Richmond Park

With an area of some 660 ha (2,300 acres), Richmond Park is the largest city park in Britain and the one with the oldest oaks. The old town of Richmond, in the area of which it lies, situated on the southwestern outskirts of London on the south bank of the Thames, is one of the 32 London boroughs and one of the city's most favored residential suburbs. The park was enclosed by Charles I in 1637 as a deer park, and numbers of red and fallow deer still roam at large in its well-wooded expanses, while the Pen Ponds, excavated in the 18th century, are the haunt of waterfowl of all kinds. On the east side of the park, facing Roehampton, are two public golf courses, and on the west side are attractive footpaths over Ham and Petersham commons. Among the most attractive features of the park are the Isabella Plantation, a woodland garden laid out in 1831, and the Prince Charles Spinney, in which some 5,300 trees (oak, beech, chestnut, ash and maple) were planted in 1949. The park has 10 gates, and contains a number of old mansions.