Today, I went for a cycle round a corner of southwest London. A map of my GPS track is
here. I started in Horton Country Park. This was established in the environs of the 'Epsom Cluster', the collective noun for the 5 mental hospitals that previously occupied the site.
One striking feature of
'London Orbital', Iain Sinclair's account of his walk around the M25, is the number of mental hospitals, asylums and sanitoriums (-a?) there were on the London periphery. They 'haunt the motorway like abandoned forts'. As well as the Epsom Cluster, there were several near St Albans (Shenley, Harperbury and Napsbury), Leavesden in Abbots Langley, and the Holloway Sanatorium in Virginia Water(see
blog post of my Runnymede ride). In the late 90's/early noughties, in accordance with the 'Care in the Community' policy, the inmates were dispersed, and the sites were sold off for development, mainly as upmarket apartments and homes, usually by Crest Homes, and usually with a tactful change of name (who would want to live in Asylum Gardens or Sanatorium Drive). Thus Shenley became 'The Pavilions', and Claybury (in Chigwell) became 'Repton Park', referring to its earlier conversion from a stately home landscaped by the eponymous garden designer. The most prominent surviving feature of these hospital complexes is usually the water tower.
The Epsom Cluster comprised the hospitals of Horton, Long Grove, Manor, St Ebba's and West Park. Each was almost a self contained town, with food supplied by their own farms, and a central power station (now a fitness centre). There was a dedicated light railway branch line from Ewell to carry in coal and other supplies. The route of the railway now forms a cycle path through what is now Horton Country Park, and along this I started my ride. The sky was grey and the path muddy.
Emerging from the Country Park, I progressed next to the River Hogsmill, and followed the riverside trail to Old Malden, through the Hogsmill Local Nature Reserve which (according to the information board) 'is a green corridor that opens the way through Ewell Court and West Ewell to the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames'. The Hogsmill was a fast flowing stream which powered flour and gunpowder mills, and in Victorian times was a popular hangout for the Pre-Raphaelite artists. Incongruous as it seems now, the backdrops for several of Holman Hunt's paintings were inspired by these surroundings: 'the Hireling Shepherd' was set upon the Hogsmill banks, his 'Light of the World' showed Jesus knocking at the door of what was then a disused hut in the gunpowder works near the Hogsmill Pub, and Sir John Everett Millais based his painting 'Ophelia' in the Hogsmill near St John's Church, Old Malden. Of painting en plein air hereabouts, Millais wrote:
- My martyrdom is more trying than any I have hitherto experienced. The flies of Surrey are more muscular, and have a still greater propensity for probing human flesh ... I am threatened with a notice to appear before a magistrate for trespassing in a field and destroying the hay ... am also in danger of being blown by the wind into the water, and becoming intimate with the feelings of Ophelia when that Lady sank to muddy death ... Certainly the painting of a picture under such circumstances would be a greater punishment to a murderer than hanging.
North of Old Malden, the path petered out across soggy meadows, so I took to roads and headed back through the Tudor-bethan thirties estates of Worcester Park and Stoneleigh to Nonsuch Park, so called because it was the site of the 'unequalled' palace built in the surrounding hunting park for Henry VIII. The palace was eventually passed by Charles II to one of his mistresses, the Duchess of Cleveland, who demolished it for building materials. A later 18th century mansion survives and houses a cafe.
I followed the tarmacced cycle paths around the park, but then branched off on the London Loop path: very muddy (London Gloop?), eventually rejoining the Hogsmill near Bourne Hall in West Ewell, and following a slightly different path through Horton Country Park back to the car park. An interesting if rather muddy outing.
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| 'Hike and Bike' trail in Horton Country Park |
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| Tower of West Park Hospital: one of the few which seems not to have been sold to Crest Homes. It is now New Epsom and Ewell Community Hospital (NEECH) |
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| The trail uses the disused hospital railway branchline: stampede of ramblers approaching |
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| St John's Church, Old Malden |
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| Hogsmill: hereabouts, Millais painted the background for 'Ophelia'. His model for the lady herself posed in a bath rather than risking immersion in the river, a wise move. |
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| Cafe adjacent to Old Malden station |
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| Remaining mansion in Nonsuch Park; houses a cafe |
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| Spring has come very early to Nonsuch |
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| London Loop (Gloop?) |
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