Thames Landscape Strategy - Hampton to Kew -

Arcadian Diary January 2006

The world’s attention has been on our river over the past week, transfixed by the arrival of a whale outside the House of Parliament. Although the end was so desperately sad the media attention associated with the sighting has brought home just how much the Thames is a part of London life.

At 190 miles long, the Thames is not a big river – on a global scale it is more of a small stream but even so it commands a position far more important than its size would suggest. The cultural associations of the Thames; be they the Wind in the Willows, punting in Oxford or the Palace of Westminster, are iconic and help to shape the way that the river is viewed across the world. A tourist trip to London is not complete these days without a stroll down by the Thames taking in the restored South Bank or the Embankment.

The whale has also fuelled media attention on what else lives in the river and in particular just how clean the tidal Thames is to sustain these species. All the experts agree that the river is now clean with many going farther stating that that it is one of the cleanest metropolitan estuaries in the world. The problem comes after periods of heavy rain. During these events, millions of tonnes of raw sewage can be spilt into the river via the sewer network. At these times the river is filthy.

Londoners need reminding about Old Father Thames every now and again. This great ribbon of water running through the heart of our city was for centuries at the very centre of London life. At one point, one fifth of the capitals workforce made their living from or on the Thames – a staggering statistic. Without interest in our great river, much of what we love about it could be lost particularly under a swathe of development that now lines the banks.

This said, the Thames still arouses huge interest and passion particularly in the upper reaches of the capital’s river. This passion inevitably means that there are many views as to how the river should be managed often spilling over into heated debate. One of the key aims of the Thames Landscape Strategy is to provide a forum for debate regarding the river’s future that can than be transferred to practical projects on the ground once a general consensus has been agreed. With passions running high this will never please everyone as for each point of view there is always someone who has the opposite. This does make planning the future conservation of the river corridor tricky at times.

One of the best ways to actively get involved in the conservation of the Thames is to join one of the many volunteer groups that help to manage the river corridor. All of these works have now been linked directly to the relevant local authorities day-to-day management regimes so that best practice is followed and to ensure that the works have a significant role in riverside management.

A series of riverside clean up events are planned over the next month and anyone is welcome to join in. Winter is the time to pick up accumulated litter, give shrubs that overhang the towpath a haircut and carry out a range of bio-diversity tasks that will become a home to a variety of species come the summer.

The first volunteer event takes place along the Warren Footpath in Twickenham on Saturday 28th January organised by the Environment Trust for Richmond with the London’s Arcadia project, followed on Sunday 29th January by another riverside clean up along Lower Ham Road in Kingston (10.30am meet at the Leander Scout Hut) organised in partnership with the Canbury and Riverside Association and the Royal Borough of Kingston.

In front of Ham House, volunteers are working alongside London’s Arcadia, the Ham and Petersham Association, BTCV, and the National Trust to make a ‘dead hedge’ – a traditional hedging method dating back centuries. This forms an instant and thick boundary that houses a huge variety of different species. Each side is planted with native holly and thorn hedge that grows up around the decaying wood of the dead hedge to form a wonderful traditional boundary that can later be layered. Local school children are to help in the planting of the hedgerow plants and on the 25th February, the Ham and Petersham Association is organising a volunteer event to finish the job.

On Sunday 12th February, the Kew Society, Environment Trust for Richmond, River Thames Society and the Thames Landscape Strategy will be litter picking along the towpath between Richmond Lock and Kew Gardens. This event promises to be particularly exciting with so much debris strewn along the riverside to pick up and it is hoped (weather permitting) to go down onto the foreshore and clean up years of accumulated junk on the foreshore at low tide.

It really does amaze me what people will throw into the river. Last year we cleared up a considerable amount of building rubble that had been fly tipped by the riverside. This would not have been so unusual except for the fact that the rubbish had been dumped on Glovers Island in the middle of the river. The effort needed to transport the waste here must surely have been much more considerable than loading it in the back of a car and going to the town dump.

The London’s Arcadia Heritage Lottery funded scheme has had a few similar problems recently of its own. Work in St. Margaret’s along Isleworth Promenade has been delayed due to a spate of vandalism. Last Thursday we thought that the restoration work was coming to an end with the installation of a series of benches and railings. However, the following morning all the benches had been thrown in the river. To do this took considerable effort as they were tightly secured to huge blocks of York stone, which were fixed to concrete slabs that also ended up in the Thames. It’s beggar’s belief why people would want to do this but it does demonstrate the sorts of problems that we face whilst we carry out work along the river.

All building works in public places come under criticism for effectively shutting off open spaces whilst the work is progressing. This is the last thing we want to do (as it obviously raises concern) but it is a necessity brought about by crime, vandalism and the suing culture that blights so many areas of public life. Although we try to minimise disruption as much as possible, construction sites have to be made safe for the period that works are taking place and this inevitably means that sections of the river will be shut off for some periods. This may not be a perfect situation but will be worth the wait.

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