London Out of Sight: Exploring the City's Secret Green Spaces

London Out of Sight is an essential handbook for the London resident and visitor seeking solace from the city's bustling, hectic character. With a focus on green and outdoor spaces, the book explores the capital's charming hidden squares, elegant graveyards, lush community and public gardens and parks, sleepy city squares, sprawling woods, working city farms, and idiosyncratic and hidden points of interest. London does not necessarily immediately spring to mind as a city teeming with quiet and beautiful green areas, but the bustling sprawl belies a wealth of fascinating and meditative spaces. London Out of Sight looks to highlight a number of these, with profiles comprising practical information, historical and cultural contexts and beautiful original photography. Divided by orientation, the book features such diverse inclusions as: Richmond Park in west London (particularly its wildlife and facets such as King Henry's Mound, the Ian Dury bench and its ancient walls); Hackney, Spitalfields and Freightliners City Farms; Gunnersbury Nature Triangle; the public and historic gardens at Chiswick House (the birthplace of the English Landscape movement, and with an observatory, Ionic temple, waterfalls, a Doric column and the Inigo Jones gateway); the Geffrye Museum Gardens in Shoreditch; the community Phoenix Garden in Charing Cross; Elephant and Castle Urban Forest; the 'Magnificent Seven' city cemeteries; quiet city escapes such as St Dunstan-in-the-East; and fascinating sculpture, follies, abandoned tunnels and other idiosyncrasies such as the crumbling abbey and Paxton Tunnel in Sydenham and Dulwich Woods, the Ruined Arch in Kew, and the Crystal Palace dinosaurs. London Out of Sight is an aesthetically wonderful, informative and indispensable guide to anyone seeking out London's quiet, green and hidden nooks and corners.