Early Spring Roundup
By Clare Graham, Chair, Open Spaces Committee
Featuring Latchmere Rec's crocuses, a new community garden initiative for the Doddington Estate, and the return of Battersea Park in Concert later this year—but also some less welcome developments along Sheepcote Lane, and across the river on Chelsea Reach.
Spring is Coming …
A clump of crocuses in Latchmere Rec.
In Latchmere Rec at least, Spring is already here; I noticed at the weekend that the sheet of purple and white crocuses has started coming into bloom. I commented on it last year and it looks as if this year the display will be even better, as the bulbs continue to naturalise. Do go and check them out if you get the chance, they are quite a spectacle.
Just part of the sheet of crocuses in Latchmere Rec.
Devastation in Sheepcote Lane
Sheepcote Lane, looking eastwards towards the cleared section.
Less happily, we were alerted back on 14 December by a local resident to clearance works being carried out by Network Rail at very short notice on the south side of Sheepcote Lane, where a continuous strip of green divides the street from the railway tracks. When I went down there, I found trees, undergrowth and grass alike being ripped out, and the surface levelled all the way between Freedom Street and Reform Street. This was bad news both for human neighbours, now without the screen of trees that shielded them from sight and sound of trains, and for nature: 'green corridors' like the Sheepcote Lane verge, and of course the untended railway land behind it, are major local resources for biodiversity. I tried contacting Enable's Tree Team, whose members were as upset as I was, but had no power to act; Network Rail is a statutory undertaker, and was working on its own land, and within its permitted development rights. The site is apparently needed for a new access ramp, but remains empty at present; while we appreciate the need for operational safety, it still felt disheartening to encounter such a heavy-handed approach, quite at odds with Network Rail's own stated ambition ... to let nature flourish and its formal Biodiversity Action Plan.
Detail of the damage.
The Mega-houseboats at Chelsea Reach
Section of the houseboat community at Chelsea Reach, viewed from Battersea. The two mega-houseboats are moored side by side, left of centre.
The picturesquely diverse group of houseboats moored on the north side of the river at Chelsea Reach, to the west of Battersea Bridge, form a cherished aspect of the view from our own side of the Thames, and the Thames Path. So both we and the Planning committee were more than happy to write to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea ahead of its Planning Applications Committee on 19 December, supporting our colleagues at the Chelsea Society's objections to two new 'mega-houseboats' recently installed there. These ugly oversized vessels are not actually navigable boats, rather rectangular pontoons each fitted out with a couple of boxy structures designed as self-contained luxury flats, then towed in and moored across two of the old berths, to be let out at luxury prices. Quite apart from their problematic appearance, if more come it is likely to be at the expense of the existing community of traditional houseboats, whose residents fear being squeezed out in future as their mooring permits come up for renewal. RBKC had initially been reluctant to take action; it was good to see it decide that it did have the planning powers to do so after all at the 19 December PAC, but right now the two intruders remain moored there.
A New Community Initiative
It was encouraging to drop into this workshop and hear more from Doddington Estate residents and organisers s.labs of their ideas for the Arthur Court residents’ garden, at present shut up and unloved. Local social housing built in the aftermath of World War II, and the slum clearance programme of the 1950s and 1960s, was deliberately built to include generous amounts of amenity greenspace, but poor design and decades of under-investment has left much of it looking lacklustre, and some parts feeling unsafe or closed off altogether, as here. That it's possible to reverse this trend and create welcoming new community- and nature-friendly spaces has already been shown by existing resident-led projects like the Doddington and Rollo Community Roof Garden nearby. Lots of good ideas were floating around at the workshop, and hopefully enough volunteers can be recruited to get the project moving forward. I'm looking forward to seeing a Design and Action Plan.
Facilities and Festivals
The disused toilet block on Clapham Common.
Wandsworth Council recently approved a planning application to restore the long-disused public toilet block beside The Avenue near the junction with Clapham Common West Side as a café, 2023/0392. Derelict at present, it's an attractive little brick building which deserves to be restored and put back into use, though whether the Common can support yet another café remains to be seen—the Pear Tree at the Bandstand is only a few hundred metres away, and another up opposite Thurleigh Road recently folded.
Still on Clapham Common, the Friends and the Management Advisory Committee have reported in Brixton Buzz and with evident relief that Festival Republic has now cancelled its contentious plans for a huge commercial event on the Common this summer. This is good news—but so too is the announcement that Battersea Park in Concert will be returning on 24-6 August. That event will once more be run by Enable Leisure and Culture—who as the body responsible for looking after our open spaces from day to day in any case, can be trusted to minimise disruption to other users, and damage to the park itself. I really enjoyed last year's 'Prom in the Park' and am looking forward to seeing what's on offer this year.