Landscape Architecture INFORMATION:Organizations Private Offices, Public Offices Landscape Schools, ELEE, Official Bodies, Garden Courses London Landscape Guide    East London landscape walk

A Landscape Walk from Blackheath to Victoria Park in East London

[Further information is available in the London Landscape Guide to sites of landscape architecture and design interest in London, provided by the University of Greenwich School of Architecture and Landscape. ]

This walk can be done in sections, but if you are coming from Central London the recommendation is: (I) go by train to Blackheath station (2) follow the route to Victoria Park (3) take the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) back from Bow Church Station to Central London. Mark the route onto an A-to-Z map of London.

Northwards, the walk starts from Blackheath Village. It was saved from destruction by local protest: the Greater London Council proposed to run an urban motorway through the heart of the village.

Leaving the Village, you walk across Blackheath. It is one of London's ancient commons and used to host a wide variety of land uses - including the first golf course in England. After the Metropolitan Commons Act of 1871 it was taken into municipal ownership and was converted to mown grass and playing fields. The byelaws restrict most other uses. Only Whitfield Mount survives as a pocket handkerchief of native vegetation. But times are changing and mowing regimes are being modified. The most successful experiment is the land adjoining Hyde Yale.

The route takes you into Greenwich Park by a side entrance. It is, like all the Royal Parks, better maintained than most municipal parks. But the seventeenth century geometrical design only just survives in the midst of the nineteenth century 'landscaping'. See article by Turner, T, in The Garden (Vol 112 Pt 3, March 1987). When you reach the Wolf Statue, you can look down the sad remains of the Giant Grass Steps to the grass parterre which is Le Notre's only design for an English site. Beyond lies a magnificent prospect of the Queen's House, the National Maritime Museum, the Royal Naval College (now housing the University of Greenwich) and the Isle of Dogs. The Queen's House was the first Palladian building in England and Vanbrugh Castle, which can be seen if you look due east from the statue, was the first mock-medieval castle in Europe.

The Greenwich Meridian line is set in the path below the observatory. Like other visitors you can have your picture taken with one foot in the Eastern Hemisphere and one in the Western. It is worth noting another axis before leaving the Wolf Statue. The prime axis of the Park was set by the, unknown, landscape designer of c1660. It was extended northwards to St Anne's in Limehouse by Hawskmoor, and southwards across to Blackheath when the church was built in the nineteenth century. The Chief Architect and Planner of the London Docklands Development Corporation argued that it should be sustained through the Isle of Dogs in the l980s. He was over-ruled, and the northern extension of the axis was obliterated by the Canary Warf Development on the Isle of Dogs.

Walk down the hill to the river. As you turn west along the waterfront you will be on the Five Foot Walk, in front of the Naval College It is 4.4 metres above Ordnance Datum and can teach urban designers many lessons about the correct proportions for riverside promenades. This one receives a great deal more use than others which are wider, or further removed from the water.

 You will soon reach the Cutty Sark. The space around the old tea clipper was re-designed  in 1999 and received a Civic Trust Award. Most people think the old ship is too far from the water. If are not in a hurry it is worth making an excursion into Greenwich. It a medieval settlement but was rebuilt in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Should a preservation order have been placed on the medieval buildings? St Alfege's Church is by Hawksmoor and Thomas Tallis was the organist.

Now walk to the glass-domed. building on the riverfront and take the 1902 foot-tunnel to the other side of the river. You emerge into the Island Gardens. The land was purchased by the Admiralty in 1848 and planted plane trees to hide the industrial buildings on the isle of Dogs from the Naval College. It was taken over by the London County Council in 1895 now provides by far the most splendid view of Greenwich.

 The recommended route now takes you to a pocket park, Saunders Ness Gardens, which was designed for the local community by the Free Form Art Trust, in 1983. The Trust, which employs artists and landscape designers, has an innovative approach to landscape detailing.

Next, you cross Manchester Road and enter the Mud Chute Park. It was made by the great Victorian builder, Thomas Cubitt, and was originally a tip for waste material excavated when the dock basins were built. Much of the material was taken to 'reclaim' Battersea Fields as Battersea Park, the land has some of the 'common land' appearance which once characterized Blackheath, but it is being municipalized.

On reaching Crossharbour Station, turn west and across the dock basin. You are now in what was the Isle of Dogs Enterprise Zone. Special planning procedures and financial incentives made it the most active building site in Britain for a decade. There was no architectural co-ordination of any shape or kind, but the dock basins ensured an exciting ensemble. If you think things could have been done better then take a set of photographs and, when you get home, re-arrange them as a photographic montage.

Things improve as you travel north. The Heron Quays development, designed by Nicholas Lacey, is beautifully composed in shades of red and maroon. It was a very good idea to build out over the water, but some of the dry land spaces are unsatisfactory.

The development of Canary Warf has been underway since the mid-1980s. It was variously promoted as the largest building project in Britain, Europe, or the Solar System. The architecture was only moderately co-ordinated but the scheme benefited from a strong landscape design by Hanna/Olin of Philadelphia. They have aimed to provide a strong open space core around which buildings could be grouped as round a Georgian Square. It reaches from Westferry Circus to Blackwall Landing. Laurie Olin described the scheme in Landscape Design No 163 Oct 1986 and Tom Turner commented upon it in Landscape Design (No 166, Apr 1987).

Leave the isle of Dogs by West India Dock Road. The name reminds us of the Dock’s origins. Walk past St Annes Limehouse to Limehouse Basin. A difficult-to-find flight of steps leads down to the Great Union Canal and Limehouse Basin, The latter is owned by British Waterways Board and was derelict for years as arguments took place as to the right mix of housing and industry, and the extent of public access to the basin. In the last years of the twentieth century it was developed for residential use. Turn north and follow the Canal which received some landscape treatment from the Greater London Council as part of the Canalway Parks project and then further work by the British Waterways Board. The detailing is satisfactory and its a pleasure to walk along the canal.

When you draw level with the Stadium, you should enter Mile End Park. It is astounding that the planners had sufficient confidence in Abercrombie’s great Open Space Plan to demolish housing and industry to make way for the park. Unfortunately it was always an old fashioned park and the usage does not justify the expenditure. The GLC re-developed the park in the 1980s [see Landscape Design No 153, February 1985] and it was done again, using lottery money in the late 1990s.

Proceeding north on the Canal takes you to Victoria Park, which is often claimed as the first publicly owned recreation park to have been designed in Britain. It was conceived (in 1842) as the Regents Park of the East End. See G F Chadwick The Park and the Town and C Polson, Victoria Park (1976). The idea was to have an encircling tree belt, a carriage drive and villas for the well-to-do. Unfortunately the middle classes did not want to live here and the poor did not rave carriages. Nor is there any integration between the park and the large residential area to the south. The GLC designed an imaginative and popular children’s playground in the centre of the park in the 1980s. When the Borough of Tower Hamlets took over the park, after 1986, they initiated a restoration plan.

If you are not exhausted, you can return to the canal towpath and make your way northwards to the Lee Valley Regional Park. Or you could visit The Greenway, made by Newham Council on top of the Northern Outfall Sewer. Or you could walk down Grove Road and along Bow Road to Bow Church Station on the Docklands Light Railway. The return trip over the docks offers panoramic views of the water bodies and innumerable building projects.