Stave Hill Ecology Park
Stave Hill Ecological Park is managed by the Trust for Urban Ecology as a nature reserve, educational facility, research area and place of recreation. The Park has been designed and managed to form a mosaic of grassland, woodland, scrub and wetland habitats which support a wide variety of wildlife. Visitors can enter from Russia Dock Woodland or from entrances around Stave Hill. The Park is open to the public at all times and has a full time warden.
Site History
Stave Hill Ecological Park is a 5.2 acre nature area located on the site of Stave Dock in the centre of the former Surrey Commercial Dock, a few minutes walk from historic Rotherhithe and just over the river from Canary Wharf. The site was offered to the Trust in early 1984 by the London Docklands Development Corporation as a replacement for the William Curtis Ecological Park, Britain's first urban nature park. Landscaping work began in 1986 and the park was handed over to the Trust in 1988.
Stave Hill Ecological Park's mosaic of habitats have been created from scratch by sowing and planting the poor soil. In some places it has bee improved or altered by the addition of sand, spent mushroom compost and a variety of mulches. The Park is intensively managed to conserve the wide variety of wildlife that colonised the area during the years the docks lay derelict and provide a haven for some of the species that loved here before humans so changed the land