To continue this year's Christmas perambulations, three little donkeys.
Donkey Lane EN1
This is the best known of the three, or would be if only the football team at the far end had named their stadium after the road rather than the Queen. We're a long way north, almost as far as Turkey Street, just off the Great Cambridge Road in the London borough of Enfield. Locally the local area is known as Carterhatch, and might be known more widely had the potential Overground station not closed in 1919. If driving up the A10 look out for the Toby Carvery (previously the Halfway House pub) because Donkey Lane begins just round the back behind the bins.
The lane existed long before the main road triggered ribbon development, a brief track off a country lane between a field and an orchard. It's now somewhat longer and rather more hemmed in, but only in this initial stage before it opens out onto Enfield's massive recreational savannah. The first evidence that Donkey Lane is a leisure nexus is a banner promoting post-pandemic 6-a-side football and the second is a vast shed owned by David Lloyd. This is where folk who prefer 'health centres' to gyms come to exercise, perhaps tempted by the full complement of pools, spas, tennis courts and the obligatory crèche. But these people stay on their side of the railings because Donkey Lane is not for them.
At 1 Donkey Lane is a car repairs shack equipped with a 'low bake oven' for optimum spraying, and the remaining four addresses form a lacklustre terrace of staggered townhouses. In the battle of the front gardens Number 5's rosebush is still flowering pink, Number 7's white picket fence is criminally twee and Number 7a's owner merely runs a mower up and down occasionally. Walk a tad further to the point where the dogleg starts, by the alleyway to Cambridge Gardens, and you'll reach the entrance to an enormous yet featureless car park. It's of a size sufficient to cope with the simultaneous parking needs of all the players in 24 Sunday morning matches, which is indeed a possibility because it sits at the top of the utterly vast Enfield Playing Fields.
At 120 acres this is the largest recreational space in the borough, and almost entirely grass apart from an avenue of horse chestnuts down the centre. It'd be easy to trim off some of the edges for housing but thankfully that's never happened because it was designated a King George V Field in 1939 so is rightly protected. In December the main midweek use appears to be the mass exercising of dogs, so if you were turning up for a weekend fixture I'd not recommend throwing yourself to the ground for a tackle. Meanwhile for the chief attraction hereabouts continue to the end of Donkey Lane, taking care over the speed bumps, and blimey that is quite a building.
This is the Queen Elizabeth II Stadium, which opened in Coronation year but wasn't given its current name until the Silver Jubilee. For most of its life it's been an athletics stadium but in 2011 lost its two inside lanes so it could double up as a football ground. It peaked on the world stage when the ConIFA World Football Cup Final (for territories not affiliated to FIFA) was hosted here in 2018. Kárpátalja beat Northern Cyprus 3-2 on penalties. But most of the time it acts as the home ground for Enfield Town FC, highfliers of the Isthmian League Premier Division, whose supporters broke away from Enfield FC in 2001 in a fierce row over club debts. The Art Deco cafe on the first floor is now the clubhouse, and even on a non-matchday the upstairs crew looked pretty cosy with some kind of beverage in hand. For football on many levels, Donkey Lane is a kick ass location.
Donkey Lane UB7
To West Drayton, which thankfully I did in the summer because I have no burning desire to go back to this wilfully peripheral backwater. It's very close to the point where the M4 leaves London, but if driving can only be accessed by negotiating a rickety Bailey Bridge over the river Colne. Pedestrians get the additional option of a glum footpath beneath the access roads to junction 4A, but like I said maybe don't.
In pre-motorway times Donkey Lane was a brief track providing access to four fields alongside the Bigley Ditch, the minor stream marking the edge of Middlesex, but today it feeds a backwoods industrial estate where cars are fixed, timber is sawn and bifold doors are manufactured. Employees park their cars down the side of Donkey Lane that isn't a spiked metal fence, and it's no longer possible to walk down to the stream because the kennels are securely gated. Give this borderline Donkey a miss.
Donkey Alley SE22
London's briefest Donkey is a short tarmac ascent in East Dulwich. It climbs the northern flank of Dawsons Hill, a ridgebacked uplift with an iconic council estate perched on top, and earnt its name because it once led to a paddock on the upper slopes. Here a small number of donkeys remained until the early 1990s, by which time nine houses had been squeezed in lower down and that's where you'll find the new residents of Donkey Alley.
As a street it still feels more of a residential afterthought, indeed you have to go up on the pavement to drive a car in. Ignore the nicer houses on the left because they're a lingering aftertaste of Hillcourt Road. The true Donkey properties are brickier townhouses and are recent enough that the front gardens never had any grass, they've always been optimised for parking. Ignore the scrappy row of garages on the right because they're another outpost of Hillcourt Road. The decrepit lock-up on the left was scheduled to become the backyard of an even more squeezed house, but this recently failed to get planning permission on a financial technicality (which will have made adjacent complainants very happy).
Continue past the mighty lime tree, the turnaround space and two bollards and a view slowly becomes apparent. It is an excellent view, far better than you might've have guessed lower down, boasting an almost unbroken skyline from Elephant & Castle round to the City. Residents of Donkey Alley with upper windows pointing in the right direction must be visually blessed. The undeveloped end of the alley then curves uphill, just broad enough for former donkey owners to have driven a truck up, before opening out into the sloping delights of Dawson's Hill Park. The view here is considerably better, but if you want the optimum spot best bring decent footwear to climb the last claggy metres above the bench.
I could write a full post about the extraordinariness of the Dawson's Heights estate but I'll save that for another time because today is all about donkeys. And tomorrow it's Christmas geography.
