Flâneurs

Image: A couple of small, two-storey, seventeenth-century brick houses with tall chimneys and gabled roofs. A white picket fence separates them from the road in front, which has double yellow lines painted on it.

Harefield (beginning of the third row) to Ruislip Manor Station (page 39 column J).

After a ridiculously long gap of over two years, I finally did the next walk in my A-Z project a couple of weeks ago in the company of ewan. The project had stalled in Harefield, partly because Harefield is a bit of a faff to get to, and partly because this walk was going to involve a lot of fields, and green stuff, and no street signs, so I kept putting it off.

We met for lunch (photo) at the Harefield pub, and discussed the route. Ewan wanted to drop by a pub that he needed to photograph, the Breakspear Arms on the edge of Ruislip, and this seemed quite plausible given where the footpaths appeared to go on our maps. (Incidentally, Ewan had already had a bit of a wander before we met up, getting photographs of other pubs in the area. He has a project going to photograph every pub and ex-pub in Greater London, which is well worth a look if you're interested in that sort of thing.)

Heading down Church Hill to the point where we would leave civilisation and enter the countryside OMG, I spotted some interesting-looking little houses on one side of the road (pictured above, click through for larger version and more links). These turned out to be the Countess of Derby's almshouses, built in the seventeenth century for poor women of the parish of Harefield. They're Grade II* listed, and still owned by the charity set up by the Countess, though they were converted to bedsits in the 1950s.

Shortly after this, we left the road and headed down a footpath past St Mary's church (photo) and the Anzac Cemetery, where over a hundred members of the First Australian Imperial Force are buried. During World War I, casualties from this force were treated at the newly-established Harefield Hospital, and links remain between Harefield and Australia to this day.

Then we walked over some fields (photo) and through Bayhurst Wood (photo), and it was all very non-urban. We even met some horses (photo), and discovered an impressively non-smelly compost maturation site (photo of sign and some commentary).

The abovementioned Breakspear Arms turned out to be a fairly uninteresting '70s-built Greene King pub, though the pub sign (Ewan's photo) is of some interest, as it depicts Nicholas Breakspear, who was born in the area around 1100 and was the only Englishman ever to become Pope.

This marked the western edge of Ruislip, which itself is one of the most westerly parts of Greater London. The area has a long history, appearing as a parish in the Domesday Book, and even today you can still see the remains of a Norman motte and bailey castle. We didn't go and see this, though we did walk past the Ruislip Manor Farm heritage centre (photo and some commentary) on our way to the J J Moons pub that marked the end of the walk, just opposite Ruislip Manor Station. I ate a very delicious salad (photo), and then headed home.

Next up: Ruislip Manor Station via Ruislip Lido to either Northwood Hills or Pinner. This will be on Monday 30 May (a Bank Holiday) — drop me an email if you'd like to come along. (I don't normally make these walks into a social occasion, so this may be your last chance for a while!)