Parks of Enfield: Grovelands Park, Arnos Park, and Broomfield Park

Parks of Enfield: Grovelands Park, Arnos Park, and Broomfield Park

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One afternoon I decided to take a walk through several of Enfield’s parks…

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I walked from Winchmore Hill Station to a sunlit Grovelands Park.

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Grovelands Park has one of the loveliest woodland I’ve ever seen in a park – it is a Grade II park on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

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There are little streams in it…

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And there is something magical about the stillness of this park.

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I quite enjoyed the play area as well. No explanation required, just an intriguing tangle of tree trunks.

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More little streams throughout Grovelands Park…

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The Boating Lake was absolutely gorgeous as well…

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Most beautiful little waterfowl were paddling about in the waters…

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Mandarin duck!

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Next I decided to cross over to look for Arnos Park and Broomfield Park, through the endless commuter-belt suburbs of Arnos Grove…

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But during this walk through the suburbs of Arnos Grove I found what passes for one of the local attractions: The stocks! (The stocks??)

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I’ve never seen a set of stocks being elevated to local relic with its own fenced up plot and all. I must say they are a rather cruel and unusual punishment. The feet would have been placed into the stocks so that the victim would be locked in position and subjected to constant exposure to the elements and torture from the public passing by the stocks, who would also fling all sorts of rubbish at the ‘unruly artisan’. Apparently they never explicitly banned stocks, although it simply went out of fashion.

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Finally, I found Arnos Park.

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Pymmes Brook runs through it. It is not so much a picturesque brook as one that has been responsible for flooding so a lot of the literature on it is more about controlling the river from bursting its banks in these parts of North London.

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There is also an interesting hole feature which I almost wanted to crawl through but it was too wet and there were so many dogs running through it from time to time!

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Finally I got to Broomfield Park. This is the most ordinary of the parks to be honest.

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In Broomfield Park, I found a Hollow oak!

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A closeup of its hole!

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It had a pond but Broomfield Park is located right next to a very noisy road lined with shops and moderate traffic, so it has the feel of an urban park rather than the feeling of country woodland as in Grovelands Park and Arnos Grove.

The Walk: