Black Park

In the margins of a short visit to Harefield Hospital about ten days ago, we paid a rather longer visit to the oddly named Black Park Country Park - although I grant that Black Country Park - or perhaps Blackie Country Park - would not be that clever either. We arrived there after a run of about an hour from Epsom, having cut back from the M40.

It turned out to be a large place with a large car park, surprisingly busy for late Monday morning, which one might have thought was a working day. Memory on this point was a bit wobbly, but gmail confirms that I paid £5.35 to park with my telephone. Getting the hang of things!

There not being a very satisfactory map of the place to hand, the next step was to download the Ordnance Survey app onto my telephone. Which I managed without fuss and I was pleased to find quite a decent mapping application. Even better when I got the hang of the compass provided. No need to download chunks of maps from my laptop any more. And I was covered by my pre-existing, very moderately priced subscription with the Survey.

The attraction was a large mixed wood with lots of autumn colours, a wood which also contained, inter alia, a lot of very tall pine trees, including the ones above snapped to the east across the lake. Maybe the Pinewood Studios, more or less in the middle of the map above, took the name from them.

One of the walks.

We were told that there was an avenue of Wellingtonia at the northern end of the park and we made a rather half hearted effort to find it - it was getting rather near the time for our picnic. But we did find this fine coastal redwood as a consolation prize.

In the margins of said picnic we also tweeted a nuthatch - all credit to BH for spotting it in the first instance - the first such for a while. Although checking, not so long as I had thought, just over six months. See reference 1.

Some days later, I found talk of an avenue of Wellingtonia at somewhere called the Langley Park Arboretum and got it into my head that this was something to do with Langley Corner, near the northern end of the country park. But the map (from Scotland) above does not show the sort of estate where one must expect to find such. Although it does have a house called Heatherden middle right, which looks to be where the studios now are. A supposition which is confirmed at reference 6.

I now think that panning down the Scottish maps gives the answer. There is another country park to the south of the one we were visiting, on the other side of the Uxbridge Road, the A412, once the land attached to the house still called Langley Park at reference 2. The house survives as a Marriott hotel at reference 3 in the middle of the country park, which includes an arboretum, mapped at reference 4.

Perhaps Langley Corner was once, a long time ago, the northwestern extremity of the Langley estate.

Clearly lots to investigate and enjoy next time. Maybe two lots of Wellingtonia. In the meantime, the snap above, taken from reference 5, will have to do. 

PS: judging by reference 3, I think the Marriott hotel is a bit too rich for our stomachs. We will stick with Denham Grove for now.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/02/tweet_28.html. 

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langley_Park,_Buckinghamshire.

Reference 3: https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/loniv-the-langley-a-luxury-collection-hotel-buckinghamshire/overview/.

Reference 4: https://countryparks.buckinghamshire.gov.uk/media/2778/map-langley-park-colour-map-named-areas-tw-20210721.pdf.

Reference 5: https://www.redwoodworld.co.uk/picturepages/slough.htm.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heatherden_Hall.