19/09/2023 10:05:57 PM
112. Boxers Lake Open Space
Boxers Lake in Enfield is surrounded by woodlands, remnants of Enfield Chase. The woodland mainly comprises oak, hornbeam and ash. The lake has a small, wooded island and is popular with anglers. Foxes are often seen in the area and occasionally muntjac deer. There are a variety of waterfowl to be seen, including mallard, moorhen, Canada goose and swans. The area is a Site of Nature Conservation Importance.
There’s a children’s playground, enclosed by fencing as it’s right next to the lake. There’s no café or toilets.
Boxer's Lake Open Space is a relic of the seventeenth century landscape park of South Lodge. It was originally one of a string of lakes or fishponds on the estate. South Lodge was one of three lodges of Enfield Chase, a royal hunting ground, established to accommodate the keepers when the Chase was divided into three walks after 1419. Suburban housing was built over the estate in the nineteen thirties, but its boundary is still traceable in lines of residential streets such as Lonsdale Drive, where the lake is.
The open space and lake are owned by the local authority, but the upkeep is the responsibility of the Boxers Lake Conservation and Angling Association. Surface water from the whole of the Oakwood area passes through culverts and is collected and held in the lake before being released at a controlled rate to continue along the Glenbrook to join Salmons Brook and then the River Lea.
We visited in January, on a dry day, at the start of a blessed release from the weight of months that had nearly crushed me. While Jack was on the Big Lying Down swing in the playground, I sat on a bench, looking through the treetops, each twig glowing and sparkling round the edges, towards the patches of blue sky between the clouds. I exhaled.
Once I’d breathed in again, we went to feed the water birds.
I hadn’t thought to bring anything for them, but they eemed to like the goldfish food that we keep in the car in case we come across any piscine fellow travellers.
Who was Boxer? Does the name include an apostrophe or not? The truth is probably out there. Somewhere.
Judith Field
Boxers Lake, Lonsdale Drive, EN2 7JU
13/09/2023 12:57:36 PM
111. Fortune Green
Fortune Green is a green space in West Hampstead with a village green feel. It mostly consists of lawns and plane trees, with a children’s playground and lots of seats. It’s divided by tree lined paths, with games pitches and a children’s playground. There’s a dog area on the site of former games pitches.
The first recorded mention of Fortune Green was in 1646, and it was first shown on a map in 1746, lying to the north of the village of West End. The Green was a triangular patch of manorial 'waste' where local residents had the right to graze animals, dig turf and play sports and was originally about twice the size it is now. As a result of local protest, various attempts to build on the land in the 1880s and 1890s failed and it was purchased for public open space, opened to the public in 1897.
The Friends of Fortune Green, working with the local authority, was set up in 2007 to improve the Green. This was spurred by the loss of a Planning Appeal against construction of a block of flats on the edge of the Green. One reason given for the planning approval was the "neglected state of the Green". The Friends run regular sessions to maintain the planting, and a programme of varied events, such as Big Lunch, Nature Walks, Action Days and 'Films on the Green'. They excavated the remains of a communal Word War 2 bomb shelter then re-turfed part of it and in one corner created a small children's landscaped area with wooden animal sculptures. They also installed an outdoor gym.
In recognition of the improvement works the Friends have achieved and in celebration of HM The Queen's Diamond Jubilee 2012, Fortune Green is now safeguarded as a public recreational space in perpetuity through the charity, Fields in Trust.
At the edge of the green is a pair of K2 telephone kiosks from 1927. Although I didn’t go inside, they both had telephones inside. I believe they’re listed structures. I can’t remember where I last saw a phone box.
There are no café or toilets.
We parked on a street next to it, they’re all named after Greek heroes: Agamemnon, Ajax, Achilles, Ulysses.
Judith Field
Fortune Green, Fortune Green Road, London NW6 1DS
06/09/2023 10:43:44 AM
110. Preston Park
This Green Flag accredited park is in the Preston part of Wembley. The name Preston is not widely used locally, and the neighbourhood is generally considered to be part of either Kenton or North Wembley.
The park was created for the surrounding housing of the Preston Park Estate, built between 1927-37, and the park is bordered by residential housing on all sides. The land was once part of Preston Farm, which until 1086 had belonged to the church, possibly granted to Abbot Stidberht in 767AD by King Offa. Preston was a rural hamlet until Preston Road station was opened in the area in 1931 although the railway had run through the area from 1880.
John Betjeman makes a passing reference to Preston in his Metroland poem Baker St Station Buffet, about his parents taking the train from their home in Ruislip into central London:
Smoothly from Harrow, passing Preston Road,
They saw the last green fields and misty sky…
The park mostly consists of mowed lawns and grassland (some left to grow long during the summer) with mature trees – willows, poplars, and conifers - scattered all over. There are also flower beds, and a winding sunken path runs east-west across the park. The park has a bowling green, football and cricket pitches, tennis courts, an outdoor gym, a playground, and a skateboard area. There is no café or toilets.
An oak tree was planted at Preston Park, in April 2022, as part of the Association of Jewish Refugees’ 80 Trees for 80 Years Project, in which trees were planted around the UK to mark the Association’s 80th anniversary. The aim of the project was 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.
The park has a small car park, or you can park on the surrounding streets. Access is from Carlton Avenue East, College Road and Montpelier Rise, Wembley.
Judith Field
Preston Park, College Road, HA9 8RJ
30/08/2023 11:50:09 AM
109. Compton Terrace Gardens
These are a pair of gardens running in front of a row of houses, parallel with Upper Street in Islington, London N1. They were created in 1823 and were originally private spaces for the houses but are now open to the public.
Compton Terrace was built piecemeal between 1805 and 1831 as upmarket townhouses for professionals working in the City of London. It’s set back from Upper Street, which was even noisier and busier than it is today as it was not only the main route into the City for people, but also for cattle to be taken to Smithfield market. In the early 19th century, it’s estimated that over 30,000 cattle were brought to the market each week and in 1870, Charles Dickens described Upper Street as being “amongst the noisiest and most disagreeable of thoroughfares in London”.
Today, the gardens are smaller than they were originally, their symmetry destroyed by a German V1 bomb that fell on the north end of the terrace in June 1944, destroying twelve of the nineteen houses and the gardens in front of them. Highbury Corner roundabout occupies this area today.
In 1956 the local authority bought the land. By the 2000s the gardens were run down, and in 2009 a local group of volunteers, with a small grant from the council, took over the management. The gardens now contain 130 mature trees, with a large lawn running through the middle, and lots of park benches on the eastern side.
There are two large anchor shaped flower beds in the gardens, and no one knows why. It’s presumed that a former gardener may have laid them out like that for some personal reason, and they’ve never been changed since.
Judith Field
Compton Terrace Gardens, Compton Terrace, London N1 2UN
23/08/2023 11:47:53 AM
108. New Southgate Millennium Green
Millennium Greens are areas of green space meant for the benefit of local communities in England. Starting in 1996, 245 were created in cities, towns and villages to celebrate the turn of the millennium. Each one is different, as local people had an input into the design of their green. They are run by local charitable trusts.
The land had previously been used in the nineteen seventies for housing, shops and a workshop until local redevelopment took place in the nineteen seventies. There had been plans to build on the land, but these were not implemented and the land was flattened and seeded with grass, with a few trees were planted in corners. It was owned by the local authority and regularly mown, but otherwise ignored by both the authorities and the public alike.
Around twenty years later, the council sent a survey out to local people asking them what they wanted the land to be used for and over 70% said they wanted it to remain green. With the support of the local community association, an application was made to the Countryside Commission to create a Millennium Green and it opened in 2000. One entrance is decorated with a finial from a former Southgate gasworks.
The green receives no regular funding from the local authority. There is a playground (which we also visited as it had not one, but two big lying-down swings) almost opposite, so the Trust concentrates on the green being a countryside haven, with high hedges and tall trees to block out the outside world as much as possible. It has a mix of more community features, such as paths, a paved area and sculptures (including wooden pigs – Jack’s favourite animal) with more country features, such as uncut grassland and an orchard of fruit trees, donated by Homebase. The trust is in the process of creating an arboretum. There are seats in the centre of the Green and a tree-seat in the shade. There is also a large picnic bench in the shade in the Orchard.
In 1999 a boat sculpture was created, to commemorate the writer Jerome K Jerome, author of “Three Men in a boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)”, published in 1889, who lived nearby during his childhood. There is also a mosaic of a dog set into the ground near the north entrance.
There’s are no café or toilets. We parked on the street nearby.
Judith Field
New Southgate Millennium Green, Inverforth Rd, Arnos Grove, London N11 1SY
09/08/2023 04:35:49 PM
106. Paradise Park
This park in Holloway has just received a Community Green Flag Award, for the twelfth time. The Friends of Paradise Park say that when their organisation was first set up over ten years ago, a green flag would be almost black after flying for a year in the Islington air but now, a flag is hardly grey. Cutting down on pollution is making a difference.
The park includes a large open grassed area, wildflower and sparrow meadows, outdoor gym, and a table tennis table. There’s also a children’s playground with a water play feature. It’s also home to the Paradise Park Children’s Centre.
On Boxing Day 1944 at 9.30pm, one of the worst civilian disasters of the Second World War happened in the road where the park is now. People were crowding into the Prince of Wales pub opposite, when the pub received a direct hit from a V2 rocket. These rockets travelled at supersonic speed and, unlike the V1 flying bomb, there was no audible warning. According to records, this one had been launched in Belgium and took just twenty minutes to arrive. The final death toll was calculated at 68 although some bodies were never recovered. For many years the area now occupied by the park was filled with prefab houses providing shelter for some of the many local families who had lost their homes during the War.
The park includes the Mary Tealby garden. This quiet space is maintained by the Friends, who hold weekly gardening sessions. It commemorates Mary Tealby (1801-1865), who set up The Temporary Home for Lost and Starving Dogs where the park now stands. Later, the Home moved to south London and became Battersea Dogs and Cats Home. The garden has a chess table with seats, a recreated traditional hedgerow and wooden sculpture of a dog.
Next to Paradise Park is Freightliners City Farm. This has a café and toilets but there aren’t any in the park itself. We found space to park on the road.
Judith Field
Paradise Park, Mackenzie Road London N7 8RB
02/08/2023 04:49:45 PM
105. Pinner Village Gardens
This large, popular community park is the second park in Pinner that we’ve visited, and it was worth getting my ear bent by Jack for turning right at the end of the road, to go there.
The name Pinner apparently comes from the Anglo-Saxon word Pinnora. There seem to be different translations: it might mean a hill surrounded by oaks, a hill shaped like a pin, or a bank at the edge of the River Pinn, a tributary of the River Colne, that runs through the middle of the area.
Pinner Memorial Garden was laid out in the 1920s at the same time as the suburb Pinner. It comprises a variety of different spaces – there is open grassland but also winding paths across the lawns, shrubs and specimen trees around the perimeter, floral displays in raised beds and a rose garden. There are also a 1930s drinking fountain, and a wildlife pond which is home to frogs and newts. There’s a Narrow ‘rig ridge’ and furrow in the south part of the park. This is a reminder of the previous use of the land for farming, from medieval times. The Friends of Pinner Village Gardens look after the gardens, organising bulb planting and other events, such as a picnic to celebrate the Coronation.
There are tennis and basketball courts, table tennis tables, basketball, exercise equipment, skateboard area and a playground. The park is also home to a 2 km junior parkrun for children between 4 and 14, every Sunday morning.
There are a number of small wooden totem poles around the park, carved by a local wood sculptor, including a fairy tower with staircases, windows, and a turret at the top. There isn’t a café or toilet, for the wee folk of any size.
There is access from Hereford Gardens, Marsh Road, Rayners Lane, and Whittington Way, all in Harrow. There isn’t a car park, but we found space to park on a nearby street.
Judith Field
Pinner Village Gardens, Marsh Road, Pinner, HA5 5JR
26/07/2023 12:31:18 PM
104. Finsbury Circus Gardens
Not to be mixed up with nearby Finsbury Square, or not so nearby Finsbury Park, Finsbury Circus Gardens is the largest open space in the City of London.
For the ten years up to August 2020, it was closed as the central part was occupied by Crossrail, who used it to dig down and sideways to the tunnels underneath in constructing Liverpool Street Elizabeth Line station. It has a large lawn in the centre, surrounded by tall trees, including London plane, lime trees and a Japanese pagoda tree, and a bandstand.
This Grade II listed garden is what remains of Moor Fields, London's first public park, dating from 1607. The Circus was created in 1812, the name reflecting its elliptical shape, like the circuses in ancient Rome. It was opened as a public park in the early twentieth century, having previously been a private space for the use of the freeholders or leaseholders of the surrounding buildings.
The lawn is lined with benches, and I sat for a while, watching a group of hi-vis jacketed children on the other side, from a nearby nursery perhaps, playing with hula hoops. I was visited by a baby starling. I wish I’d thought to bring some birdseed for it. I’ll have to add that to the fish food we always take along; perhaps in separate pockets of my jeans.
The City of London Corporation is said to be bringing proposals forward to improve the gardens and introduce a new pavilion building that will be used as a café and restaurant. There isn’t one at the moment, nor toilets.
Just outside Finsbury Circus is what looks like a small stone obelisk, dedicated to the memory of George Dance the Younger, the architect who designed the Circus. The road in front of it has an array of large manhole covers, and the indents at the top of the obelisk are open spaces. The obelisk is actually hollow, and it’s a ventilation tower. The site used to be an underground toilet, but in 1997 the site was cleared and taken over for use as an underground gas storage facility.
Assuming you don’t want to drive, and in particular try to park in the City, the easiest way to the garden is by Underground to Moorgate, from which it’s about a 5-minute walk.
Judith Field
Finsbury Circus Gardens. Finsbury Circus, London EC2M 7DT
19/07/2023 04:44:27 PM
103. Bernays Gardens
This garden is in Church Road, Stanmore. I found it when I got lost trying to drive to another open space. Waze had led me up a private road to the wrong place, Maps kept telling me I'd arrived, and I was on my way home when I drove past the garden. It is named after the Bernays family, of whom Leopold and later Stewart Bernays were rectors of Stanmore parish church, next door.
The garden is on the site of an old Manor House, built in a mock Tudor design by a local property developer in 1930. He planned to make the house self-sufficient with a small farm, and a row of buildings beside the gardens today are still known as the cowsheds. He was fond of inscriptions and inscribed on the beam above the entrance lodge ‘Welcome ever smiles and farewell goes out sighing.’ The main building is known as Cowman’s Cottage, and has a moral statement carved on a wooden plaque on the side elevation: ‘Children of our hearts learn from flowers that grown in golden years.’
Unfortunately, after spending over £100,000 on the project, he had to sell up after he was declared bankrupt. During World War II the gardens were used for allotments. In the nineteen forties the land was bought by Harrow Council and laid out as a public park. The high walls surrounding the garden date from the 19th century and are Grade II listed.
The garden was restored and is maintained by the Bernays Gardens Community Group, who reinstated one of the flower beds as a rose bed, and planted rose bushes, daffodils, poppies, shrubs and plants. They have installed bat boxes, bird nesting boxes and bee/bug boxes, and have created woodpiles to make areas more suitable for wildlife.
There are picnic benches and plenty of places to sit. There is no café or toilets. Parking is a matter of luck – we found a space right outside on the main road. The site is open from 7.30am - dusk.
Judith Field
Bernays Gardens, Old Church Lane Church Road, Stanmore HA7 2QX
