Claybury Park

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Claybury Park occupies the south-facing slopes of a ridge east of Woodford Bridge. It consists of parkland associated with Claybury Hall, ancient woodland formerly in the grounds of Claybury Hospital, plus other land owned by the London Borough of Redbridge that has secondary woodland, an old orchard once part of Hospital Farm, patches of scrub, a few ponds and open rides. With such a variety of habitats, many long-established, it is rich in wildlife including some unusual species.

From high up on the slope there are spectacular views over East London, Docklands and the Kent hills – even better, no doubt, from the buildings such as Claybury Hall that dominate the northern skyline.

The western part of the ancient woodland, Claybury Wood, contains many ancient hornbeam coppice stools and pollard oaks and is carpeted with bluebells, wood anemones and wild garlic in spring. It also has many wild service trees, butcher's broom and broad-leaved helleborine orchids. Hospital Hill Wood to the east is dominated by oak and, probably because of a lack of management in the past, is less interesting botanically. Typical woodland birds are found here, including tawny owl, nuthatch, treecreeper, sparrowhawk and woodpeckers. Migrant warblers such as blackcap visit in summer.

The parkland design was influenced by Humphrey Repton, a landscape designer of the late 18th and early 19th century who lived in Romford, not far away, and also designed Wanstead Park, a couple of miles to the south-west. Several historic landscape features have survived, including Cocked Hat Plantation (a linear woodland of oak, silver birch and hornbeam), Ash Plantation (dense elm scrub with mature oak and grey poplar – no ash!) and Egg Clump (oak, ash and hawthorn).

Claybury Park's soils are varied and this makes for variety in its grassland plants also. These support a variety of the commoner grassland butterflies, including small heath. Birds using the grassland, scrub and young woodland include kestrel, skylark, whitethroat, meadow pipit, reed bunting and goldfinch.