Silkstream Park

Silkstream Park is within the Watling Estate, a large LCC housing estate built in the 1920s for inner city slum clearance, designed by LCC architect George Topham Forrest; by 1930 4000 homes were built over an area of c.64 hectares. Eventually schools, churches, shops and other community facilities were put in. The design of the estate was influenced by Arts and Crafts and the Garden City movement, with buildings simple in plan and design, and good quality materials used. The layout consisted of well-spaced buildings often arranged symmetrically around green spaces and street trees, so that the building layout was softened with greenery. Roads tended to follow old field boundaries allowing existing trees to line new roads, as well as planting of new trees on corners. Grass verges were a characteristic of the estate and there was wide use of hedges. Tracts of open space were created through the estate, following the meandering course of Silk Stream and its tributary. These included Watling Park (q.v.), The Meads, an unlandscaped, natural area and Lyndhurst Park, which was reserved on the original estate plan and was subsequently made into a public park.

Silkstream Park has natural landscaping either side of the Silk Stream, the banks of which have some mature horse chestnut and other trees, otherwise the park has lawns and small areas of ornamental shrubs, with a few old oak and hawthorn from the time when there were fields and hedgerows here. There is seating with some newly planted trees such as an avenue either side of a cycle path, and recent gates are located at the east end.