Inside Croydon’s arboriculture correspondent DOUGLAS FIRBANK JR tries to see the wood for the struggling trees in the latest council lash-up
Spotlight: the official switching on of Croydon Minster’s new floodlighting is on Sunday evening
At a special choral evensong service at Croydon Minster this Sunday, the long-awaited landscaping improvements to Minster Green will be opened officially.
The service takes place at 5.30pm – almost an hour after dusk.
The timing will allow the Minster’s new floodlights to be shown off to best effect.
But the evening darkness will also help to disguise the sorry state of some of the planting that has taken place around Minster Green, following a publicly funded “Liveable Neighbourhoods” scheme which was originally allocated more than £17million of public money.
It’s a case of better late than never, as plans for the transformation of Croydon Old Town were formulated more than seven years ago by the previous Labour-run council, which won a £9.5million chunk of cash from the Greater London Authority. The council was supposed to provide £7.7million in match-funding from its “Growth Zone” fund.
But what has been delivered by Croydon’s Mr Toad-like motoring fan, Mayor Jason Perry, is markedly different in certain important aspects.
Perry will be on hand on Sunday evening to declare it all a great success. His success.
Yet instead of delivering Minster Green, there are worrying signs that Perry’s council has in fact handed over Minster Brown.
Law-breaker: Mayor Perry’s BMW sets a bad example of illegal parking near Croydon Minster
Perry was on site at the Minster yesterday, getting a briefing on the changes and improvements, after parking his BMW on a yellow line.
There was no sign of any enforcement to slap a ticket on the mayoral windscreen: Mayor Perry has a special parking pass that allows him to do as he pleases. Perry’s arrogance hardly sets an example of good behaviour on our roads for others.
The new lighting which will illuminate the Minster at night will be switched on officially on Sunday. Not only will there be uplighting from ground level, there will also be lighting at a higher level, too.
Locals, Minster church-goers and visitors have watched the sometimes painfully slow progress of the project.
A planting morning involving children from the Minster School has already taken place in the funkily-shaped new flower beds. Plants were chosen which are hardy and drought-tolerant. There’s wildflower areas across the Green, too.
New paving – setts or cobbles – has been laid around the church, replacing its car park’s oil-stained tarmac, and a new drainage system put in place. The River Wandle flows under the new landscape in a culvert, coming to the surface a few hundred yards away in Wandle Park.
Cobblers: the setts that have replaced the old tarmac are more in keeping with the ancient church building
One of the intentions of the design was to open up the space around the Minster. The pathway through to Church Street is now more accessible, the vegetation trimmed back.
There’s been some drastic work to the wall of the Memorial Garden, which has been replaced with a wavy-lined and shorter flint wall which gives a much clearer sight of the area around the Minster.
The Minster welcomes visitors and worshippers from around the world each year. The new landscaping provides a much more welcoming ambience than previously. One church member said how excited she was to see the new space and was thinking of different ways in which the church could use the new area.
People driving past along Roman Way will have a much better view of the Grade I-listed historic building now, too, as the low-rise flint wall snakes alongside the A236, with the wording “Minster Green” placed by the roadside in large rust- coloured lettering.
By closing the pedestrian underpass under the Roman Way dual carriageway and filling in the access slopes, the area in front of the church has been significantly increased.
Flinty outlook: the new wall serpentines along the outside of Minster Green
A wide, sweeping path meets the pedestrian crossing. Benches and seats have been installed. A shabby chic rusting tower (no one seems to know what it is supposed to be or represent) acts as a centre point.
The programme’s delivery is, as with so many council-run projects, late.
Signage on the nylon fencing around the Church Hall had said that the project was “expected finished [sic] in the summer 2026”. Meteorological winter starts on December 1.
It is the works conducted on and along Roman Way where the council, under car-loving Mayor Perry, appears to have diverged significantly from the grant-winning application.
Twin towers: no one seems to know what, if anything, the rusty metal is supposed to represent. The notice on the ironwork (below) doesn’t help, either
According to the GLA, the project was supposed to preserve the “architectural and mediaeval character” of the Minster, while “improving pedestrian and cycling connectivity… alongside public realm and green space enhancements (such as St John’s Memorial Garden)”.
The original Liveable Neighbourhood bid’s aims included overcoming the way that the six-lane urban motorway split the Old Town community in two. The grant-winning proposals included new provision for people to cycle safely.
“This is a huge opportunity to mitigate the divisive effects of out-dated car-first planning policies that built an incomplete ring road of urban motorways through Croydon’s historic Old Town,” Andrew Pelling, then a councillor for the area, said in early 2019.
But Mayor Perry’s visceral hatred of cycling and cyclists saw those aspirations binned.
The triple carriageway layout has been restored on both sides of Roman Way, almost as if to encourage motorists to put their foot to the floor. Those driving southbound are confronted with plenty of potential for road rage as the three lanes converge into two with little warning, at a point right outside the Minster. So much for the Green being a place of peace and tranquillity.
It must be rare, in the 21st Century, for a local authority to introduce a road scheme which makes driving more dangerous, rather than safer, calmer and discouraging of speeding. But that’s what Mayor Perry has managed to deliver.
The real test of how green and successful the project overall has been will come next summer. Early indications aren’t good.
Drought victims: the recently planted trees down Roman Way’s central reservation don’t look in a good way after the summer’s heatwaves. Even if they survive, who will be venturing into the road to provide the saplings with the watering that they need?
The deep pedestrian subways on the St John’s Road side of Roman Way were filled in mainly with building aggregate and a sliver of compost on top. Whether the design matches tree pit standards required remains to be seen.
There are already dead trees outside the Minster. Perhaps they are just resting, but probably only in the sense of Monty Python’s dead parrot. The loss of leaves on new trees while established trees nearby are still green or only just going autumnal golden yellow gives cause for concern.
The right time to plant trees is in late autumn or winter. “This gives trees the best chance of establishing.” That’s according to the charity Trees for Streets, who are working with councils around the country, including Croydon.
The Minster Green’s dying trees were planted earlier this year, in the middle of the worst drought that has ever been seen in the history of Croydon’s venerable, 1,000-year church.
Trees for Streets say all newly-planted urban trees must be watered from May to September in the first few years of their lives, getting a minimum of 50 litres of water every week.
The way we were: the works provide a comparison to the way the areas around the then Parish Church looked in 1904, long before the six-lane urban motorway was built
Planting them during the heatwave, as has happened outside the Minster and in the Old Town central reservation, and then not watering them properly, if at all, is just asking for trouble. Such a waste. Such a shame. So typical of Perry’s Croydon.
Looking at historic pictures of the front of the church, the change that this project has delivered is transformative. Just, perhaps, not as transformative as the grant-funders might have expected.
Read more: Promising signs of the future for Croydon’s historic Old Town
Read more: Perry’s plan is rejected by four parties – and Commissioners
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The sub-title of the original Liveable Neighbourhood project was “Reconnecting Old Town”, which was supposed to tame the Roman Way racetrack and provide more and better crossing points of the dual carriageway. But, in a project best described as a wasted opportunity, the despised subway under the road has been filled in and the one (staggered) crossing remains completely unchanged, forcing pedestrians and cyclists to wait for two crossing phases to get across the untamed racetrack !