Park of the week

55. Conway Road Recreation Ground

This park is in Palmers Green and I found it by looking for areas of green on the map that aren’t golf courses or school grounds. As we visit more and more places there are fewer new ones nearby. This is tiny, but I couldn’t face a longer drive.
I was glad that I chose it, because it was peaceful and clean, with a lovely ornamental pond, grassy slopes filled with wildflowers, and plenty of benches for resting on. Just where Jack and I needed to be on a sunny afternoon. Much of the space is taken up with two private tennis courts, but the rest of it is a green oasis in a suburban setting, tucked away and easy to miss.

The pond had been there for centuries, fed by natural springs running underground, before housing was developed in the area in 1904. In 1911, there was talk – which got into local papers – of a Beast of Conway Pond. Nobody had seen it, but rumours were that it was some sort of sealion, said to produce such an “ominous bellow” that people were kept awake at night and “babies cried with fright.” In the end it was found – an American Bullfrog about six inches long. 

The Rec is home to a wide range of amphibians, insects, birds, and mammals – including three species of bat. It’s looked after by the Friends of Conway Rec working closely with Enfield Council, local schools, and the tennis club. Volunteers garden and keep the pond clean and healthy. Work is under way to plant more native species of bulbs, shrubs, and trees, to offer an increasingly rich habitat. Future projects include creating a bog garden and setting up a discovery trail. The oaks in the Rec are about 250 years old and were once part of the Great Forest of Middlesex.

The Rec is also home to the smallest library I’ve ever seen, a box of books put there by the Little Free Library organisation. It’s one of 100,000 registered Little Free Library book-sharing boxes in 108 countries worldwide. They operate on an honour principle. Take a book, return that one, or a different one. The box was stocked with books, intact and unvandalized. Unfortunately, there was no space in this library for me to write in, so the search continues. 

Judith Field

Conway Road Recreation Ground, Conway Road, London N14 7BD