Park of the week

84. Trent Country Park

This is a large park in Enfield and includes varied woodlands, some of which dates from before 1600. There are also lakes, meadows and other habitats and a heritage landscape. Hay meadows in the park are harvested to encourage grassland flowers.

It used to be part of the royal hunting park of Enfield Chase. When it was enclosed after 1777, A deer park and lake were laid out and an old lodge converted into the house that’s still there, known at the time as Trent Place. 
It’s the former estate of the Sassoon family of Baghadi Jews family known as "The Rothschilds of the East".  Sir Philip Sassoon designed Trent Park to be the perfect venue for his political and social entertaining in the nineteen twenties and thirties. In 1951 the estate was compulsorily purchased as Green Belt land and in 1968 most of it became a public park, Trent Country Park, which was officially opened in 1973. 

Trent Park is recognised by Historic England as being of national and international significance on a level with Bletchley Park. During the Second World War, the house was requisitioned by the government and used as a centre to extract information from captured German officers. The rooms at Trent Park had been equipped with hidden microphones allowing the British military (MI19) to listen to the prisoners’ conversations. These secret listeners were almost all German émigrés (most of them Jewish) who escaped Nazi persecution for Britain and signed up for military service. This provided information about, for example, the relative strengths and weaknesses of German aircraft during the Battle of Britain. Undercover interrogators were planted among the prisoners.

Later in the war the house was used as a special prisoner-of-war camp (the "Cockfosters Cage") for captured German generals and staff officers. Again, hidden listening devices allowed the British to gather important information and an insight into the minds of the German military elite. My father was involved with MI19. I don’t know if he was one of the listeners, and I wish I could ask him, even though he may not have told me. 

The main entrance to the park is the west entrance on Cockfosters Road. The north entrance on Hadley Road leads into a forest, close to Camlet Moat, a small, moated island. This first appeared in local records in the fifteenth century as Camelot Moat when there seems to have been a building on the site called Camelot Manor. I've not heard of any Arthurian connections.

The Country Park has a café, toilets, visitor centre, showground, golf course, two fishing lakes, a cycle trail through the meadows, a horse-riding circuit and play area.

Judith Field

Trent Country Park, Cockfosters Road, Enfield, EN4 0PS