Havering Country Park

The land was part of the estate of the medieval Royal Palace of Havering. William the Conqueror kept the manor of Havering for himself in 1066, and the council writes that 'Henry II's and Henry III's records frequently refer to building repairs and upkeep of the park, including the construction of a bath for the king in 1215'. A survey of the King's property in 1650 described the palace as 'a confused heap of ruinous decayed buildings whose materials of lead, glass, brick, tile, timber and stone [were] valued at £480', and by 1816 there was no trace of where it had stood. The McIntosh family bought the manor from the Crown in 1828, built an Italianate house on the site of the palace, laid out a park of some 250 acres and planted the Wellingtonia avenue. After Charlotte McIntosh's death the mansion was demolished in 1925 and the estate sold in one-acre plots at about £30 each — the Plotlands along Wellingtonia Avenue and Pinewood Road, popular from the 1920s to the 1940s, of which two bungalows survive, one as the park office. A compulsory purchase order cleared the Plotlands from 1970, the country park opened in 1976 and Havering Council acquired it from the Greater London Council in 1986. A cache of Roman coins found in the park suggests a Roman villa, and the council notes that the straight line of Clockhouse Lane may follow a Roman road.