- published: 15 Apr 2016
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Coordinates: 51°34′16″N 0°06′03″W / 51.5712°N 0.1009°W / 51.5712; -0.1009
Finsbury Park is a 46 hectare (115 acre) public park in the London Borough of Haringey. Officially part of the London area of Harringay, it is also adjacent to Stroud Green, the Finsbury Park district and Manor House. It was one of the first of the great London parks laid out in the Victorian era.
The park provides a large green space in central north London. It has a mix of open ground, formal gardens, avenues of mature trees and an arboretum area with a mix of more unusual trees. There is also a lake, a children's play areas, a cafe and an art exhibition space.
The Parkland Walk, a linear park, starts here, and provides a pleasant, traffic free, pedestrian and cycle route with much of the feel of a country walk, that links the park with Crouch Hill Park, Crouch End, and Highgate tube station.
Sports facilities in the park include football pitches, a bowling green, an athletics stadium, and tennis and basketball courts. Unusually for London, the park hosts two facilities for "American" sports: an American football field, home to the 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011 national champions London Blitz, and diamonds for softball and baseball, home to the 2007 and 2008 national champions the London Mets.
Coordinates: 51°31′34″N 0°06′12″W / 51.52603°N 0.10347°W / 51.52603; -0.10347
Finsbury is a district of central London, England. It lies immediately north of the City of London and Clerkenwell, west of Shoreditch, and south of Islington and City Road. It is in the south of the London Borough of Islington. The Finsbury Estate is in the western part of the district. The eastern part of the district is now sometimes known as St Luke's.
The name is first recorded as Vinisbir (1231) and means "manor of a man called Finn."
In the Middle Ages Finsbury was part of the great fen which lay outside the walls of the City of London. It gave its name to the Finsbury division of the Ossulstone hundred of Middlesex. In the early 17th century trees were planted and gravel walks made, and the area became a place for recreation. In 1641 the Honourable Artillery Company moved to Finsbury, where it still remains, and in 1665 the Bunhill Fields burial ground was opened in the area. Building on Finsbury Fields began in the late 17th century. The parish church of St Luke's was built in 1732-33, and at the end of the 18th century a residential suburb was built with its centre at Finsbury Square.