Sport, Parks and Open Spaces
Although close to the extremities of Greater London, Brentwood is surrounded by open countryside and woodland. This has been cited as showing the success of the Metropolitan Green Belt in halting the outward spread of London's built-up area.
Brentwood has a number of public open spaces including King George V Playing Field, Shenfield Common, and two country parks at South Weald and Thorndon. Weald Country Park was first chosen to hold the 2012 Olympics mountain biking but was declared to be "too easy" a course. Brentwood does however host a number of Criterium Cycle Races that attract many of Britain's greatest cyclists.
The town has two large sports centres providing access to a range of sports including badminton, squash, swimming, and football. There are a number of golf courses, including a 70-par municipal course very close to the town centre at Hartswood as well as others in the surrounding countryside. A number of cricket clubs exist in and around the town although the County Ground, closest to the town centre, no longer hosts Essex matches. Brentwood is also home to Non-League football club Brentwood Town F.C. and basketball team London Leopards, who both play at the Brentwood Centre Arena. The town is also home to London junior league club Brentwood Elvers RLFC, the only rugby league club in west Essex. Brentwood Hockey Club is also based in the town at the Old County Ground and fielded 7 Mens and 5 Ladies league teams for the 2009-10 season.
Although no longer manufactured here, Brentwood became the centre of trampolining in the United Kingdom between 1965 and 1981 after George Nissen brought the new sport to the town in 1949 and eventually manufactured trampolines in the town, continuing to do so for many years after they ceased production in the USA for fear of litigation. Ted Blake, a long-term Brentwood resident, was managing director of Nissen UK from its inception until shortly before it closed and became a leading figure worldwide in the development of modern trampolining. Brentwood still has a thriving trampolining community but no longer a local factory.
The town also has a large volleyball club and the only handball club in Essex.
Read more about this topic: Brentwood, Essex
Famous quotes containing the words parks, open and/or spaces:
“Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.
Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant and which know me not, I am frightened and am astonished at being here rather than there. For there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)