We've found 2594 parks

The Round House, a late C18th oval stuccoed country villa, was built for William Sheldon, and is said to owe its unusual shape resembling a tea-caddie to his profession as a successful tea merchant. From the C18th gentlemen's mansions and parks began to be built around the old village of Havering-atte-Bower, which had fine views southwards across the Thames. In the early C20th the house was occupied by the Revd Joseph Hardwick Pemberton, a famous rose-grower and President of the National Rose Society. Here he grew and hybridised roses, including the Alexandra Rose as well as various Musk and Shrub roses. The adjacent grounds of Roundhouse Farm have the site of a large kitchen garden, now grassed, enclosed with high brick walls.

The Royal Liberty School, formerly Hare Hall, is on part of an old estate previously known as Goodwins. Hare Hall was built in 1768/69 for John Arnold Wallenger, who then began landscaping the grounds, possibly with advice from Richard Wood, its bridged lakes and winding shrubbery walks much favoured by him. It would seem that Humphry Repton later improved the gardens. In the C19th the estate was used for farming, then purchased for the railway, but later part was back in private hands. After WWI it was mostly developed for housing with a small part of the land and the Hall itself purchased by the Romford UDC in 1921 to house the new Royal Liberty School for Boys. Hare Hall with C19th additions survives surrounded by ancillary buildings and playing fields to the north, but the extent of the estate grounds is greatly diminished. The form of the serpentine lake remains, now almost dry and overgrown, together with vestiges of a raised terrace and fragment of the stone bridge, with fine trees between the house and lake, and around its banks.

The Shrubberies, a terrace of six identical pairs of houses with a detached house at the east end, was built in the late C19th and remain fronted by the original strip of landscaping, laid out as a setting to the terrace. Built as a speculative residential development when the area was becoming built up following arrival of the railway, these simple Edwardian-style houses retain most of their original features. The garden strip is laid out with grass, some flower and shrub beds and a few trees, including a row of limes.

The Sternberg Centre is on the former site of Finchley Manor House, which once belonged to the Bishops of London and comprised a sizeable estate. A moated manor house is known to have existed by 1253, but there may have been an earlier house on the site. It was occupied by a succession of influential people and underwent numerous name changes over the years. All that remains of the once extensive moat is a dry L-shaped ditch at the far end of the grounds. The current building dates from 1723, built for Sir Thomas Allen on a new site outside the moat, who also had gardens laid out. The estate began to be broken up for development from 1849 and the house was leased as a school in both the C19th and C20th. In 1984 the Manor House Centre for Judaism was opened, later renamed the Sternberg Centre for Judaism.

The Tarn takes its name from the lake that dominates the small park, a remnant of the late C17th grounds of Eltham Lodge that was once within the Great Park of Eltham Palace, a royal palace dating from the C14th. Eltham Lodge was built in 1664 when Sir John Shaw leased the estate. When the area was being developed for housing, The Tarn was acquired by the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich in 1935 and laid out with paths and shelters around the existing lake. Near the entrance is a mid C18th brick ice-well built to supply Eltham Lodge with ice.

St Mary's Church was built in the late C12th by the Knights Templar who moved here from Holborn. The round church was first consecrated in 1185; a larger chancel was added and its consecration in 1240 was attended by Henry III. The Knights Templar were dissolved in 1312 and in 1324 their Temple property was given to the Knights of the Order of St John, who subsequently leased it to a society of students of the common laws of England. This later formed into two societies, those of the Inner and the Middle Temple, who in 1608 were granted the freehold in perpetuity for use as a place of study and residence. The Temple Church escaped the Great Fire of 1666 but was badly damaged in 1941 and restored in 1954. North of the church a paved churchyard has a number of tombs, beyond this is a raised area laid out as a small garden containing the C18th memorial to Iohannes Hiccocks, the tomb of Oliver Goldsmith, and gravestones set into the paving.

The Victoria & Albert Museum, now the largest museum of decorative arts and design, has its origins in 1836 and was established here as the South Kensington Museum in 1857, on part of the site of the Great Exhibition of 1851. As its collections grew, museum buildings were added and by 1883 formed a quadrangle surrounding a central courtyard garden. In 1890 a competition for new museum buildings was launched, which created the new main façade on Cromwell Road. The foundation stone was laid in 1899, and it was on this occasion that the museum's name changed to the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2001 a major renovation programme was launched, which has included re-landscaping of the central court garden, named the John Madejski Garden after its benefactor. Opened in 2005, it has a formal layout, with an elliptical water feature that can be drained so the area can be used for events.

The Vineyard is an early C17th 3-storey house with C18th alterations that is said to be on the site of a Tudor monastery. The Gatehouse, now No.76A, is the former stable to the house and is probably early C19th. Remains of an early C17th barn were discovered under part of the house. The garden with its high boundary wall is probably the largest private garden in the borough. In 1918 the house was purchased by Lord Beaverbrook, whose political career began as an MP in 1910 when he moved to Britain from Canada and who went on to become the first of the powerful press barons, influencing public opinion through his newspapers, the Daily and Sunday Express. Winston Churchill was a frequent visitor to The Vineyard, which remained in the ownership of the Beaverbrook family until the 1990s. The garden as laid out for Lord Beaverbrook has changed over time, while its overall shape is unchanged and some trees remain, although part of the front garden was lost when the road was widened in 1930.

Warren House, later renamed The Warren, was built in 1882 as a country mansion, the house and its grounds added to by subsequent owners, who developed the gardens. Since 1935 it has been the Metropolitan Police Sports Ground, the house now the club house. It retains fine gardens although a number of trees, shrubs and flowerbeds were removed to make a playing field. Tennis courts have been built on the site of the kitchen garden and a bowling green made on the east side of the house.

* on The National Heritage List for England, Parks & Gardens

The Water Gardens Estate was built in 1961-66, designed by Trehearne, Norman, Preston & Partners for the Church Commissioners and includes three 17-storey towers, smaller blocks, and a terrace of houses with private gardens, backing onto the communal landscaped gardens. The gardens were designed by Philip Hicks in Modernist style with split levels, rectangular forms and strong horizontals to counteract the surrounding verticals, its rocks, willows and falling water providing an almost oriental atmosphere. The design brief for the gardens was to mask service roads and basement garages, and to provide interest for the residents from ground level and also from above.

The Watergardens were created in the 1860s by horticulturalist James Veitch Jnr, who had purchased land from the Duke of Cambridge for his Coombe Wood Nursery. He laid out former gravel workings in the south of the nursery as a Japanese watergarden, with streams, bridges and plants brought back from Japan, its design apparently inspired by the Willow Pattern in Chinese plates. This part of the nursery was later brought into the grounds of the adjacent Warren House, then owned by banker Hugh Hammersley. It remained part of the grounds of Warren House until 1985 when a parcel of land including the former water gardens was purchased by Octagon developments for a private housing scheme. Veitch's watergardens were restored and have ponds, streams and waterfalls, and numerous rare trees.

The Webb Estate was laid out from 1888 onwards by William Webb, a chartered surveyor and horticulturist who purchased 260 acres of land in Purley. He developed this as an upmarket residential estate according to his 'Garden First' system whereby landscaping and infrastructure should be established before house-building began. He set up a nursery to grow hedging, trees, shrubs and flowers for the estate. Houses were gradually built from 1901 onwards when the landscape infrastructure was maturing and the estate was completed by 1925. All roads but one were curving and names given to 'floral roads' reflected their planting schemes, such as Silver Lane, Rose Walk, and The South Border. The garden aspect of the estate endures today and it remains an important example within early town planning that recognised landscape as an essential component.