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The UK’s first Football Association exhibition match took place in Battersea Park 160 years ago, just six years after the park was declared open by Queen Victoria.
Tim Webb

Can you imagine just how exhilarating it must have been witnessing that first match, and how strange the setting for Victorian Londoners, many of whom would never have seen green space on this scale let alone its exotic succulents, water cascades, and lakes?

Parks such as this had until this point been private. The scale of the park, the variety of plants and trees and even its landscape were vastly different from the marshy Battersea Fields it was built on.

All the latest gear was thrown at Battersea to make it an unforgettable experience. It’s hard to compare it with a modern equivalent, but I guess the vision for the Millennium Dome when that was launched comes close.

Typically, even the service buildings the Victorians constructed were designed to look impressive. And so today we have the Pump House Gallery. Back then it housed an impressive steam engine to pump water around the park for its cascades. These were made to look like mountain waterfalls, spilling into the lakes. Scenery which would previously only have been seen in picture books for Londoners lucky and educated enough to have access to them.

It was all artifice. The rockeries, waterfalls and lakes were designed by prominent garden landscaper James Pulham II. It was his first composition in a public London park, mimicking his work using his proprietary cement known as Pulhamite in royal and private gardens. It was mixed using a secret concrete recipe to resemble real stone. Sadly, the recipe was never recorded and it tended to change a little as each new section was built.

While the park’s landscape remained largely unchanged bar a few new buildings and facilities, or different planting schemes, the cascade dried up when coal used to power the steam pumps was diverted for the war effort. Luckily the building built to house the engine and pumps was preserved [first as] a contemporary art gallery, now both a contemporary art gallery and venue licensed for weddings and parties.

Wandsworth Council is set to deliver a rebirth of the park, managed by Enable, the not-for-profit organisation which maintains Battersea Park on their behalf. The project aims to fully restore the Pulhamite Rockery and Cascades by repairing damage, reinstating power supplies, and reinvigorating heritage planting.

Round one development funding of £654,757 has been secured from The National Lottery Heritage Fund with a further round two grant of £2,714,457 likely to complete the restoration.

While Victorian London thrived on the industrial revolution, it’s the digital tech revolution which is now spearheading quiet change in our parks and gardens. Battersea’s new cascades will be powered by clean energy. The Pulhamite rock recipes are being digitally analysed to enable experts to recreate or perhaps improve the mix, and the whole project involves mapping the landscape, its plants, biodiversity, infrastructure and much more. Battersea will be more able to cope with the growing ravages of climate change.

Battersea isn’t the only green space to enjoy the benefits promised by cutting-edge tech. Next years’ Chelsea Flower Show, what we like to think of as the precursor to our London Open Gardens weekend, will feature an Al powered garden which can tell you how it’s doing.

Garden designer Tom Massey says: “You’ll be able to ask how are you, and your garden will be able to respond, telling you it needs a drink or a trim.” This is all based on sensors buried in the soil, attached to plants, embedded in trees and sampling the air, wind-speed, temperature and sunlight, all processed via artificial intelligence. This Al is being ‘trained’ using research from Royal Horticultural Society advisors and their years of studying plant behaviour. It’s hoped the interactive garden will save resources in our changing climate.

It doesn’t end there. LPG is involved in the creation of a new British Standard for Smart Parks. This will cover different aspects of park management and access. The scope includes wildlife friendly lighting, various sensors to inform water and nutrient management, Wi-Fi access, safety and security measures to protect users, and potentially even clean energy generation.

We are living in a deeply digitally connected world. LPG has had presentations from tech companies utilising freely available geo-location data from mobile phones and other devices. None of this directly links to people’s names and addresses so is anonymous. Tracking device movements, it is possible to show how many people visited a park, how long they stayed, where they went within a park and more. Cross referencing this data with other datasets enables you to guesstimate with some reliability the ages and backgrounds of typical park visitors.

While it is a bit alarming to see how easy it is to access this information, the data would be invaluable when it comes to parks management, especially care of heritage aspects. The look of our green spaces need not change, many of the tech features won’t be visible, but it will improve resource management, making our public green space more efficient, more inclusive, and more resilient so they can protect and support communities in our changing world.

The playgrounds in our public parks have a history that is as rich and important as the rest of the landscape, but they are little understood. Landscape historian Linden Groves takes us through three centuries of playgrounds in parks, to tell the story.

In the beginning, by which I mean the second half of the 19th century, the word ‘playground’ did not yet come with today’s assumptions of half a dozen pieces of equipment for children to play on. Instead, it was simply land set aside for play in a variety of ways. This mainly meant sports such as football or archery, but could also cover games such as marbles and skipping and there were also quoit and skittle alleys. Some areas boasted ‘gymnasia’, large pieces of equipment such as trapeze rings and horizontal bars to allow adults and youths to climb and swing, for exercise rather than play. Giant strides were also popular – these offered a twist on the traditional maypole, where instead of merrily weaving with ribbons, users hung onto ropes to swing exuberantly around a pole.

One of the first major playgrounds in the capital was at Myatts Fields, in South London. Myatts Fields was created as a public park in 1889 by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association and was designed by Fanny Wilkinson, one of the first professional women landscape architects. She included gymnasia with ‘giant strides swing frames’ at £38 5s – one gymnasium for boys and one for girls, as it was customary to keep males and females separate. A “very necessary” watch box for an attendant was placed in the fence between the two playgrounds, with doors opening into each.

By the start of the 20th Century the concept of playgrounds for children’s play, as opposed to being places where everyone could exercise, was fully awake. One of the things I love about playground history is ‘watching’ the grown-ups trying to do their best for children! A children’s playground was created in Kensington Gardens for the first time in 1909 (this would, much later, evolve into the Diana Memorial Playground, created in 2000). The National Archives’ records for the Office of Works, which was then responsible for the Royal Parks, show that the Kensington Gardens playground was to have a sandpit, giant stride, 20 swings, a fountain, and an attendant’s shelter. Peter Pan author JM Barrie had paid for the sandpit and swings. There was to be an attendant, as was usual at the time, whose role would be to keep the playground tidy and ensure good behaviour and safety. The kind of rules they had to oversee included, “Boys up to the age of 10 and girls up to the age of 14 only are allowed to use the Playground”, anyone who doesn’t comply with the attendant’s instructions should be excluded, and, “Women in charge of young children are admitted to the enclosure, but may not use the swings etc.”

The Kensington Gardens playground was a hit, with an estimated average of 500 children “of the poorest class” reportedly using the ground. A letter in The Times that summer proclaimed: “Anybody who cares for the happiness of children will honour the name of the first Commissioner of Works and the generous donors of the drinking fountain, &c., to the children’s playground in Kensington Gardens. Why did nobody think of this before? Spend ten minutes at the railings on any fine day, and even a park ranger would cease to be a cynic.” There was a complaint too about the playground being closed on a Sunday, which had been standard since playgrounds started to be created in the 19th century: “Lastly, but indeed not least, why close this “kids’ paradise” on Sunday? Perhaps it is necessary and right to do so during Church hours, but surely when the public houses are open the playground should be also. I am not against people having their beer on Sundays, but I am against stopping children’s harmless games.”

By the 1920s the playground was also receiving attention from Hubert Seligman, the son of wealthy German-American banker Isaac Seligman, who was moved to donate funds for new play equipment. Isaac Seligman had in 1899 – when Hubert was 18 – bought 17 Kensington Palace Gardens, then (as now) a prestigious address. It would seem that Hubert was quite fond of playground philanthropy, and the Archives are peppered with correspondence between him and the Department of Works in which they accept, and perhaps even encourage, more and more donations of playground equipment. He offered two see-saws for the Kensington Gardens playground; in the event though it was decided that a better purchase would be a plank swing, an enormously long swing that moved from side to side with multiple children on it. The plank swing given by Seligman to Kensington Gardens was supplied by playground manufacturer Charles Wicksteed & Co Ltd at a cost of £30.0.0, and was “greatly appreciated by the children” on its installation in January 1924. In 1927 another plank swing was ordered from Wicksteed & Co at a cost of £16.1.9, with free delivery.

Charles Wicksteed was one of the fir playground equipment manufacturers, developing the business from an engineering works’ sideline to an industry of its own. Through the next decades he and his firm promoted children’s outdoor play and equipment, helping ensure that today there is an assumption that parks
include playgrounds, and that playgrounds include kit.

For many years these playgrounds were largely simple, flat spaces filled with apparatus of various kinds. By the second half of the twentieth century, however, some of the best playgrounds provided a playful landscape too in which swings, slides and climbing frames could sit. One such playground was added to Alexandra Palace Park (‘Ally Pally’) in the early 1970s, and this still largely survives. Around the edge are circular brick-edged planting beds weaved through with low concrete benches or – depending on your perspective – raised pathways for adventuring and balancing! To one side is a locally-iconic concrete doughnut play sculpture, over which generations of children have scrambled. Within the main play area, which is spacious and fenced, there are more low concrete benches or balancing walkways. There is also a circular sandpit, which always teems with small children.

Perhaps the star of the show at the Ally Pally playground is a long slide which runs from top to bottom of an artificial mound, with gentle slopes of muddy grass on three sides and a near sheer face at the front down which the slide runs. This playground is a surviving archetype of the period’s design at its best. The ‘large sized hill or mound’ is perhaps the single most defining play feature of that time, coming after a century of playgrounds being notably flat.

Such hills or mounds were much admired by Drummond Abernethy, an influential play advocate from the National Playing Field Association: “Basically, this is one of the most useful facilities. The contours should be uneven: its outlines rugged and there should be deep indents. If the use is likely to be intense the surface should be hardwearing… However if it is humanly possible the hill should be turfed. This is particularly important for city children. It can be used simply for running and rolling up and down.

Sally Williams, Keeper of the lnventory

ln the quest for new garden sites that might be usefully included on the LPGT Inventory and London Gardens 0nline, a friend’s mention of a secret animal cemetery in Richmond caught my imagination. An added poignancy emerged in its location close to the Royal British Legion Poppy Factory, since, as November approaches in this centenary year, it seems apposite to consider how the practice of buying a poppy to remember those who suffered and died in the First World War came into being.

The sale of remembrance poppies dates back to 1921, originating in America with the sale of real flowers as a means of supporting US exservicemen. The tradition was soon brought over to Great Britain by Mme Anna Guerin, who had made and sold flowers in the US to fund work in devastated France. She persuaded Earl Haig to adopt the poppy for the British Legion, which he had founded in 1921, and the production of artificial flowers was instigated by Major George Howson, who had set up The Disabled Society in 1920 to provide work for disabled ex-service personnel. With a grant of £2,000 from the British Legion, the first poppy factory opened in Old Kent Road in 1922, staffed by 5 disabled war veterans. ln 1925, when larger premises were needed to cater for the growing demand, the factory moved to a disused brewery near Richmond Hill, changing its name to the British Legion Poppy Factory, from where it still operates albeit not in the original building. Housing for the growing workforce was soon required and adjacent land that was part of the Cardigan House estate was purchased in 1925, Cardigan House itself was used for the British Legion clubhouse. This land had once been the site of the Richmond Wells, a place of entertainment from 1690 to 1750, which was demolished in 1755 and replaced by a new house, later named Cardigan House after it was purchased by the 5th Earl of Cardigan. The Poppy Factory workers’ estate was built by 1932, an interesting housing scheme that is worth including on the lnventory in its own right, with communal landscaping between the residential blocks and high level washing lines an unusual amenity. At the south extremity a length of old wall forms the boundary with Terrace Gardens, the delightful hillside public garden that opened in 1887, formed from a number of private estates, including that of Lansdowne House, which formerly bordered the Cardigan House estate. ln 1925 Richmond Council purchased part of the wooded grounds of Cardigan House, including an lce House, to add to Terrace Gardens.

Tucked along this boundary wall, and now within a private garden, is a discreet line of 8 headstones, commemorating what were clearly beloved family animals buried between the 1870s and 1910s. Some of the inscriptions refer to Cardigan House as the place of birth or death; their names – Kindo, Fusi, Selim, Tweed, Ching, Stepper – suggest they were dogs, horses or ponies; and where their place of origin is given – Japan, Bombay, China – suggests their owners were well-acquainted with foreign lands.

After the Earls of Cardigan sold the estate in 1837 there were a number of owners, including Captain John or Jock Willis (1817-1899), a well-known and successful ship-owner who had taken over his father’s shipping company and ran a fleet of tea clippers. Among his ships was the famous Cutty Sark, which he had built with an eye on winning the annual China Tea Race, although this was never successful. Another of his ships was a vessel named Ife Tweed,a name found on two of the headstones, so it is not presumptuous to surmise that the animals buried here were owned by the Willis family, who lived here until c.1918, although the full story of this tiny graveyard is yet to be uncovered. However, it calls to mind the part played by animals in warfare through the centuries, poignantly commemorated in The Animals in War Memorial at the edge of Hyde Park, which was unveiled by HRH The Princess Royal in November 2004, the 90th anniversary of the start of the First World War.

With grateful thanks to Cathy Cooper for sharing her research, also to Ron McEwan and the Richmond Local History Society, not to mention Kathryn Standing.

Journalist Leana Pooley describes how local residents and enthusiastic volunteers are working to save a much-loved pocket park – through the power of a good party!

Two years ago, a thin, grassy, brambly scrap of land beside a busy Ealing road was overflowing with enthusiastic volunteer gardeners. Over the course of several autumn days, 10,000 bulbs were planted, overgrowth was hacked back, and paths were mown.

Those of us who live nearby discovered that the work was overseen by Abundance London, an admirable community organisation with charitable aims, which transforms unloved public spaces into pleasure grounds full of flowers, fruit, trees and art.

The long, thin piece of land has a history of precarious moments. It was named Beaconsfield Gardens after the 1970s Beaconsfield housing estate which lies on the other side of the road. Before the red-brick estate was built, the Victorian buildings – mostly terraced houses on either side of the road – were demolished, and the straight road was curved to give the Beaconsfield Estate a car park. This narrowed Beaconsfield Gardens to a wide green road verge. Only 100 yards to the south is Acton Green Common, part of the historic Green in 1642; inevitably the land of Beaconsfield Gardens would have been trampled by the Parliamentarians as they pursued the Royalists northwards.

Since its transformation in 2022, however, Beaconsfield Gardens has bloomed. Early spring sees golden daffodils, blue scylla and forget me knots. In summer the long grasses wave with wildflowers such as ox-eye daisies and purple knapweed. For local residents walking down to do their shopping in Chiswick High Road, it has been a pleasure to step away from the pavement and meander down mown pathways instead.

This spring, however, we received a jolt. A nearby resident noticed a man spraying lines onto the ground of the Gardens. When asked what he was doing, he replied that he was a surveyor marking out a possible site for a tall telecoms aerial and its ugly accompanying metal cabinets.

This was alarming. Planning rules for 5G masts in England, as of April 2022, state that new ground-based mobile masts are permitted without planning permission at heights of up to 30m, or up to 25m in protected areas such as conservation areas and national parks. Regardless of whether planning permission is required, however, operators must obtain agreement from the landowner to build mobile masts on private land, and must notify local planning authorities.

A phone call to a planning officer at Ealing Council revealed that an operator had previously made an application for approval for an aerial on Beaconsfield Gardens, but had been rebuffed. The verdict was that the tall aerial and cabinets would be an eyesore, and out of keeping with the attractive green landscape. The planning officer – who described Beaconsfield Gardens as one of Ealing’s ‘pocket parks’ – said he thought it unlikely that a similar future application would be approved.

However, local residents and Abundance London were not convinced. They felt that the Gardens might still be at risk and decided that a major celebration of the Gardens would alert more people to their existence. Flyers were delivered throughout the neighbouring streets, with promises of free tea and cake and children’s face painting. On a sunny Saturday in March, when the Gardens were cheerful with daffodils, crowds of people turned up; tables loaded with cakes had been laid along the paths and neighbours chatted happily with each other. Throngs of dogs wagged tails at knee-height. Ealing’s MP Rupa Hug came along, as well as Councillor Hitesh Tailor, Mayor of Ealing.

Memories were aired. We heard that, many years ago, a working pony had spent its leisure hours tethered in the Gardens grazing grass. Elderly residents talked about the surrounding neighbourhood of south Acton being called Soapsud Island, the place where West London’s washing was done. In 1900 there were more than 600 laundries in the streets nearby, most of them owned and managed by women – an army of Amazons – who employed other women. The area is no longer a working-class neighbourhood – many residents claim they live in Chiswick rather than Acton – but the shells of laundries remain as rectangular brick buildings slotted into the Victorian terracing.

Afterwards, it was agreed that the day’s celebration of the Gardens had been very successful. Not only had many people walked into the gardens for the first time but they had made friends, basked in the spring sunshine and vowed to return again. All we can hope is that Beaconsfield Gardens will continue to flourish and enjoy the strengthened protection that Abundance London, vigilant neighbours and publicity can provide.

Beaconsfield Gardens is not currently on the Inventory. Inclusion helps protect sites from future development. If you are interested in researching this or any other space for our Inventory, please get in touch at office@londongardenstrust.org

Debbie Nyman, LPG Research Volunteer and author of Tea & Memories – Growing up in Roe Green Village – questions who is responsible for protecting our heritage, through an examination of the illustrious history and troubled present of Roe Green Park.

Roe Green Park in north-west London is steeped in history.

In 1899, the country house Kingsbury Manor was designed by W. West Neve for Mary Blair, Duchess of Sutherland, and set in 10 acres of grounds. In 1903 the Coach House was built, and became home to John Logie Baird; he received the first television signals here in 1929, from Berlin.

In the Second World War the Coach House hosted Air Raid Precautions (ARP) Wardens, who were responsible for trying to protect civilians during air raids, for example by handing out gas masks and guiding people to shelters. Baird’s television masts made the house a landmark – Head Gardener Bertram Winch’s daughter Brenda, a little girl at the time, remembered a row of bombs dropping alongside the masts – and so they were removed.

At the entrance to the estate from Kingsbury Road was a Lodge, where Winch – who became Head Gardener in 1936 – lived with his family. He cared for the ornamental gardens around the Manor House, tending quite an extensive fruit orchard and walled kitchen garden.

Conservation and adaptation

The property developer George Ernest Cloke sold the Manor to Middlesex County Council in 1938, and the area is now under the umbrella of Brent Council. The gardens, Coach House and Manor have all had a second life in the
years since. The Manor – a Grade II listed building – is now a school, run by the Southover Partnership. The Coach House became a nursery in 2015, and all that remains of Baird’s experiments, which led to the television we now enjoy, is a concrete block with metal fixings for the television masts, set in the wall alongside a commemorative memorial stone. The gardens are now run by volunteers from the Barn Hill Conservation Group, which took them over in 1990 as a community garden project, open to the public.

As time passed, Roe Green Park was developed. Winch became the Council’s park keeper until he retired in 1969 and left the Lodge.

The fate of the Lodge

For many years the Lodge was left to the elements – empty, gradually being vandalised, and with rats as its only occupants. In 2014, Brent Council decided to advertise the Lodge on a long lease at a nominal ground rent, giving permission to make alterations within planning restrictions. A ‘Change of Use’ was also applied, so the existing Lodge could be converted into a much-needed cafe in the park.

The community began to look forward to this conversion. However, within a very short time, the trees surrounding the property started to disappear and high fencing went up.

By February 2022, construction work had begun and the community watched with concern as this historic lodge began to change dramatically. Although the plans stated that much of the original exterior should be retained, it became clear that the reconstruction was not in line with the planning application. At this stage, Roe Green Village Residents’ Association stepped in to try and protect the building, as the park is an extension of the Roe Green Village Conservation area.

Since the building was taken over, it has had a number of owners. It was never a caf ; when it was eventually up and running, the owner applied for an alcohol licence, which was granted by Brent Council. Since then, owners have come and gone, but its current transformation has been the worst so far. Referred to as a nightclub, it is open until the early hours of the morning, regularly attracting noise complaints. At the time of writing, the latest owner’s alcohol licence has been suspended for repeated violations; the owner has appealed this decision.

Leaving heritage conservation up to chance

Roe Green Park is a wonderful open space and the other tenants that use and care for Kingsbury Manor, the Coach House and the Walled Garden have preserved them well.

However the Lodge has become a magnet for antisocial behaviour, and is a sad reflection on how we preserve our heritage.

With thanks to Brenda Smith, daughter of Bertram Winch, who lived at the Lodge from 1932-1956, and to Philip Grant of the Wembley History Society.

A description of Roe Green Park can be viewed here on our inventory.
The LPG Research Group welcomes anyone interested in contributing new research – find out more at bit.ly/lpgvols

Paul de Zylva, Chair of the Quaggy Waterways Action Group (QWAG), tells the story of London’s supposedly ‘lost’ rivers, and how recovering them plays a key role in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss.

Everyone knows London’s river – Old Father Thames – but can you name some of London’s ‘other’ rivers? The Fleet, perhaps, or the Westbourne?

Nowadays, you’d be hard pressed to see the Fleet as it flows from Hampstead Heath beneath Camden, Kings Cross, and Clerkenwell, to dissect Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street before emptying into the Thames near Blackfriars Bridge. The Westbourne is also largely hidden as it also heads from Hampstead, this time via Kilburn – another watery name – Hyde Park and Sloane Square (in a metal tube above the Underground tracks and platforms) before reaching the Thames near Chelsea Bridge.

When in central London, I imagine walking above the Cock and Pye Ditch as I head from Seven Dials down St Martin’s Lane to St Martin’s-in-the-Fields. The ditch runs beneath them, before entering the Thames near the blacking factory which gave a young Charles Dickens much to write about in later life.

Other rivers also give their names to places. Brent and Wandsworth boroughs gain their names from the Brent and Wandle rivers respectively.

London’s many ‘other’ rivers and waterways are often referred to as being ‘lost’, but they are still there beneath the surface, pumping like veins and waiting for sense to prevail.

A tale of two rivers

25 ‘other’ rivers flow directly into the Thames, from the Beam, Effra, and Lee/ Lea to the Longford, Neckinger, and the short Walbrook in the Square Mile. Many more rivers are tributaries – feeding these and other main rivers rather than flowing directly into the Thames themselves.

In deepest Bromley, the Ravensbourne rises from Ceasar’s Wells at Keston Ponds. It flows behind Bromley High Street, between Queens Mead Park and Martins Hill, before heading down to Catford where it is joined by the River Pool coming from Sydenham. Then, it’s through the restored Ladywell Fields to central Lewisham where the Ravensbourne meets the River Quaggy.

The Quaggy also rises in leafy Bromley – at Locksbottom, not far from the Ravensbourne’s source. It runs through Petts Wood and Sundridge Park, before entering Lewisham at Chinbrook Meadows in Grove Park. It crosses into its third London borough as it enters Sutcliffe Park in Greenwich, where a hugely successful river restoration has revived the park, brought back wildlife, and kept everyone much safer from flood risk.

Lewisham’s official borough crest shows the confluence of the Quaggy and the Ravensbourne, but for years the borough’s leaders, including one notable MP, cast disdain on the river. When Christopher Chataway was Conservative MP for Lewisham North between 1957 and 1966, he condemned the Quaggy as “a curse and an eyesore”. Formerly an Olympic athlete, Chataway was clearly no front-runner when it came to knowing how treating rivers well makes them more friend than foe.

Back into Lewisham at Lee Green, the river is largely confined by the A20 and residential roads, but it has helped give life to treasured green spaces at Manor House Gardens and Manor Park. Finally, in central Lewisham, it vanishes beneath the landmark Clock Tower and Europe’s largest police station before being seen, albeit in a concrete channel, in front of Sir George Gilbert Scott’s St Stephen’s Church.

The last stretch of the combined rivers follows the route of the Docklands Light Railway from Lewisham, through the award-winning Brookmill Park to Deptford Creek. Here Henry VIII built his Navy and Peter the Great of Russia studied shipbuilding while staying at Sir John Evelyn’s Sayes Court (now Sayes Court Park). Today you can enjoy low-tide walks in the Creek itself, thanks to the fantastic Creekside Educational Trust.

What rivers tell us about our city

London’s many rivers – visible or ‘lost’ – show us so much more about where we live. They can, for example:

• show how London was formed across mind-bending geological time – some of the rocks in the River Quaggy are over 50 million years old;
• reveal more recent history, such as how the Vikings rowed up the rivers to settle (at Ladywell) and how early mixes of concrete were trialled for river walls in Napoleonic times (at Manor Park);
• help us see our city in ways other than via the usual routes we take (roads, trains and buses) or the maps we use (A to Z or Google);
• allow us to appreciate wildlife other than squirrels in the local park kingfishers, bats, damselflies and fish.

Turning our back on our rivers

Mills on the Ravensbourne once made glass, paper, and silk, hence the names of some streets and venues in downtown Lewisham, but the arrival of the railways and expansion of housing for workers saw London turn its back on many of its rivers, and start to view them as a problem.

Building work continued right up to the riverbanks, and – surprise, surprise these new homes and properties flooded. Flooding is a natural process, and rivers that flow through floodplains – such as that on which London is built – will flood. But engineers and builders in the late 19th and 20th centuries thought they knew better. Major public works were ordered to straighten, canalise and often cover over rivers. The view was that these harsh methods were the only ways to protect life, limb and livelihoods.

The utter folly of this was seen once the rivers could no longer be seen down in their ‘concrete coffins’, as members of the river restoration community often call the deep encasings in which rivers were put – devoid of light, and of little or no value to nature.

River restoration works

The decades-long blame game has taken a long time to change – but change it we have.

The River Quaggy was one of the UK’s most abused and heavily-engineered rivers. It’s still stuck in masses of concrete for much of its length, but local volunteers have shown how restoring the river, instead of continuing to mistreat it, cuts flood risk, brings back and supports nature, and complements local parks and spaces, improving them for recreation, learning and more.

Rivers also link up places that otherwise have little to do with each other – rather like bus, tube or rail lines, but in a more natural and cultural sense. The Quaggy, for example, is the only thing that people living in Orpington and Petts Wood have in common with people living downstream in Hither Green, Lee Green and Deptford.

Rivers cross borough boundaries, and making them better requires local councils to cooperate. That is a challenge, but is made easier by the existence of Catchment Partnerships which bring together community groups, councils and others across an entire catchment instead of within borough boundaries.

The Ravensbourne Catchment, for example, covers the whole of the boroughs of Bromley, Greenwich and Lewisham, and part of Croydon. Councils can learn how to work across wider landscapes by cooperating from source to sea on river restoration, pollution control, de-paving and other measures to cut flood risk, capture and store free rainfall, and boost the resilience of our streets and neighbourhoods to excess heat, which is increasingly a threat to health.

Thanks to patient, community-led action, south-east London is now a beacon of successful urban river restoration with major restorations in Chinbrook Meadows, Sutcliffe Park, and Ladywell Fields, and many smaller-scale improvements at points in between.

The world even comes to see. We have given tours to people from as far afield as Northern Ireland and Hong Kong to see how it’s done and how it helps cut flood risk, boost wildlife, and improve places for people.

Restoration across London

Across London, communities are acting to reverse decades of damage to rivers, waterways and wetlands:

• In south-east London, Bexley’s Thames Road Wetland is hemmed in by roads but is now accessible, and offers a rare sanctuary for many important wild species.
• In the south west, the Hogsmill is the focus of efforts to bring beavers back, while in the north beavers have already returned to restored rivers and wetlands in Enfield and now also in Ealing.
• Threatened eels are returning, as rivers are removed from concrete or as physical barriers to their movement up rivers are knocked-out; even half-inch high steps built into concrete river bases are hard for eels to get over.
• In the west, brilliant work is being done by the River Crane Partnership.
• In the east, the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics saw decades of neglect left behind as the river Lee-Lea was opened up. Efforts are underway to improve other maligned rivers such as the Roding in Barking.
• Across London, river action complements the well-established good work by Friends of parks and gardens groups, and others.

When you look at your area, or look at a map of London, remember that Old Father Thames is fed by many more humble rivers that tell us more about London – and make it work better – than we might think.

For more information about QWAG’s projects and membership, visit www.qwag.org.uk

LPG Research Volunteer Barbara Deason describes the history of the recently renamed Joe White Gardens, Hackney.

A second public green space in the London Borough of Hackney is being renamed following a proposal from the Hackney Naming Hub. The Hub was launched two years ago as part of Hackney Council’s anti-racism programme and the renaming is part of a wider review into the names of local landmarks, streets, buildings and public spaces in Hackney, to ensure they reflect the borough’s diverse history. Readers may recall that Cassland Road Gardens was renamed Kit Crowley Gardens in November 2021.

The second garden to be renamed was originally known as Aske’s Hospital, and then, until the renaming, as Aske Gardens. Aske’s Hospital, one of the earliest and grandest almshouses to be built in Shoreditch, took its name from its benefactor Robert Aske (1619 -1689), who also bequeathed money for Haberdasher Aske’s School. Aske’s will of January 1689 left £20,000 to the Haberdashers’ Company for the establishment of almshouses for “20 poor single freemen and a school for 20 sons of freemen”, and in 1690 a charity was set up by Act of Parliament to carry out the terms of the will, and a site was obtained. The original almshouses were designed by Robert Hooke in 1692 and the building was completed by 1695. This building fell into disrepair, being pulled down in 1822 and rebuilt in 1825-27 by David Riddel Roper with increased educational provision.

By 1882, the almshouses part of the building had been demolished, school buildings had been enlarged and it was in use as an educational establishment for 300 girls and 300 boys, subsequently becoming the LCC-run Shoreditch Technical Institute. At this point the open space in front was designated as public open space. The Institute was later renamed City and East London College.

However, Robert Aske was an investor in the Royal African Company, and as well as using some of his money to establish the almshouses and educational buildings was also an active participant in the slave trade. Between 1672 and 1731 he is known to have transported 187,697 enslaved people on company-owned ships to English colonies in the Americas. 20% of these enslaved people died on the journey.

Robert Aske’s name will now be replaced by that of Joe White (1962 – 2002), an inspirational Hackney-raised sportsman. White forged a successful career as a professional basketball player representing Team GB, before becoming one of the most successful youth coaches in UK basketball history, winning 14 national schools titles and 18 national club titles.

Joe White also developed some of the country’s best players, two of whom went on to represent Great Britain at the 2012 Olympics, and coached many more who achieved professional careers in sport, as well as helping change the lives of hundreds.

The LPG Research Group would welcome anyone interested in contributing new research – find out more at bit.ly/lpgvols

The LPG Inventory lists commons, heaths and greens among its approximately 2,600 entries. They range from Monken Hadley Common, Barnet in the north to Keston Common, Bromley in the south. Many are well known, such as Hampstead Heath and Wandsworth and Clapham Commons.

Both commons and greens have defined meanings and both have Acts of Parliament governing them. Commons are lands to which rights of common – such as grazing, gathering of fuel and digging gravel – apply or used to apply. Greens originated with the obligatory allotment of land for exercise and recreation in Enclosure Acts; after 1845, if an Enclosure Act did not include a green, the reason hac to be justified in a report to Parliament. Under the Commons Registration Act 1995, augmented by the Commons Act 2006, all commons and village or town greens have to be registered by the local commons registration authority, which in London is the local borough council.

In 2005, English Heritage (now Historic England) commissioned David Lambert and Sally Williams of the Parks Agency to investigate and write a report on the 111 commons, heaths and greens then listed in Greater London. This report remained a valuable point of reference, and in 2014 English Heritage made it available to the public David Lambert, one of the founders of the Parks Agency, is a notable researcher and expert on the conservation of historic parks and gardens. Sally Williams is Keeper of the Inventory at LPG, and data held in the Inventory provided the starting point for their research.

The report was commissioned to study and identify historic environment conservation issues, and priorities for future study and funding. It included a review of existing information, a statistical overview, a sample survey, site visits to 25 sites and case studies of a further five sites. In its survey, the report looked for observable changes in the 25 sites in 2005 compared to documentary sources and late 19th and early 20th century maps.

Not surprisingly, given the lack of grazing animals, 44% of sites had increased growth of trees and scrub. A further 87% had formal tree planting schemes. Many commons and greens had lost margins to highway development and had space allocated for car parks. There were leisure developments and formal sports provision and, in many cases, new surfaced paths and unsympathetic municipal furniture and lighting.

The authors made a number of recommendations which are still relevant today. They emphasised the importance of understanding the historical significance of a site to enable appropriate management plans to be developed. Clear statements of significance and of value should be established to understand the impact of any proposed developments. There was, and still is, the need to determine whether a site was to be a public park or a common, and to try to get consensus in the community.

It was noted that while the historical significance of a green space might not always be fully appreciated, the ecological value often was. Since 2005, there have been more advances in managing sites for biodiversity and ecological conservation. These improvements are often effected by local volunteers working in collaboration with the site management. To cite a few examples:

• a voluntary conservation group in Hounslow Heath was set up five years ago to clear and maintain their nature reserve on a weekly basis;
• the Friends of Plumstead Common’s environment group rescued and restored Workhouse Wood on the demolished St Nicholas Hospital site, one of the areas listed in the report for ecological enhancement;
• the Wandsworth Common Friends Group, set up in 2018, hold sessions to help maintain and encourage biodiversity on the Common.

Eighteen years on from the publication of the report, there is a need for more up-to-date research to be carried out. For example, the report commented that – although it listed observable changes at the time – no assessment was made as to whether these changes were for the good. There has been little assessment of subsequent changes.

The LPG Research Group would welcome anyone interested in contributing new research – find out more at londongardenstrust.org/support/vols/become-a-volunteer. London’s commons, heaths and greens incorporate a very wide variety of different open spaces and are being asked to fulfil a range of public needs. As such, they present a complex management challenge. It is vital to understand their rich social history, and the development of the character and appearance of the landscape over time.

Research Focus

In a special edition of Research Focus marking the passing of Queen Elizabeth II in September, LPG Research Group volunteer Fran Martin reminisces about the Queen’s connection with London’s South Bank.

The queue for the Queen’s lying-in-state at Westminster Hall snaked along the aptly named Queen’s Walk, the promenade along the southern bank of the Thames which runs from Lambeth Bridge to Tower Bridge. The walk forms part of the Jubilee Walkway, created to mark the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, and runs past monuments marking her numerous jubilee celebrations: the Jubilee Gardens, created to mark the Silver Jubilee and transformed in 2012 for the Diamond Jubilee; and the Golden Jubilee Bridges either side of the Hungerford Railway Bridge. Just a few months before, I had eagerly photographed a passing Platinum Jubilee bus! The Golden Jubilee Bridges – opened by the Queen’s cousin, Princess Alexandra, in 2003 – provide a lovely walk between the south and north banks, offering some of the most stunning views of the Thames in London.

Images of Queen Elizabeth II became a familiar sight on the streets of London after her passing, as we paid our respects with signs in shop windows, floral tributes, and displays at venues across the capital. On the South Bank, memories of the Queen were everywhere.

The Southbank Centre itself – the largest arts centre in the UK and one of the nation’s top visitor attractions – is inextricably connected with the Queen. The Royal Festival Hall was opened in 1951 by her father, King George VI, as part of the Festival of Britain, which was intended as a tonic after the war years and a symbol of hope for the future. The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh attended the first concert in the Hall on 3 May 1951 and were frequent visitors in the years that followed. The Queen was a fan of jazz and her first solo engagement at the Royal Festival Hall was a jazz concert on 14 July 1973. The Queen Elizabeth Hall was built with the smaller Purcell Room and opened by the Queen in 1967, with a concert conducted by Benjamin Britten. She also opened the Hayward Gallery – a landmark of Brutalist architecture – in 1968.

All along the Queen’s Walk, the inescapable sight of the London Eye looms overhead, beautifully lit up at night since its opening as part of the Millennium celebrations in 2000. The twinkling lights complement the gentle buzz of passers-by, both locals and tourists, soaking up the autumn glow. Who doesn’t feel a hint of dismay as the clocks go back and the darker evenings beckon? Yet the splendour of the South Bank at night reminds us of the beauty of the changing seasons. This area of London, which has witnessed scenes of such profound sadness just weeks ago, also shows us the comfort of history and legacy. Just as the tenacity of those waiting in the Queen’s Queue inspired us, the rich history and culture of this area of London can offer us a glimmer of comfort in the wintry nights ahead.

Margaret King, Maria Precedo and Jo Roll, from the LGT’s Research Group, select snapshots from five centuries of London landscapes created by women gardeners, illustrators and landscape architects

With thanks to the LGT research volunteers for their hard work and original research.

Further Reading:

• Collens and Powell eds., Sylvia Crowe, Landscape Design Trust Monographs No 2 (1999)
• E Crawford, Fanny Wilkinson: London’s Landscape Gardener The London Gardener Volume 23 (2019)
• S Dumpelmann and J Beardsley eds., Women, Modernity and Landscape Architecture (Routledge 2015)
• S Edwards, Interview with Dame Sylvia Crowe, Landscape Architecture Magazine vol 76 No2 (1986)
• K Fitzsimon, Nine decades, nine inspiring women in landscape architecture, Landscape Journal Issue 3 (2019)
• C Norwood, Gardening Women: their stories from 1600 to the present (Virago 2010)
• A Meredith, Horticultural Education in England, 1900-1940: Middle-Class Women and Private Gardening Schools, Garden History Journal 31, 1 (2003)
• L Newman, Madeline Agar (18741967): from lady gardener to landscape architect, Garden History Journal 48, 2 (2020)
• M Precedo, Helen Colt, London Landscapes (Summer 2021)
• J Roll, Searching for Sylvia in London: Sylvia Crowe DBE (1907-1997), garden designer and landscape architect, The London Gardener 25 (2021)
• T Way, Virgins, Weeders and Queens (Sutton Publishing Ltd, 2006)