Park of the week

60. Chandos Recreation Ground

We’ve now visited 166 different parks, and we continue to find new ones each week. Lately they’ve been restricted to tiny ones with big lying down swings and, often, little else, and I’m going to do something about that. Here’s a park that had more.

There seem to be several open spaces in and around London called Chandos Park, but we found Chandos Recreation Ground (also called Chandos Park on one of the signs by the entrance) in Edgware/Harrow by passing it on the way from one of the places we’d visited by turning right at the end of the road (Harrow, Borehamwood, Elstree, loud protests). 

The park was laid out early in the twentieth century and is named after the Duke of Chandos of Canons. Another Part of the Duke’s eighteenth-century estate is now Canons Park (see 17.) The original gates are still there, and at the entrances are shrubberies and some formal beds. It’s a gently sloping open area with a large field crossed by tree-lined paths, which is the sort of space where I can look into the distance. There weren’t very many other people there when we went, which made me feel even less closed in.

Yet again we found a stream at the northern edge: the Edgware Brook. This used to mark the boundary of Edgware, which name is derived from ‘Ecgi’s weir fishing pool’, so it must have been deeper and wider then. The brook combines with the Silk Stream (see 34) and eventually finds its way via the River Brent to the Thames. Volunteers from the Thames21 organisation are doing scrub clearance events to improve the visibility of the Brook. 

The park has two children’s play areas, a skateboard area, football, basketball and cricket pitches, tennis courts, plus an outdoor gym. There are no café or toilets.

There are entrances from Camrose Avenue, Merlin Crescent and Methuen Road, Edgware. There is a small car park at the Camrose Avenue entrance, and you can also park on the surrounding streets.

Judith Field

Chandos Recreation Ground, Camrose Avenue , Edgware HA8 6BX