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Havering Well Garden is a small public garden on the site of a former burial ground for the Independent Church. In 1952 the Trustees of the burial ground conveyed the site to Hornchurch UDC, who were covenanted to lay it out as a garden of rest and register it with the Charity Commissioners. The landscaping consisted of grass with shrubs and trees around the border with a commemorative stone as a centrepiece and two gravestones set into the ground. There were flower beds to the front of the garden and wooden seats were provided.
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The land was used for food production during WWII, after which it was developed by Hornchurch UDC for public recreation. It was laid out with ornamental planting and a miniature golf course, football pitches and hard tennis courts. The bowling green was the first to be provided in Hornchurch and its popularity led to those in Harrow Lodge Park and Clockhouse Gardens. Playground equipment was installed from the early 1950s onwards. In 1963 land formerly part of Haynes Park Farm was added to the park, containing fine elm and willow trees.
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Hornchurch Cemetery was opened by Hornchurch UDC in 1932 and has been enlarged several times since. The northern and eastern sections abut the churchyard of Hornchuch parish church of St Andrew where the majority of funeral services took place. The cemetery contains utilitarian monuments and a war memorial, and is sparsely planted although the southern section has some mature trees. It contains a separate burial ground for members of the Armed Forces, recalling the RAF Station based at Hornchurch from 1915. Between the cemetery and churchyard is The Dell, since 1965 an electricity substation but which was previously a site popular for fairs and other recreational events including prize fights.
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The northern part of Hornchurch Country Park is on the site of Suttons Farm, once part of the medieval Manor of Suttons. The southern part was within Dovers Manor, later Albyns Farm. During WWI an airfield was created at Suttons Farm, leading to the development of RAF Hornchurch, and during WWII it was home to fighter aircraft. The airfield closed in 1962 but many remaining features can be seen along the Eastern Pathway. The area was re-landscaped as a country park in 1980 and is left to develop naturally; it is bordered to the east by the Ingrebourne River.
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On the site of a late C19th house and estate, Hylands was initially developed in the 1920s as a trotting and racing track. The first race meeting was held in 1925 and the course apparently a great attraction on race days, and also used for prestigious athletics meetings. It eventually closed down and was bought by Hornchurch UDC and converted into Hylands Park in the late 1920s, one of the first public parks to be provided in the district. An oval path, cricket and football pitches were laid on the former trotting track and a rose garden was planted in an area previously occupied by a static water tank. The stone gate piers with wrought iron gates at the Osborne Road entrance were from Grey Towers, the C19th castellated mansion built by Colonel Holmes of Langtons.
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The small park was opened in the 1930s as Jutsums Lane Recreation Ground, later changed to Jutsums Park. Judson's Lane is an old lane running across farmland, shown on C19th maps. The Great Eastern Railway had reached Romford in 1839 and thenceforth the old market town expanded although the area to the west remained largely farmland into the 1920s. The future park's site, near Crowlands and Fiddler's Hall, is marked as a gravel pit by 1896. By 1939 the Recreation Ground is shown laid out with perimeter trees along north, south and west boundaries, bounded to the north by the railway escarpment. A children's playground is shown to the east with a drinking fountain and lavatories, and a path leads east from the entrance on Jutsom's Lane.
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King George's Playing Field was originally known as Mawney Park, named after the old manor of Mawneys. As Romford expanded, the Mawneys estate was sold for housing development in 1883 although the land here remained as fields, then partly allotment gardens, until 1928 when it was acquired and laid out as a recreation ground. Later Romford Borough Council received funding of £3,000 from the King George's Fields Foundation, and as a consequence it was renamed King George's Playing Field. It remains a triangular site, its boundaries little changed from those of the old fields, although the southern boundary is now the Eastern Avenue. The River Rom forms the easterly boundary of the park.
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Langtons Gardens is the remains of a landscape garden of an C18th mansion built on the site of a C15th house. Parts of the C18th house and its garden walls, stable-block, orangery and gazebo survive. In the early C19th the gardens were remodelled by Humphry Repton for the Massu family who owned the property until 1850. From 1899 Mr Varco Williams, a prominent local citizen, lived here. In 1929 his daughter Elizabeth Parks gave it to Hornchurch UDC on condition that house and gardens were maintained and unaltered. The grounds opened as a public park and the house was used as Council offices until 1965, becoming the Registry Office for Havering Council in 1976. The walled kitchen garden was used for wartime allotments and underground shelters, but in 1947 became an extension of the park. From the late C18th Hornchurch Cricket Club played on a pitch in Langtons parkland, now known as Fielders Sports Ground.
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Lawns Park is on land that was once part of Collier Row Common that was enclosed in 1814. A post mill stood here from c.1810 until the 1860s; between 1846-55 it was owned by William Blakeley, who is thought to have built Lawn House from which the park takes its name, which was situated just north of the park. Collier Row, a village until the 1920s, then began to be developed. In 1931 this site was acquired by Hornchurch UDC for public recreation but it was not laid out until 1956/7. Various recreational facilities were provided. The park has good views due to its hilly site
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Lodge Farm Park, on the southern side of Main Road from Raphael Park, forms part of Thomas England's vision of a 'Green Lung' running through the borough from Romford to Havering Atte Bower. Once part of the Lodge Farm Estate, the site was acquired by Romford UDC in 1927 but not laid out as a public park until 1962/3. Lodge Farm itself is now built over with housing. The park was provided with facilities for bowling and tennis, and largely consists of open green space with some ornamental planting of shrubs and trees.
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The name is presumed to derive from the Marshall family who owned the estate in the C12th. By 1618 Marshalls comprised some 40 acres and by 1816, when it was purchased by Rowland Stephenson, it was 112 acres; the sale catalogue described its grounds having 'water well-stocked with fish'. Stephenson enlarged the house as a gentleman's residence. In 1924 the estate was sold for development and the parkland largely built over. The stables and house remained, the latter used as the Conservative Club until after WWII, then as an annexe for Romford County Technical School, but eventually demolished in 1959. It had been a 5-bay stuccoed building facing a stretch of water with a small C18th bridge, which remains visible from Lake House. A remnant of the serpentine lake also survives, now surrounded by a development of early C20th private houses.
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Harwood Hall, now Oakfields Montessori School, is on the outskirts of Corbets Tey village. It was built c.1782 by Sir James Esdaile, who had purchased the extensive Manor of Gaines or Gaynes, building 10 houses on his land of which Harwood Hall is one of only two to survive. It remained part of Gaynes Manor until it was purchased in 1819 by Captain Cox, who lived here until 1858. Harwood Hall was enlarged and improved between 1840s and 1880s; among Captain Cox's projects was an unsuccessful attempt to plant fir tree saplings. The substantial grounds had gardens by the house, with a lake and ice house in woodland near West Lodge. It remained in private ownership until converted as a school.