London’s Pocket Parks: Belsize Wood, NW3

Around the back of suburban houses in Belsize Park is a small but richly planted woodland on a very steep slope.Unlike many more central pocket parks which often emerged from land clearance, this woodland has never been built on – its primaeval. The whole area was once fields, but as London expanded, housing started being developed around the area, and a large hospital to the northern side of the woods.
But the patch of land was bought by the Midland Railway Company in the 1860s as they du