Park of the week

190. Bittacy Hill Park

Bittacy Hill Park, also known as Bittacy Park, is a small park in G-d's Own Mill Hill. It’s the closest park to where I live, just a ten-minute walk, and is a hilly open grassland bordered with mature trees. There are also gardens, a multi-area sports court, tennis court, and a children’s play area. We used to visit fairly often until I got worried that Jack shouldn’t be using the play equipment, when he was about 13. Recently, the playground was refurbished, it has now has a “big lying down swing”, Jack is 28 and I don’t care. The park has benches and a few paved pathways cross the grass, good for a walk although the slope is steep.

Bittacy Hill was the original name for the area now known as Mill Hill East. The change of name occurred in 1935, shortly before the railway became part of the Northern Line in 1939. Bittacy House and Bittacy Farm were the main estates until the 1860s. The farm continued until 1908 and the park is situated on the land it previously occupied.

It seems that there was at least one air raid shelter in the park, removed in the early nineteen seventies, with ones at six other local parks, because they were considered eyesores and a danger to children. The work cost £6,227.

I make lots of different soups, and when we visited Bittacy Hill Park there were plenty of nettles growing. I managed to pick a shopping bag-full, but only had surgical gloves with me, left over from the Covid days. Should you decide to do the same, do note that the surgical gloves aren’t thick enough but that the saying about “grasping the nettle” is true – squeezing them tight does seem to reduce the number of stings.

Once I’d blanched the nettles to remove the formic acid, I ended up with a passable soup that tasted like spinach. I was reminded of the Irish rebel song, Down by the Glenside: ‘Twas down by the Glenside, I met an old woman, A-plucking young nettles, she ne'er saw me coming’ And nobody saw me coming, but Jack. It was a calm and quiet place to walk.

There is access to the park from Bittacy Hill and Brownsea Walk, and by a footpath from between 27 and 29 Bittacy Rise – this is the entrance we use as it’s the next street to ours.

Judith Field

Bittacy Hill Park Sanders Lane, London NW7 1BU