London Fields

A filthy hipster hell-hole. Haggerston or Victoria Parks are much nice.

People are too trendy to pick up their rubbish, and after a sunny day the park is strewn with discarded BBQs, bottle tops, fag butts and neon coloured lycra leggings!

Hundreds of years ago London Fields was on the edge of London, and was the site of plague pits: mass burials during the Black Death. Though there’s no visible sign of what lies underneath, this park still has the same type of peaceful but mournful atmosphere found in cemeteries, with its London plane trees and resident crows. At the South end a dried up concrete pond is presided over by some intriguing mosaic pearly king and queen sculptures. In the North things are a little more cared for, with a well-used children’s play area, a popular pub and the newly re-opened lido: a 50m open air swimming pool.

On sunny days the park transforms as the locals come out in force and it becomes crowded and noisy as a seal colony. At other times you’ll find a school sports day, or maybe some small event like a recycling fair. But mostly it’s the place people pass through on the way to or from work or the shop. If you run you could find worse: once round, cutting the corners a bit, makes roughly a mile, largely on grass. It’s also lacking in toilets, so unless you are visiting the lido or pub, you may not wish to linger too long.

London Fields in the summertime is one of my favourite places to hang out. From 10am to 10pm the park slowly fills up and if you get there early it's great fun to people watch everyone from avid early morning dog walkers to people looking for somewhere to lie down after a heavy night (I tend to fall into the latter category...)

There are 3 main wide open areas where everyone congregates and it's a great place to go for a BBQ, to chill with your friends or even just to walk through on the off chance you'll see some people you know!

There are toilets in the centre of the fields but if, like me, you can't stand public toilets there are plenty of pubs dotted around the perimeters of the park who are usually pretty lax about the 'paying customers only' rule.

My first experience here was late March, one of the first sunny days of this spring. Sat there eating my pizza then all of a sudden found myself surrounded by hungry dogs trying to snatch my pizza. Then came along a drunk man accusing me of being a yank, he set off to chase me across the field for about 15 minutes, until he was distracted by another “yank”? Later, in the beginning of this month recognised him again, this time at Hoxton square- didn’t chase me--but spoke of killing people with his mind.

Took me nearly two months until i went back to the fields- and the second time, and third and fourth, and many more to come---the experience was beautiful, happy, drunk, funny, sunny, and everything else associated with the word “fun”

I have really had trouble thinking of new velues that I’ve been to for these past sunny summer weekends. I blame this stretch of grass entirely. I’ve lost whole days here, hopping from one sunkissed, beer-addled cirle of friends to another, tripping over bikes, pets and abandoned barbeque efforts as I continue my journey. There are as number of actually very good amenities in this park (a play area, a table tennis court, a lido) that most people blissfully ignore,preferring instead to turn themselves lobster red, while eating char-grilled sausages with their pals. And who could blame them.

There’s a near Zen-like social equilibrium about the experience of sitting in this park on a summer’s day, everyone seems to have the same blissed out look on their faces, even the annoying buggers that you’d happily slap if you met them in a club are more relaxed, playful, gleefully pissed. It’s such a great reminder that in a world of obsessive busy-ness, you can have all the fun in the world by playing cricket with a plastic ball, emptying wine glasses by the nanosecond and being shit at frisbee. Life is good.

London Fields is a brilliant little park in the Shoreditch/Hackney area. It’s populated by hippies, bohemians, bike fanatics (those cliquey delivery guys) and vagabonds. It is truly unique and there are fixed concrete ping-pong tables if you want to bring your bat and ball. There are always interesting clothes and tattoos on display as well as buskers to add a melody to your afternoon.

Lovely community feel park, badly lit for the night though!

What an amazing place to chill out and take it all in.

Gets extremely busy in the summer, especially if there is a game of cricket on. BBQ, picnics and generally good drinking times to be had here.

The pub gets pretty busy but you can get your drinks in plastic glasses.

A must on a sunny afternoon!

It’s the hipster park to end all hipster parks. London scene kids come from all over the East end to drink beer, see, and be seen. On Saturday, the adjacent Broadway Market offers a selection of hot food and baked goods to take into the park. Prime time is on warm Saturdays 12-5pm. But in the peak of summer, it stays crowded until as late as 8pm. Definitely a place to check out. And keep an eye out for a man selling home made ice cream, prepared right in front of you.

A great green space in the middle of hectic East London.
London Fields is a great place to hang out with friends, have your lunch on a Saturday afternoon, walk your dog or simply to take a book.
It has the Lido, a variety of different courts (basketball / football) and kids running around...
Its quite popular on Saturday's because of Broadway Market...
Recommended pubs around the area are the Pub On The Park and the Cat & Mutton.