The Old Man of Sunny Field

The Old Man of Sunny Field, a photo by Odin5491 on Flickr.

This stone face adorns the left gatepost of a large stone-and-iron gate embossed "Sunny Field," at the junction of West Heath Road and Platt's Lane. There is no field here now; the gate is backed by the back fence of someone's back garden. It appears there once was open land here called Sunnyfield: it is referenced in this oral memoir of the late 19th Century from the Child's Hill Baptist Church, and in this 1902 Report of the Hampstead Scientific Society. How long the Old Man has been here I do not know, nor how long he will gaze forlornly across the road toward the West Heath. He is another of those frozen moments of time that make life here so interesting.