The Unexpected Beauty of Croydon

One of Croydon's most beautiful parks year-round, Heathfield is especially vibrant in springtime. The house is surrounded by ornamental gardens, water features and woodland. Heathfield House was owned by Raymond Riesco until 1964 and is now used as a training centre by Croydon Council.  I saw some bumblebees at Heathfield on Christmas Day 2020 Already, there are daffodils, crocuses and irises coming through in the gardens. In just a few weeks, spring will be in full swing. I wrote this post based on memories and photographs of previous springtime visits to this little patch of paradise in Croydon. There is a round pond near the house which appears quite barren in the winter but it supports dragonflies, damselflies, frogspawn and visiting ducks in the spring and summer.  In front of the house there are grass terraces with flowerbeds and a rose garden, with views over fields down Gravel Hill towards New Addington. Horses from the neighbouring farm are often found in the fields, relax

There are three meadows in the Woodside, South Norwood and Selhurst area, approximately north east of Croydon town centre. Two of them only became public parks in the 1990s, meaning they don't appear in the book Croydon's Parks: An Illustrated History , which was published in 1988.  Brickfields Meadow  Brickfields Meadow lake, Jan 2021 The peace and stillness of the grassy meadow, small woodland and deep lake at Brickfields are quite a contrast to the site's industrial past. As the name suggests, it was previously a brickworks. The first brickworks on the site started in 1810, where Thomas Becket School now stands, but closed in 1856. Horris Parks opened a brickworks on what is now the meadow in the 1880s and it was later bought by Edward Handley, becoming Handleys Brickworks. The brickworks eventually closed in 1974. Housing was built on part of the site while the rest was opened as public green space.  Adult & juvenile moorhens, Brickfields, Oct 2020 Interestingly, pa