Viewpoints from your doorstep: 8. Broadmoor Farm Meadows

Broadmoor Farm Meadows is situated in a pleasant valley with a babbling brook. This is a view across the meadows from one side of the valley to the far side. Click on the image for the full size version.

To the distant left of this viewpoint stands Broadmoor Hospital, built in the 1860s. The Victorians described it as ‘the country’s first asylum for the criminally insane’. It is Grade II-listed. © The Francis Frith Collection

A bench in the shade of the trees at the top of this woody knoll at Broadmoor Farm Meadows is an ideal spot to cool off on a hot summer’s day.

In the canyons of my mind I hear a voice. It echoes down the centuries from long forgotten mystic times of the broadsword and battle joined for the capture of a crown. The voice tells me that the Broadmoor knoll is a tumulus. See how strongly it resembles the Bronze Age tumulus on Hampstead Heath – reputed to be the burial place of Queen Boadicea? A Scheduled Ancient Monument. Am I deluding myself? Should I listen to the voice telling me that Broadmoor is the burial place of a long-forgotten monarch of this realm – possibly the missing link in our royal ancestry?!

In spring and summer the meadows surrounding our mysterious mound are aflame with colourful wildflowers such as ragwort…

…and oxeye daisy.

It’s a very good place for budding botanists to practice identifying umbellifer flowers. An easy one to identify is wild carrot: simply look for the tiny red dot in the middle of the umbel!

Growing along the fence-line of Broadmoor Farm Meadows is the delicately attractive, but often overlooked, umbellifer: upright hedge parsley.