Hackney Parks and Open Spaces

Hackney Parks And Open Spaces

The London Borough of Hackney, one of the inner London boroughs, has 62 parks, gardens and open spaces within its boundaries, totalling 330 ha. These provide the "green lungs" for leisure activities. Hackney Marshes contain the largest concentration of football pitches in Europe.

In July 2008, seven Hackney parks won Green Flag awards, these were: Clissold, Springfield, Haggerston and Shoreditch parks, together with London Fields, St John's churchyard and Hackney Downs. St John's was also awarded 'Heritage Green Status'. However, by contrast, Abney Park in Hackney became scheduled in 2009 as one of Britain's historic parks and gardens at risk from neglect and decay.

Read more about Hackney Parks And Open Spaces:  Principal Open Spaces, Water, City Farms

Famous quotes containing the words hackney, parks, open and/or spaces:

    Now hardly here and there an hackney coach
    Appearing, showed the ruddy morn’s approach.
    Now Betty from her master’s bed had flown,
    And softly stole to discompose her own;
    The slipshod ‘prentice from his master’s door
    Had pared the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor.
    Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)

    Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    In that open field
    If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,
    On a summer midnight, you can hear the music
    Of the weak pipe and the little drum
    And see them dancing around the bonfire
    The association of man and woman
    In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie....
    —T.S. (Thomas Stearns)

    In any case, raw aggression is thought to be the peculiar province of men, as nurturing is the peculiar province of women.... The psychologist Erik Erikson discovered that, while little girls playing with blocks generally create pleasant interior spaces and attractive entrances, little boys are inclined to pile up the blocks as high as they can and then watch them fall down: “the contemplation of ruins,” Erikson observes, “is a masculine specialty.”
    Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)