2024-01-14 15:15:28
“How many parks are there in London?” he asked himself one day. Hunter Davies, the celebrated biographer of the Beatles, determined to explore the unfathomable geography of his adopted city in “London Parks.” He made a list of spaces larger than eight hectares and came up with 370. Although the number of parks reaches a thousand, and green areas are probably around 3,000, including community gardens, nature reserves, urban farms and leafy cemeteries that invite exploration even in the middle of winter.
By their own estimates, the green carpet occupies around 60% of urban space. No large city with millions of inhabitants can compare, hence London was distinguished in 2019 as the world’s first “National Park City” (an idea coined by National Geographic chief explorer Daniel Raven-Ellison).
“The parks are without a doubt the greatest glory and trademark of London,” attests Hunter Davies, who spent a year of full immersion to write his very personal guide, plus the 60 years he has been walking almost daily through his beloved Hampstead Heaththe incredible 320-hectare oasis north of Camden, also distinguished in 2020 as the first “Park of Silence” in Europe.
“We can remember in passing that there are 230 theaters in London, seven football teams in the Premier and an imposing river, the Thames, which is the heart of its history,” Davies recalls. “But as the philosopher John Rushkin, who has a park in his name on Denmark Hill, said, the measure of any civilization is its cities. And the measure of cities is the quality of its public spaces: its parks and its squares.”
A thousand parks were too many, the best thing was to make a “selection” of 11, like in soccer teams. Starting with the first Royal Park, St.James (courtesy of Henry VIII) and ending with the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (the “legacy” of Boris Johnson), passing through the “miracle” of Hyde Park in the real estate heart of the city, the immensity of Richmond with its deer, the distance in space and time of Greenwich or the irresistible attraction of Victoria Parkthe first “working class park” in the forgotten east.
“It all started about 500 years ago, with the royal parks which were really great expanses of hunting and recreation for monarchs and aristocracy,” Hunter Davies recalls. “The second stage comes in the Victorian era, when a parliamentary committee was even set up to investigate whether public spaces for walking were ‘a valuable addition to society’.”
The destruction caused in London by The Blitz, the German aerial bombardment during World War II, unexpectedly created a third wave of green spaces such as the Burguess Parkemerged south of the Thames on the ruins of hundreds of demolished buildings.
Hunter Davies.
In London there was never an urban plan like that of Baron Haussmann in Paris or the “grid” of New York. So the multicentric city opened spaces between its 32 districts, including the wetlands of Tottenham and the marshes of Hackneythe 36 completely wild nature reserves (a must see, the Camley Street Natural Parkwhere St. Pancras station ends) and 13 urban farms with sheep, horses and lamas visible as the “overground” passes by.
Green expansion continues to this day, with the opening of parks such as Beckenham Place in Lewishamon what was a very private golf course, or Northala Fieldsemerged on the remains accumulated for the construction of Heathrow and Wembley Stadium in Ealingwhere beavers have just been reintroduced after 400 years, in one of the most celebrated “rewilding” projects.
“Parks have also spread in London because people are very local and rooted in their environment,” emphasizes Hunter Davies. “Popular pressure was, for example, vital to prevent Sir Thomas Maryon from developing part of Hampstead Heath. In the 19th century, what had traditionally been the washerwomen’s quarter became more refined and attracted people with money, and became fashionable for its thermal baths”.
In 1871, after years of wrangling, Parliament passed the Hampstead Heath Act, preserving the authentic urban woodland as a public space. The park was expanded with the acquisition of Parliament Hill, where you can enjoy the best views of London, and finally with the addition of the Palace of Kenwood and his considerable collection of paintings (including a Vermeer and a Rembrandt self-portrait).
“It is my favorite park and I have always wanted to live near it, although my heart is divided with Victoria Park because of its popular conquest,” acknowledges the author of London Parks, who has also written the monographic book The Heath. “It continues to amaze me that six kilometers from London there can be a place where you have the feeling of being in the countryside and you can spend hours walking without crossing a road.”
At one of the entrances to the park is Keats’s house-museum, and in the middle of jungle vegetation it suddenly emerges. The Pergola. Although if the Heath is known for something, it is above all for its three ponds suitable for bathers – the mixed one, the men’s and the women’s – open all year round and immortalized in films such as “The Mole”, based on the novel by John Le Carré.
The oak and beech forests alternate with meadows in which up to 650 species of wild plants grow and with wetlands that provide shelter to 180 species of birds and a unique fauna, from the ubiquitous foxes to the muntjac deer, introduced to England since the Southeast Asia in the 19th century.
For Hunter Davies, Hampstead Heath also has a very high emotional charge: “I walked here for decades with my wife Margaret, who left us in 2016, but who is still very present on my walks to the bench where our dedication for our silver wedding is inscribed.” “There are more than 600 dedicated benches in the park, each with its own story.”
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