February was a busy and very wet working month for our volunteers, we fixed brash bundles into our berm in our ongoing Ladywell Fields (middle field) project and weaved the main ‘wall’ of the structure with coppiced hazel and lime that was situated alongside the river.
For the latter half of the month we were digging out reeds, iris and encroaching grasses from the ephemeral pool alongside the secondary channel in Ladywell Fields. Although the recent wet weather made it easier to dig the soil, it was still a heavy and very mucky task to do!
Join urban sociologists Dr Emma Jackson and Dr Louise Rondel to celebrate the launch of the Place-making and the Rivers of Lewisham podcasts and project report, hosted by the Centre for Urban and Community Research (Goldsmiths).
As part of this event, you are invited to join us to walk along two stretches of Lewisham’s rivers, from Lower Sydenham to Catford Bridge and from Confluence Park (Lewisham Gateway) to Deptford Creekside and listen to podcasts with stories and soundscapes from the rivers. You are also invited to join us at Creekside Discovery Centre for the launch of the project report followed by a drinks reception.
Friday 28th June, 1pm-7pm – Various venues across Lewisham (please see event information and tickets for more details)
This walk will follow the Waterlink Way and will be on a mix of off-road paths and pavements. It will involve crossing roads. For more details see: https://www.accessable.co.uk/venues/waterlink-way
4.30pm – 7pm Report launch at Creekside Discovery Centre
While the Thames looms large in questions of the past, present and future of London, a network of 25 smaller tributary rivers criss-cross the city, shaping the landscape and impacting in dramatic and mundane ways on people’s lives. These include the rivers of Lewisham: the Ravensbourne, the Quaggy and the Pool.
Over the course of a year, the research project Place-making and the Rivers of Lewisham has conducted a close-up exploration of two stretches of Lewisham’s rivers, through the use of creative qualitative methods, walking interviews, soundscape recordings, ethnography and a review of policy documents that are relevant to blue and green spaces across the borough.
The two stretches of river we are following in the project take us through a fast-changing part of Lewisham. They thread together landscapes of newly privatised high-rise development where the rivers have only recently been opened up as part of the Lewisham Gateway regeneration, the well-established Waterlink Way Linear Park, stretches dominated by transport infrastructure and the unique ecology and heritage of Deptford Creek.
Caring for Lewisham’s stretches of river are groups such as the Friends of the River Pool, Quaggy Waterways Action Group [QWAG], the Friends of Brookmill Park, Creekside Discovery Centre, Thames21, Healthy Rivers Project and Lewisham’s Nature’s Gym. These groups meet regularly to pull on their waders, don litter pickers and bin bags, and walk the river and its banks collecting litter, weeding out invasive plants, clearing debris which impedes the water’s flow, monitoring water quality, and carrying other such essential maintenance tasks; and, of course, sharing flasks of tea and donuts.
If you have any questions or accessibility requirements, please contact the organisers: Emma Jackson and Louise Rondel e.jackson@gold.ac.uk and l.rondel@gold.ac.uk
With thanks to the Goldsmiths Strategic Research Fund for funding the project.
New Year, New You? Don’t want to pay a gym fee to be indoors working out? Why not join us once a week in the Rivers of Lewisham? Plus, whilst you do that you are actively helping the blue spaces within the borough!
The volunteer session programme has now been released for October to December 2023. Check out the programme HERE. If you would like to get involved in volunteering on Lewisham’s rivers please read through the the River Volunteering web page, and if you have any questions or queries please get in touch with Emily.
October gave us the perfect weather for working in the rivers in Lewisham, dry and cool enough to still be working in t-shirts! This time at Chinbrook Meadows we were working on the wildlife pond, clearing more of the willow surrounding and blocking light into the pond, and removing any silted islands that were growing vegetation to halt succession from happening on the pond. The pond itself would benefit from being desilted, so we’re keeping an eye out for any funding to hire a mini-digger to help us out in the future. For now, our volunteer group and the wonderful Friends of Chinbrook Meadows are continuing to monitor wildlife in and around the pond.
Another spot we’ve been working on this month is the area under the Ladywell Road bridge in Ladywell Fields. This is a special location for us to work in as it’s near to one of Lewisham’s kingfisher nest boxes, so we only work in the areas nearby outside of their nesting season.
There was a huge fig tree growing into the channel and blocking debris in teh channel, so we spent a few hours working on the lower branches of the tree and allowing the full width of the channel to flow as intended. It’s also a good time to note that sadly this area is affected by litter thrown from the bridge above, but during these volunteer sessions our team get into the undergrowth to prevent this litter from entering the river.
NB: Our volunteer on the left hand image doesn’t normally wander under bridges with a pruning saw but as it was halloween the photo opportunity seemed to good to miss! #SpookySeason
September was a month of hot and dry weather, which was showcased by low water levels across the River Ravensbourne catchment. During this period we took our opportunity to work on the boggy areas to remove encroaching vegetation, like above, which is normally a wet area in Manor Park but had previously been overtaking by sedge, bramble and grass!
The lower water level across the month also helped us access the deeper sections of the rivers. We spent some time in Beckenham Place Park (East side) performing litter picks and clearing areas of the main channel. We found more than 25 golf balls in this stretch, along with parts of an old fireplace surround!
August brought the volunteer team some hot weather, so being in the river was a pleasant break from the heat! We started the month working on the boardwalk section of Cornmill Gardens, removing plants that had grown up through teh accessible viewing platform then reducing the vegetation height so you can get a clear view of the river. One bonus from our time at Cornmill was we got to watch Lewisham town centre’s resident peregrine falcons flying overhead!
We’ve also continued the job of clearing eel tiles around the catchment, and monitored the areas where we know siltation happens in backwaters and small channels.
We were also very lucky to have Philippa Nicholls, European Eel Officer, from Thames21 come along to our group and present on London’s European Eel population and some of the challenges and obstacles they face within the Ravensbourne Catchment.
Continuing on from last month, we spent the first couple of weeks in July taking part in the 3 Rivers Clean Up. After 3 weeks of being in river we removed over 5000 Himalayan balsam plants from the River Quaggy and River Ravensbourne.
One fantastic sighting when we were downstream of Manor Park was a large European Eel feeding amongst the gravel riverbed. Can you spot it in the photo below?
Whilst in Manor Park it was also wonderful to look at the bug hotels that the 12th North Lewisham Scout Group have been looking after.
June marks the beginning of the Three Rivers Clean Up, also known as 3RCU, for the London Borough of Lewisham. Rivers & People, Nature’s Gym and various river projects/ user groups combine to make a group effort to remove Himalayan Balsam before it seeds around the banks of the three rivers.
Whilst bashing the Himalayan balsam we also litter pick the channels and take the what3words locations of any other invasive plant species, such as Japanese Knotweed and Giant Hogweed. These plants get treated and tackled by the wider Glendale team, whilst we focus our efforts on the Balsam.
Over the last 2 weeks, the Nature Conservation team has been joined by Sophia who wished to carry out her work experience with us. Here she writes about her time. We wish Sophia well in the future.
Being an A level geography student and an avid environmentalist, I did two weeks of work experience with Nature Conservation Lewisham. Having lived in Lee or Grove Park for all of my life, I feel passionate about the borough I live in and the importance of allowing for young people like myself to support it and help prevent potential future damage to it. This was what inspired me to work with Nature Conservation Lewisham.
The work was hugely varied and involved working in a variety of situations including working with primary school aged children in public green spaces, cleaning rivers, and removing invasive plant species from riverbanks. Working outdoors allowed for me to gain practical experience and be able to face and resolve potential challenges such the impacts of the weather and finding unexpected numbers of a plant species. I thoroughly enjoyed the variety and unpredictable nature of the work in that each day we would be working on different tasks each day and not visiting one place more than once. This allowed for me to plan ahead and demonstrate the skills and ability to complete tasks of strongly different disciplines; one day we could be waist length deep in mud and river water removing Himalayan Balsam, and the next we would be in a park counting and observing birds. How different this is to most people’s perceptions of work: 9-5 hours at a desk doing a fairly predictable job in a centrally heated building wearing a suit!
The people I was working with were friendly and welcoming (special thanks to Jess and Emily!) and I immediately felt like one of them and part of their projects as soon as I started work at Nature Conservation Lewisham and felt that it was a very supportive working environment.
I wish the organisation and its people all the best for the future and (despite the awkwardness of having a large proportion of cold and dirty river water enter my wader when I was in the river) feel proud to have had the chance to work with them and feel that this would be a unique and interesting opportunity to reflect on and relate to when I complete my A levels and go on to do a human geography degree in the not-so-distant future.
May saw a varied programme for our volunteers, from taking part in the EU-wide Preventing Plastic Pollution‘s #PlasticBlitz event to water quality testing to heavy silt removal in a pond fed by one of Lewisham’s rivers.
We were also joined by a group of students from Goldmith’s University who are looking into prevalence of plastics and invasive species in Rivers in urban areas.
Rivers and People 