Chalk

Monument to Samuel Rogers and Family

Hornsey · 1.9 miles

Chest tomb of the nonconformist Roger’s family of Stoke Newington. Samuel Roger’s was a celebrated Victorian poet who died in 1855 aged 92. Grade II listed.

Downhills Park

Duckett's Green · 2.5 miles

Spanning roughly 12 hectares (about 30 acres), the green space on the edge of Wood Green and Tottenham provides a mix of open fields and a cultivated garden. The managed area includes a rose garden, alongside facilities for tennis and basketball, while the broader recreation ground accommodates informal sport and leisure. In 2006 the site earned the Green Flag Award, recognising its standards of maintenance and community value. Since July 2015 the park has also acted as a base for several local clubs, notably the Finsbury Park Rugby Football Club, the Og GAA and the Holloway Ladies Gaelic Football Team. The land’s history reaches back to a house called Downhills that existed before 1728. After being purchased by a private developer in 1881, building work only began at the turn of the century. Following a resident-led campaign, the Tottenham Urban District Council acquired the estate and its surrounding fields in 1901, retaining many original features while adding new amenities. Wartime bombing after 1939 led to the loss of several structures, and new children’s play equipment was installed by Haringey Council during the 1980s. The park lies nearest to Duckett’s Green and is freely accessible to the public, offering a blend of historic landscape and contemporary sport facilities.

Oak Hill Park

East Barnet · 2.5 miles

Oak Hill Park occupies a sizeable stretch of green space in East Barnet, within the London Borough of Barnet, and is maintained by Barnet Council. The site carries a Green Flag Award for the 2009–10 period, reflecting its quality as a public amenity. Visitors can make use of an outdoor gym, a dedicated bowls green, several football pitches, a golf course, three tennis courts, a multi-sports court and a toddler-friendly play area, offering a variety of activities for different ages and interests. A portion of the grounds was designated Oak Hill Wood as a Local Nature Reserve in 1997, and the watercourse Pymme’s Brook, together with the Pymmes Brook Trail, run through the park, providing opportunities for walking and wildlife observation. Since August 2011 the park has hosted a weekly Parkrun, adding a regular community fitness element. Access points are situated on Church Hill Road, Parkside Gardens, Daneland and Vernon Crescent, allowing entry from several surrounding streets. The area traces its origins back to at least the 11th century as part of the Monkenfrith estate held by the church. Following the dissolution of the monasteries the land was sold in the 1530s and stayed in private hands until the late 1920s, when the death of Charles Edward Baring Young led to the council’s purchase in 1930. Oak Hill House subsequently became the home of Oak Hill College, while the remaining estate was laid out as a public park in 1933. A monument to early-18th-century owner Sir Simon Haughton Clarke can be seen in the cemetery of St Mary’s Church opposite the park.

Swan Lane Open Space

Woodside Park · 3.1 miles

The park offers a compact green space within Whetstone, part of the London Borough of Barnet, and is listed as the smallest of the borough’s sixteen Premier Parks. It combines open, mown lawns with a collection of mature trees, notably giant redwoods and a Cedar of Lebanon, alongside more natural zones that are actively managed for wildlife. Visitors can use the children’s playground, stop at the on-site café, or follow the pond’s edge, where reeds and water plants now fringe a spring-fed water body that once hosted model boating. Laid out around the 1930s, the site was reclaimed from former gravel pits that bordered a nineteenth-century estate. Locally dubbed “The Pits” from at least the 1960s, the area bears a somber memory of a 1925 tragedy in which three schoolchildren drowned while exploring the disused workings. The park’s upper section appeared in the early 1970s during filming of a Monty Python “Hells Grannies” sketch, with the period Wendy House visible in the background. Rose beds beside the café have been planted to commemorate two local residents, adding a personal touch to the landscape. Access points are provided from Swan Lane, Whetstone High Road and Woodside Lane, situating the open space close to the Woodside Park neighbourhood. As a public amenity, the park does not charge admission and offers basic facilities such as the playground and café for casual visits.

Trent Park

Oakwood · 3.1 miles

The expanse of Trent Park stretches across roughly 320 hectares of green within the Metropolitan Green Belt, positioned near the Oakwood district of north London. The landscape forms part of a conservation area and holds a Grade II entry on the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England. Central to the grounds stands the former country house, itself a Grade II listed building together with several statues, an orangery and other ancillary structures that survive from the original estate. Historically the site originated in the fourteenth-century hunting grounds of Enfield Chase and later hosted a succession of private owners before becoming a secret World War II prisoner-of-war centre where covert recordings of German officers were made. After the war the house formed the Trent Park campus of Middlesex University until the campus was vacated in October 2012. The surrounding parkland has been known as Trent Country Park since 1973 and currently accommodates the Southgate Hockey Centre, a sports ground, and a building that formerly housed an indoor tennis court for royalty before being converted into a sports hall. A developer’s 2017 permission allows 262 new homes to be built on the former university site, with plans to retain the historic house and to house a museum on its lower floors. Visitors to the park can observe the listed mansion, its ornamental gardens and the Orangery, while the open fields support organised sport at the hockey centre. The nearest settlement is Oakwood, and the park’s status within the green belt and conservation area ensures its landscape remains largely unchanged despite recent redevelopment proposals.

Tottenham Marshes

Upper Edmonton · 3.1 miles

Covering more than 100 acres, the Tottenham Marshes lie in the London Borough of Haringey, close to Upper Edmonton. Managed by the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, the site forms part of the wider Lee Valley Park network and is split into three sections – Clendish Marsh, Wild Marsh West and Wild Marsh East – the latter two being divided by the River Lea. The area is recognised as one of the few remaining examples of semi-natural wetland within Greater London. A mixture of neutral grassland, sedge marsh, reed swamp, sallow scrub and tall-herb vegetation creates a varied habitat that supports plant species such as wall bedstraw, yellow vetchling, bee orchid and Babington’s poppy. Invertebrate and bird life includes the brown argus butterfly, skylark and short-eared owl, species that are relatively uncommon in the capital. Historically the marshes originated as a flood plain of the River Lea. Between the 1860s and the 1930s the site accommodated recreational facilities including tennis courts and a swimming area. Post-World War II, from 1946 to 1960, the land was used for gravel extraction and landfill, and in the late-19th century the River Lea was diverted to allow construction of part of the Lee Valley Reservoir Chain, bisecting Wild Marsh East. Tottenham Hotspur Football Club first played there in 1882. The Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, established by an Act of Parliament in 1965, purchased the marshes in 1972, securing their present status as a public park.