London Borough of Hillingdon's newest Urban Country Park opened on Sat 7th September 2002 by the unveiling of the Skylark Monument, the Radar Tower and the Bridle Path. It combines many of the facilities of an urban park with a 60-acre expanse of meadowland fringed by trees and the canal.
Historical Overview
Lake Farm was created under an Act of Parliament 1809 'Enclosure Act'.
By 1816 the medieval agrarian system of common land with large open fields divided into differently owned tenant strips had made way for consolidated farm holdings.
Most of the northern parts of Dawley field , north of the Grand Junction Canal of 1794, together with much of the Botwel1 Common were awarded to John Baptist Shackle. The Shackles became a notable land-owning Hayes family, who also extracted gravel and brick earth from lake Farm.
- A dock was constructed north from the canal in the early part of the 19th Century.
- The Country Mansion once stood on the eastern side of Botwell Lane north of the lake, now marked by the undulating open ground by Forris Avenue.
- The Gramophone Company (1897) built a record factory In Hayes 1907 and by the 1920's had acquired Lake Farm for possible industrial expansion.
- By the Second World War E.M.I. had embarked upon Radar research and Lake Farm was used for equipment Field Research up to the early 1980's.
- A proposal to excavate gravel in 1991, opposed by local residents, prompted the council to purchase Lake Farm as a public open space.
