Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Plans approved for final Woodberry Down phase reach up to Harringay's border - Farewell Rowley Gardens
The Hackney Citizen has reported that on 3 September the final phases of the Woodberry Down regeneration masterplan have been approved by Hackney Council. Hackney council granted Berkeley Homes conditional outline planning permission, subject to conditions, for the final phases of the project.
This approval related to phases 5 to 8, the last of which is the development of what is currently the Rowley Gardens estate built on the site of Northumberland House.
The Phase 5-8 Masterplan sees Phase 8 running between 2031 and 2041.
The full planning application can be viewed on Hackney's planning portal here.
Attached is a pdf with extracts relevant to Phase 8 from the Woodberry Down Community Organisation's overview of the Phase 5 - 8 plan.
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WD Phase 8 Extracts.pdf, 1.4 MB
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Not as far as I'm aware, but if you look at how the land was used in the 60s development and compare that with more modern developments, you'll see that a much higher density is now typically achieved. By modern standards, in the existing development, there's too much low-rise house housing and too generous an allocation of 'unused' space.
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Permalink Reply by Simon Bradley on
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This is really horrible news. The approved plans show a near-unbroken wall of slabs and towers along Green Lanes, leaving only a narrow green strip between the housing and the pavement. Almost all of the green slopes around and between the present tower blocks will be built over, and many mature trees lost. Freedom of movement for pedestrians and cyclists through the estate will be reduced to a single east-west path. Goodbye openness, goodbye greenery, goodbye sky, goodbye daylight.
The existing Rowley Gardens estate is a really good piece of landscape design, full of light and air, and composed in an orderly way. The buildings themselves are well above the average for their 1960s, and deserve to be renovated and retained. The replacement architecture - and there's lots of this stuff now, closer to the reservoirs, with more to come - is in visual terms a giant dump of jumbled blocks and towers, confused and messy from almost every angle.
Last, and in many ways worst, the existing residents of this long-established estate will all be evicted so that their homes can be destroyed.
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Permalink Reply by Ruth on
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It really is horrible news in so many ways as you rightly summarise here Simon. So much for protecting the environment. So much for greenery. And the residents will lose their homes. It's happening right across the country.
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What is happening to the existing residents?
I imagine they will incorporate some shops at ground level but the problem is how high they are, how much they are and how more resources will be able to accomodate more people (Doctors, railways etc..)
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I imagine they'll be 'decanted' at some point and I imagine will be offered alternative accommodation. There may be a 'right of return' on completion, but I'm not sure. And, yes the best flats will be reserved for privately held accommodation.
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I think I remember a Guardian article, from at least a couple of years ago, that suggested guarantees made to existing residents about a "right of return" after redevelopment (in the blocks on Seven Sisters Road) had not been fulfilled, at least partly because the number of "affordable" homes was far lower than promised. The loss of open space and greenery is a major downside; the canyons of the King's Cross railway lands redevelopment are probably a pretty good indicator of what's to come.
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I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that many current residenty are not able to return. I feel for them: it looks like it’s been quite a decent place to live on. I imagine they’re quite decent flats.
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Wonder if Rowley Gardens is old enough to have been built to Parker Morris standards? Big rooms and lots of light, rather than hutch-like proportions. The standard was scrapped by the Tories in 1980; the Mayor's Office approved new guidelines for London new-builds in 2010, but I'm not sure if they still apply. Either way, it seems unlikely the rebuild will be as civilised to look at as the estate it replaces.
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The Guardian addressed this in 2014 (not a typo) - https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/may/18/-sp-truth-about-gen...
This from May 2025 is by Dave Hill who in 2014 wrote for The Guardian - https://www.onlondon.co.uk/hackney-woodberry-down-revisited/
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Exactly this.
So many losses and negative aspects of this so called regeneration with the existing tenants losing out the most- losing their homes. It's heartbreaking to hear real life stories from residents 'decanted' from other areas across London, across the country. Prof Paul Watt has collected many such personal stories in his decades of researching and writing about social housing in London. His Estate Regeneration and its Discontents:Public Housing, Place and Inequality, is sometimes hard to read without feeling sad and angry.
The replacement bland flats take away greenery, light, space as pointed out here. And there will be more people living in what was Rowley Gardens, more overcrowding on local buses and Manor House tube.
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