Love the Cran Brook
This is a pilot project to see if we can restore the Cran Brook as a biodiverse waterway. The Cran Brook’s source is in Newbury Park and it runs underground and then emerges in Valentines Park, just by our Forest Garden. It then flows on and into the River Roding , Ilford’s river, the third largest in London. The Cran Brook is polluted. We hope that if locals are reconnected with their waterways, we can build up a project to work with other groups, to make the Cran Brook healthy.
We have held some events over the past few years, all well attended which gives hope for local interest in the Cran Brook: a Show The Love event in 2022 including blessings by local leaders and people of faith/no faith, river talks and a blessing for the Cran Brook at our 2023 Forest Garden festival, and a Valentines Park waterways community walk John Rogers. in August 2024. See the entry and video below.
Discovering Valentines Park waterways – a community walk
Fifty people joined John Rogers, a local psychogeographer, story teller and film maker to discover the waterways in Valentines Park and to find out more about the Cran Brook. These waterways were important in the past. We collected local knowledge on our quest to locate and understand the problems with the Cran Brook. We will be organising citizen science activities on the Cran Brook soon with the Roding River Trust and Thames 21. See the video below of our fabulous walk and talk on 31 August 24.