Greater London is a big beast. It’s 606sq miles, and has 32 boroughs and the City of London. The Greater London Authority runs it from City Hall in Southwark, and like all decent cities it has a mayor, Sadiq Khan.
What it also has – which doesn’t seem to fit its proud city status – is a load of random fields, farms, and tiny villages that really don’t need to be there.
There are plenty of perfectly good counties all around the place that could take these chunks of land and do something with them, while real London could get on with its important business of, you know, actually being a city.
Here, in a torrent of unashamed bitterness, are 21 of those places.
1) North Ockenden, Upminster
Click to expand. Image: Google Maps.
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Look at all that green. It’s the wrong side of M25, for a start, and it’s the most easterly and most outlying settlement in Greater London (as rightly measured by distance from Charing Cross). Somebody in 1992 had the bright idea of giving everything east of the M25 to Essex, but a bunch of NIMBYs said no, obviously, and so here we are.
2) Puddledock Farm Fisheries, Upminster
Click to expand. Image: Google Maps.
These guys run fishing matches on ‘the Snake Lake’ every Sunday, so that’s nice. There are four lakes – including a purpose built competition lake, a specimen lake, and a peg lake. Whatever any of that means. All I’m seeing is a whole lot of green and a whole lot of wrong side of the M25.
3) Fairlop Plain, Barkingside
Click to expand. Image: Google Maps.
This is Redbridge, so it’s not even one of the hard-core, middle-of-nowhere boroughs, and yet here we are. There’s a tube station right next to a huge load of random green, including (but not limited to) a Country Park, a golf course, a large lake, another golf club, and a whole load of empty fields. Honestly. Three tube stations in one screenshot and a whole load of green. Immoral.
4) Turkey Brook and Clay Hill, Enfield
Click to expand. Image: Google Maps
Ignoring the Museum of Transport up in the top left – everyone loves a museum of transport – this is just a whole load of green countryside that does not need to be in London.
5) Botany Bay, Enfield Chase
Lovely and green. Image: Christine Matthews/creative commons.
Get back to Sydney where you belong, and stop being so ridiculous, Enfield. It’s about a mile away from the nearest train station, and it has a farm shop. This is not the future liberals want.
6) Trent Park, Enfield
Click to expand. Image: Google Maps.
If there were a triple lock designed to annoy CityMetric readers as much as the real one annoys the youth, this one has it. It’s in the Green Belt, lies within a conservation area, and also gets a spot in the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England. This sounds like a lovely place, but it’s just empty fields from here to the M25 and beyond into Hertfordshire, so why not just give them the thing.
7) The road between Totteridge and Highwood Hill
Not London. Click to expand. Image: Google Maps.
This stretch of winding road has acres and acres of green space on either side, and has a pretty open path out to the countryside of Hertfordshire. What need for it to be in London?
8) Hill End, Hillingdon
I’ve always wanted to live in a big city like London. Image: Nigel Cox/creative commons.
Part of a charming park – the Colne Valley Regional Park – that really doesn’t need to be in London, and is a 57-minute trudge away from the nearest train station, Rickmansworth on the Metropolitan line. Or if you want to be in Zone 6, it’s an hour and ten to walk to Northwood. Your choice.
9) Malden Rushett, near Epsom
The long shadow of urbanisation. Image: Nigel Cox/creative commons.
You know that bit where London pokes out to the south west, like an accusatory pointing finger? It’s the Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames, and I’d always assumed there was something important there that needed to be included in Greater London. But no. There’s just this village. It even has a sad dribble of a railway line that they started building south of Chessington South station, on the branch line from Motspur Park, before the Green Belt was introduced and they realised that there was no point taking the line any further south. Thanks, Green Belt. You gave us this pointless village on the udder of London.
10) Happy Valley & The Devil’s Den, Coulsdon
Click to expand. Image: Google Maps
I’m not happy about the fact that this is in the Borough of Croydon when it could just as easily be in Surrey.
11) Kings Wood, near Warlingham
Look at the density of that wood. Crazy.
12) Addington Hills, Addington
Click to expand. Image: Google Maps
Swathes and swathes of countryside, green things, and another golf course. What is it with all the golf courses.
13) Layhams Farm, Layhams Cattery, and the Metropolitan Police Dog Training Establishment, Bromley
Click to expand. Image: Google Maps
Not making any of this up.
14) Shepherds Shaw, Tatsfield
Click to expand. Image: Google Maps
So many fields, so little need to be in the urban area of Greater London.
15) Buckhurst, near Biggin Hill
Click to expand. Image: Google Maps
Most Londoners wouldn’t know what to do with this much green even if you put it in a bag of toasted kale chips and charged four quid for it.
16) Horns Green, Bromley
Click to expand. Image: Google Maps.
A trio of charming villages here.
17) Berry’s Green, Bromley
Click to expand. Image: Google Maps.
I know it’s not good to quote from Wikipedia, but the entry here is too good. It’s apparently “a fairly wooded rural area with a scattering of farmland”.
18) Downe, Bromley
Click to expand. Image: Google Maps.
Charles Darwin lived here, and that’s it. That’s literally all they’ve got.
19) Hockenden, near Swanley
Click to expand. Image: Google Maps.
This *hamlet* isn’t even on a bus route.
20) Rainham Marshes
Click to expand. Image: Google Maps
Drain the swamp, drain the swamp, drain the swamp.
21) Hacton, Havering
Click to expand. Image: Google Maps
Surrounded by the – you guessed it – green belt.
Of course the alternative to chucking all of these places out of Greater London would just be to build some bloody houses on them, but let’s not push the boat out too far.
Jack May is a regular contributor to CityMetric and tweets as @JackO_May.
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