Intro – Noble Trees Blues

Noble Trees Blues is a record of human resilience and desire; a document of Gladstone Park with its “noble trees” and the local people who took refuge in its space for their daily exercise during lockdown.

As the lockdown measures were announced in the UK on 23 March 2020, I started taking daily walks in my local park, Gladstone Park. With a camera in hand, I was attracted (while observing social distance) to the poetry between the landscape and the people: running; walking; playing sports; or resting briefly.

Gladstone Park, famous for Dollis Hill House, is a place of great cultural importance, visited by William Ewart Gladstone (four-time prime minister of Great Britain (1868-74, 1880-85, 1886, 1892-94) and the American writer Mark Twain, who visited the house with his family in the summer of 1900, and wrote “never seen such a place … with its noble trees and stretch of country, and everything that went to make life delightful, and all within a biscuit’s throw of the metropolis of the world”.

This website is a daily log of select photographs from the project. I have ideas for other forms of dissemination in the new-normal life. If you have any ideas, comments or feedback to share, do get in touch – I love to hear from you.

More info on Gladstone Park and Dollis Hill House can be found on Brent Heritage website