Milham Ford Nature Park

Lovely green with a play area and wildlife. Used to be the sports grounds of a girls school but is now a nature reserve.

Nice park with a little pond and a play area. Popular with locals. Dogs allowed

A peaceful little park for adults and a fun park for kiddo .

Very good local small park for walking dogs, nice kids play ground, lovely nature ponds for kids to mess about too.

A relaxed park with lots if green space surrounding it. It has two slides, swings, climbing frame, roundabout, wooden balancing equipment, rockers and good for young or old. Also there are ponds with frogs to discover. All in easy reach if residential areas and on the main road/bus route into Oxford.

Small park with a walk between ponds and a playground. Ducks and other water birds abound. Often used as a wide open dog park so be prepared for lots of 4 legged friends.

Milham Ford Nature park can be found at the intersection between Marston Road and Jack Straw’s Lane. According to Oxford city council’s website, the park covers 3.8ha - which is quite substantial in comparison to other city council reserves/parks such as Peasmore Piece Nature Park, (1.2ha); Court Place Farm Nature Park, (1.9ha); Magdalen Quarry Local Nature Reserve, (0.4ha); Cowley Marsh Nature Reserve/Park, (0.8ha).

Milham Ford Nature park (which refers to itself as Milham Ford Ecology Park) is managed by Friends of Milham Ford Nature park.

There is a row of trees forming an avenue along the southern section of the western side of the park. There’s also a biggish pond in the south western corner of the park but, the rest, is almost wholly grasslands. It also has a formal play area in the middle of the park.

There are not that many trees in this reserve. There are some magnificent trees in Headington Hill gardens just up the road from Milham Ford, and there are also some pretty magnificent ones in the area of Harberton Mead beyond the park (Haberton Mead forms the southern boundary of the park but continues up to Jack Straw’s Lane). But, disappointingly, there are none in the park itself.

Milham Ford used to be a girls school. The main school building is an impressive structure, a local landmark, which is still as imposing as ever. (Apologies but I don’t know the school in much detail). I vaguely remember that the area in front of the school building was a huge lawn - sometimes used as a playing field.

I suspect that this lawn is the heritage of the current Ecology park. I hope that over time it will evolve into something more exciting.

Oxford city council’s website ‘Countryside and Nature Reserves’ has a page devoted to Milham Ford Nature park but visitors who click on the link ‘Site Boundaries Map’ will find only an advertisement.

Pretty nice little park, but could be improved... the play area for children is really good, but the rest seems a little unkempt (it could do with some looking after).