The Middlesex County Council acquired 192 acres of land in the 1930s to plant trees and create a landscape to the existing hedges. The amount of public open space has since diminished, partly due to the building of Northwick Park Hospital, a major NHS hospital.[2] Later in 2006, a major privately owned golf course called Playgolf Northwick Park was opened,[3] which has been voted number one 9-hole golf course in the UK in 2009 by National Golfers Magazine. Until World War II, there was a previous golf course there at the land now covered by the Harrow campus of the University of Westminster.[4]