At The Canal Club

Novelist Sarah Winman visited the Canal Club in Bethnal Green recently with Photographer Rachel Ferriman to report on the threat to the community spaces at the Wellington Estate

Toslima Rahman with her daughter Saima & son Ayaan at the Canal Club

The Canal Club sits at the corner of Waterloo Gardens and Sewardstone Rd in Bethnal Green. It consists of a playground, a ball park, a community centre and community garden between the vast Wellington Estate to the east, of which it is part, and the Grand Union Housing Coop to the west. At the southern border is Belmont Wharf, a small boating community established by Sally and Dominique who were granted permission by the council nine years ago to have moorings along this stretch of Regent’s Canal and to create a sustainable garden for boat dwellers and land dwellers alike.

The garden is incredibly beautiful, a biodiverse haven. The sound of children playing carries across the water from Victoria Park and faded bunting flutters in the breeze. Flowers of every colour bloom and bees are plenty and go about with purpose. Butterflies delight around the nettles and even bats have found a home here. This garden has been created with care and thought and, more importantly, time. The air is sweet and clean, far removed from the fug of Cambridge Heath Rd and Hackney Rd that pollute nearby.

I met residents Sally, Dominique, Alex, Ricardo, Helga, Erdoo, Mr & Mrs Ali, and Toslima to learn that this beloved site has been selected by Tower Hamlets Council for a housing infill scheme. These schemes are becoming common practise by councils, who target sites – usually recreational – on existing estates and build further.

The proposal for the Wellington Estate is to demolish the Canal Club and remove the open space and community asset it provides. This is to construct a further twenty-two flats on an already densely populated estate which was built in the thirties as an answer to slum clearance – basically, it is taking space from those who have little to start with.

It is a complex situation that is the outcome of thirty years of right-to-buy, money held by central government and the chronic need for housing. However, what is inexcusable to the residents of the estate and the boating community and supportive locals, is the opaque nature of the dealings – the council’s lack of transparency and openness to discussion. Two years ago, they thought they were simply looking at the refurbishment of their community centre, until they later found out that the decision to demolish the Canal Club site was already under way.

Alex explains that the Canal Club land was given by the GLC to the people of the Wellington Estate in the late seventies and early eighties to offset the overcrowding and the lack of balconies and gardens. It was their land and she believes the present council had a responsibility to share their ideas with the residents. The irony is not lost on her too, that Tower Hamlets say they are an Climate Emergency Council and yet are taking away the only green public space on the estate.

Everyone talks about the eighties and nineties when the community centre was thriving. It was hired out for weddings and birthdays then. There was a youth club, opportunities to learn a second language and for recent immigrants to learn English, space for pensioners to get together, and for the residents association to meet and share ideas. Dwight tells us he was a member of the youth club and it was the only chance for kids to have day trips out of London. He remembers camping in Tunbridge Wells. The chance to ride horses and canoe – see a different life, be a different person.

There is nothing for kids now, someone says. So much has already gone. And if you take away the ball park, then what? Looting across the generations, another says. Building slums of the future, says another. Erdoo, who has lived on the state all her life, tells me that her dad Joseph looked after the Community Centre for years before the council took away his key and barred the local residents from using it anymore. Then the Community Centre was offered up to private use for private rents. The popular Scallywags nursery is the present tenant, but ill-feeling from that time remains.

This engaging group of people care so much about their environment and improving the lives of others. Yet what is apparent is how the agency of council tenants is being eroded in the widening chasm of inequality.

The right to space and light and clean air can never only be for the rich.

I stand on the old wharf where the custodians, Sally and Dominique, repaired it with two-hundred-year-old bricks. Wildflowers grow here now and nature has reclaimed an area once used for the dumping of waste. Kick the soil and a filament of plastic is revealed, hidden by knapweed or evening primrose, or large swathes of hemp-agrimony. Over the years, composting has built up the fertility of the soil, attracting a diversity of insects and bird population. Dominique explains that the principle of permaculture is to work in sympathy with nature and harness its natural energy. A wild colony of bees appear every year for a few weeks when the cherry tree blossoms and then disappear again to their unknown world. Dominique keeps a daily diary of the changes and visitations. The secret life that we do not see, either because we move too fast or because the insects are too small.

The license for this garden expires next year, and Dominique and Sally fear the council will not renew it if the demolition goes ahead. I find it unbelievable that such a necessary and beautiful urban green space could be sacrificed especially in a time of declining mental health. The benefits that access to nature provides are irrefutable. This community garden is more than a garden, it is a destination for the carers and patients who come down from the Mission Practise or readers looking for solitude. It is a resource for artists seeking inspiration and children who want to know how the natural world works – or simply those who need to be reminded that they are more than their circumstance.

As I leave this corner of East London, I am reminded of a speech delivered by Robert Kennedy back in the sixties about how the value of a country is measured – “It does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry… It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion… it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

Please help save the Canal Club: CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE RESIDENTS’ PETITION