M25 Bulls Cross

Post to the west Whitewebbs Lane
Post to the south Maiden's Bridge
Post to the north Theobalds


Bull’s Cross
The road is a continuation of Green Lanes and thus a drove road into London. Suddenly becomes straight because this is part of the line of Roman Ermine Street which ran from London to York.  This was a small hamlet with a group of old cottages and some ‘big’ houses. The name may come from a family who lived there in the 13th. It was one called ‘Bedalles Cross’.
Manor House. This stood on the junction with White Webbs Road and was the home of Sir John French
The Orchard. This was the Spotted Cow Pub. It was first noted in 1838 and last used as a pub in 1923.
Pied Bull.  This would have stood in the centre of the 17th village. It is a small rendered house and a 17th building when it appears to have been kennels. It is first noted as a pub in 1716. It was also the childhood home of garden writer Frances Perry,
Bulls Cross Cottage. Home of garden writer and broadcaster Frances Perry who was also involved in Capel College and Myddelton House gardens.
Bowling Green House This was a 16th red-brick building associated with the bowling alley belonging to Elsyng Palace. In 1724 it was purchased by Michael Garnault and in 1809 it passed to his sister Anne Garnault who had married Henry Carrington Bowles in 1799.
Myddleton House. This is used as the Lee Valley Regional Park Headquarters. It was built for H. C. Bowles who was Treasurer of the New River Company, on the site of Bowling Green House. Bowles demolished the old house and the present villa was built by George Ferry and John Wallen for him in 1818. It then remained in the Bowles family. In 1954 the property were transferred to the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine and to the University of London's School of Pharmacy. In 1968 it was sold to the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority but The School of Pharmacy Department retained the kitchen gardens. There is a conservatory in the south front which contains two early 18th lead ostriches.
Myddleton House Grounds.  The gardens are on sloping ground falling from north to south and there are views from the higher ground, southwards over to Forty Hall. The New River originally ran alongside but was diverted 1859 leaving a stretch here as ornamental water which was filled in 1968 and is now the site of a curving lawn. .  Botanist Gussie Bowles, created a garden here from 1900, which partly survives. After his death, the gardens fell into disrepair and some plants were lost. Since 1984 the Lee Valley Park has restored it. There is: an alpine meadow and rock garden; a 'lunatic asylum' of plants that grow irrationally such as corkscrew willow and green roses; 'Tom Tiddler's Ground' planted with golden, variegated and coloured-leaved plants; The National Collection of irises with more than three hundred varieties; a rose garden with many of Bowles' original favourites with a summerhouse with an adjoining wall called the 'Irishman's Shirt' and a diamond-shaped brick pier from Gough Park, Enfield; a  terraced lake with water lilies, gunnera and reeds and grasses; a is a new conservatory with tropical. Mediterranean and desert plants plus an exhibition on Bowles' achievements; .on the lawn a petrified tree in a bed of stones and a well bore from the White Webbs New River Pumping Station; the Wild Garden, and the Fern Garden;. The Pergola Garden with a pergola constructed from unsawn oak; the Tulip Terrace, with beds edged in box; an iron bridge, dated 1832 which is planted with a wisteria
Sports Ground with a sports pavilion from the 1960s. In the 18th these were Reynold's Field and Kenney Land and were part of Bull's Cross Farm.
Kitchen garden. This is now a Pharmacognosy Garden for studying drugs of plant origin. The 19th glasshouses were demolished in the 1960s.
Enfield Market Cross. This is now a feature of the Myddleton House gardens and was installed here by Bowles. It previously stood in Enfield Market Place where it has been since 1826.
Stable block. This is early 19th with wings and a clock turret.
Museum – this is an early 19th building which housed part of Bowles' collection of artifacts.
Walls. The garden boundaries are marked by a mixture of brick walls and fences. The red-brick west wall which runs from the entrance is late 18th.
Myddeton Farm. The farm was run as a market garden in the early 20th. This is a training ground for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club it has facilities for the first team squad and youth academy. There is a two storey main building, an artificial pitch under cover and 15 grass pitches outdoors.  Because it is on a green belt site, the club has to plant 150 trees and thousands of new plants, hedges and flowers, as well as creating a wetland habitat zone.
Garnault. Italianate house built around 1860. It has an old loop of the New River running through its grounds

Bullsmoor Lane
The name is thought to mean 'marshy ground associated with a family called Bell or Bull and is clearly connected to Bull’s Cross. It was marshy moorland until the railway crossed it in the 1890s and it was then joined by the upgraded A10.
Capel Manor Primary School. The school opened in 1954 with work done to lay out playing fields in 1959.
172 Bulldog. This pub was built in the late 1940s as part of the Elysing Estate. It is on the site of an entrance to a former Prisoner of War camp and was a Charringtons house. At the rear was a dance hall where there were dances and gigs. It was eventually renamed 'The Gardeners Arms' but has since become a burger bar.
Prisoner of war camp. This had been a camp used for an AA battery. It had a wooden fence surrounding a parade ground, with white washed kerb stones and a flag pole in the middle. T later became a prisoner of war camp, housing Italians who worked in the local nurseries. Home Guard
Capel Manor. The estate dates back to the 13th with an original manor house which was probably on the site of Capel Manor Primary School.  This became Crown property in the 16th and then passed to successive owners. In 1745 Robert Jacomb demolished the old house and built Capel House which was demolished before 1800. A second house was built which is now called Capel Manor which remains as a red brick seven-bay 18th house. A timber porch with Corinthian columns is said to have come from Rotherhithe. In 1840 Capel Manor –became the home of the Warren family who refurbished the house – some rooms decorated with tea and coffee motifs to reflect their role as tea planters. Capel House had early electricity, gas and running water, a dairy by the stable block and an ice house in the grounds of which there are some remains.  Lt Col Sydney Medcalf lived here until 1958 who established a stud here and it became a National Centre for Clydesdale horse breeding Metcalf left the house to the Incorporated Society of Accountants to use as a college. In 1966 they rented it to Enfield College of Technology and from 1968 the grounds were leased to the Capel Manor Institute of Horticulture. It is now a specialist centre for land-based studies with a working estate where students and staff can get experience of horticulture, arboriculture, garden design, floristry, animal care, saddlery and environmental conservation.
Capel Manor Gardens. These are 30 acres of historical and modern gardens and the original 17th garden has been extended by the College, with a series of demonstration gardens. Around the house are mature trees, cedar and other ornamental conifers, and yew hedges and a walled garden. There is a fragment of wall and ha-ha built for James I around Theobalds. The copper beeches are said to be the original ones brought to England. theme gardens created by the college trace the history of gardens and gardening. Among them is an Italianate maze, a 17th walled garden and Japanese garden, as well those created for the Chelsea Flower Show.  One area, for instance, shows many different types of clipped hedging, while another compares pruning methods, with the same plants grown in similar conditions but with different types and degrees of pruning. There is a national collection of achilleas and a low-allergen garden, with no wind-pollinated plants, a sensory garden and a Van Gogh garden, and many others.
Stables and coach house with clock tower and original fittings. There is a weather vane of a horse - Clydesdale ‘Craigie Warren’ which Col. Metcalf bred. .
New River, The channel of the river is crossed by a bridge in this road, The bridge, with an ornamental parapet, is in reinforced concrete, dates from 1927 and has a substructure designed by the Metropolitan Water Board.


Gilmour Close
This is another section of Ermine Street as a pedestrian path on a route which eventually led to Theobalds House.
Walls – 18th listed red brick walls to Capel House.
Bulls Cross Lodge. 19th lodge in picturesque style.


Great Cambridge Road
This is part of the A10, a dual carriageway, with 1930s and 1940s houses either side, set back a bit on separate local roads behind greens in some cases and many built by the local authority, This was begun as a bypass arterial road in the 1920s but this section was held up by the Second World War.
Junction – it is crossed by Bullsmoor Lane as a major junction.


Kempe Road
Bullsmoor Library. A community lending library with a collection of fiction and non-fiction books for children, teenagers and adults, DVDs and audio books for borrowing as well as free computer use.
Kempe Hall Community Centre


Lovell Road
Honilands Primary School.  The school was built in the early 1950s for children from the Elysinge estate.


M25
New River Aqueduct.  This is an enclosed concrete structure constructed by Greater London Council acting as agents for the Department of Transport. It is a post-tensioned concrete structure, cast in situ. It carries the river in two rectangular boxes, 90m long, over the carriageways that run east-west. Boxes are lined with epoxy panels to prevent contamination of the water. The top slab of the aqueduct boxes is used as an access road for maintenance by Thames Water and has metal railings at its edges.


New River
The old course of the New River ran west from and is on this square slightly south of the junction with Turkey Street running along the southern edge of the grounds of Myddleton House.,


Turkey Street
New River – Turkey Street crosses the New River on a narrow humped iron bridge. A plaque on it reads “'Priestfields Ironworks 1827. This is now closed to through traffic
147 Loyala Sports Ground. This was bought by the Old Ignations Association in 1999 and they have built an ambitious new club house.  It was previously the sports ground for Belling and Lee whose factory was south of here in Great Cambridge Road.
Radio Marathon. This is a sports centre for people with learning disabilities.


Whitewebbs Lane
Clydesdale Stud. This was built on the site of the original manor house and was set up by Col Metcalf.
Capel Manor Cattery. In the buildings of the Clydesdale Stud.

Sources
Aldous. Village London
British History Online. Enfield. Web site
British Listed Buildings. Web site
Capel Manor. Web site
Cinema Theatres Association. Newsletter
Dalling. The Enfield Book
Diamond Geezer. Web site
Edmonton Hundred Historical Society. Occasional papers
Essex Lopresti.  The New River
Historic England. Web site.
London Borough of Enfield. Web site
London Gardens Online. Web site
Lost Pubs. Web site
Meulenkamp and Wheatley. Follies
Middlesex County Council. History of Middlesex
Myddleton House leaflet
Pam. A Parish Near London.
Pam. Victorian Suburb
Pevsner and Cherry. London North 
Sellick. Enfield
Sellick. Enfield Through Time
Stevenson, Middlesex
Thames Basin Archaeology of Industry Group, Report
Walford. Village London 
WW2 People’s War. Web site.