Have aliens ever landed in Baxter Fields?

[Robin Orton]

The recent hot dry weather has revealed an extensive network of geometrical shapes formed by narrow lines of paler grass in Baxter Fields. They seem to me to be too complicated and regular to be caused by underground cables or pipelines, and the shapes (e.g. parallelograms) don't look right for either the foundations of old buildings or the for remains of white lines for sports pitches;in any case, they're on both the upper and the lower fields. Anyone got any ideas? I suspect they may be messages left by aliens from outer space (cf. corn circles, the Nazca lines in Peru), but I don't know of any UFO sightings in the area.

[chrisj1948]

I was chatting to an alien the other day and he assured me that they had never landed anywhere near Baxter Fields. I think some more mundane explanation is needed.

Regards
Chris

[Tim Lund]

Something like this?


In contrast, the land drains in Mayow Park are obvious


Satellite images taken from Google Earth, so probably copyright

[Robin Orton]

Thanks for the pictures, Tim. I think the Baxter Fields one just show the traces of recent grass-cutting. The Mayow Park one is more intriguing. It may be that alien interest in Sydenham is even more extensive than I feared.

By an odd coincidence, my wife also suggested the 'land drain' theory. Sounds pretty far-fetched to me.

[Tim Lund]

Robin:

There's no doubt that the pattern in Mayow Park is from land drains. It was laid out as a cricket pitch in the 19th century - and may soon become one in the 21st!

[Falkor]

Clue: when I was younger I once participated in an egg & spoon race as part of school sports day held each year at Baxter's Field!

[multisync]

The same is happening in Wells Park

[jmc]

I'll agree with the land drain theory. The lines in Mayor Park work with the natural slope of the site.
Noticed similar lines at sports field in Bromley recently.

It's a very good summer for spotting the location of old buildings. The site of the old Cricket Pavilion building in Crystal Palace Park is very obvious.

[JRobinson]

I walk across the middle of Mayow Park twice a day and was getting curious as to what the straight lines of dryer grass were, and it now seems obvious that they're land drains, but I'd have to question why it's necessary to put in drains across a flat field unless it's normally very wet ground, but we're on a hill, so the water table can't be that high.