Nostalgia, Royal deer, and elusive Wombles

A great walk through the best green space any city has to offer.

Capital Ring, Section 6 (sort of), Wimbledon to Richmond

Red Deer, Richmond Park

I have written before about the ongoing attempt some friends and I have been making to walk the Capital Ring in its entirety and in order. But enthusiasm seems to have waned, and, to be honest, having looked at the map, some sections  – where the Ring largely follows uninspiring suburban streets – don’t seem to be worth the effort, so the idea of completion may now have gone out of the window. But one stage that simply cannot be ignored is that which begins in Wimbledon, crossing Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park to end by the Thames in Richmond. Parts of the route are as near to wilderness as you can get in a major city, matching the most attractive rural landscape for beauty. And for me, there is the added bonus of nostalgia as the route passes through places I played as a child, and somewhere I once worked in what might be the best job I ever had.

Start: Wimbledon Station TQ248707

Finish: Richmond Station TQ180751

Length: 8½ miles/5 hours

How to get there: Strictly speaking, this section of the Ring begins at Wimbledon Park tube station, on the District Line, but because it was a more convenient place to meet, we began at Wimbledon. Numerous buses, South West Trains services from Waterloo, the Tube, and Tramlink from Croydon make it a very easy place to reach. Returning from Richmond is just as easy: train (to Clapham Junction & Waterloo, or to north London and Stratford), bus or tube once more.

It’s hot. Very hot; hottest day of the year so far, and the people of Wimbledon are packing the High Street, taking advantage of a bank holiday to spend the day battling through the crowds of other shoppers on the pavements narrowed by road works. We leave the crowds behind and head away from the town centre parallel to the District Line, along streets of Victorian villas. Past Wimbledon Park Station, with its original, quaint cottagey Metropolitan District Railway booking hall dating from 1889, and into Wimbledon Park. The entrance from Home Park Road leads onto a stone balustraded terrace which looks down over the Park; to the north east, a great view to distant central London: Battersea Power Station; the London Eye; the Shard; Tower 42 and 40 St Mary Axe.

The Waterfall Garden, a recent addition to Wimbledon Park's historic landscape

Descending the steps from the terrace takes us past tennis courts on one side (not particularly well used today, but likely to be extremely busy during Wimbledon fortnight when for a brief period the country goes tennis mad) and the children’s playground on the other. Many, many years ago, I would have been among the children at play or enjoying an ice cream from the café in the timber pavilion; the memories of lazy Sundays playing in the late afternoon sunshine to a soundtrack of rumbling and whining tube trains before heading back to my Nan’s for tea are surprisingly vivid now I’m here, despite this being my first return visit in such a long time.

With its rose walk, bowling green and putting course, the Park seems an archetypal early 20th century public park. The land was purchased by Wimbledon Corporation around the time of the First World War, but its landscape history goes back much further. Back to when it was enclosed as a deer park in the 1600s; back to 1638 when Charles I bought the manor for Queen Henrietta Maria, who sold it in 1661 to George Digby, Earl of Bristol; to the early 1700s and Sir Theodore Janssen’s attempt to build a new manor house, only to lose his fortune when the South Sea Bubble burst; to Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough’s purchase of the estate in 1728, bequeathed to her son John, 1st Earl Spencer, upon her death in 1744; to the beginnings of property development on parts of the estate when it was sold by Frederick, 4th Earl Spencer to John Augustus Beaumont in the 1840s; to its passing to Beaumont’s daughter, Augusta, in 1886, whose desire for profit very nearly led to the Park’s complete loss to housing, only to be saved by its purchase by Wimbledon Corporation.

Wimbledon Park Lake, courtesy of Capability Brown

The list of names of those who shaped and sculpted its grounds and gardens reads like a ‘Who’s who’ of landscape design. Queen Henrietta engaged French designer André Mollet, royal gardener to Queen Christina of Sweden, Prince Frederick Henry of Orange, and both Charles I & II (for whom Mollet created St James’s Park), and one of the first gardeners to introduce parterre as an integral part of a garden design. Diarist and gardener John Evelyn, author of Sylva, the great book on timber, forestry and silviculture published in 1664, was employed by George Digby in the 1670s to add fountains and statuary to the grounds. The influence of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (whose work I recently saw across the Thames at Fawley Court) can still be seen in the Park today, having been employed by Earl Spencer in 1764 to re-style the gardens in a less formal manner, his sweeping natural curves being well suited to the golf course which currently occupies much of the former estate.

We touch briefly upon the edge of the lake created by Brown and nearly filled in by Augusta Beaumont. Despite the weather today, it’s still too early in the year for the sailing club to be active, but numerous Canada geese and ducks are floating by on the glistening water. On the far side of the lake, a church spire rises above the trees: St Mary’s, where my parents married.

The path continues along a row of tall conifers around the athletics track, then we head across the grass, dodging frisbees and footballs, to the park gate. A stretch along tree-lined, expensive streets follows, past wisteria-clad houses. Behind a fence, an absolutely perfect croquet lawn sits beneath an elegant mansion in the grounds of the All England Lawn Tennis Club, home of the Wimbledon tennis tournament.

We cross a busy road onto Wimbledon Common, but the traffic noise soon subsides as we head beneath the dappled shade of oak and birch woodland, broken only by patches of heather-covered heathland. Like the Park, Wimbledon Common is somewhere I visited often as child, and an early memory of being told off for climbing a tree by a smartly-uniformed mounted Keeper, and thinking ‘wow! what a great job!’ may have been the earliest stimulus for a later career in conservation and landscape management. So, thank you Wimbledon Common; sorry about the tree.

Heathland on Wimbledon Common; no Wombles

It’s not just nostalgia that makes this a special place. Totalling 460ha, over three quarters of the Commons in the care of the Conservators is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest and Special Area of Conservation. The patchwork of different habitats – woodland, heathland, grassland and water – provide a home for numerous different species of birds, plants fungi, and animals including grass snakes and adders. And Wombles of course, who play a vital role in keeping the Common clean and tidy, although they all appear to have the day off today as we don’t see a single one. Well, it is a bank holiday.

The Commons’ social history is just as fascinating as their natural history. The Commoners nearly lost their centuries-old grazing rights when, in 1864, Frederick, 4th Earl Spencer, proposed to enclose and improve the Commons, selling part for housing, which would be a solution to the problems of ‘noxious mists and fogs’ and the ‘great nuisance…caused by gypsies’. Fortunately, the Commons were saved for the public, being conveyed to the Conservators under the Wimbledon and Putney Commons Act of August 1871, for which we have to thank Sir Henry Peek, MP for Mid Surrey. Sir Henry is commemorated with an inscription on the stone work surrounding Caesar’s Well, a natural spring arising near Caesar’s Camp, an iron age (but not Roman; the association with Caesar is a Victorian construct and entirely whimsical) hill fort in the south of the Common.

Wimbledon Common windmill; still no Wombles

We emerge from the trees onto open grassland packed with bank holiday sun worshippers. Being near the windmill, built in 1817 and a museum since 1976, this is a honeypot site on the Common, and the car park and café are bustling. We hurry on, keen to avoid the crowds, and head back into woodland, downhill along the course of a stream, which with the lack of recent rain is now a muddy silent seep. If it were flowing, the stream would run into Queen’s Mere, the tree-lined lake at the foot of the wooded slope. The glassy surface reflects the surrounding oaks, only faintly rippled as a solitary swan gracefully glides across the water.

Passing an enormous beech, its twisting entwined branches like Medusa’s hair, we pause to take on water and take in the solitude – away from the car parks, the Common is delightfully peaceful.

Queen's Mere; not a Womble to be seen

Once back on the move, the War Memorial at Putney Vale Cemetery & Crematorium is glimpsed through the trees. In the burial ground are the graves of many notable people including sculptor Jacob Epstein (the creator of the controversial Night and Day figures on Charles Holden‘s 55 Broadway) and Howard Carter, Egyptologist and excavator of the tomb of Tutankhamen, while the list of those cremated here includes footballer Bobby Moore, cricketer Len Hutton and numerous Thespians such as Kenneth More, Donald Pleasance and Jon Pertwee.

The path continues through lacy cow parsley in a narrow tree belt flanked on either side by football and rugby pitches where what must be some of the last games of the season are under way. We cross Beverley Brook, a tributary entering the Thames at Barn Elms, and much improved in recent years, by means of a footbridge which provides the venue for a quick game of Pooh Sticks. A short walk across the sports ground brings us to the busy A3 at Robin Hood Roundabout, where the pedestrian crossing has a companion in the shape of an equestrian crossing complete with red and green horses!

Once safely over the road, we arrive at Robin Hood Gate, an entrance into Richmond Park. At over 1000ha, Richmond is the largest of London’s Royal Parks, and the most breathtakingly beautiful. OK, I admit to being biased – I worked here as a gardener for a while – but even so, a description of Richmond Park could include any number of superlatives, with no trace of hyperbole.

Richmond Park, near Robin Hood Gate

A National Nature Reserve and Site of Special Scientific Interest, Richmond Park is internationally renowned as home to a vast range of flora and fauna. Grazing by the Park’s 300 red and 350 fallow deer has helped to create the largest area of acid grassland in London, a nationally rare and important habitat which supports a large number of grass species and wildflowers. Like Ashtead Common which I visited last year, Richmond Park is also nationally important for veteran trees, boasting over 1200 ancient oaks, which provide habitat for fungi, birds, nine species of bat and hundreds of species of saproxylic beetle and other invertebrates. It really is unsurpassed as magnificent and priceless urban open space: where else in London, or indeed in any other large city, could you lose yourself in near-wilderness on a misty autumn morning, no other human for company, while marvelling at rutting stags?

And of course the associations with royalty make Richmond Park all the more fascinating. Early connections with the monarch began with King Edward I and King Henry VII who built a palace in what was originally known as the Manor of Sheen. During an outbreak of Plague, Charles I moved his court to Richmond and, ignoring the grazing rights of locals, enclosed the Park with an eight mile long wall, introducing 2000 deer to satisfy his love of hunting. Charles was later forced to pay compensation and re-introduce the rights to gather firewood – access over the wall was via a ladder, from where the name Ladderstile Gate (on the south side of the Park) originates. In the 17th century, Charles II spent £3000 on improvements in the Park, including the digging of ponds for the deer to drink from.

Still Pond, Isabella Plantation

King George II built White Lodge, now the home of the Royal Ballet School, as a hunting lodge. The Lodge is the focal point of a vista, Queen’s Ride, formed by trees planted in the 18th century. White Lodge eventually passed to Princess Amelia, daughter of George’s consort Princess Caroline; like Charles I before her, Amelia refused the public access to the Park, only re-opening it after local brewer John Lewis won the legal right for pedestrians to enter the Park, again via ladderstiles. The connections with royalty remain to this day: Princess Alexandra, cousin to the Queen, lives in Thatched House Lodge.

We pass a sign warning of Alligator Teeth (another species to add to the Park’s long list of fauna? No, just a traffic control measure) and another which explains why long trousers are being worn today in spite of the temperature – the risk of Lyme disease carried by deer ticks. The Ring heads directly north-west to Pen Ponds from Robin Hood Gate, but we take a more circuitous route in order to take in more of the Park’s stunning landscape. Heading off road, we continue through a parkland of unfurling bracken and gnarled and hollowed ancient oaks, to skirt the edge of Prince Charles’s Spinney, where a mass of bluebells carpets the woodland floor. A short but steep climb past an enormous oak monolith – a dead tree whose branchless trunk is allowed to remain standing, retained as valuable habitat for fungi, bats and beetles – leads up to Broomfield Hill, an open grassy area packed with picnickers.

Some of the 'Wilson 50' Kurume Azaleas, Isabella Plantation

Over the hill, and down to the entrance to the Isabella Plantation. Established by Park Superintendent George Thomson and Head Gardener Wally Miller in the years after the Second World War, this woodland garden displays a maturity that belies its relative youth. Spectacular the whole year round (visitors can enjoy the pink and red Camellia blooms and the scented coppery spider-like flowers of witch hazels in winter/spring; and the glorious autumn colour of Japanese maples), it is in late spring that the garden explodes into a riot of colour. And we’ve timed our visit pretty well. The sickly-sweet-scented fiery orange and yellow flowers of the deciduous Azaleas are not quite fully open, but it is the pillow-like mounds of evergreen Azaleas, lining the gently trickling streams, that are the star attraction: a vibrant, almost gaudy, nebulous mass of cerise, magenta, purple, rose and cherry blossom pink flowers. A simply stunning display to which words can’t do justice.

The many, many varieties of evergreen Azalea on show are part of the National Collection of ‘Wilson 50′ Kurume Azaleas, collected by the plant hunter Ernest ‘Chinese’ Wilson in the 1920s on one of his many trips to the Far East. But the Wilson 50 are not the only oriental plants grown in the woodland garden, which features an enormous number of Rhododendron species, many originating from China and the Himalayas, and as many hybrids, some bred at Exbury and (so I was told) donated many years ago to the Royal Parks by the de Rothschild family in lieu of taxes.

We follow a meandering route through Isabella, around Still Pond, its pink and purple backdrop reflected in the water, and along and over streams (passing an Acer palmatum I remember planting 20 years ago) to Thomson’s Pond. The adjacent lawn features a collection of low hummocky Rhododendron yakushimanum hybrids known as the ‘Seven Dwarfs’, including varieties named ‘Bashful’ and ‘Dopey’! We pass the Bog Garden, looking wonderful, the leaves of Gunnera manicata not yet fully attaining their eventual 2m size, but impressive nonetheless. After a relaxing picnic amongst the trees we follow the perimeter of Peg’s Pond (where the knobbly pneumatophore ‘knees’ of a Dawn Redwood can be seen along the water’s edge) to the gate where we leave the Isabella Plantation.

Red Deer in Ham Cross Plantation

Across grassland pimply with hundreds of ant hills, into the cover of imposing oak trees at Ham Cross Plantation. A mandarin duck perches on a branch above our heads – unlike many other duck species, mandarins like to nest in cavities in trees. Movement in the bracken ahead: a group of red deer are feeding. Once they become aware of our presence, heads are raised, ears pricked, eyes studying us intently. Although not a time of year when the deer can be at their most aggressive – the autumn rut, and when calves are born in early summer are when the deer could attack those who venture too close – we nonetheless keep a respectful distance, and they soon return to feeding, more bothered by their itchy moulting coats than by our proximity. We allow these majestic creatures to head on their way before continuing into more open parkland, past more veteran oaks, and what appears to be an extensive badger sett.

Crossing the road into an avenue of hornbeam trees running parallel to Queen’s Road, a red deer stag, far less timid than the group we encountered earlier, crosses our path entirely unfazed by the numerous human visitors. Raising a hind leg to scratch at loose fur, he saunters away westwards down the slope towards Petersham Park, almost regally, as if well aware that this is his territory, and we are merely passing through deferentially. Further on, a group of antlered fallow deer are dozing lazily next to the path, not bothered at all by the snapping shutters of dozens of cameras.

We enter the gardens surrounding Pembroke Lodge, a stately Georgian mansion once the residence of John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, twice Prime Minister in the mid 19th century, and his son the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Home to GCHQ’s Phantom Squad in the Second World War, the Lodge is now a popular wedding venue, and one such event is under way, smart soldiers in full dress uniform being photographed, as we climb the steps up from the Dell onto the terrace to the west of the house.

The view west from King Henry's Mound

After a welcome pause for ice cream, we continue past the rose garden and herbaceous borders to King Henry’s Mound, believed to originally be a neolithic burial mound. Being the highest point in the Park, it provides a breathtaking view westwards over the Thames Valley. So well tree’d is west London, that it’s almost like looking out over a forest from which emerge scattered tall buildings: Twickenham rugby stadium, the tower of St Peter’s Church, Petersham, and in the distance, the control tower at Heathrow Airport, where planes climb steeply into the hazy sky. On the ground, a spiral stone inscription records the words, written in 1727, of James Thomson, poet and resident of Richmond, which describe the view with perfect eloquence:

Heavens! what a goodly prospect spreads around,
Of hills, and dales, and woods, and lawns, and spires,
And glittering towns, and gilded streams, till all
The stretching landscape into smoke decays.

Turning to the east, another less obvious view presents itself. Using the telescope installed on the mound, it is possible to look through a ‘keyhole’ in the holly hedge, along a ride through nearby Sidmouth Wood and across 10 miles of London to the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, which today shimmers in the heat haze. This vista was first established in 1710 and has been maintained ever since; it now has the status of a protected view.

Poets Corner; Ian Dury's bench is second from left

Passing beneath the tunnel-like John Beer Laburnum Walk, dripping with yellow flowers and underplanted with purple Alliums (based on that at Bodnant) we come to Poets Corner where James Thomson is commemorated once more. A less obvious memorial to another artist can also be found here: a wooden park bench, appearing at first to be nothing out of the ordinary, remembers the musical legend Ian Dury who loved visiting Richmond Park. Engraved ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful’, the bench sits centrally to formal flower beds at Poets Corner, surrounded by an award winning collection of Iris. A headphone socket allows visitors to listen to a solar-powered selection of Ian Dury’s songs, but, being prone to vandalism, this sadly doesn’t appear to be working today. Neverthless, it’s a touching memorial, and an ingenious one too; there ain’t half been some clever bastards. Hopefully the Park management will fix it soon, otherwise…well, what a waste.

Through the gate and back into the Park, we continue to Star and Garter Gate, so named for the grand home for disabled ex-Servicemen just outside the Park wall, opened in 1924. Opposite the home on a traffic island is an intricate 1891 ironwork memorial to the RSPCA, four lanterns mounted on two conjoined arches over a fountain, mostly painted black except for four distinctly unfluffy, golden winged griffins.

A short distance along Richmond Hill we come to The Wick House, built in 1772 for the painter and first President of the Royal Academy Sir Joshua Reynolds, but since 1950 a home for nurses at the Star and Garter Home. The house next door, confusingly called The Wick, has in its time seen a number of famous residents including actor Sir John Mills, Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones, and current owner Pete Townsend of The Who.

Formal pond in Terrace Gardens, Bulbous Betty at the centre

The gravel terrace opposite the Roebuck is busy with drinkers enjoying the shade of lime and plane trees. The pub must be a contender for ‘Best View From A Pub In London’ looking out as it does over Petersham, Ham House and across a gentle bend in the Thames far below to Marble Hill Park. Like that from King Henry’s Mound, the view westwards is protected by law. To reach the river ourselves, we enter the steeply sloping Terrace Gardens, a beautifully maintained public park. Historically fascinating, the Gardens are an amalgamation of the grounds of Buccleuch House (owned by the Dukes of Buccleuch) and Lansdowne House (owned over the years by the Duke of Molyneux, the Earl of Leicester, the Marquis of Wellesley and the Earl of Lansdowne); neither building remains, Lansdowne House being demolished in about 1869, and Buccleuch House suffering the same fate in about 1938. The 5th Duke of Buccleuch acquired Lansdowne House in 1863 and in the following years the combined estate was the venue for lavish parties, guests at which included Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and Arthur, Duke of Wellington. On the 5th Duke’s death in 1884, his eldest son sold the estate for £30,000 to the Vestry of Richmond who opened it as a public park in 1887.

Now Grade II listed, and recently restored, Terrace Gardens are looking splendid today. The twisting path takes us past a formal pond, at its centre a voluptuous naked stone goddess sitting astride a dolphin, ostensibly a statue of Aphrodite but renamed ‘Bulbous Betty’ by locals. Then downhill past a bright magenta flowered Judas tree, pristine lawns, beds of primroses and polyanthus beneath tall cedars, and maturing herbaceous borders.

Looking down over Terrace Gardens, and the Thames

Petersham Road separates us from the river bank, but we avoid the traffic by descending one of two symmetrical staircases into a pleasantly cool tunnel beneath the road. The tunnel emerges at a flint grotto beneath three arches that feature heavily weathered gargoyles as keystones.

The river is busy with boats, but not as congested as the path along the bank which we follow towards Richmond Bridge. The sky overhead has rapidly clouded over and looks ominously grey; just as we comment on this, a rumble of thunder confirms what we’re all thinking. We pass cafes and bars, both on land and on the water, and an enormous plane tree – the Riverside Plane, one of the Great Trees of London. Just beyond the bridge, a boathouse offering camping skiff holidays (which sounds idyllic – I wonder if the hire fee includes a small fox-terrier called Montmorency?), and a thronging crowd enjoying the last of the bank holiday sunshine. There’s a struggle to find a seat at the White Cross (surely the only pub with one entrance unusable at high tide?), but once the rain starts to fall, the crowd vanishes rapidly. We do the same, ducking in and out of shop doorways along Richmond High Street on our way back to the station.