Boxing Day Open Day at New Cross Gate Cutting

Come and explore this beautiful nature reserve which is usually closed to the public.

The perfect location for a Boxing Day stroll and a chance to make your own Green Man tree sculpture from clay.

New Cross Gate Cutting is a secluded area of woodland with small grassy glades, set on the broad slopes of a deep railway cutting, which supports 170 species of flowering plants.

The reserve is predominantly oak woodland with open glades of neutral and acid grassland in which reeds and tall herbs grow. Some flowers are locally rare, and the site contributes to one of London’s most important railway cuttings for wildlife, stretching southwards to Forest Hill.

The cutting was dug in 1838-39 and still bears the legacy of once being part of the old Great North Wood, and at times the route of the Croydon Canal, brickworks, and wartime allotments.