Kingston Vale
Kingston Vale is a district in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in the south west of London. It is an area between Richmond Park, Wimbledon Common and Coombe Hill. The main road is the A308 which is a route for traffic passing to. Many of the roads are cul-de-sacs. The area was known as Kingston Bottom up until the middle of the 19th Century, the earliest record of the change from Kingston Bottom to Kingston Vale occurs in the 1861 Census Returns, where the area is referred to as Kingston Vale Hamlet. By the time of the 1891 Census, the area is described as a civil parish, Kingston Vale is located north east of Kingston on the A308, the village straddles both the A308 and the A3 London - Portsmouth Road. The closest junction of the A3 is the Robin Hood Roundabout, bus connections are available within a short walk of the stations at Kingston, New Malden, Surbiton and Barnes. The nearest Tube station is Putney Bridge station on the District line, an indirect connection with South Wimbledon station on the Northern line is possible, via New Malden, Coombe Lane or Kingston.
Kingston Vale benefits from a primary school, the Robin Hood Primary School. The Village Hall plays host to the Oranges and Lemons Nursery School, whilst a Montessori nursery school, for education in Kingston Vale see the main Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames article. The first church in the area was built in 1839 and became the centre of its own Parish in 1847 and it is an Anglican church within the Deanery of Kingston and the Archdiocese of Southwark. In addition to its religious functions, the acts as a focal point for community activities in Kingston Vale, which are held within the Village Hall. These include social clubs and table tennis, as well as providing facilities for local associations and for two local nursery schools. Every year the Church holds a fete and a fireworks night event. The Parish Office manages the booking of four halls, which are used for parties, there are no known facilities for other faiths within the village of Kingston Vale. A guide to the places of worship in the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames can be found via the Kingston Inter-Faith Forum, the site is home to the annual National Schools Rugby Sevens Tournament.
It has a local amenity group - the Kingston Vale Residents Association. This is a body which deals with matters such as planning, transport, environment
Charing Cross
Charing Cross denotes the junction of Strand and Cockspur Street, just south of Trafalgar Square in central London. It gives its name to several landmarks, including Charing Cross railway station, Charing Cross is named after the Eleanor cross that stood on the site, in what was once the hamlet of Charing. The site of the cross has been occupied since 1675 by a statue of King Charles I. A loose Victorian replica of the cross, the Queen Eleanor Memorial Cross, was erected a short distance to the east outside the railway station. Until 1931, Charing Cross referred to the part of Whitehall between Great Scotland Yard and Trafalgar Square, at least one property retains a Charing Cross postal address, Drummonds Bank, on the corner of Whitehall and The Mall, which is designated 49 Charing Cross. Since the early 19th century, Charing Cross has often been regarded as the centre of London. Erect a rich and stately carved cross, Whereon her statue shall with glory shine, George Peele The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First The name of the area, Charing, is derived from the Old English word cierring, referring to a bend in the River Thames.
Folk etymology suggests the name derives from chère reine — dear queen in French — and this wooden sculpted cross was the work of the medieval sculptor, Alexander of Abingdon. It was destroyed in 1647 on the orders of Parliament during the Civil War, a 70 ft -high stone sculpture in front of Charing Cross railway station is a copy of the original cross. Erected in 1865, it is situated a few hundred yards to the east of the original cross and it was designed by the architect E. M. Barry and carved by Thomas Earp of Lambeth out of Portland stone, Mansfield stone and Aberdeen granite. It is not a replica, being more ornate than the original. A variation on the name appears to be Charygcrouche, near St Martin in the Fields, since 1675 the site of the cross has been occupied by a statue of King Charles I mounted on a horse. The site is recognised by convention as the centre of London for the purpose of indicating distances by road in favour of other measurement points. Charing Cross is marked on maps as a road junction.
Since 1 January 1931 this section of road has been designated part of the Whitehall thoroughfare, the cross has given its name to a railway station, a tube station, police station, hospital, a hotel, a theatre, and a music hall. Charing Cross Road the main route from the north was named after the railway station, at some time between 1232 and 1236, the Chapel and Hospital of St Mary Rounceval was founded at Charing. It occupied land at the corner of the modern Whitehall and into the centre of Northumberland Avenue and it was an Augustinian house, tied to a mother house at Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees. The house and lands were seized for the king in 1379, protracted legal action returned some rights to the prior, but in 1414, Henry V suppressed the alien houses
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom
Emergency care including ambulance and emergency department treatment is free to everyone, regardless of immigration or visitor status. The NHS commissions most emergency services through the 14 NHS organisations with ambulance responsibility across the UK. As with other services, the public normally access emergency medical services through one of the valid emergency telephone numbers. This led to the formation of predominantly county based ambulance services, which gradually merged up and changed responsibilities until 2006, when there were 31 NHS ambulance trusts in England. Following further changes as part of the NHS foundation trust pathway, the commissioners in each region are responsible for contracting with a suitable organisation to provide ambulance services within their geographical territory. The primary contract for each area is held by a public NHS body, of which there are 11 in England. The service was operated before reorganisation in 1974 by the St Andrews’ Ambulance Association under contract to the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service was established in 1995 by parliamentary order, and serves the whole of Northern Ireland.
The Welsh Ambulance Service NHS Trust was established on 1 April 1998, there is a large market for private and voluntary ambulance services, with the sector being worth £800m to the UK economy in 2012. This places the voluntary providers in direct competition with private services, expenditure on private ambulances in England increased from £37m in 2011−12 to £67. 5m in 2013/4, rising in London from £796,000 to more than £8. 8m. In 2014−15, these 10 ambulance services spent £57.6 million on 333,329 callouts of private or voluntary services - an increase of 156% since 2010−11, in 2013, the CQC found 97% of private ambulance services to be providing good care. These private, registered services are represented by the Independent Ambulance Association, there are a number of unregistered services operating, who do not provide ambulance transport, but only provide response on an event site. These firms are not regulated, and are not subject to the checks as the registered providers, although they may operate similar vehicles.
There are a number of ambulance providers, sometimes known as Voluntary Aid Services or Voluntary Aid Societies, with the main ones being the British Red Cross. The history of the ambulance services pre-dates any government organised service. As they are in competition for work with the private ambulance providers. Voluntary organisations have provided cover for the public when unionised NHS ambulance trust staff have taken industrial action, there are a number of smaller voluntary ambulance organisations, fulfilling specific purposes, such as Hatzola who provide emergency medical services to the orthodox Jewish community in some cities. These have however run into difficulties due to use of vehicles not legally recognised as ambulances, all emergency medical services in the UK are subject to a range of legal and regulatory requirements, and in many cases are monitored for performance. This framework is largely statutory in nature, being mandated by government through a range of primary and secondary legislation and this requires all providers to register, to meet certain standards of quality, and to submit to inspection of those standards
Roehampton House
Roehampton House is a Grade I listed house at Roehampton Lane, London. It was built in 1710–12 by the architect Thomas Archer, from 1910 to 1913, Sir Edwin Lutyens made some alterations to the main house and added north and south wings. Historic England note that these were a continuation of the Archer style and to a close to Archers original intentions. Archer built Roehampton House on behalf of the merchant Thomas Cary, carys father John emigrated to the Colony of Virginia in 1663, and Cary was born there in 1669. Both returned to London and by 1690 were running an import and export trading business, in about 2009–13, it was converted into 24 apartments and houses by St James Homes of the Berkeley Group. John Pearse,1812, Governor of the Bank of England Gerhold, D. J. Villas and Mansions of Roehampton and Putney Heath ISBN0905121058
A3 road
The A3, known as the Portsmouth Road or London Road in sections, is a major road connecting London and Portsmouth passing close to Kingston upon Thames, Guildford and Petersfield. For much of its 67-mile length, it is classified as a trunk road, almost all of the road has been built to dual carriageway standards or wider. Apart from bypass sections in London the road travels in a southwest direction and, after Liss, the other section of such restriction is through Battersea and Stockwell towards the northern end reflecting its urban setting and accommodating bus lanes and parking meter bays. The construction of the Kingston and Guildford bypasses in the 1920s and 1930s made use of narrow gauge railways to move the construction materials. The Esher bypass, between Hook from the first mentioned bypass to the M25, is three lanes with a hard shoulder, from here to Guildford the road has three lanes. Lord Montagu of Beaulieu stressed the urgency of building a Kingston By-pass in 1911 however before the onset of World War I public funds were not secured and were not available in the aftermath.
It was opened by the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Stanley Baldwin MP and it ran for 8.5 miles from the Robin Hood Gate of Richmond Park to the near outskirts of Esher. The opening ceremony concluded with refreshments for 800 guests in marquees near to the northern start/end and its construction immediately attracted developments of housing where access was easiest. The road was once the haunt of highwaymen such as Jerry Abershawe who terrorised the area around Kingston, another particularly dangerous location was in the vicinity of the wooded crest skirting the Devils Punch Bowl, about 8 miles south-west of Guildford. In 2011 the Hindhead Tunnel became the centre of the Hindhead Bypass around the road of the small town. Until 2011 the road through Hindhead was the last single carriageway section of the route, outside London and it continues along Newington Butts, and bounds enters the London Borough of Lambeth on Kennington Park Road which becomes Clapham Road and Clapham High Street. The A3 turns west as Clapham Common North Side, along this road it enters the London Borough of Wandsworth after which it runs concurrently with the A205 South Circular and goes through Wandsworth, the A205 carries on west towards Richmond.
The A3 continues south-west between Richmond Park and Wimbledon Common before beginning to bypass Kingston upon Thames while going through Roehampton Vale. The A3 enters The Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames just before Kingston Vale where there is a junction with the A308 for Kingston upon Thames, the speed limit increases to 50 mph before going under the Coombe Flyover. The A3 goes on a flyover by Shannon Corner in Raynes Park, before having junctions for New Malden, brief features of a section of road contribute to a traffic pinch-point during peak hours around the Hook underpass. The road reduces from three lanes to two in the underpass, the speed limit at this point reduces from 70 miles per hour to 50 miles per hour, with the first of a handful of GATSO speed enforcement cameras. If returning to London traffic from the A309 joins just before the underpass, after passing Claygate the motorway-standard section has junctions with the A244 between Esher and Oxshott, the A245 between Cobham and Hersham.
The roads Wisley Interchange with the M25 enables a flyover still with a 70 mph speed limit and it bypasses Wisley, Ripley before cutting through the major town itself as a dual carriageway and changing to a 50 mph speed limit
Thomas Archer
Thomas Archer was an English Baroque architect, whose work is somewhat overshadowed by that of his contemporaries Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor. The exact date of Archers birth is unknown, but can be inferred from the two sources that mention his age. One is an entry in the Oxford University register recording his matriculation at Trinity College on 12 June 1686, aged 17, if these records are accurate, he must have been born between 12 June 1668 and 22 May 1669. Thomas is the one of the Archer children not to have his birth recorded in the Tamworth-in-Arden parish register. He attended Trinity College, from which he matriculated on 12 June 1686, after leaving university, he went on a Grand Tour, spending four years abroad and was influenced by the work of Bernini and Borromini. At the commencement of the wars, he was a colonel in the parliamentary forces. But when he discovered the designs of the parliamentarians, he threw up his commission and emigrating, thereafter he represented the city of Warwick in the Cavalier Parliament.
Among Archers churches was St John Evangelist, Westminster suggestive of Hawksmoors baroque influence and its four towers were originally built to stabilise subsidence. Historians believed that was more likely than following Sir John Vanbrghs style, built in 1750, St Pauls, Deptford sweeping semi-circular porticos were not copied for a century until Smirkes magnificent church at St Marys, Bryanston Square that dominated the street. At St Philips, now Birmingham Cathedral there was a sense of the Italianate Lombardic influences of High Baroque style of churches, high ceilings, with cupola. External to St Philips is the roof balustrade quite unusual in English church architecture, St Johns and St Pauls were both built for the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches. John Summerson said these two buildings represent the most advanced Baroque style ever attempted in England, at Hale, Hampshire, he remodelled St Marys Church, which contains his memorial, carved by Sir Henry Cheere to Archers own design.
Archers secular works included Roehampton House in Surrey, Welford Park in Berkshire, and the Cascade House, in 1709–11 Archer designed a Baroque garden pavilion for Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Kent at Wrest Park, Bedfordshire. After 1712 Archer designed Hurstbourne Priors in Hampshire for John Wallop and he was a founding governor of the Foundling Hospital in London in 1739, but was not involved in the construction of the resulting building, completed c. The architect for that project was Theodore Jacobsen, Chatsworth House, North front, Derbyshire, c.1705 Heythrop Hall, Oxfordshire, c. Whiffen, Thomas Archer, Architect of the English Baroque, Hennessey & Ingalls, Santa Monica 1973, ISBN 0-912158-23-9 Thomas Archer
Parkstead House
Parkstead House, formerly known as Manresa House and Bessborough House, is a neo-classical Palladian villa in Roehampton, built in the 1760s. The house and remaining grounds are now Whitelands College, part of the University of Roehampton and it is situated on Holybourne Avenue, off Roehampton Lane, next to the Richmond Park Golf Course in the London Borough of Wandsworth. In 1955, it was designated a Grade I listed building by Historic England and it was built for The 2nd Earl of Bessborough, an Anglo-Irish peer. Construction on the building started circa 1760, by the architect Sir William Chambers and it was completed in circa 1768. The building was inspired by Chiswick House and Foots Cray Place, a resident of Parkstead was the wife of The 3rd Earl of Bessborough, Henrietta Ponsonby, Countess of Bessborough, a Whig hostess and socialite. Lady Bessborough had a relationship with Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Earl Granville and she had four children with her husband, Lord Bessborough. These were, John Ponsonby, 4th Earl of Bessborough, Frederick Cavendish Ponsonby, Lady Caroline Lamb and William Ponsonby, on the death of Henrietta, in 1821, the 3rd Earl leased the property to a politician, Abraham Robarts, who made it his permanent home.
When Robarts died in 1858, The 5th Earl of Bessborough sold the house, in 1861, the house and 42 acres of surrounding land was sold to the Society of Jesus, the Jesuit religious order. The Jesuits used the building to house their novitiate and a house for Ignatian spirituality. The house was renamed Manresa House after the town in Spain where Ignatius of Loyola developed his Spiritual Exercises, within the property, the Jesuits created a cemetery. The first burial was in 1867, the cemetery contained only Jesuits, including Alban Goodier SJ, the Archbishop of Bombay from 1919 to 1926. From Manresa House, the Jesuits served the local Catholic congregations, in 1860, they commissioned Joseph John Scoles to design the chapel. It was completed after his death, in 1864, by his pupil S. I. Nicholl, in the 1870s, Henry Clutton designed the north aisle which expanded the chapel. Clutton designed the long connecting the chapel to the refectory in the new north wing. In 1885, the wing, designed by Frederick Walters, were added.
It copied the elevation of the north wing, with the completion of these two wings the original stable blocks were demolished. One of the Jesuits at Manresa House was the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and he was a novice from September 1868 until September 1870. In the 1950s, London County Council compulsorily purchased the surrounding land, the last burial in the cemetery was in 1962
Greater London
London, or Greater London, is a region of England which forms the administrative boundaries of London. It is organised into 33 local government districts, the 32 London boroughs, the Greater London Authority, based in Southwark, is responsible for strategic local government across the region and consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. The county of Greater London was created on 1 April 1965 through the London Government Act 1963, Greater London was first established as a sui generis council area under the Greater London Council between 1963 and 1986. The area was re-established as a region in 1994, and the Greater London Authority formed in 2000, the region covers 1,572 km2 and had a population of 8,174,000 at the 2011 census. In 2012, it had the highest GVA per capita in the United Kingdom at £37,232, the Greater London Built-up Area—used in some national statistics—is a measure of the continuous urban area of London, and therefore includes areas outside of the administrative region.
The term Greater London has been and still is used to different areas in governance, history. In terms of ceremonial counties, London is divided into the small City of London, outside the limited boundaries of the City, a variety of arrangements has governed the wider area since 1855, culminating in the creation of the Greater London administrative area in 1965. The Greater London Arterial Road Programme was devised between 1913 and 1916, one of the larger early forms was the Greater London Planning Region, devised in 1927, which occupied 1,856 square miles and included 9 million people. The LCC pressed for an alteration in its boundaries soon after the end of the First World War, noting that within the Metropolitan, a Royal Commission on London Government was set up to consider the issue. The LCC proposed a vast new area for Greater London, with a boundary somewhere between the Metropolitan Police District and the home counties, protests were made at the possibility of including Windsor and Eton in the authority.
The Commission made its report in 1923, rejecting the LCCs scheme, two minority reports favoured change beyond the amalgamation of smaller urban districts, including both smaller borough councils and a central authority for strategic functions. The London Traffic Act 1924 was a result of the Commission, Greater London originally had a two-tier system of local government, with the Greater London Council sharing power with the City of London Corporation and the 32 London Borough councils. The GLC was abolished in 1986 by the Local Government Act 1985 and its functions were devolved to the City Corporation and the London Boroughs, with some functions transferred to central government and joint boards. Greater London was used to form the London region of England in 1994, a referendum held in 1998 established a public will to recreate an upper tier of government to cover the region. The Greater London Authority, London Assembly and the directly elected Mayor of London were created in 2000 by the Greater London Authority Act 1999, in 2000, the outer boundary of the Metropolitan Police District was re-aligned to the Greater London boundary.
The 2000 and 2004 mayoral elections were won by Ken Livingstone, the 2008 and 2012 elections were won by Boris Johnson. The 2016 election was won by Sadiq Khan, Greater London continues to include the most closely associated parts of the Greater London Urban Area and their historic buffers. Thus it includes, in five boroughs, significant parts of the Metropolitan Green Belt which protects designated greenfield land in a way to the citys parks
Putney
Putney is a district in south-west London, England in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is centred 5.1 miles south-west of Charing Cross, the area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. And thus we take leave of Putney, one of the pleasantest of the London suburbs, Putney is an ancient parish which covered 9.11 square kilometres and was until 1889 in the Hundred of Brixton in the county of Surrey. Its area has reduced by the loss of Roehampton to the south-west. In 1855 the parish was included in the area of responsibility of the Metropolitan Board of Works and was grouped into the Wandsworth District, in 1889 the area was removed from Surrey and became part of the County of London. The Wandsworth District became the Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth in 1900, since 1965 Putney has formed part of the London Borough of Wandsworth in Greater London. The benefice of the remains a perpetual curacy whose patron is the Dean. It has a small chantry chapel removed from the east end of the south aisle, a charitable almshouse for 12 men and women, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, was erected by Sir Abraham Dawes, who provided it with an endowment.
Putney was birthplace of Thomas Cromwell, made Earl of Essex by Henry VIII and of Edward Gibbon, author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, died at a house on Putney Heath. At that time Putney took on Londons premier role in civil engineering, Putney had a second place of worship, for Independents and Roehampton was in the process of achieving separate parish status. The proprietors of the bridge distributed £31 per annum to watermen, and watermens widows and children, Putney in 1887 covered 9 square kilometres. Putney appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Putelei and it was noted that it did not fall into the category of local jurisdictions known as a manor, but obtained 20 shillings from the ferry or market toll at Putney belonging to the manor of Mortlake. One famous crossing at Putney was that of Cardinal Wolsey in 1529 upon his disgrace in falling out of favour with Henry VIII and on ceasing to be the holder of the Great Seal of England. As he was riding up Putney Hill he was overtaken by one of the royal chamberlains who presented him with a ring as a token of the continuance of his majestys favour.
The first permanent bridge between Fulham and Putney was completed in 1729, and was the bridge to be built across the Thames in London. The ferry boat was on the side and the waterman. Walpole vowed that a bridge would replace the ferry, the Prince of Wales apparently was often inconvenienced by the ferry when returning from hunting in Richmond park and asked Walpole to use his influence by supporting the bridge. The bridge was a structure and lasted for 150 years
Ordnance Survey National Grid
The Ordnance Survey National Grid reference system is a system of geographic grid references used in Great Britain, different from using Latitude and Longitude. It is often called British National Grid, the Ordnance Survey devised the national grid reference system, and it is heavily used in their survey data, and in maps based on those surveys. Grid references are commonly quoted in other publications and data sources. The Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system is used to provide references for worldwide locations. European-wide agencies use UTM when mapping locations, or may use the Military Grid Reference System system, the grid is based on the OSGB36 datum, and was introduced after the retriangulation of 1936–1962. It replaced the previously used Cassini Grid which, up to the end of World War Two, had issued only to the military. The Airy ellipsoid is a regional best fit for Britain, more modern mapping tends to use the GRS80 ellipsoid used by the GPS, the British maps adopt a Transverse Mercator projection with an origin at 49° N, 2° W.
Over the Airy ellipsoid a straight grid, the National Grid, is placed with a new false origin. This false origin is located south-west of the Isles of Scilly, the distortion created between the OS grid and the projection is countered by a scale factor in the longitude to create two lines of longitude with zero distortion rather than one. Grid north and true north are aligned on the 400 km easting of the grid which is 2° W. 2° 0′ 5″ W. OSGB36 was used by Admiralty nautical charts until 2000 after which WGS84 has been used, a geodetic transformation between OSGB36 and other terrestrial reference systems can become quite tedious if attempted manually. The most common transformation is called the Helmert datum transformation, which results in a typical 7 m error from true, the definitive transformation from ETRS89 that is published by the OSGB is called the National Grid Transformation OSTN02. This models the detailed distortions in the 1936–1962 retriangulation, and achieves backwards compatibility in grid coordinates to sub-metre accuracy, the difference between the coordinates on different datums varies from place to place.
The longitude and latitude positions on OSGB36 are the same as for WGS84 at a point in the Atlantic Ocean well to the west of Great Britain. In Cornwall, the WGS84 longitude lines are about 70 metres east of their OSGB36 equivalents, the smallest datum shift is on the west coast of Scotland and the greatest in Kent. But Great Britain has not shrunk by 100+ metres, a point near Lands End now computes to be 27.6 metres closer to a point near Duncansby Head than it did under OSGB36. For the first letter, the grid is divided into squares of size 500 km by 500 km, there are four of these which contain significant land area within Great Britain, S, T, N and H. The O square contains an area of North Yorkshire, almost all of which lies below mean high tide
William Ponsonby, 2nd Earl of Bessborough
William Ponsonby, 2nd Earl of Bessborough PC PC was a British politician and public servant. He was an Irish and English peer and member of the House of Lords and he was a Privy Counsellor, Chief Secretary for Ireland and Earl of Bessborough. In 1725 Ponsonby was returned to the Irish House of Commons for Newtownards and in 1727 for County Kilkenny, holding the seat until 1758, from 1741 to 1745, he served as Chief Secretary for Ireland under his father-in-law, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. As Viscount Duncannon, Ponsonby was first appointed a Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty on 27 June 1746, a position he held until 1756 and he represented the British constituencies of Derby from 1742—1754, Saltash from 1754–1756 and Harwick from 1756–1758. Upon the death of his father on 4 July 1758, Ponsonby succeeded him in the House of Lords under the title Baron Ponsonby of Sysonby on 23 November of that year. On 2 June 1759 Ponsonby left the Treasury and was appointed Postmaster General of Great Britain jointly with Robert Hampden-Trevor and he resigned the position when his brother-in-law, William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, was dismissed as Lord Chamberlain in October 1762.
He was reappointed to the position in July 1765 jointly with Thomas Robinson, 1st Baron Grantham, until he resigned in 1766, upon William Ponsonbys death on 11 March 1793 his son, Frederick Ponsonby, succeeded to his titles. William Ponsonby was the son of Brabazon Ponsonby, 1st Earl of Bessborough, and his wife Sarah Margetson, on 5 July 1739 William married Lady Caroline Cavendish, eldest daughter of William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire, who died in 1760 aged 40
Richmond Park
Richmond Park, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, was created by Charles I in the 17th century as a deer park. The largest of Londons Royal Parks, it is of national and international importance for wildlife conservation and its landscapes have inspired many famous artists and it has been a location for several films and TV series. Richmond Park includes many buildings of architectural or historic interest, the Grade I-listed White Lodge was formerly a royal residence and is now home to the Royal Ballet School. Historically the preserve of the monarch, the park is now open for all to use and includes a course and other facilities for sport. It played an important role in world wars and in the 1948 and 2012 Olympics. Richmond Park is the largest of Londons Royal Parks and it is the second-largest park in London and is Britains second-largest urban walled park after Sutton Park, Birmingham. Measuring 3.69 square miles, it is comparable in size to Pariss Bois de Vincennes and it is almost half the size of Casa de Campo and around three times the size of Central Park in New York.
Of national and international importance for conservation, most of Richmond Park is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The largest Site of Special Scientific Interest in London, it was designated as an SSSI in 1992, excluding the area of the course, Pembroke Lodge Gardens. In its citation, Natural England said, Richmond Park has been managed as a deer park since the seventeenth century. In particular, Richmond Park is of importance for its diverse deadwood beetle fauna associated with the ancient trees found throughout the parkland, in addition the park supports the most extensive area of dry acid grassland in Greater London. The park was designated as an SAC in April 2005 on account of its having a number of ancient trees with decaying timber. A public open space since the mid C19, Richmond Park is located in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. It is close to Richmond, Kingston upon Thames, Roehampton, day-to-day management of the Royal Parks has been delegated to The Royal Parks, an executive agency of the Department for Culture and Sport.
The Royal Parks Board sets the direction for the agency. Appointments to the Board are made by the Mayor of London, the Friends of Richmond Park and the Friends of Bushy Park co-chair the Richmond and Bushy Parks Forum, comprising 38 local groups of local stakeholder organisations. Although welcoming the principles of the new arrangements, the forum. Richmond Park is enclosed by a wall with several gates
Roehampton
