| Walk Notes |
This is an interesting route just inside the M25 in the far north of London, in the Borough of Enfield. It combines several scenic waterways, a park and some fine woods as well as a couple of impressive country estates open to the public.
Highlights include a short stretch of The New River and longer stretches along its long de-commissioned Old Course, the Whitewebbs Loop, the (optional) route through the Myddelton House Gardens, the Tottenham Hotspur Training Centre, London’s first Beaver Enclosure, the semi-natural ancient woodland at Whitewebbs Park including a stretch along the meandering Cuffley Brook, the Flash Lane Aqueduct which carried the New River across the brook, the Rendlesham Railway Viaduct (on a short detour), the Turkey Brook meandering through Hilly Fields Park as well as through the Forty Hall Estate and the views of Forty Hall.
Longer routes through Whitewebbs Wood, Hilly Fields Park and the Forty Hall Estate are described, as are two link routes to/from SWC Short Walk 10 (Trent Country Park and Enfield Chase).
Note: the underlying soil is mostly London Clay – fenced paths and forest paths or tracks are mud-prone.
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| Notes |
Turkey Street and Turkey Brook
The Turkey Brook (also known locally as the Maiden Brook) is a river in the northern outskirts of London. It rises near the Fir and Pond Woods nature reserve east of Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, and flows eastwards to merge with the River Lea Navigation near Enfield Lock. Important tributaries are Hollyhill Brook, Cuffley Brook, and the Small River Lea. With its tributaries, it drains a large area east of the south-east Hertfordshire hills and south of Broxbourne Woods.
It came into being about 400,000 years ago after the Anglian glaciation, when the ice sheet diverted the Thames to a more southerly route, broadly along the line of its current course.
The river is named after the hamlet Turkey Street (first recorded as Tokestreete in 1441), which was probably used for a street of houses associated with a family called Toke or Tokey. Later changes led via Tuckhey strete (1610) and Tuckey street (1615) to Turkey street in 1805.
The New River
The New River is neither new nor a river. It is an aqueduct built from 1609-1613 from near Ware to Islington to bring freshwater from the Lea river and from Hertfordshire springs to London. Thames Water still uses it as a source for London’s drinking water, although as of 1946 the New River Head is at East Reservoir in Stoke Newington. Its current course largely still follows the historic water channel and also provides a 45 km (28 mi) Long Distance Footpath.
New River Path
The New River Path is a 45 km (28 mi) linear waymarked Long-Distance Footpath which follows the course of the 17th-century aqueduct, the New River, from its source in Hertfordshire to its end in Islington, London, and then further along the now truncated route of the watercourse to its culmination at New River Head adjacent to Sadler's Wells Theatre in Clerkenwell. The waymarks display the words "New River Path" on a green background.
Myddelton House and Gardens
Myddelton House was built circa 1812-18 by Henry Carrington Bowles (1763-1830), one of five generations of print and map makers based at St Paul’s Churchyard, London. It replaced an earlier Elizabethan property, Bowling Green House, and was named in honour of Sir Hugh Myddelton, the engineer that created the New River, a section of which has bisected the garden from 1613 until 1968.
The gardens were created by Edward Augustus Bowles (1865-1954), one of Britain’s most famous self-taught gardeners, artists and expert botanists and host a variety of trees, shrubs and flowers from four climatic zones from around the world, as well as an extensive heritage kitchen garden and cut flower beds.
Tottenham Hotspur Training Centre
In 2007 Tottenham Hotspur Football Club bought a site in Bulls Cross hamlet, Enfield and in 2009 announced plans for a £45 million new training ground which opened in 2012. The 31 hectare site has 15 grass pitches and one-and-a-half artificial pitches, as well as a covered artificial pitch in the main building on Hotspur Way. This also has hydrotherapy and swimming pools, gyms, medical facilities, dining and rest areas for players as well as classrooms for academy and schoolboy players. A 45-bedroom players lodge with catering, treatment, rest and rehabilitation facilities was added at Myddleton Farm next to the training site in 2018. The lodge is mainly used by Tottenham's first team and Academy players.
Recent plans to enlarge the site into the northeasterly parts of the neighbouring Whitewebbs Park for a Women’s and Girl’s Football Academy are bitterly contested.
Enfield Beaver Enclosure
Enfield Council founded London’s first beaver reintroduction programme in 2022, bringing beavers back to the capital for the first time in 400 years, as part of a rewilding and natural flood management project. The six-hectare enclosure in Archers Wood on the Forty Hall Farm Estate has been designed in partnership with the nearby Capel Manor Environmental College and with advice from the Beaver Trust.
It was hoped that the beavers would create a natural wetland ecosystem and will contribute to excellent flood defences, protecting the local area and hundreds of homes from flooding downstream, while encouraging local biodiversity to thrive.
In summer 2023, the enclosure witnessed the first baby beavers born in London in hundreds of years.
Late in 2024, the enclosure has been enlarged using funding secured from the Rewild London Fund.
Whitewebbs Park and Wood
Whitewebbs Park and Wood are remnants of a former Royal Hunting Ground, the Enfield Chase. It later became the estate of a family named Whitewebb. The New River, when completed in 1613, made an elaborate loop through the grounds, carefully following the contours and turning almost 180° at Flash Lane Aqueduct. This loop was later abandoned but it can still be traced on the ground. In 1931, Enfield Council purchased the estate from Sir Duncan Orr-Lewis and divided it into a municipal golf course and an 80-hectare public park, with some open space, ancient woodland plus streams and small lakes. After the sale, Whitewebbs House served for many years as an old people’s home and now a Toby Carvery.
The council closed the loss-making golf course in 2021 and subsequently selected Tottenham Hotspur Football Club to “regenerate” the site. Most of the site will remain publicly accessible including around half of the former golf course that will be restored to parkland. A significant chunk though will be “managed access for the new Women’s and Girls’ Football Academy and the [also new] Sports Turf Academy.”
Whitewebbs has links with the Gunpowder Plot, as Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators are known to have used a safe house in the area. The claim as to being the location of this safe house is held by the Rose and Crown public house, which was extended into what would have been cottages at the time. Fawkes met with Robert Catesby at the original Whitewebbs House which was located on the site of what is now Guy's Lodge Farm opposite the King and Tinker public house.
https://whitewebbspark.org.uk/ https://www.friendsofwhitewebbs.org.uk/
Hilly Fields Park
Hilly Fields Park was formerly farmland known as Park Farm. In 1909, despite considerable local residents’ and builders’ opposition, the farm was purchased by Enfield Council, saving the land from development after the opening of new railway stations at Gordon Hill and Crews Hill.
Forty Hall and Elsyng Palace
Forty Hall is a manor house in Forty Hill, Enfield. The Grade I-listed building is today used as a museum by Enfield Borough. Although it is known to have been built 1629-32, it has the external appearance of an 18th-century house. A detailed examination as part of the Forty Hall Conservation Plan concluded that the house was probably not designed by a famous architect such as Inigo Jones, but by a "clever artisan builder".
The hall and formal park are located on the top of Forty Hill, a level gravel plateau standing above the flood plain of the River Lea to the east, and the valley of the Turkey Brook to the north and west. The park slopes down into the valley, where the remains of old ponds lie on the London Clay. A loop in the former course of the New River forms the boundary of much of the estate, though this has since been re-routed to the east. To the north are Whitewebbs Park and Myddelton House.
The estate of around 107 hectares makes up part of the London Metropolitan Green Belt. Around the house are formal gardens, a small lake and a magnificent Cedar of Lebanon, one of the Great Trees of London, and the county girth Champion for Greater London.
An award-winning 4-hectares vineyard run by volunteers produces organic wines, for sale in the farm shop.
Also within the grounds is the site of the Tudor Royal Palace of Elsyng (variously: Elsynge, Elsing, Elsings). Its exact location was lost for many years until excavations were carried out in the 1960s. Further digs in the 21st century have revealed more traces of the palace and its associated outbuildings. The earliest known reference to Elsyng dates from 1374 and Henry VIII used the palace as a base for deer hunting in Enfield Chase. The palace was of the scale of Hampton Court with outer and inner courts and it provided a childhood residence for the future King Edward VI and Queen Elizabeth I, but was demolished in 1656.
https://www.fortyhallestate.co.uk/
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