Thames Landscape Strategy - Hampton to Kew -

Arcadian Diary September 2004

It’s always hard to settle back into work routine following a long relaxing summer holiday and unfortunately that’s exactly what I am doing now. My first day back at work wasn’t so bad as it was spent aboard one of the oldest and most beautiful boats on the Thames – ‘The S.S.Streatly’. The Streatly is a fully restored turn of the century steam boat, and she provided the perfect setting to take out almost the entire London team of the Heritage Lottery Fund to show them the wonderful Arcadian stretch of river between Hampton Court and Kew. Hosted by the Environment Agency, the trip provided us with the perfect opportunity to update the London Team on the Arcadia project and to showcase emerging projects such as the Teddington Gateway. During the trip we also looked at other potential projects that could be funded such as Kingston Riverside, Strawberry Hill and the Terrace Gardens on Richmond Hill and passed the site of other lottery funded schemes including Orleans House Gallery in Twickenham and the restoration of Bushy Park.

The support provided by external funding agencies such as the Heritage Lottery Fund to repair and restore the built and natural heritage cannot be underestimated. Without their funding many of our most cherished places would quite literally crumble away under our feet so I am pleased to say that despite the driving rain they we were pleased with what they saw. What amazed them most was the way that the Thames linked each of these sites with one another, a fact that was largely unknown to many of them having rarely ventured out to deepest darkest South West London.

The importance in having a long-term plan for such an important landscape was also widely applauded. Through the Thames Landscape Strategy, priorities can be set and the needs of a vast variety of users and different agendas can be brought together. Also, projects in neighbouring locations can be linked to inter-relate with each other providing cohesion and often saving very limited resources. For example, the next stage in the restoration of the View from Richmond Hill has now started with the beginning of a plan to repair the Terrace Gardens. As with Arcadia the whole process will take time so don’t expect major advancements just yet but the future of these wonderful Victorian pleasure gardens is now more secure than it has been in a long time. In another exciting development we have been working with the Royal Borough of Kingston looking at ways to breath new life into Kingston’s riverside. Again the process will take time and has to go through much consultation but the seeds have now been sown.

Whilst each of these projects have been established primarily to breath new life into our riverside open spaces it is also hoped that the schemes will have an additional benefit. With each project we are raising the profile and understanding of the importance of the Arcadian Thames to a wider audience. Given time, it is intended that this new awareness in the river will help to shape the way that new building developments along the river are designed – more in context to their surroundings. Whilst we do not want to preserve the landscape in aspic we can try and persuade developers and planners alike that the river is so special that only the very best design, in keeping with its environment is acceptable. As many of you will know this is a constant struggle but every little helps.

Promotion of the Arcadian Thames as a world-class heritage asset does throw up a difficult problem for us though. In doing so, we have to strike a balance between promotion and preservation of all the aspects local people like best – intimacy, peace and quiet and the feeling of being out in the countryside. The last thing we want to do is to destroy this or turn the area into a Disney type theme park – ‘Arcadialand’. This is often difficult to achieve given the way that funders allocate their money and the requirements of C21st legislation. All new work naturally has to conform to building regulations, flooding guidance and accessibility standards (from this year this is also a legal requirement under the new Disability Discrimination Act). To gain monies from trust funds the future needs of all users have to be anticipated and on-going maintenance issues accounted for. For example, the installation of a simple bench is often not enough for many external funders. ‘New and imaginative installations that capture and interpret the intrinsic character of the place’ are often stipulated. Taking all this into account it is often very difficult to carry out works that do not involve some degree of change.

This said, we have in the development of our projects and in particular the Arcadia scheme attempted to reduce the degree of change to the bare minimum whilst accounting for all the various elements that are required. It is the river and landscape that visitors should be looking at, not any fancy new designs. Simple, understated, good design is required drawing the eye to the river.

The most difficult area of design to achieve this principle is when interpretation is required (and the installation of interpretative material is a stipulation of the Heritage Lottery Fund). Importantly we have asked the appointed landscape architects to incorporate any interpretive pieces into the design process from the very beginning. In this way the impact will be very low key and will avoid creation of the Disneyland type of educational material that blights so many otherwise wonderful places. These detailed designs have been now been formally submitted to the Heritage Lottery Fund and we are awaiting confirmation that they meet their strict criteria. The designs have changed many times over the past four months taking into account the views expressed through the consultation process. The process is not over yet either. It is anticipated that many of the finer details can still change if needed although the list of projects to be funded is now complete. The project team is confident that the chosen schemes give just the right mix required to repair and restore the most cherished parts of the riverside and Richmond Hill whilst taking into account modern access requirements and lottery funding criteria. In essence we are proposing the minimum amount of change possible to make the maximum benefit of our funding in order to save our landscape for the future. Our main efforts now are in trying to raise the £1.3m in match funding required and then we can start – more about that next month!

River Fact

Steam powered boats such as the S.S. Streatly are regarded as one of the most endearing and traditional sights on the river but this has not always been the case. In 1890 Dicken’s wrote a scathing attack on these new fangled craft ‘Steam launches are too often the curse of the river. Driving along at an excessive speed, with an utter disregard to the comfort or necessities of anglers, oarsmen, and boating parties, the average steam-launch engineer is an utter nuisance…Perhaps the worst offenders are the people who pay their £5.5s. a day for the hire of a launch, and whose idea of a holiday is the truly British notion of getting over as much ground as possible in a given time”. How times have changed.

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