Kidbrooke Community Keepers

The park

A buried river, brought back to life.

How Sutcliffe Park went from a playing field over a pipe to a flood meadow and nature reserve, and how it holds the water when the Quaggy rises.

The story

Decades in a pipe. Then daylight.

  1. Before the 1930sThis was Harrow Meadow, a wet field beside the River Quaggy that flooded when the river rose.
  2. 1930sAs houses spread across the area, the council put the river in a pipe and laid playing fields on top. The park opened in 1937.
  3. The floods kept comingWith nowhere to spill, the Quaggy still flooded the streets downstream.
  4. 2004The Environment Agency lowered the middle of the park to hold flood water, brought the river back to the surface to wander through marshy meadow, and made wetlands and a lake. Their board by the path says the scheme protects 600 homes.
  5. 2006The heart of the park became a Local Nature Reserve. It is also a Site of Borough Importance for Nature Conservation.
  6. TodayHerons, kingfishers, little egrets, reed warblers, snipe, dragonflies and damselflies all use the park, and so do the runners, every Saturday morning.

Sources: the Environment Agency and Royal Greenwich information board in the park (2004); Wikipedia, "Sutcliffe Park".

The bowl

The park is built to fill with water.

The low ground along the river is a basin, edged by a gentle bank. When the Quaggy runs high, it spills here instead of into people's homes. The board by the path says the low-lying parts are likely to flood about once a year, and the whole basin only rarely.

 

Ground heights: Environment Agency LiDAR, 1 m, shown at 2 m. The water is drawn from the shape of the ground to show how the basin works. It is not a flood forecast.

Explore

Where to look.

    Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Much of the park's grassland is not mapped yet: you can add it.