Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Plan to open Walthamstow wetlands to public
View of the Marine Engine House, courtesy of DCLG (Click picture for credits)
Story quoted in full from Blackhorse Action Group (See below):
The BBC have announced that Thames Water in conjunction with Hackney, Haringey and Waltham Forest Council are hoping to raise 10 million pounds to open up the Walthamstow reservoirs as a nature reserve and wetlands centre.
The reservoirs are already open to any member of the public willing to trek down Forest Road with a shiny one pound coin to the not exactly signposted entrance across the road from The Ferry Boat Inn.
The four square kilometre site, dubbed Walthamstow Wetlands, and made up of ten reservoirs, would be transformed into an urban nature reserve and wetland centre with a ‘Water and Life’ visitor centre and other facilities.
Olympics Minister Bob Neill and Council leader Chris Robbins visited the largest man made bodies of water in London on Thursday (12 May).
Chris Robbins said: “We have a fantastic natural resource right on our doorstep which provides most of London’s water.
“We want to turn it into a place where people can go to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.
“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to unearth a hidden gem that most people don’t realise exists and create a unique nature reserve smack bang in the middle of London to provide a brilliant leisure resource to people living here.”
Visit the London Wildlife Trusts “Walthamstow Reservoirs Project” to read residents views on opening up the sites, the wildlife to be found there and more.
More on the story at the website of the Blackhorse Action Group, whom I thank for the story. Also visit Thames Water's current Walthamstow Reservoir visitors page.
Tags for Forum Posts: walthamstow wetlands
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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There's an admittedly below par 'how to get there' on the Thames Water link I gave above. Does that help?
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Permalink Reply by Kit on
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It's good for tube directions, Hugh. But I hoped to find a HOLer who has been there by bike and can share route info. Follow Lea Valley canal to Enfield Lock or alternative route?
So, killer shrimp. Yum or yikes?
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Permalink Reply by alistairj on
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Kit, you get quite a good view from Coppermill Lane so, by bike, cycle out to the Markfield Beam Engine then down the River Lea to Springfield Marina (stopping at the cafe if open), then take the bridge across the River Lea to Coppermill Lane.
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Fantastic. Thx, Alistair. Must have whizzed past Markfield Beam Engine museum many times without noticing. Will make a point to stop and visit next time.
Aren't our canals brilliant!
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Permalink Reply by BAG on
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Thanks for link to Blackhorse Action Group site :)
However you might have changed a word or two at least when you cut and pasted the story from our website
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Hi BAG, thanks for visiting. I hope you got my message, Twitter follow and notice of this posting earlier today.
I'll be happy to completely rewrite the story if you'd like. I'd hoped since I'd copied just a part of what you had on your site, fully credited you and linked to the original story, you would welcome the additional publicity for the story and your group. I could have changed a word or two, but how honest would that have been?
Where I can I reuse material. This site is run on a non-commercial basis alongside a full-time job and I simply don't have time to write all material from scratch.
Just say the word though and I'll happily do that with this story.
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Thanks Hugh
Dont worry about completly rewriting, it doesnt warrent that but perhaps the "Thanks to BAG for the story" would be more truthfully reported as "this story is reproduced from BAG to read in full".
I wouldnt worry about it now but as a website who also cut & pastes running our own site like you in spare time we always directly atribute any lifts.
That aside its a great story if it ever actually comes to anything!
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Grand. It's attributed already. Hope that's enough. Good to make contact with you guys.
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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Why does everything have to be 'packaged' and 'used'..?
The 'charm' of Walthamstow and Tottenham Marshes was exactly that they were desolate and hard to find - especially in winter..
And why does yet another 'Americanism' have to be used..? 'Wetlands' -honestly.. give them a lousy title just to make some money out of them..
http://water.epa.gov/lawsregs/guidance/wetlands/definitions.cfm
The name 'Marshes' sufficed for at least two hundred years and everyone knew exactly what was meant.. I don't see why it should be changed now..
**finger wag** Everyone bangs on about using Harringay and not Green Lanes as the area's name and yet they fall into the same trap of changing an area's name and killing off it's heritage somewhere else.. - don't do it!
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A finger wag right back atcha!
Ehm.... No one ere's changed nuffin' nor fallen in to any trap. I've just reported on something.
And you can relax somewhat on the Americanisation front, Mr H. It appears that the word originates from these shores (though it seems to have been popularised internationally). It appears that more than just whim, greed or indeed Americanisation underpinned its development:
What is a 'wetland'? The etymology of the word shows that it is a modern', twentieth century, creation. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it was first defined in the New Scientist in 7965 (17 June, 763/3: ‘Wetlands are defined to include marshes, bogs, swamps and any still water less than six metres deep') and again in Nature in 1969 (19 April, 239/2: wetland ecosystems in the limited sense of this work are defined as ecosystems with a water table, above, at or very near the substrate surface, the substrate remaining saturated throughout the year'). Only one earlier use of the word is recorded, dated to 1955 (Science Newsletter, 29 October 281/2: 'The wetland partridge is about twice the size of the valley quail'), but before that date, wetlands as a word did not exist, and only emerged in the twentieth century out of a growing concern about the habitat of birds, and especially ducks, leading to a number of federal laws in the USA that used the term wetland as a generic term for such habitats. That the pressure for such laws came principally from the hunting lobby matters not, but it explains the early preoccupation with generic, rather than specific, wetland protection. During the UNESCO-sponsored International Convention on Wetlands in Ramsar, Iran, in 1970, the term became internationally recognised.
Bradley (2000) has argued that people in the past did not think in terms of environmental systems or ecosystems, but developed 'native ecologies', using their own terms to define specific topographical features or places. Recent cultural anthropological studies have come to similar conclusions (e.g. Lopez 1986; Ingold 1995; Harris 2000). 'We can assume that people in the past living within and outside the wetlands would have understood these landscapes in terms of particular landforms, rather than by using the broad, generic term 'wetlands', and proof of this is abundantly available in the form of place-names. These never include the generic term wetland as a prefix or suffix. Instead, we find plenty of English place-names (often deriving from Anglo-Saxon roots) indicating specific kinds of wet landscapes or wet features, with suffixes such as -ings, -hay, -moor, -dyke, -fen, -levels, -fleet, -pool, -mere, -beach, -ford, -bridge, or -on-the-water and -on-the-Marsh. We find the same in Irish, Dutch, German, French, Danish and many other European languages.
"Places, perceptions, rethinking landscapes boundaries and tasks in wetland archaeology", Robert Van De Noort And Aidan O'Sullivan, in Archaeology from the Wetlands: Recent Perspectives, The Society of ....
Full paper attached in case anyone's interested. - Attachments:
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places, perceptions.PDF, 1.9 MB
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