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History of Sutcliffe Park

 
Now a splendid wetland which is also a flood storage area, Sutcliffe Park was once a boggy piece of ground known as Harrow Meadow.

Created from swampland

In the mid 1930s, the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich landscaped the site to create a park. The park was named Sutcliffe Park in memory of Mr J Sutcliffe, who had previously been employed as the Borough's Engineer.

Sutcliffe Park opened to the public on 1 May 1937. The Eltham & Kentish Times of 4 May 1937 reported on the proceedings:

"Fifteen years ago the Harrow Meadow was a swamp, and as they looked about them that day they would appreciate the amount of work and engineering skill involved in drainage and tidying up the Quaggy."

The athletics track, home to the Cambridge Harriers Athletics Club, opened in 1954.

A venue for events

Sutcliffe Park was used for decades as a sports ground. It contained a number of football pitches and on occasion, the perimeter path was used for cycle races.

For a number of years the park hosted the Council’s annual fireworks display.

A fair was a regular feature in the southwest corner of the site.

Flood control

The character of Sutcliffe Park today has largely been shaped by flood control efforts and their impact on the river Quaggy.

When South London became heavily developed in the 1930s, open sections of the river were encased in concrete tunnels (or culverts).

A problem resulting from this practice was that during times of heavy rainfall, water would surge through the culverted sections, rather like water in a hosepipe.

When the water of the Quaggy met the river Ravensbourne, at Lewisham, flooding occurred in this low-lying area. The most recent flooding in Lewisham town centre was in June 2002.

Recent developments to address flood risk

In recent times, planners have become aware of the effects of climate change and urbanisation. It is now understood that the Thames Barrier cannot, on its own, effectively prevent serious flooding.
 
A solution has been to establish local flood alleviation schemes in areas where the risk of flooding is high.

Local action

In the late 1980s, The National Rivers Authority (now the Environment Agency) unveiled a flood alleviation plan. An early version of the scheme was to encase the 'open' sections of the river in more concrete channels and culverts.

A local voluntary organisation, the Friends of the Qwaggy (now the Qwaggy Waterways Action Group) was formed in 1990 to oppose this.

The group championed the idea of re-creating the open, natural watercourses of old.

Qwaggy Waterways Action Group website

Revised scheme

The scheme was revised, with a key part of the new scheme being to take the river Quaggy out of its culvert on certain sections of its course.

This had two main benefits:

  • water pressure would be reduced
  • the river would be visible to onlookers.
An area to contain floodwaters temporarily was needed and Sutcliffe Park was the obvious place.

After public consultation in 1995, the Sutcliffe Park Flood Alleviation Scheme began in earnest in 2003, under the direction of The Environment Agency.

More about the Sutcliffe Park Flood Alleviation Project

Local Nature Reserve

Today, Sutcliffe Park is a splendid wetland habitat – one of the best in Greater London. The site was designated as a Local Nature Reserve by Greenwich Council in 2006.

Return to Sutcliffe Park main page

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