Springfield Park
Hackney, London
Supported by Dominic Cole Landscape Architects, our practice has completed the restoration of Springfield Park, a Grade II Listed green space on the banks of the Lea Valley, and of its of Grade II separately listed Springfield House, stables and walled garden. The project was carried out for the London Borough of Hackney as a not-for-profit making organisation supporting the Springfield Park User Group and co-funded by the Heritage Fund.
The former private house and gardens had been converted and opened as a public park in 1905 serving the local community since. When we first became involved with the project the stables, walled garden and first floor of the mansion were on the Historic England at Risk Register, dilapidated and inaccessible; the park was neglected, the lake silted, key views lost and paths overgrown, causing disorientation and antisocial behaviour issues.
We reinstated the much-loved local building, improving its facilities for park visitors. The scheme now offers a much-improved cafe with new enhanced public toilets, and bespoke offices on the first floor for the LB Hackney's Parks Team. A new lift and entrance arrangements were sensitively incorporated to improve accessibility, and a permanent exhibition on the restored ground floor reception rooms allows the history of the park to be explained.
The new energy-efficient buff brick annex has provided space for the cafe kitchen and toilets allowing formerly intrusive elements to be removed from the heritage fabric. The stables block was sensitively refurbished to accommodate four separately lettable office spaces for the creative industry.
As part of the overall regeneration project, a stunning new community events building, the Glass House, sits within the restored, walled kitchen garden. The EPC-A-rated venue, with a capacity for 150 people, is already much in demand for weddings, community activities, corporate away days and celebrations for the local community, such as B’nei Mitzwhah. All this was achieved in association with a comprehensive set of improvements to the park.
The project brief was developed in close consultation and collaboration with local voluntary support groups, the London Borough of Hackney, various key local stakeholders and Historic England. The design stems from a conservation plan that follows a detailed Specialist Conservation Heritage Significance study aligning restoration, interventions and proposals to the significant historical features of the site.
Following a successful NLHF Round 2 in 2018, works started on site in 2019, with completion achieved in January 2021. The overall capital cost of the project was £4 million.
Mick Beanse, Senior Project Manager at Hackney Council's Public Realm, Climate, Homes & Economy Directorate, said:
"The Heritage Funded Springfield Park project has been a great success for Hackney Council and has exceeded expectations in many ways. It has improved the public realm and secured an income stream for the park that will help maintain the quality of this important heritage asset for the 21st Century. As a community-based project, we are really excited how well the various areas such as the park itself, the new Glass House, the restored artistic work units in the Stables and the Cafe are already being extensively used. [Architect] Malcolm McGregor ( … ) was with the project from start to finish and helped us achieve all this and we were delighted to be honoured with a Hackney Design Award in December 2022. As a further endorsement to the project as a whole, we the parks team, have moved into the wonderfully restored first floor of the house from which we now operate."
In the words of Hackney’s former Mayor Philip Glanville:
“to have so many people from the borough come together here at the reopened Springfield Park to celebrate not only the Queen’s Jubilee but also our collective community spirit has been amazing”.
Consultants
Landscape: Dominic Cole Landscape Architects
Exhibition Design: GuM Studio
Structural Engineering Rodrigues Associates
Building Services Engineering: SVM Consulting
Awards
Hackney Design Award 2022
New London Architecture Community Prize 2023