Many Londoners search in vain for the city’s elusive hidden treasures: areas of peace, tranquility and natural beauty in the heart of this bustling metropolis. Public parkland is widespread throughout the city, but is often uninspiring, and can be as crowded as the high street on a warm afternoon. Getting out in the country, on the other hand, often involves a stressful crawl to get past the M25. Those of us looking for a happy medium of countryside tranquility and urban accessibility could do worse than travel to the southern tip of the Northern Line.
Morden will be familiar to most of you only as a place name on the front of a tube train, and tourism generally comes in the form of drunken revellers falling asleep on the last train home. In truth, there’s little else to recommend the town centre, but a few yards down the road lies a genuine hidden treasure. Morden Hall Park, a National Trust-owned house with surrounding parkland is a world away from the built-up bustle that encircles it.
Entering through a narrow gap in the boundary wall alongside a busy main road, you wander into what looks like a medieval village, complete with squat little cottages, stables and a duck pond. A walk out into the parklands is equally pleasant. In the centre of the grounds, the view is of swaying green trees and immaculate expanses of grass. A wooded area hides a network of wide, clear streams with birds swooping and clucking around you. Even on a bright spring afternoon, it’s easy to find a spot without another person in sight.
Ultimately, Morden Hall Park can’t completely escape its urban setting; the far boundary of the park is marked by a tram line, it smells a little bit like green diesel, and the outline of Merton Civic Centre can be glimpsed through the trees. It’s an interesting and picturesque place though, its landscaped gardens and wide open spaces lifting it above other city parks. The distant rumbling of the nearby roads may taint the idyllic setting slightly, but there can’t be many more peaceful and attractive countryside retreats to be found on the Tube network.
Comments