Park of the week

138. Victoria Park - Finchley

This park is a short walk from FRS. You’ve probably driven past it more times than you can count, and even gone in for a walk. It’s one of Barnet’s Premier Parks and won the Green Flag award for 2009-10. 

Victoria Park and I go back to the mid-sixties, when my aunt and uncle moved into a house with a garden with a big tree with squirrels, which we didn’t seem to have in Liverpool. Better still, the garden backed onto the park and had a kid-size gap in the railings that led to a gardener’s hut, and from there to the park itself. We spent happy times on the putting green and in the playground. Years later, I took a walk in the park to try to ease the pain of first love. By the tennis courts I sat down and wept. 

In 1988 my daughter and I moved to a house in Long Lane (and joined FRS), just down the road from one of the park entrances. More memories, happy (trying to fly a kite) and silly (when I decided it’d be a good idea to get myself some roller skates and stagger around the playground in them).

The screen has gone all misty…time to move onto some less personal history of the park. It was Finchley’s first public park and opened in 1902, although it had been intended to mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887. Much of the park was originally part of Colby’s Farm, where Charles Dickens wrote part of Martin Chuzzlewit. So, I’m not the only person who comes to Finchley (FRS in my case) to write. 

During the winter of 2021-22 the Association of Jewish Refugees planted trees around the UK to mark its 80th anniversary, to thank all the British people who helped Jewish refugees find safety in Britain from Nazi Europe, and to celebrate the remarkable contribution that the Jewish refugees have made to every walk of British life. A Sea Buckthorn tree was planted in Victoria Park.

The park is mainly open grassland with specimen trees, shrubs. I noticed these two trees that appear to have grown wrapped around each other.

There are lots of benches for sitting (and crying if you must). There are two playgrounds, tennis courts, outdoor gym and a bowling club, and a cafe and toilets.

There are entrances on Ballards Lane, Long Lane, Seymour Road and Etchingham Park Road, N3.

Judith Field

Victoria Park, Ballards Lane, London N3 2PH