tennis courts and residential gardens occupied the area at the southern end of the reserve. From 1894 to 1899, writer Edith Nesbit lived in a large house named Three Gables on Baring Road, her garden backed up to the railway line and overlapped with what is now the southern part of the nature reserve. It is suggested the location inspired her children's book The Railway Children which was published in 1906, and the footpath on the southern side of the reserve was named Railway Children Walk in her memory. During the mid-twentieth century, up to the 1980s, much of the land was used as allotments and was of particular importance during the Dig For Victory campaign during World War II, when there was also an anti-aircraft battery located on the site. Although the site had been used informally by local residents for recreation for many years it officially became a nature reserve, in 1984, when the Lewisham London Borough Council agreed to manage the area under licence from British Rail, then in 1987 Lewisham Council acquired freehold of the land, following a public enquiry the previous year in which planning permission for housing on land just to the north was granted. An organisation named Friends of Grove Park Nature Reserve was set up, and since 2007, the National Lottery Community Fund awarded the organisation over £30,000, which has paid for new signs, seats, improvements to the entrance and the path, installing bat boxes and a sculpture and several open day activities. The Nature Reserve has won the Green Flag Award several times since 2009. In 2020 Grove Park Nature Reserve and Railway Children Walk were temporarily closed so UK Power Networks could complete works, to maintain the electricity supply network. Although there were delays caused by ground conditions, and the COVID-19 pandemic, the site was opened again in November 2020 after the grassland and pathway was returned to its previous state. In September 2020, it was reported that one of the entry points to Railway Children Walk and Grove Park Nature Reserve was unlawfully closed and locked, and some of the trees had been deliberately damaged. Permission to remove some of the trees and build a trailer park on the land had been applied for but was refused in August 2020, as Lewisham Council had issue with the proposal to erect larger buildings on the land and the plans to