agriculture London Clay mostly gives rise to poor, alkaline soils, and in prehistoric times the flood plain supported fishing and rough pasture but little in the way of crops.
On a wider scale this clay – which covers most of Essex to London’s east as well as much of modern London – is encircled by the chalklands of the foothills of the Chiltern Hills to the north and the North Downs to the south. In the south London boroughs of Croydon and Bromley there are examples of downland that could easily be mistaken for the South Downs of Hampshire and Sussex.
But there is a smaller scale, too, the most significant of which are the gravel beds and terraces. In south London, the sandy Lambeth beds are associated with heathland and acid soils. The Bagshot beds, named for the Surrey town, spread into London’s south-west and also cap some of north London’s higher parts, such as Harrow and Hampstead; they reappear too in Epping Forest, on London’s north-east boundary with Essex.
The Wandle in Watermeads Nature Reserve (Walk 19)
Through this pattern run London’s rivers. The Thames apart, they are often forgotten, even by Londoners, but they are an essential part of London’s geography. Out east, the Lea (or Lee – it retains two spellings), the old Essex/London boundary, was an industrial corridor for many years, as was the Wandle in south-west London, its steep course once powering many watermills. With the Brent in north-west London, these three rivers divide the capital conveniently into the four sectors that provide a structure for this book.
The Lea, Brent and Wandle are the three major tributaries but others feature too. In the very centre of London, the Fleet, Westbourne and others have been lost to underground culverts, but against that can be set London’s canal system. Between them, the rivers and canals provide many quiet spaces in which wildlife can flourish, as well as untroubled routes for walkers.
To sum up: London is built on impermeable clays across the centre; porous chalk to the south and north-west; and gravel toppings appear throughout. Each of these, and little local outcrops too numerous to count, combined with the flow of London’s many rivers, give rise to different habitats, and contribute to a diversity of wildlife which is still apparent to this day. It may require significant human intervention to maintain it – often in conflict with forces of human self-interest that seek to destroy it – but that diversity is a glory of London. Any Londoner should be proud of it, and any visitor can seek it.
London’s open spaces
Londinium was tightly enclosed within its walls. After the Romans’ departure, that settlement was largely left to ruin, but a new city grew up to its immediate west, and so began the slow development of London.
Slow, that is, until the 19th century, when the city became the largest in the world, and the tight Thames-side site that had served for centuries, barely more than a couple of miles long, simply could not hold the burgeoning population. The railways enabled new suburbs to be carved out of green fields, woods and market gardens, with the last major developments, such as the Metroland of outer north-west London and the great estates around Becontree in the east, taking place between the wars.
And yet, open space survives, by a mixture of private benevolence, public planning, some luck, and the often very active and direct role that Londoners themselves have played.
Allotments, West Finchley (Walk 12)
Although most London open spaces were first created so as to give humans a place to relax rather than wildlife a place to thrive, the two often go hand in hand. It’s worth noting, too, that land which is not ‘open’, such as railway cuttings and derelict industrial sites, not to mention house gardens and allotments, can also be fantastically valuable for wildlife, precisely because human involvement is so limited.
Successive monarchs (and senior courtiers), at least until the 18th century, saw London’s hinterland as an opportunity for sport, by which they meant hunting and frolics. Great tracts of land were maintained for that purpose, either as formal gardens such as those around Hampton Court or rougher lands over which men could gallop, nearby Bushy Park an example. But tastes, and pressures on royal time, changed, and the lands became less necessary to their daily needs.
The eleven Royal Parks range from small gardens (and one cemetery) to the famous large expanses such as Hyde Park and Richmond Park. Save for Greenwich Park in the south-east, these are all situated in the wealthier areas of the capital. Much of London’s growth during the 19th century, often in cheap housing where crime and disease were rife, took place elsewhere. Many developers no doubt saw open space as just a lost opportunity for profit.
It took government action to create London’s first public park, Victoria Park in the east end, in 1842. But such a top-down approach was needed less as first the Metropolitan Board of Works and then the London County Council, with smaller boroughs beneath it, took on the responsibility of providing open space for London’s residents.
All around Victorian London there were great natural spaces held as common land. From Tudor times, and gathering great force from the 18th century, tracts of land which were once open for all to use – for grazing, say – became enclosed by a landowner and the collective rights withdrawn. Although the city had grown in part through the use of enclosure for housing and commercial development, areas right across the capital from Tooting Common to Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest were still held in common. In 1864 the proposed enclosure of much of one of the largest of the commons – Wimbledon – proved a spur to campaigners, who feared that if Wimbledon went, no other common in the capital would be safe. Meanwhile, in Epping Forest, enclosures by a local vicar were opposed by the direct action (and ensuing imprisonment) of his parishioners.
Within a year a Commons Preservation Society was set up, its aim ‘to save London commons for the enjoyment and recreation of the public’. It had early success, with an act of 1866 that in essence barred further enclosure of London Commons. Not that the war was quite over; as an example, in 1896 a golf club sought to ban locals from One Tree Hill (Walk 22), only for mass demonstrations of first 15,000 then over 50,000 to assert their rights. However, we must thank the 1866 act and its successors for the retention of common land across the city, which provides much relatively untampered, relatively wild land to retain its natural aspect, and with it a refuge for many species that would otherwise be lost.
During the 20th century, many other open spaces were taken into local authority ownership while others have come under the control of the National Trust. Allied to that, the Metropolitan Green Belt established in 1938 provides a chain of green spaces encircling London. Not that such provisions are guarantors for all time. The green belt is chipped away a little each year, and the post-2010 relaxation of planning law deliberately makes the life of a developer easier.
London’s physical boundaries may not increase, but the number of people who live in it undoubtedly will: perhaps to 10 million by 2027. That brings more pressure on places to live, work and play, and to travel within the city and beyond. Watchfulness and a campaigning spirit are needed to defend the open spaces that London has. But as we have seen, that is hardly new; they are traits that come naturally to many Londoners.
Above Happy Valley (Walk 20)
And in this they have support. Almost every open space has its own little volunteer-led group, which might run anything from a bird count to a children’s nature hunt or a litter pick. Many are listed in this book. If you’re a Londoner and haven’t joined one, do. If you’re a visitor, check out what they are doing this
