London’s Pocket Parks: Crabtree Fields, W1

On a side street off Tottenham Court Road you can find this very leafy pocket park, a legacy of WWII bombing, but is also far younger, dating only to the 1980s.

Crabtree Fields was still fields right up to the 1740s, when developments along Tottenham Court Road started expanding outwards, and within 50 years, the whole area was covered in the street layout we pretty much see today. Crabtree Fields as a pocket park didn’t exist, though, as the area was filled with houses, facing a small passageway, Colville Court, later Colville Place.

The houses on the other three sides of the southern block were swiftly taken over by commerce, and many were extended to replace the back gardens. The large green behind them was filled in with a factory, the Phoenix Works.

This later became the Oxford (later Bedford) Pantechnicon, which initially sounds like it might be something to do with early cinemas. In fact, it was a furniture removal firm using an early form of horse-drawn van, known as the Pantechnicon.

It was WWII that would turn a row of houses into a pocket park when a large bomb hit the corner of the block sometime between 7th Oct 1940 and 6th June 1941, destroying most of the area.

After the war, the site was cleared, and spent many decades as a car park.

Things started to change in 1982 when the Fitzrovia Neighbourhood Association asked the Greater London Council (GLC) to buy the site and convert it into a public park. The GLC had allocated £5 million to buy and rejuvenate six sites across London, and spotting their chance, the local residents bid for their car park to become a carless park.

It took some time though, as the owners, National Car Parks (NCP), objected to a compulsory purchase order and tied the process up in a public inquiry. In August 1985, they finally lost the fight, and after clearing the site, Crabtree Fields opened as a public park.

The name comes from when the area was all fields. There was a Crab Tree Field meadow here, owned by Mrs Beresford, wife of the carpenter John Goodge, after whom Goodge Street is known. It was the Goodge family that developed the area from fields into housing.

Today, the area is a mixed space, with two open patches of lawn separated by a long plant-covered walkway pergola, which is quite delightful to wander through.

The lawns look rather threadbare, especially one which is heavily shaded by the trees, and park is surrounded by high bedding plants. A wide open space to one side is a tired looking children’s playground, which was refurbished in 2012 but hasn’t worn well.

The very 1980s looking metal fence around the park is also quite offputting as it forms a high fairly solid barrier to the park.

On my visit, a few people were sitting in the shade, and a number of people with cans of lager seemed to be having the sort of argument between themselves that suggested giving them a wide berth.

The park will change soon, as the council plans to revamp the park as part of its wider improvements programme in the area to improve greenery around Tottenham Court Road. Some of the trees will be thinned out to increase daylight into the space, and fresh shade tolerant planting will fill in gaps where the bedding plants have wilted. The children’s play area will also be restored.