Hampstead Heath has all sorts of good associations - literary, intellectual, romantic. But, as anyone who knows Wimbledon Common well will tell you, it is far superior. Tactfully tended by the Rangers, it maintains areas a great variety, of view, of elevation and of wildlife. It has a long history, some of which is implied in this poem, and its most obvious feature is the windmill.

I have loved Wimbledon Common for over fifty years, and I can still get lost. On one occasion we planned to move to Ealing, but it was the Common which drew us back. We have never regretted it.

There are dangers of course - and always have been, simply because it is so wild. And be ready to duck the golf balls!

WIMBLEDON COMMON



The old tree with its warm and crusty bark,
Grasping the bank with random rutted claw,
To hold fast ground against translucent ghosts
Who in this place since ancient times endure;

The shaggy man who drops his scraping flint
When loping homewards to his earthwork sett;
The Roman pausing to unloose his mail
And swat a midge that puddles in his sweat;
The men who come in carriages at dawn
Discharging honour through a quaking gun,
Whose ghosts still walk among the older ghosts
When Kent and Wessex fought at Wibbandun.

In winter silver birch twigs scribe the sky
With hair-thin strokes of oriental line,
The pools grow heavy with their curding ice
And spiders rig the boughs with crystal twine.
This is a potent and a private place
Where man may walk with ghosts and be alone,
Explore the inland of his secret self -
Or kick a rotting branch or idle stone.

In summer ragged canopies of leaves
Leak light that scatters ground with golden tears
Which travel on the back of giggling streams
To quiet quenching in the sunken meres.
And by the windmill and refreshment bar
The children suck at straws and candy floss -
A generation of forthcoming ghosts
Who reckless play beneath the turning cross.

In truth some day these families who sport
With balls and sticks and kites with singing strings
Will join us all as ghosts around the tree
And dance again beneath white windmill wings.


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