The lovely rural scenes of North West London

Is this the best park ever or am I biased? I love Kilburn Grange Park for it's history, I love Fortune Green for it's community focus, West End is superb for it's sheer cheek and atmosphere.

But as an all in one Queen's Park is pretty impressive. It's owned/run/maintained/held in trust by the City of London Corporation: http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Corporation/LGNL_Services/Environment_and_planning/Parks_and_open_spaces/queens_park.htm

But crucially it is deceptively large - when you stand at the corner of say Kingswood Avenue you can see the whole length of it, but when you actually walk about it is much much larger than the eye at first appreciates - this is further enahnced by the way in whcih it is lovingly tended with different sections and components.

One of these is the bandstand - charming, used, and very very colourfully maintained - it's one of the features that makes the park stand out and was one of the mainstays of the centenary celebrations.

Councillor Mark Cummins was a leading light in those celbrations and has been a hugely interesting font of information on both the pak, it's iconic significance to the community and also his own role (which he plays down).

It's now 20 years since he was first elected as councillor and I guess I wanted to take this small chance to thank him and place on record my own appreciation for his work.

http://www.brent.gov.uk/Democracy.nsf/66d8b8e642f063d780256a9400404f4e/9489a972f5ae375f8025716b00341e77!OpenDocument

Other posts about the Park:
http://474towin.blogspot.com/2008/01/queens-park-squirrels-with-demon-eyes.html

http://474towin.blogspot.com/2008/01/stucco-patterns-in-skill-of-pargeting.html

Did you know that at one end of the park there is underground drainage - in order to cope with the naturally boggy ground - when it was the grand exhibition it became so boggy and wet that the area was almost unuseable - there is some story about Queen Victioria not visiting due to the poor ground!