Queens Wood and Shepherd’s Cot

If you head north east from Highgate Village you will cross the Archway Road into Shepherd’s Hill, a wide avenue lined with late Victorian mansions running down to Crouch End. Turn left down Priory Road, follow the footpath to Queen’s Wood and then head down the path on your right. This will take you along the western edge of Queen’s Wood, past the allottments and down to Shepherds Cot cricket pitches.

No less than six cricket clubs and five tennis clubs are tucked into this glorious patch of countryside nestling on the side of the hills running up to Highgate and the Ally Pally on one side, Muswell Hill and Crouch End on the other side.

‘Cricket’, so the signboard tells us, ‘has been played on these fields for 150 years – tennis came a few decades later. Formerly farmland owned by the Bishop of London, Shepherd’s Cot Farm was leased to Crouch End Playing fields in 1893. The company then bought the land in 1928 but was eventually dissolved in 1980. The Sheperd’s Cot Trust was formed in 1981 and owns all the land inside the red dotted line on behalf of its beneficiary sports clubs.’

Until last week I had not been there since the 1990s when we joined the regular summer Sunday morning gatherings of hundreds of small boys in cricket whites all there for cricket coaching and the occasional league match. And on a beautifully crisp sunny winter day last week, it had lost none of its magic.

Having walked along the little country path that runs through the pitches I headed up for a quick visit to the Ally Pally and its famous Marconi Tower from which the BBC’s  first television broadcast was made in 1936. (Anyone who is interested in the history of the Marconi Tower, and/or early TV, should check into this excellent blog post complete with a number of fascinating video clips.)

My homeward route took my by a different path along the other side of the cricket pitches, across Wood Vale, and up through Queen’s Wood – a tiny, 52 acre patch of ancient woodland, all that is left of the Great Forest of Middlesex which once covered much of London – and was, of course, mentioned in the Domesday book.

I realise that it is a very long time since I took my readers for a walk – so here is a walk up through Queen’s Wood – followed by a little slow watching of a family of squirrels. I was very excited at the start of the walk because we were getting ‘real’ bird song but I fear that the parakeets were very soon in on the action.

I am suspecting that there must have been a couple of especially delicious nut trees at the top of the hill as there were about six squirrels busily digging for something and paying very little attention to the passing walkers or their dogs.