Southchurch Hall Park, 2016

An oasis, that’s the obvious description, a medieval house and gardens surrounded by ponds. Now a museum, once a farm, has been a local library, ’round these parts it’s known as The Duck Park, distinguishes it from the nearby and much larger Southchurch Park. It stands on the side of a hill.

You hear two snippets recorded from near the front of the house facing south, with a lower, shallow pond to the right and a stream entering it from the left. The traffic noise is from Woodgrange Drive, directly ahead.

At 1m 50s the recording is from the west side of the house facing the York Road entrance with the noise of the water of a small upper pond (used to have black swans there years ago) falling into the biggest pond there, home to fish and abandoned terrapins, which eat the eggs of the ducks. I didn’t see any of them basking when I was there though, but they may have been gotten rid of.

Bird songs and duck calls, no idea what they are but I’m sure someone could identify them. Domestic gardens back onto the park along Woodgrange Drive, Victoria Road and half of Park Lane, so the song could be enjoyed by many of the neighbours.

Recorded 7.40-ish in the evening.

Image of duck pond by John Myers used under Creative Commons (Attribution-ShareAlike) licence. View the original here.