10/03/2022 03:51:02 PM
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
02/03/2022 03:13:49 PM
46. Arnos Park
Jack asked to visit this park, which he’d apparently been to with his college a long time before. He didn’t know its name, describing it as “a park with a railway bridge near X and Y’s house” (in Whetstone) and I didn’t know which one he meant. His mixed-up directions took us to Cockfosters without finding the park, but on the way back (by which time he was extremely cross with me, and the only thing stopping me pulling my own head off was the fact that I was driving), we happened to pass what turned out to be Arnos Park – in Southgate. I hadn’t been there before.
Southgate was a settlement at the south gate of hunting park of Enfield Chase. Henry VIII confiscated the land, then owned by the Roman Catholic Church. It became the Arnos Grove Estate. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the large estates in the area were broken up as housing was built. Arnos Park was created in 1928 when an area of wood and meadow were bought by the local authority. The rest of the estate was sold for housing development. The “railway bridge” is the Arnos Park Viaduct on the Piccadilly Line, built in the nineteen thirties, which divides the park in two. With thirty-four arches, it’s the biggest brick viaduct ever built for the London Underground.
The park is long and thin, with a lot of open space. It’s a Site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation. Its woodland, running across the north end of he park, is believed to be ancient in origin, with trees including sessile oak and wild service tree (both uncommon in London), as well as hornbeam, wild cherry, and hazel.
It has a small stream – Pymme’s Brook, bordered with shrubs and willows. The brook has its source in Hadley Common, eventually joining the River Lea. Woodland flowers grow near it. A walking route, the Pymme’s Trail, follows the brook as far as Arnos Park.
It has tennis courts, cricket and football pitches, a children’s playground, a putting green, and a bowling club. There are toilets but no café. There’s no car park but it’s possible to park on the surrounding streets.
Judith Field
Arnos Park, 120 Morton Way, London, N14 7AL
24/02/2022 04:37:04 PM
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
17/02/2022 10:00:53 AM
45. Chestnuts Park
This park is in Tottenham. I promise to write about a different area next time. My excuse is that we can get to Haringey by turning left at the end of our road – as I’ve mentioned before, Jack reacts badly to our turning right. I would rather endure driving on part of the Benighted North Circular than spend an entire journey with “I told you to turn left” blasting from behind me.
Originally the land that’s now Chestnuts Park was used to grow watercress – a crop which thrives in wet conditions. The Stonebridge Brook, which used to run through the park is now housed in an underground culvert. The brook rises in Crouch End and eventually joins the River Lea by Markfield Park (see Park of the Week 28), which joins the Thames.
In 1850, Chestnuts House was built on the land. In 1898 the local authority bought the house and land, and it was laid out as Chestnuts Recreation Ground to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The park opened to the public in November 1900. The house was at first used as a public reading room and museum, later becoming a health clinic. It was demolished in the nineteen eighties to make room for the Chestnuts Community Centre.
Most of the park is grass. There are a lot of mature trees: London plane, common lime, cherry, silver birch. There’s also a community willow garden and an orchard of fruit trees. People from the local community have planted bulbs and there are flower beds. The park was first awarded the Green Flag Award in 2008 and has kept it ever since. It’s a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation because it’s a sizeable park with plenty of mature trees and areas of long grass, in a part of Haringey with little accessible natural greenspace. It is also a Field In Trust. This means it is protected in perpetuity (at least that’s the idea) as a site for public recreation, as part of the Queen Elizabeth II Fields Challenge scheme. It has a café, toilet, football and basketball pitches, tennis court, zip wire, outdoor gym, and a playground.
Judith Field
Chestnuts Park, St Ann's Rd, London N15 3AQ
10/02/2022 12:12:10 PM
44. Paignton Park
Paignton Park is a small open space in South Tottenham. It was created in the mid-1980s on the site of former terraced housing, as part of the wider regeneration of the area. The park received a Green Flag Award in 2010 and has kept it ever since.
It’s in a location, known as The Triangle, that’s densely populated with little other public open space nearby. The park a local Site of Importance for Nature Conservation because it has parkland, neutral grassland, and ruderal vegetation. “Ruderal” was an unfamiliar word to me, it means “growing on waste ground or among rubbish”. I apologise to any readers to whom I’m telling something you already knew.
In the centre of the park is a large grassy area. To the east of this is a woodland area which provides a habitat for insects, birds, and flowers. It also has dense shrubbery. There’s also a small orchard, a picnic area and table tennis tables.
Among the wildlife living in the park that we saw was a squirrel, “doing cute” as I call it, as in the photo. I don’t suppose it was the same squirrel who’s worked out how to knock the bird feeders in my garden onto the ground and dig up Jerusalem artichokes (quite helpful, that), but on the other hand he’s clever enough to have worked out how to hitch a lift (possibly on the roof of my car). Perhaps I should branch out into writing children’s books. I can see myself as the Beatrix Potter of FRS.
At the Daleview Road entrance is a specially commissioned welcome arch decorated with representations of the leaves of trees found in the park. The main path into the park incorporates two mosaics developed with the local community around fifteen years ago. This entrance also includes the area known as the community square. It includes brick paving, a feature throughout the park, and tables and seats made of stone blocks. Two of the tables have chess boards built into their design. The square also includes raised brick-built flower beds, which local people have used for planting.
There’s a playground, but no toilets or café. There are entrances on St Ann’s Road, Eastbourne Road, Richmond Road and Daleview Road, N15. Daleview Road becomes Paignton Road just after the entrance.
Judith Field
Paignton Park, 17 Eastbourne Rd, London N15 6NT
03/02/2022 10:36:15 AM
43. Elthorne Park and Sunnyside Community Gardens
These two small parks are next to each other, in Islington. Elthorne Park has a conservation area with silver birch trees, hedgerow, and a perennial meadow. It has football pitches, a basketball court and outdoor gym equipment. There’s a children’s play area, including one of the tyre swings that Jack likes. It wasn’t really big enough and he managed to get stuck in it trying to climb off, but fortunately I managed to release him. There are toilets but no café.
An interesting feature in the park is the walled Philip Noel Baker Peace Garden, Japanese in style, with square ponds and rose beds and a statue of Baron Philip Noel-Baker (1889-1982), a Nobel Peace Prize winning politician. He was active as an MP, advocating for worker’s rights, the removal of occupying forces from countries in peacetime, and the rights of refugees. In 1979, he co-founded the World Disarmament Campaign. Near the Peace Garden is a sculpture showing an African mask, by Yoruba artist Emmanuel Taiwo Jegede, who studied in London in the 1970s.
Because of the lack of open space many small community gardens grew up in Islington from the 1970s on, created and maintained by local residents on sites made derelict by the Blitz and redevelopment. Sunnyside Community Gardens was opened in 1978 and has been described as a massive back garden for local people living in flats with no or very small gardens. It has a long history of providing therapeutic horticulture for people with disabilities, and those recovering from illness. It has an organic garden and a wildlife pond and has been designated as a site of importance for nature conservation.
Volunteer gardeners also garden in the formal Peace Garden in Elthorne Park. The Hazellville Road end of Sunnyside has been developed into a special family garden, for those with small children to enjoy. The garden can be closed off from dogs and has a colourful child and wildlife friendly planting scheme.
There isn’t a car park, but space can be found on the nearby streets.
Judith Field
Elthorne Park and Sunnyside Community Gardens, 23 Hazellville Rd, London N19 3NF
27/01/2022 10:20:00 AM
42. Childs Hill Park
Jack asked to visit this park, rather than me finding it. He didn’t know its name but told me that it was near his primary school (he’s got a long memory). That was in Cricklewood and there were several parks that it could have been, but after a few loud arguments and a desperate drive in the pouring rain, when we found it but didn’t get out of the car, I got the right place.
It’s thought that Childs Hill was probably named after Richard le Child, a local landowner in the fourteenth century. In the late nineteenth century, there was rapid housing development in the area, and in 1891 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners gave land for Childs Hill Park to the Local Authority. Is seems the gift was not as straightforward as it might sound because The Hendon and Finchley Times of 13 March 1891 reports complaints from the local authority about ‘the expensive conditions attached to this gift of a recreation ground that involved building a sewer and a wall.’ I do love the British Newspaper Archive.
Childs Hill Park is one of Barnet’s Premier Parks. It’s mostly open space with shrubberies and flower beds round the edge. It has two tennis courts, a multi-sports court, a bowls club, outdoor gym, children’s playground, cafe, and toilets. Like so many places that we visit, there’s a stream there, although all you can really see is the pipe it runs through, along the southern edge. This is Clitterhouse Brook, a tributary of the River Brent.
Young people with learning difficulties work on eco projects at the park as part of Highgate's Harrington garden scheme. In September 2021, a picnic grove was opened in the park, marking the end of a project lasting several years to upgrade the facilities including new gym equipment, a marsh garden, benches and planted areas. Near the play area, in the marsh garden, are a number of carved wooden animals.
Access is from Nant Road, Hodford Road and Granville Road. NW2. There isn’t a car park, but we found space on the nearby streets.
Judith Field
Childs Hill Park, Granville Rd, London NW2 2AT
20/01/2022 10:09:37 AM
41. Coppett’s Wood and Scrublands
Coppett's Wood and Scrublands is a Grade I Site of Borough Importance for Nature Conservation, between Muswell Hill and Friern Barnet. It’s part of the Coppett’s Wood and Glebelands Local Nature Reserve.
The Scrublands reserve occupies a former sewage works which was later a rubbish dump. This is now covered by a wide diversity of vegetation and it’s the main area where the birds feed.
Coppett’s Wood used to be part of an extensive area of woodland, which later became known as Finchley Common. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Common was a notorious haunt of highwaymen. It was also used for military exercises and other activities such as bare-knuckle boxing, pigeon shooting and horse racing.
The main trees in the wood are oak and hornbeam, and a variety of plants can be found, including bluebell and garlic mustard. There’s a small pond with yellow iris, frogs, and newts. Birds include woodpeckers, tawny owls and sparrowhawks and there are a number of rare insect species.
The wood was used for military training and gas mask testing during the Second World War. Some maps show ‘tank traps’ in the wood, and we did see the remains of large hollow concrete cylinders, near the main footpath in the south of the wood. If that’s what they really are, they’d be well hidden in the wood and if there was an invasion, they might have been using during the war to block roads leading south into London and slow down the advance of tanks. A hollow in the south-west corner may be a bomb crater. During the Second World War, German planes flew overhead to bomb the radio transmitting station at Alexandra Palace. Sometimes planes would release bombs at random places, perhaps on the return journey, and one may have been dropped and exploded in Coppett’s Wood.
Access is from Colney Hatch Lane, where you’d have to find a parking space on the road, and from the Benighted North Circular. There’s also an entrance on Summers Lane, N12, where there’s a car park.
Judith Field
Coppett’s Wood, Colney Hatch Lane, London N12 0LT
13/01/2022 02:08:07 PM
40. Princes Park
This quiet little park is hidden behind residential streets in Golders Green. When we first arrived, it looked like a typical urban park, with neat lawns, flowerbeds, shrubs and rose beds near the entrance, mostly edged by people’s back gardens. When we walked round the edges and I looked more closely at a small woodland at one end, the place began to look as though that part was a piece of much older forest.
The park is a Site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation. It was opened in 1923 as part of the development of Golders Green, but a map dating from 1796 shows woodland in the same place. The oak trees in the park, particularly the ones along the edge of Oakfield Road, are older than the surrounding houses and there are also wild service trees and crab apple trees: evidence of a long history.
The hawthorn hedges in the park could be the remains of farm hedgerows. My source of nature lore (aka Other Half) tells me that hawthorn leaves are called bread-and-cheese. I don’t recommend trying them because they taste nothing like it and, besides, there’s a café in the park. There are also toilets, tennis and multi-sport courts and play areas.
In February 2018, a memorial screen and small garden for Sir Nicholas Winton were installed in the park. Sir Nicholas was a British humanitarian who organised the evacuation of 669 children from Europe before the start of the Second World War. Most of the children were Jewish, and from Czechoslovakia, with the evacuation taking place on the eve of the Second World War in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport. Sir Nicholas found homes for the children and arranged for their safe passage to Britain.
There is access to the park from Oakfields Road NW11 and Park Way NW11. There’s no car park but spaces can be found on the surrounding streets.
Judith Field
Princes Park, Oakfields Road, London NW11 0JS
