Lakeside Nature Reserve

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Lakeside Nature Reserve.JPG

Lakeside Nature Reserve is a small Site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation in Church End, Finchley in the London Borough of Barnet. Its main feature is a pond which was constructed in the late 1890s by Peter Edmund Kay as a reservoir to store rainwater for commercial greenhouses in the Claigmar Vineyard, a large market garden in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. [1] [2] [3] The pond has a fountain and plants fringing the shore include water mint, gypsywort and purple-loosestrife. Waterfowl nest on a small island, and dragonflies are present in the summer. [4]

There is no public access but it can be viewed from a footpath off Strathmore Gardens.

References

  1. Miles, Dudley (February 2024). "Claigmar Vineyard in Finchley: Commercial Grape Growing in the Ninetheenth and early Twentieth Centuries". The Local Historian: 34, 36.
  2. Financial Times, 29 January 1904, p. 8
  3. Ordnance Survey 26 inches to a mile Mid-Finchley Map, 1911
  4. Hewlett, Jan; et al. (1997). Nature Conservation in Barnet. London Ecology Unit. p. 94. ISBN   1-871045-27-4.

51°35′58″N0°11′06″W / 51.5994°N 0.1850°W / 51.5994; -0.1850