A major new park in the London Borough of Enfield; Brooks Park will become one of the primary green spaces within the 80-hectare Meridian Water development.

The Meridian Water site is one of the last ‘grey’ gaps in the LeeValley Regional Park, requiring extensive remediation and flood alleviation works before development can begin. The park plays a key role in managing flooding, returning the site to the wider LeeValley network, and providing new ecologies and recreation space. We were commissioned by Enfield Council to deliver the detailed design and planning application.

Periscope worked closely with ARUP’s specialists, the Environment Agency and Enfield Council’s SUD’s team to address the site’s contamination and poor ecological value and the need to manage river and rain water in the park. The landscape is designed to flood, celebrating the theatre of the changing water’s edge.

Brooks Park will provide a new 2-hectare, public riverine park, connecting Tottenham Marshes to the centre of Meridian Water, with meandering river walks, natural play spaces and ecological areas. Designing the park around the naturalised Pymmes Brook creates a wide range of habitats for river flora and fauna as well as a mosaic of woodland, grassland and seasonal wet meadow. These naturalistic environments and elements of the industrial past create a unique sense of place, grounded in its history.

The project benefits from the £150m Housing Infrastructure Grant secured by Enfield Council in 2019 as part of the Strategic Infrastructure Works (SIW) to recover the site from contamination and install new infrastructure. The project achieved detailed planning consent in March 2020. In 2021 Vinci Taylor Woodrow was appointed to deliver the parks over a four-year construction programme.