The West Cemetery is looking especially beautiful at the moment, the headstones struggling to hold their own amongst the wild garlic, the three cornered leeks and the newly unfurling ferns. And it is in the West Cemetery that we were working today, back on the trail of lost graves. Lost because although each grave is …
The shire horses come to the heath
On a packed weekend at the end of February the England National Cross Country Championships returned to Hampstead Heath after two years of COVID – nearly 8,000 runners sploshing squidgely through the deep mud generated by recent heavy rainfall. This was not only extremely hard going for the runners but turned large swathes of the …
Searching for pollinators on the heath
At the very last minute this morning I joined Rory, Heath Hands’ expert on insects, pollinators and other invertebrates who was leading a group ferreting out early spring pollinators. And here we all are – photographing solitary miner bee nests – those little holes in the ground that we are all staring at! Female solitary …
Another update on The Elms….
Some of you may remember that back in December I posted about The Elms in Fitzroy Park because I had been contacted by Fiona Mather, great, great, great granddaughter of Otto Gossell who had lived at The Elms between 1874 and 1888 – and she had much to share. Well, now I have been contacted …
Heath action
Those of you who follow us on Instagram will know that we Heath Hands-ers have been busy the last couple of weeks – but to bring everyone else up to date. Last week we were up in Highgate Woods waging war on the holly trees which had taken advantage of the restricted work that could …
Random update…..
I realise, somewhat guiltily, that Salon Music has definitely taken precedence over Hampstead Heath recently and although I have put in a good few stints both on the heath itself and in the cemeteries, I have totally failed to record anything! So here is a somewhat random update – finishing with a short walk down …