Lakeside Nature Reserve

Lakeside Nature Reserve is a small Site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation in Church End, Finchley in the London Borough of Barnet. Its main feature is a pond which was constructed in the late 1890s by Peter Edmund Kay as a reservoir to store rainwater for commercial greenhouses in the Claigmar Vineyard, a large market garden in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.^[1] The pond has a fountain and plants fringing the shore include water mint, gypsywort and purple-loosestrife. Waterfowl nest on a small island and there are dragonflies in summer.^[2]

There is no public access but it can be viewed from a footpath off Strathmore Gardens.

References

^ Financial Times, 29 January 1904, p. 8; Ordnance Survey 26 inches to a mile Mid-Finchley Map, 1911
^ Hewlett, Jan; et al. (1997). Nature Conservation in Barnet. London Ecology Unit. p. 94. ISBN 1-871045-27-4.