I live on Pemberton Road and like scores if not hundreds of people who live on the ladder I regularly walk through the passages to get to Finsbury Park. When I hit Umfreville Road the passage stops and I then have to go down to Green Lanes. After going under the railway bridge typically I would go straight back up Lothair Road and cut across to the park, going in the entrance on Endymion Road by the New River.
Why tell us all how you walk to the park you might well ask? Well, in the middle of the route, when you hit Umfreville Road and the passage ends, there is the lovely Railway Fields nature reserve straight in front of you, but with no way in. There is only one way in and out (on Green Lanes), so it's no use as part of a walk from one place to another and hence massively underused. However, there is a disused/possible entrance on Umfreville Road directly opposite the end of the passage, by the old tower in the fields. A project to turn this into an entrance would cost the council peanuts - a nice wrought iron gate to match the one on Green Lanes, a bit of gardening to clear out the passage from Umfreville to the tower and that's about it!
There are really good reasons for doing this: getting better use out of Railway Fields and improving the walk down to Green Lanes for the residents, which could all be done for almost no cost. The only down side I can think of is that the wardens would then have to lock up two gates at the end of the day instead of one - big deal! I asked a warden in Railway Fields about this on Friday and she said something like "oh it would be a bit of a pain to lock up the other gate and we'd have to get more keys cut"! She also said it was always a worry to make sure everyone left at the end of the day before locking it. This would be the same worry if there was one gate or two anyway. Pretty hopeless reasons not to go ahead with a project that would have a very high benifit to cost ratio.
Any thoughts anyone? I'd love to get a head of steam on this and get a proposal to the Council, but it's not something I have any experience in doing. Anyone else interested in this?
Hugo.
P.S. In a more ambitious plan, they would also open the river path between Umfreville and Endymion Roads and build a foot bridge over the railway tracks either on the river path or from within the Railway Fields across to the river path so you could then walk straight over to the park. This quite simple measure would allow you to walk right through to the Endymion road entrance to Finsbury Park from either Hornsey station (along the New River path to Wightman/Hewitt and then down Hewitt, through the passages and then over the bridge and along the last stretch of the new river) or from Turnpike lane, right through the passages and finishing in the same way. However, those plans are much more adventurous and I don't want any grander designs to get in the way of the simple and really cheap plan of simply putting in another gate!
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