The Hill Garden and Pergola is hidden away on a quiet bit of Hampstead Heath and is a gorgeous brick building with a long pergola, created by Lord Leverhulme. Apparently a lot of the soil involved in creating the gardens came from the tunnels being dug for the Northern Line at Hampstead! The gardens were first built in 1905 and developed further over the next twenty years, but then went into a decline after WW2. The Corporation of London is now responsible for the gardens and their upkeep.
We visited the same day as Fenton House as by the time we got there the sun had come out and it was absolutely gorgeous. The gardens are lovely and we had it virtually to ourselves which was fab.
As ever, I am terrible at identifying plants so here are some lovely pictures with no plant names, haha.
At Fenton House there's a very nicely maintained walled garden (which must be so much work) and an orchard which had a bonsai exhibition (I love bonsai), and when it stopped raining we went outside to have a look around.
The gardens are impressive and have some plants that even Lesley had never seen before, which is a rare thing as she is very very into gardening! Whereas for me, there were about four plants I had seen before, but that is because I am not very into gardening (though I can manage if I'm pointed at a patch of earth and given clear instructions).
Lots of garden photos:
Fenton House is a National Trust property in Hampstead, a smart town house dating from 1686 with some interesting collections inside. It costs £6.50 for non-member entry so is pretty reasonable (or you can just go into the garden for £2).
Lesley and I went on a very rainy morning, and annoyingly I don't have a photo of the house from the front as by the time it stopped raining my camera batteries had given up the ghost, but this is a view from the garden before that happened:
Inside the house are collections of paintings, china figurines and musical instruments including a whole lot of harpsichords. There was actually a harpsichord player in while we were there, which was really interesting to hear (I think this is a fairly regular thing so worth checking out!).
Instruments:
There was also this excellent thing, which was my favourite:
It is a nef and is a decorative salt cellar (obviously, I mean what else would it be??). A decorative salt cellar on wheels, no less. I love it and I want one.
The rain did stop after a while and we went out into the garden, but I'll put those pictures in a separate post.
It's all been a bit quiet round here, for the obvious reason that it has been too bloody cold for me to get out and about in London. In the first three months of the year I can count the times I went walking on one hand!
However the weather has finally taken a turn for the better and last weekend it was so lovely I decided I was going to go out properly somewhere new.
I picked the Three Mills walk from my 50 London Walks book and headed off to Bromley-by-Bow, and then followed the route along the River Lea and the Hertford Union Canal, before getting bored and going off the route to make my way back round to Bromley-by-Bow.
It was a really enjoyable walk - route here - although it was slightly odd to be walking a route designed in 2001, before we'd even got the Olympics, let alone seen everything built for them. And of course the pace of development is just getting quicker and quicker so there's an awful lot of buildings springing up in the area.
The Clock Mill on Three Mills Island:
Photos from the rest of the walk along the river and canal:
And finally a couple of views from a park along the way. Which park? Who knows! I have failed to make a note so am not sure. I climbed up a mound to get these photos, anyway. /unhelpful
