Long-time London resident and avid museum and theatre-goer. I started this blog in 2014, and got serious about it in 2020 when I realised how much I missed arts and culture during lockdowns. I go to a lot more events than anyone would think is sensible, and love sharing my thoughts in the forms of reviews, the occasional thought piece, and travel recommendations when I leave my London HQ.
London Tree Walk – Honor Oak Park to New Cross Gate
12 mins
Join me for a walk through South East London’s suburbs, looking at the city through the lens of its green spaces. We follow one of the itineraries from Paul Wood’s book London Tree Walks.
Today’s walk inspiration is from London Tree Walks by Paul Wood.
A Tree Walk? What Is That?
Some of you may recall that, during the winter lockdown, I was doing a lot of walks around historic parts of London. This was a way for me to find activities to keep myself occupied, and stay connected to the heritage of my adopted city. At some point maybe around February or March I started to worry that I was going to run out of inspiration from my existing guidebooks, and so I went on a spending spree. One of the books that I bought was London Tree Walksby Paul Wood (a very apt name).
So what is a tree walk? Well, it is more or less what it sounds like! Wood has devised twelve walks around the capital, with a special focus on the city’s trees and woods. There are plenty of historic facts thrown in amongst the botany. This first attempt on my part at following a tree walk takes us around my own neighbourhood in South East London, so I have thrown in an extra couple of facts from my repertoire.
As a non-gardener, I found this walk to be fascinating, if challenging. For context, I can distinguish very obvious trees, but am really not an expert. I am confident identifying an oak, gingko, weeping willow… Much less so if you ask me to identify an ash or an elm. Wood’s book does assume a certain amount of knowledge, but by googling once or twice what sort of leaves I was looking for, I was able to keep up.
This book takes you outside of the normal tourist circuits, and casts a new light on familiar places. As such, it is highly recommended by this London walks enthusiast! Continue on with me now to find out more about London’s green spaces between Honor Oak and New Cross Gate.
London Tree Walk: In Search Of The Oak Of Honour
We start today at Honor Oak Park station, on London Overground. The name is a good indication that we will find some important trees around here! The tree at the top is the first one our guidebook tells us to look out for: a hybrid oak overhanging the entrance to One Tree Hill. The factors that make it a hybrid oak were too technical for me to appreciate – apparently both the leaves and acorns have stalks. As you can see, there are many more trees on One Tree Hill than just one. It’s the Honor Oak that we are on the lookout for.On our way up One Tree Hill, we pass by St Augustine’s Church. Note the cabbage tree outside – there are many New Zealand native plant species on our walk today. I’m not really sure why, but as a New Zealander I appreciated this detail! St Augustine’s was built between 1872 and 1900.Here we have it – the Oak of Honour (centre of top image). Once the southern boundary of the baronial territory the Honour of Gloucester, it’s now on the boundary of Camberwell Parish. Having something to do with the Honour of Gloucester seems to me like a likely origin of its name, but the story goes that Queen Elizabeth I picnicked here in 1602 on her way to Lewisham. The tree thus had the ‘honour’ of shading her. Not quite this tree in any case – this is a 1905 replacement. If you remember, we saw a ‘Queen Elizabeth Oak’ in Greenwich Park, so she left quite a trail of notable trees after her.
One Tree Hill To Brenchley Gardens
Here we are at the top of One Tree Hill, with a view over London that John Betjeman called ‘better than Parliament Hill.’ One Tree Hill is a remnant of the Great North Wood, which, confusingly, stretched from Croydon to New Cross (South of London) as late as the 19th Century. The name ‘Norwood’ in this area recalls the Great North Wood. This particular bit has been ‘re-wilded’ after being planted as a public park until the 1960s.This unassuming concrete slab at the top of One Tree Hill is an interesting witness to history. Did you know that London sufferered air raids by zeppelin during WWI? Well it did, and this was a gun emplacement to try to shoot down the zeppelins. It was a difficult task, particularly with any cloud cover as they were silent.We now head down One Tree Hill towards Brenchley Gardens, in search of a Wild Service Tree. This was one of the ones I had to Google, but I believe this is it. A Wild Service Tree is normally an indicator that you are looking at a remnant of ancient woodland.Brenchley Gardens is a long, narrow park – an indicator that it used to be a railway line. As you can see, there are a variety of different trees here, including these Leyland Cypruses which might have been a hedge at one point.This is apparently the ‘prized possession’ of Brenchley Gardens: a Japanese Chestnut Oak. My instructions for finding it were: “It is doing a reasonable impression of a Sweet Chestnut, but its open, regular form will give it away.” I really need to learn more about trees, I guess, because that did not help me.We now head along Brenchley Gardens and out of the park, with a view to our left of Honor Oak Reservoir (under the grass, see the Edwardian pumping station in the bottom image). When it opened in 1909, Honor Oak Reservoir was the largest underground brick reservoir in the world. It’s still the largest in Europe.
London Tree Walk: Camberwell New Cemetery To The Rivoli Ballroom
An ‘aged and extremely spreading Strawberry Tree’ on our way to Camberwell New Cemetery.And here we are at the cemetery. In the top image you can see a ‘fine Pin Oak’, and in the bottom image is a White Poplar. Camberwell New Cemetery opened in 1901. One famous resident is George Cornell, an East End gangster shot by the Kray twins in the Blind Beggar pub in 1966.On our way to Crofton Park we pass Buckthorne Cutting Nature Reserve, one of several to have sprung up in railway cuttings in the area.The trees around Crofton Park tell us something about the social history of Lewisham. Long a deprived part of London, today there are a number of new plantings which are beautifying and improving the area. This is a mixture of Lewisham Council efforts, and the Street Trees for Living volunteer group. They have a great track record at caring for new trees until they are established, and a bonus is these information tags so you know just what you’re looking at. Things are looking up in Lewisham!A non-botanical yet historically interesting sight in Crofton Park is the Rivoli Ballroom. This is London’s only surviving 1950s ballroom, and the interior is glorious. They are finally open again for events including dancing and film screenings, so pop along here if you can!
London Tree Walk: Hilly Fields To St Gregorios
We now walk alongside Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery on our way to Hilly Fields. These originally separate burial grounds were part of the first Victorian wave of cemeteries outside of central London. They opened in 1858. Today they are rather more overgrown than Camberwell New Cemetery which we saw earlier. A rare Japanese Hornbeam is among other new trees of note to spot on the way.Hilly Fields was rescued from encroaching Victorian surburban development after local protests. Octavia Hill, a co-founder of the National Trust, was influential in raising funds and campaigning for the land to be saved as a public space. There are great views from Hilly Fields – over the city but also back towards Crystal Palace and Forest Hill.A Corkscrew Willow is one of the species I correctly managed to identify in Hilly Fields!But can anyone help me find three Black Mulberry trees along here somewhere?Ok I found one! It only took me about three passes back and forth…Heading on past Hilly Fields, we come across another Street Tree – this time a Foxglove Tree. My hand is there to give the scale of the leaves.This is an intriguing garden which our guidebook points out. The plants here are mostly New Zealand natives, including a stand of Lancewoods. The strikingly orange Hybrid Strawberry Tree, however, is a Mediterranean species. Now here is one I can recognise – a monkey puzzle tree!It seems a little surprising, perhaps, to find an Orthodox Indian church on this quiet surburban street. And the Church of St Gregorios is in fact the mother church of all Malankara Orthodox Syrian parishes in the UK and Ireland. It dates its history back to the 1930s.
London Tree Walk: Wickham Road to Brockley Station
We head on down the hill now past Wickham Road. This is apparently where Kate Bush lived at the time she wrote Wuthering Heights. I’m not really a fan, so let’s leave it at that.Some more adventures in tree spotting. Gingko I can manage thanks to its distinctive leaf shape (and, depending on the time of year, the smelly fruit). I was also told to look for an Elm succumbing to Dutch Elm Disease. I don’t know what an Elm looks like, but this tree on the left isn’t doing too well so my money is on this one. We have now made it as far as Brockley Station. This is definitely an area which has been beautified in recent years, including several murals, and these lovely Persian Silk Trees. This is a special hardy strain which can withstand the harshest London winters.Adjacent to the Persian Silk Trees is the Brockley Station Community Garden. This is a lovely space, with volunteer gardeners hard at work when I visited.Another local mural, by Lionel Stanhope. This one newly updated to celebrate Brockley resident Alex Yee’s Olympic success.
London Tree Walk: Telegraph Hill
We are now going to head up Telegraph Hill and then back down to New Cross. As you can see, the many suburban train lines around here create a lot of green spaces. At the bottom is the Brockley Nature Reserve, which is normally closed to the public.Since I moved to Telegraph Hill I have been wondering why there was a Kent/Surrey border marker near the Haberdashers’ Aske’s School, and I learned a lot about the history of the area trying to find out. This was once the village of Hatcham, which dated back to the Domesday Book; the Haberdashers livery company bought Hatcham manor in 1614. The area was largely undeveloped until a canal was started from Bermondsey to Croydon, and the steepness of Plow’d Garlic Hill, as it used to be known, meant it wasn’t desirable for housing until land was at a premium in the Victorian period. So from rural Kent/Surrey to fairly central London in a short space of time!At the top of Telegraph Hill is Telegraph Hill Park, split into an upper and lower section. In 1795 a semaphore station was set up here as part of a network to get messages from Dover to London; the clear views in all directions made it perfect for an optical telegraph link. News of victory at the Battle of Waterloo would have passed through here. These days it’s still a lovely lookout point for views of South London.Let’s get back to some trees, which after all is why we’re here! While in the upper section of the park, I successfully identified one of several Service Trees of Fontainebleau.
Onwards To New Cross Gate
In the lower part of Telegraph Hill Park we are told to look for an ash tree showing signs of being grafted. I believe this is the right one, but don’t quote me on it. If it’s the right one, it’s a rare type of Narrow-Leaved Ash.This section of the park is also home to a monument to the abolition of slavery.There is evidence still of when this was a fine Victorian park with a bandstand. It even had a ranger’s office (top). Notable trees around here include a Honey Locust (bottom).A lot of the trees around London are Plane trees. They can deal with airborne pollution, and even help to absorb it in their bark (which sheds when the trees need to breathe). I learned a new word reading London Tree Walks – the annual chop that London’s Plane trees get is called ‘pollarding’. They don’t seem to mind being lopped right back to stumps, and in fact seem to thrive.Through the pollarded trees on our way down to New Cross Gate we can even catch a last (enlarged) glimpse of the City of London.Before finishing the walk, there’s time for one last remarkable tree. Peering over the bridge next to New Cross Gate Station, did you expect to see a Giant Redwood? Nobody knows who planted it here, but it seems to enjoy its spot by the tracks.
And that’s it! Our first tree walk over. Thanks Paul Wood for the inspiration to get out and explore my own London neighbourhood in a new light! I hope you enjoyed it, and learned a botanical (or historical) fact or two.
Sign up below for more London inspiration:
Travelers' Map is loading... If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.
2 thoughts on “London Tree Walk – Honor Oak Park to New Cross Gate”
2 thoughts on “London Tree Walk – Honor Oak Park to New Cross Gate”