A new public park, complete with artwork, play area, and bespoke wildflower planting has opened in south-east London following the completion of work as part of London’s super sewer project.

The space, situated between St Joseph’s Primary School and the historic St Paul’s Church, was required to allow Tideway – the company behind the project – to make a vital sewer connection to prevent sewage spills into the River Thames.

And now, after eight years of work from the Tideway team, the above-ground space has been handed back to the local community, following an opening ceremony led Deputy Mayor of London for Environment and Energy, Mete Coban, and Tideway’s Deputy Programme Director, Jim Avant.

Around 100 guests were given a first look at the new space, with the event opening with carols sung by a 25-strong choir from St Joseph’s Primary School.

Mete Coban, Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy said: “This inspiring project shows how investment in vital infrastructure can go hand in hand with empowering communities in London – not only by cleaning up our rivers, but by creating welcoming, high-quality public spaces that people can enjoy every day.

“The Mayor and I want to make London’s rivers something that every Londoner can be proud of. It’s great to see that Tideway is leaving a positive legacy above ground as well as below it, strengthening neighbourhoods like Deptford while protecting the River Thames for generations to come as we build a better, greener London for everyone.”

Tideway’s vital work at this site on Deptford Church Street involved digging a 48m-deep, 17m-wide shaft to connect the Deptford Storm Relief combined sewer overflow (CSO) to the new Greenwich Connection Tunnel, which links to the super sewer.

Historically, the Deptford CSO discharged nearly 1.5 million tonnes of storm sewage into the River Thames in a typical year; with the super sewer now up and running, this figure will be reduced by around 90%.

Since the new infrastructure began operating in the autumn of 2024, the entire system has captured around 12.5 million tonnes of storm sewage that would have otherwise spilled into the River Thames.

Jim Avant said: “This is a fantastic moment and an important milestone for Tideway, as we hand this civic space back to the local community.

“Delivering a major piece of underground infrastructure in the heart of a busy neighbourhood has not been simple, and I’d like to thank local residents for their patience throughout the works.

“Watching this site transform from a construction site into a new public park has been a real source of pride for everyone involved in the project, and I hope the community will enjoy this space for many years to come – all while the infrastructure beneath continues to protect the River Thames.”

The new space includes a play area that was designed with the help of pupils from St Joseph’s Primary School, who participated in a hands-on modelling workshop back in 2018.

The result is a ‘playable landscape’, rather than a conventional playground, offering children a wide range of play opportunities within a small space, with natural features like changes of levels, a rock clambering wall, stepping stones and boulders as well as a slide, swing, balance blocks and wobbly sheep.

Elsewhere on the site, Tideway commissioned Studio Weave to develop permanent artwork for the new space. The four sculptural pieces question the public art convention of placing sculptures of gods, leaders and high achievers on plinths or pedestals, to be looked up to and glorified by ordinary people.

Instead, the artists have made the plinths themselves the artwork, in celebration of common values. Each piece has a theme suggested by community members at a workshop in 2017 as a value especially characteristic of Deptford – heritage, resilience, variety and liveliness. 

J.J. Cliff, from Studio Weave, said: “We are happy to be able to contribute to the public realm of Deptford. These artworks are a small part of a contribution to a rich community, delivered as an invitation to the people of Deptford to make use of them. We’re grateful to be part of a diverse series of commissions and for the curators’ support.”

Poet Dorothea Smartt was commissioned to write poems for the ventilation columns at nine of the Thames Tideway Tunnel sites – including on four ventilation columns at Deptford.

These pieces are all accessible for the public to walk close to, and are thematically linked to London’s ‘lost rivers’, which form London’s natural drainage system and were used as the basis of Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s original sewer network.

And finally, a bespoke wildflower turf was specially grown for the space, to replicate the richly biodiverse grass mix that was found on the open space before Tideway works began.

Botanists at the Creekside Discovery Centre on nearby Deptford Creek looked after a patch of the original turf during construction, and it has now been reinstalled. The site has been planted with 29 native and ornamental trees, and the project has planted an additional 87 new trees in local spaces nearby.