Wandle Park

  • Industry :
    Environmental
    Client :
    Croydon Council
    Project Location :
    Croydon, Surrey

The Challenges

Wandle Park is one of Croydon’s most historic parks. Laid out in 1890 on former meadows alongside the River Wandle, the park included an ornamental lake, bridges, bandstand, bowling green, tennis courts, meandering paths and the river at its heart. By the 1960s, the park was in decline. Rapid urbanisation in Croydon affected the water table causing the water level in the lake to drop and the River Wandle was exposed to extreme flows after storm events causing localised flowing. Thus, in 1967 the lake was filled in and the river culverted and buried beneath new playing fields.

However the ‘lost’ river remained in people’s memories. After being buried for 40 years, the thinking behind river catchments and flood alleviation began to change and the idea of restoring of the River Wandle in Wandle Park gained an increasing level of local support.

Solutions

This project provides an opportunity to create river and wetland habitat in an urban context and re-establish the park as an area of high quality green space for public enjoyment, whilst contributing to reduction of flood risk.

The masterplan recognised the new river channel as the central focus of the park to be enjoyed by all its visitors, and proposed to link faded Victorian and 20th century features to reinstate Wandle Park as the borough’s flagship park. The historic features have been restored and the river has been de-culverted providing a water course in the park once again connecting in to a further stretch of deculverted river and green space on the adjacent Barratt site.

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Photo

LDA Design