Ice Age Marshes

We can feel the land sliding down the slope to the River Lea, and sense the ice sheets and melt water flooding along the channel.

Sunday 13th April 2025, 1pm

Mature trees in Springfield Park, on high ground overlooking the Lea Valley

Hackney in east London sits on the west bank of the River Lea, elevated above a broad, flat, marshy, unpredictable flood plain.

From Hackney Central station the walk begins with the walled garden at St. John’s at Hackney churchyard and Clapton Square garden; then to the commemorative trees at Hackney Downs, Clapton Pond, the expanse of Millfields Park and the River Lea; then across the bridge onto Leyton Marsh and Walthamstow Marshes; back across the bridge and up into Springfield Park with its splendid views and a hundred varieties of tree; the walk finishes on Clapton Common.

£8 ticket

Meeting place: south entrance of Hackney Central station on Graham Road
Arrive by train: overground Mildmay, Weaver, or greateranglia
Date & time: Sunday April 13th 2025, 1 pm
Distance: 3.8 miles
End point: Clapton Common, Clapton, nearest train Stamford Hill
Map: Komoot map click to view, Google map
Contact: email tim.ingram-smith@outlook.com mobile: 077932 00932
Cost: £8 per adult walker PAY HERE https://paypal.me/parktopark

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Gallery

Fruit sculptures beneath the medieval tower, the oldest building in Hackney, built in the 1400s.

An 1884 act of parliament allowed full and no longer used burial grounds to be cleared to become parks in urban areas and so many of the parks in our walks were once cemeteries, like the churchyard of St. John at Hackney.

The church and garden are well described in Hackney Council’s 2021-2026 St John’s Churchyard Management Plan.pdf

Hackney Downs stone pine

Hackney Downs has an avenue of 14 trees planted in the 1980s to commemorate 14 young people who died in a fire.

Murals to the hounds and wildflowers of Hackney Downs during the Covid pandemic 2020 …more

Clapton Pond and fountain

Millfields Park is a broad open expanse of grass and trees, part of the flood plain of the River Lea. 2024/5 Millfields Park Management Plan

Millfields plane tree circle

Friendship Tree sculpture by the River Lea (more…)

Footbridge across the River Lea to Leyton (“Lea-ton”) Marshes

Lea riverbank

Walthamstow Marshes, reeds and water, filling what was a V2 bomb crater

Springfield Park looks over the River Lea, the boundary of Danelaw and anglo-saxon Wessex in the south of what is now England.

Springfield Park has at least a hundred different varieties of tree. Here we have a Cedar Deodara on the left, I forget what on the right, and the flowers of the red maple can be seen in the middle distance.