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| Grim's Dyke House: gentility and a grim history. |
This short alternative route for London Loop section
15 via Harrow Weald Common avoids a slight dogleg and some road crossings,
though it does miss out on one of the best viewpoints on the trail. I’ve also
taken the opportunity to say more about the pretty but rather wiggly official
Loop link from Stanmore Little Common to Stanmore station via Stanmore Country
Park.
Crossing the high ground in the north of Harrow borough,
the Loop encounters a continuous chain of open spaces on former common land:
Grimsdyke Open Space, Harrow Weald Common and the City Open Space. Yet the
route ducks out of the green to cross the relatively busy Old Redding road
twice. I suspect this is partly a legacy issue: Grim’s Dyke House and its
surroundings form an enclave within the public space and there may have been an
issue with access across the drive. But a more positive reason for the dogleg
is to visit Old Redding Viewpoint with its breath-taking prospect of central
London, and the adjoining historic pub, The Case Is Altered.
For the view alone, my recommendation is that you stick to
the official route. But if the view and/or the pub hold no interest, or you’ve
already been there and done that, or you particularly want to avoid crossing
busy roads if you can, there is an alternative described by Colin Saunders in
the most recent edition of the official guidebook. This uses parts of the more
recently-waymarked Harrow Weald Common Nature Trail to stay within the woodland
to the north of the road. Two more plus points for this option are that it’s
350 m shorter and takes you closer to the house, which is well worth a look.
From Carpenders Park
Although it’s not an official Loop link, there’s an
obvious and convenient way of joining the trail eastbound from Carpenders Park
station. This is the next London Overground station north from Hatch End along
the West Coast Main Line, just outside London but still in the Transport for
London (TfL) fares system, in zone 7. Like Moor Park at the end of section 13,
it began as a golf halt, originally opening around 200 m north of its current
site in 1914.
The current station was built in 1952 at around the time the area
was undergoing large-scale development into a new suburb. I’ve said a bit more
about this in my original post on section 15, but didn’t realise then that this
largely private estate just across the railway from the Greater London Council
estate at South Oxhey was the model for Plummers Park in Leslie Thomas’s novel Tropic of Ruislip (1974). More about
this in the discussion of the real Ruislip under Hillingdon Trail section 2.
The developers of Carpenders Park left a green ribbon
along the course of the Hartsbourne stream, which rises on the slopes of one of
the golf courses between here and Bushey to the east, and flows for about 5 km
roughly northwest to join the river Colne near Oxhey Hall. A Woodland Walk now
follows the stream east of the railway: a street name, The Mead, is a reminder
that flood meadows once lined the waterside where houses now stand.
The woodland strip is a panhandle extension of Carpenders
Park lawn cemetery, soon visible through the trees: at this point your route
bends right to stay under the branches, entering the designated area of Watling
Chase Community Forest. As mentioned under Loop 15, the cemetery is something
of an anomaly as it’s run jointly by the London Boroughs of Brent and Harrow,
although it lies outside both their boundaries. Only at the very end do you
need to leave the woodland path, joining a short stretch of the cemetery drive which
delivers you to Oxhey Lane just north of the point where the official London
Loop route passes Mutton Wood.
Further along, as acknowledged by Colin Saunders in the
latest edition of the London Loop guide, the farmland northeast of Grim’s Dyke
Golf Course is the site of the Wild Green Project, which aims to create a
multi-layered forestry farm producing a range of foods and other products but
with a beneficial environmental impact. I bumped into environmentalist and
sculptor Lee Lannon, the man behind this, when I was last passing through. He
told me that progress has been delayed by issues with landowners, which is why
the sign has been taken down – but hopefully things will be back on track by
spring 2018.
Harrow Weald Common
You can read more under Loop 15 about Harrow Weald
Common and the tragic story of the death of dramatist and librettist W S
Gilbert, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, at Grim’s Dyke House. Following the
nature trail diversion, you’ll see a bit more of the common, with its scrubby
woodlands, old earthworks and clumps of rhododendrons spilling from the former
Victorian gardens. Crossing the house drive, it’s worth a short detour to view the
house itself, completed in 1872 by Richard Norman Shaw for the painter Frederick
Goodall, and Gilbert’s home from 1890 until his death in 1911. With its tall
chimneys and half-timbering, it’s a splendid early example of the ‘Tudorbethan’
style that later flourished in the early 20th century, though there
are various distinctive details like rounded archways that almost anticipate art nouveau.
Following the death of Gilbert’s widow Lucy, the house and
estate were bought jointly by Middlesex County Council and London County
Council in 1937, and the house was used for rehabilitating tuberculosis
patients. It’s still under public ownership, currently with Harrow council, but
has been leased as a hotel since 1970. Surrounded by well-kept lawns and
gardens, it looks impeccably picturesque and genteel in a late-Victorian way,
and it’s understandably popular as a film location. If you were walking the
Loop using overnight stays, this would be a delightful, if rather pricey, place
to break your journey.
The numbered posts of the 3.75 km nature trail installed by
the Harrow Weald Common Conservators in 2008 help you navigate through the
space: one of them is placed at precisely the point where the alternative route
leaves the official Loop. The nature trail is split into two loops (lower case ‘l’!)
identified by colours: a shorter orange loop around Grim’s Dyke in the west and
a longer purple loop around the common in the east. In case you were wondering,
here’s an outline of what the numbers indicate: for more information, you can
download a leaflet from the Harrow Nature Conservation Forum website. I’ve included the posts on the official Loop route too, as
a supplement to Loop 15.
4. This post, on the orange loop, stands by the side of
the lake where Gilbert died. Now it’s filled with marsh plants like yellow iris
and willow scrub.
7. This section, also on the orange loop, runs along the
boundary between the overgrown garden on the right, with exotic planted trees, and
the common on the left, populated with native trees like downy birch, beech
and oak.
8. This is where the purple and orange loops meet, and
where the alternative Loop route diverges from the official one. From here you
follow the purple loop back into old gardens, and then on the other side of the
drive back onto the common again, with more downy birch, and some fallen logs
providing habitats for birds, insects and fungi.
17. Don’t worry, you haven’t missed anything – walkers on
the purple loop encounter this post towards the end of their walk where it
directs them back to the Old Redding viewpoint.
9. This is where the two routes rejoin, and is
incidentally the highest point on the Loop north of the Thames, at 158 m. The 7
km Bentley Priory Circular Walk also shadows the trail from here. The notes
about this post draw attention to the old ditch and bank topped with a hawthorn
hedge a little further along on the left, past the cottages, and the rare
species like wood sorrel that can be found there.
10. Passing this post, look out for the oak trees planted
to mark the boundary of the common in the 1860s, and a pollarded oak on the
right. You cross over Len’s Avenue.
11. A strip of grassland marks an area of lime-deficient
soil. In the 1980s this was the last vestige of heathland on the common and
there are plans to try to restore it.
12. Oak trees dominate this area, with some beech and
rowan. Most of the trees here are only 50-100 years old: as with many
now-wooded commons, grazing once would have maintained a more open landscape,
and the trees have grown up since this practice declined.
Shortly after this post you leave the Common and continue
into the Bentley Priory site, described in more detail under Loop 15.
The Stanmore link
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| Spring Pond, Stanmore Little Common. |
The London Loop link to Stanmore station isn’t the
usual functional stroll through the streets, but an enjoyable walk in its own
right, making good use of Stanmore Country Park, a major green space that you
otherwise won’t encounter on the trail. The break point is easy to miss, in a
clearing among the various ponds of Stanmore Little Common, and the first
reward of breaking your walk at this point is a fuller view of Spring Pond and
its surroundings. The pretty complex of red brick buildings on one side was built
in the 1860s as staff accommodation and stables for Stanmore Hall. The banks of
the pond were once more wooded, but many of the trees had to be cut back to
deal with an algae infestation. From the pond you cross towards a wall, behind
which is the hall itself, a neo-Gothic mansion built in 1843. I’ve said a bit
more about Stanmore in general under Loop 15.
A short stroll down traffic-calmed Dennis Lane soon brings
you to the country park (here's a link to the official website, though you'll find much more information on the Harrow Nature Conservation Forum website). This occupies former farmland attached to Warren House,
at the top of the hill you’ve just descended: you pass it on the main trail and
I’ve said a bit more about it there. The estate had numerous owners prior to
1890 when it was bought by the banker and philanthropist Henry Bischoffsheim.
In 1922, his widow left it to her grandson John Fitzgerald, a member of the
Anglo-Irish aristocracy, the 21st Knight of Kerry and 3rd
Baronet of Valencia – not the Spanish city and province but an island off the Kerry
coast, today more commonly spelt Valentia.
Fitzgerald, an agricultural
enthusiast and livestock judge, showed his national loyalties by replacing the
herd of Jersey cows on the estate with Kerry cattle, though some of the park area was used as a golf course. In 1937, as we’ll shortly
see, Fitzgerald began to develop parts of the estate for housing, and sold off a large portion including the former golf course to Middlesex County Council and Harrow council as green belt land,
though farming continued into the 1950s.
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| Woodlands in Stanmore Country Park. |
The site became a Country Park in 1976 when it was partly
managed by the Greater London Council, but is now wholly owned by the London
Borough of Harrow following the GLC’s abolition. Designated a Local Nature
Reserve (LNR) in 1995, it’s a mix of meadows and fields, including some acidic
grassland dotted with the raised nests of yellow ants, and woodland – some of
it recent secondary growth but with some ancient semi-natural woodland with
wild service trees and mature hornbeams. Much of the Loop link stays within the
trees, interleaving with another nature trail and its numbered posts. At post
13 there’s a spiky midland hawthorn, and at post 14 you cross an ancient hedge
line by a 250-year-old oak.
The link leaves the park, and the Community Forest area, past a bluebell wood and enters
the Warren House housing estate along Kerry Avenue. This is the area developed
for Fitzgerald in the 1930s to take advantage of the opening of the railway. He
was determined to create something a cut above the average suburban style, as
evidenced by the generous lawns, the wooded strips that divide some of the
roads and the stylish art deco, or rather ‘moderne’, houses that line them.
Some
were designed by Gerald Lacoste (1908-83): an artist as well as an architect,
he was also responsible for various World War II propaganda posters. There are
some particularly large and fine examples of his work clustered around the junction
of Kerry Avenue, Valencia Road and Glanleam Road (the origins of the street
names are obvious if you know something of the family history: Glanleam is an
estate on Valentia island). Other architects were Douglas Wood and Owen
Williams, one of the creators of the old Wembley Stadium.
The last few hundred metres of the link continue along Kerry
Court, across a grass patch and through a hedge that strategically shields the
estate from busy London Road. Immediately opposite is Stanmore station, designed
in cottagey suburban style by the Metropolitan Railway architect Charles W
Clarke. Curiously, the station has been on three different Underground lines since
opening in 1932. In 1939 the branch was detached from the Met and became a
branch of the Bakerloo Line, and in 1979 it was reallocated again, as the
northerly section of the newly-built Jubilee Line. Despite discussions in the
1930s about a northwards extension, Stanmore remains a terminus.
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| Stanmore station, now on its third Underground line. |
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