one of the largest parks in the Borough. It was opened in 1885, after the land purchased as a result of fund-raising started by Charles Colbeck, the Assistant Headmaster at Harrow School. They wanted to provide the population of Harrow with space for sport and recreation at a time when the area was beginning to be developed and the open land built over for housing. They purchased a field of some 14 acres, now the area at the top of the current park. In 1889, further areas of land were bought by the parish of Harrow to enlarge the park. The recreation ground was mostly created for sports, with much of the area reserved for use by various local sports clubs.
The park has multi-use courts, an outdoor gym, playground, skateboard area, tennis court, bowling green and a cricket club. It was awarded Green Flag status in 2024. It’s planted throughout with trees, including evergreens and conifers, with shrubs around the perimeter. The eastern edge has mature lime trees, with horse chestnuts and oaks on the western boundary that date from the original planting. Within the park are several field oaks and other trees that predate the park when the land was used for agricultural purposes. The Mayoral Oak Avenue was instituted in 1989 by the then Mayor, and from then until 2004 each outgoing Mayor planted a pedunculate oak tree to complete the avenue.
A special peace garden was opened in the park in October 2020 after the it received funding and volunteer contributions from the OneJAIN organisation. The opening of the Ahimsa Peace Garden, as it is now known, was in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday – which Groucho Marx, Sting and I happen to share. A specially commissioned stone stack sculpture was put in place in the garden in September 2022, to celebrate the diversity of Harrow.
There’s car parking at the Roxborough Road entrance, a café but no toilets.
Judith Field
Harrow Recreation Ground, Roxborough Road Harrow, HA1 1PB
