London’s Pocket Parks: The Closes, West Drayton, UB7

This seemingly unremarkable looking public park has unexpected links with Roman England.

This part of what is now London was originally part of the Manor of West Drayton, which King Athelstan gifted to the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in 925. Following the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII granted the Manor to William Paget – 1st Lord Paget, and in 1714, the 7th Lord Paget was created Earl of Uxbridge.

Although West Drayton developed as a small village, it wasn’t much more than that until the railways arrived, and even then the nearby station was sufficiently far from the village to leave it pretty much untouched for many more decades.

The park today is lined with a long avenue of trees, and those are at least 170 years old, as they show up on a map from 1864 as an avenue from the church down to the other smaller villages to the south.

OS map 1864 showing park outline in red

During both World Wars, The Closes was turned into allotments. In 1924, West Drayton Parish Council purchased the Avenue part of The Closes for £500. The rest of it was used as grazing land until 1926, when the parish council bought the land for £3,000.

The main changes came in the 1930s, when housing developments began to surround the park, and it was protected as a recreation ground called The Closes.

OS map 1975 showing park outline in red

Today, if you enter from the north, next to St Martin’s Church, then it’s a wide passage that leads to the main park area, where there’s a mix of a tennis court, outdoor gym, and off to one side, a cycling training track.

Other than that, it’s a fairly plain but very large open space, which was certainly busy with dog walkers on my visit.

But there’s a bit of Roman history here.

Evidence from various sources and archaeological digs in the area, including the grounds of the old Manor House (the gatehouse), suggests that The Closes formed part of a Roman trackway from St Albans to Staines, catalogued by Ivan Margary in 1955.

Right up until the 20th century, it was still possible to walk along this ancient trackway to Harmondsworth and on to Staines.

In fact, the avenue of trees you just walked along probably aligns well with the old Roman road, so although there’s nothing to see of the Roman road anymore, at least you can say you walked along one.