Introduction
Friends' Meeting House
Woodcroft Wildspace
Grovelands Park
Southgate Green
Christ Church
Minchenden Oak Garden
Arnos Park
Broomfield Park
Introduction
Directions
The walk is about 7km (4 miles) long, and will
take two to three hours, depending on the time spent in parks and
gardens.
The walk starts from Winchmore Hill station and ends at
Palmers Green Station.
All the parks and gardens are open during daylight hours and
entrance is free, unless otherwise stated. The route is wheelchair
accessible, except where stated.
Please be aware of your personal safety and security when
walking. Use designated road crossings where possible.
Description
This walk explores historic parks and gardens
in the London Borough of Enfield, parts of which were for more than 400
years the royal hunting ground of Enfield Chase. From the 17th century
onwards wealthy gentlemen built houses in Enfield and the surrounding
countryside. The walk takes in the grounds of several of these country
estates, which have now become public parks, where fragments of the
original landscaping survive.
Friends' Meeting House
Directions
From Winchmore Hill station , turn right up Station
Road, cross Wilson Street and walk alongside The Green to the
mini-roundabout by the King's Head. Cross towards the pub and go down
Church Hill. The Friends' Meeting House is about 140m down
Church Hill on the right.
Description
The Friends' Meeting House here is one of the
oldest and most famous in the country. The current building of 1790
replaced the original one which dated from 1688. The crescent-shaped
area in front of the Meeting House was added in 1717 to help with the
turning of carriages in the road, which was once very narrow.
The burial ground to the west of the Meeting House is on the site of the
property's 300-year-old walled garden. There are some gravestones in
the grass immediately to the side, but the main burial area is behind
the building, with simple headstones set in the grass. There are some
mature trees, including two cedars, with yew and various shrubs and
some flowerbeds.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Woodcroft Wildspace
Photo: Woodcroft Wildspace
Directions
Outside the Meeting House, cross Church Hill, turn right and
then left into Denleigh Gardens. Continue across Branscombe Gardens to
Seaforth Gardens. The Arts and Crafts-style houses here was built in
the 1920s and 30s on land once part of the Laurel Cottage Estate.
At Seaforth Gardens, there is a choice of routes. For a
wheelchair-friendly route or to avoid woodland paths, turn left to the
top of the road, and then turn right into Broad Walk. Turn right into
the park at the mini-roundabout, or alternatively turn left to visit Woodcroft
Wildspace (see below).
For a walk through woodland, cross Seaforth Road at the end
of Denleigh Gardens, turn right and then left into the park. Walk to
the junction with the woodland path. This is what remains of the once
extensive Winchmore Hill Wood. To continue through the wood, turn
right, walk down through the trees and across the stream, then turn
left towards the lake.
To visit Woodcroft Wildspace from here, turn left
and continue bearing left, past the park office, to a junction of paths
on the right. Turn left along the main path and walk up to the park
gates. Cross Broad Walk into Woodcroft. The entrance is towards the end
of the road on the left between numbers 28 and 30 (wheelchair access is
currently limited).
Description
Until the mid-1990s, the site was used as a
sports ground. However, this use was discontinued due to poor drainage
and regular flooding. With support from the Big Lottery Breathing
Spaces Fund, the Friends of Woodcroft are turning the site into a local
nature reserve which will feature nature trails through managed
woodland, wetland, meadow and orchard areas, all of which will be
designed for full disabled access. There will also be a field study
centre, meeting room and café. See www.woodcroft.org.uk
Grovelands Park
Directions
Return to Grovelands Park and continue down the
hill towards the lake. There is an accessible café and toilets on the
left.
Description
Grovelands Park is a late-18th-century
landscape park with lake, which became a public park in 1913. Architect
John Nash built Southgate Grove (1797-98) in neo-classical style for
Walker Gray, a brandy merchant from Tottenham. Gray also employed
landscape gardener Humphry Repton, who reputedly selected the site of
the house, laid out carriage drives, gardens and pleasure grounds, and
created the fine artificial lake and islands which form the main
feature of the park, by damming the stream, known as 'Whappooles
Bourne'. The grounds featured a walled garden, graperies and heated
pits for growing pineapples, while the park was home to a herd of deer.
The estate was re-named Grovelands by John Donnithorne Taylor, who
inherited in 1835. He bought as much of the surrounding land as he
could to prevent other houses being built close to his own and
increased the size of the estate from 250 to 600 acres. The entrance to
his estate was in Alderman's Hill, and his carriage drive once extended
from the house all the way to just above where Palmers Green station
now stands. Much of the land was eventually sold off for development
after his death in 1885, with 60 acres being preserved by Southgate
Urban District Council as a public park. The house was adapted as a
military hospital in World War I and is now a private psychiatric
hospital.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Southgate Green
Directions
Walk to the right, keeping the lake on your left. On the
right is what remains of Winchmore Hill Wood, preserved by Southgate
Urban District Council in 1913, when much of the estate was sold for
housing development. Continue around the lake, past Grovelands House on
the right and a small golf course on the left, to exit into The Bourne.
Cross the road, turn left and take the first right, marked Ridgeway,
bearing immediately right into Greenway. Walk up the road and turn
right into Meadway. The ‘Tudorbethan’ houses of the Meadway estate were
built in the late 1920s by Edmondson, once of the largest builders in
the area. At the end of the road, turn left into High Street and
continue to Southgate Green . Ye Olde Cherry Tree Inn is a
former Georgian coaching inn (wheelchair access to the rear via The
Mall and accessible toilets).
Description
Southgate Green marks the old village green of
the hamlet of Southgate, named because of its position as the main
southern entrance to Enfield Chase. The old wooden stocks are displayed
on the green near the horse trough.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Christ Church
No photo available.
Directions
To take a shortcut to Broomfield Park , turn left
outside the Cherry Tree and walk down Cannon Hill, crossing Selbourne
Road and Cannon Road. Cross Alderman's Hill at the traffic lights, turn
left and then right into the park. Follow the path straight ahead and
around the top of the park to the walled garden.
Alternatively, cross Cannon Hill at the zebra crossing and
walk across the green and along Waterfall Road to Christ Church
on the left. The entrance to the graveyard is a little further on the
left (not wheelchair-accessible).
Description
Christ Church was designed by Sir George
Gilbert Scott and built in 1861-63 by the Walker family, replacing the
Weld Chapel of 1615. It has windows by the pre-Raphaelite artists
William Morris, Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward
Burne-Jones. The small churchyard is reached through an iron gate, and
is a triangular site with a holly hedge along the roadside, and a brick
wall behind. It contains specimen trees, such as Corsican pine, holm
oak and a notable cedar of Lebanon. There are a number of early
headstones among the grass, including that of Rebecca Shrawley (d.1683)
with skulls and an hourglass. The tombstone of John Donnithorne Taylor
of Grovelands is here too, marked only with the initials ‘JDT’.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Minchenden Oak Garden
Directions
Turning left outside the church, continue along Waterfall
Road to a gate in the wall on the right which leads to Minchenden
Oak Garden. There are four shallow steps down into the garden, and
the paving surface is uneven (not wheelchair-friendly).
Description
This garden was once part of the Minchenden
Estate, one of the great estates in the area, owned by the Duke of
Chandos. Minchenden House, which stood on the south side of Southgate
Green, was demolished in 1853 by the Walker family, and the grounds
incorporated into the Arnos Grove Estate. A relic of the grounds of
Minchenden House remains today in the form of the Minchenden or Chandos
Oak, an ancient pollarded oak tree more than 800 years old. Thought to
be a survivor of the ancient Forest of Middlesex, it was reputed in the
19th century to be the largest in England with a girth of over 27 feet.
Minchenden Oak Garden was created by Southgate Borough Council as an
evergreen Garden of Remembrance and opened in 1934.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Arnos Park
Directions
Continue down Waterfall Road, crossing Morton Way and enter
Arnos Park at the bottom of the hill on the left, just before the
railway bridge. Follow the path through the park to the far end,
keeping Pymme's Brook to your right.
Description
Arnos Park was created in 1928 when 44 acres of
wood and meadow, part of the 300-acre Arnos Grove Estate, were
purchased by Southgate Urban District Council from Lord Inverforth (who
had bought it in 1918), while the remainder of the estate was sold for
housing development. From 1777 to 1918 the estate belonged to the
Walker family, Quaker brewers and cousins of the Gray family of
Grovelands. Isaac Walker ‘improved’ the grounds, creating three miles
of pleasure walks. In 1884 the house was said to command ‘a view of
several rich valleys, with the hills towards Finchley and Muswell
Hill’. The 18th-century house, with 20th-century additions, still
stands on Cannon Hill.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Broomfield Park
Directions
Leaving Arnos Park, turn left and walk up the hill. Cross
Wilmer Way and turn left, crossing Dawlish Avenue. Cross Powys Lane
using the traffic island and enter Broomfield Park through the
gate just to the left. Take the path to the right, which leads to the
walled garden.
After entering the walled garden through a gate in the wall,
turn left past the herbaceous border. Turn right along the path between
two lakes, then left along the front of the house. For the children's
play area, turn right, otherwise continue straight on past a boating
lake to the park gates leading to Alderman's Hill. Turn right and
continue alongside the park, crossing the road via the traffic island
to reach Palmers Green station.
Description
Broomfield Lodge was reputedly built as a
hunting lodge for James I in the 16th century, but it has been altered
and expanded repeatedly over the years. A City merchant, Joseph
Jackson, owned the estate by 1624, and the Powys family from 1816 to 1902.
Both house and estate were improved and enlarged in the early 18th
century, probably including the formal gardens to the west.
The formal
garden, ponds and house are enclosed by red brick walls which date from
the 16th and 18th centuries. The eastern wall, behind the remains of
the house, has an early-18th-century summer house with wooden Ionic
columns.
In 1902 the house and 54 acres of its grounds were purchased
by Southgate Urban District Council and opened to the public in 1903.
The public could swim in one of the lakes until 1911, when the council
discovered that the water was polluted. The house, which became a local
museum in 1925, was badly damaged by a number of fires in 1984, again
in 1993 and then 1994.
Further information on LGT Inventory
