Pinner Park

Pinner Park was first referred to in 1273, and was part of the Manor of Harrow owned by the Archbishops of Canterbury and used as a deer park. In the C14th local peasants were allowed to feed their pigs in the woods, and during the Peasants Revolt of 1381 the Manor was plundered. By the mid C15th the woodland had been largely cut down. The park was transferred to the Crown when Henry VIII dispossessed Thomas Cranmer and it was sold to Lord North in 1545; its role as a deer park seems to have decreased although deer are still mentioned in 1490. It was converted to farmland in the C16th. By 1546 the park was reported to have 32 hectares of arable land, 51 hectares of pasture and to contain 240 oak trees. In 1560 is the first reference to a farm, which was let to Robert and Amy Crowlye, and future lessees included the elder brother of Francis Bacon, Anthony, who left his brother the lease in 1601 although there is no evidence that Francis lived here. An estate map of 1634 was commissioned for new owner Thomas Hutchinson, which shows detail of the farmhouse, moat, ponds and fields. Hutchinson (d.1656) is buried with his wife in Pinner parish churchyard of St John (q.v.). In 1687 it was purchased by Sir Edward Waldo who at one time held Canons (q.v.).

In 1731 the park was purchased for £5,160 by St Thomas Hospital and let to various tenants. The park deteriorated in the 1830s; part of the land was taken for the railway in 1837 with a footbridge over it on the original line of a path to the old exit of the park. By 1841 the park was described as 'in the last stages of poverty, covered in moss and couch grass', the buildings in a state of decay. By early C20th parts were sold off, some for sports grounds but St Thomas Hospital's desire to develop the rest for housing was opposed and it was sold to Pinner Parish Council and Middlesex County Council for preservation as open space. Pinner Park Farmhouse, built c.1724, is moated but not on the site of the earlier farm. Mediaeval fishponds adjoin the west boundary and the park has old pollards and significant lengths of bank and ditch (1m high and deep, 3-4m wide) and 600 year old double hedging surrounding the estate probably to prevent deer leaping out. George V Avenue was built across the middle of the park in 1938; until the beginning of WWII it was home to the Middlesex Hunt and the Middlesex Drag Hunt, which is the reason for hedge management, and some of the original field boundary hedges still separate the pastures. The River Pinn crosses the western edge of the park with a dam constructed to the north of George V Avenue to alleviate flooding of Pinner village. A deep hollow south of the road may have been the site of an ancient carp pond.