The new space at Deptford Church Street has been designed for, and after close engagement with, the local community.
Community input is reflected in many aspects:
- The design for the space was developed after close liaison with Lewisham Council and their wider masterplan proposals for the area, led by a community steering group
- The plan for the play spaces, which provide opportunities for many different types of activity, evolved from a hands-on workshop with students from St Joseph’s RC Primary School. Features include an embankment slide, rock clambering wall, play boulders and stepping stones, as well as a nest swing, balance blocks and wobbly sheep.
- The space’s public artworks are four metal plinths with a design and text which reflect the everyday values of Deptford such as resilience (or ‘dead bolshie’, as the plinth text puts it) were also developed after community consultation
The palette of hard landscape materials was chosen to enhance the historic context – for example, feature areas set within the lawn to accommodate essential access covers to the 48m-deep drop shaft below have paving patterns inspired by the flooring in the nearby St Paul’s Church. The four ventilation columns, which provide a focal point for the site, each features a poem by Dorothea Smartt relating to Deptford’s history.
There is level access across the new public space. There is varied seating provided to cater for different needs, including space provision at the end of benches to allow wheelchair users to sit alongside. The York stone paving and resin bound gravel paths provide a consistent smooth surface across the space. The play areas include a slide which can be used by two people side by side, so that less ambulant children can slide with a carer.
The site is designated as a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation by LB Lewisham, and it enhances biodiversity through the design of both the space and the engineering structures.
The flower-rich grassland previously here has been replicated and grown to order based on botanical surveys of the former site carried out by nearby Creekside Discovery Centre in Deptford. It has with over fifty species of native wildflowers, grasses and seasonal bulbs. The Creekside Centre looked after a patch of the original turf for the duration of the construction and returned it to be incorporated into the new scheme.
There are also 29 new trees, flowering shrubs, perennials, ornamental grasses and holly hedges. Around 87 additional new trees have been planted by the project in other locations close by in Lewisham. The amenity kiosk has a brown roof of 37.24 sqm. Five bird boxes have been installed in nearby trees, and there are log piles within the planting and on the brown roof to create habitat for invertebrates.
