Outdoor swimming hole in Soper Park.
Growing up in Cambridge next to Soper Park, the park became an extension of my backyard. I spent many days exploring the park, wading in the creek, catching crayfish and racing home-made boats. As a child the creek seemed mysterious and ancient. It was dammed with stone and concrete dams, and walled in with massive stones, broken by sets of concrete stairs that led down into the water. I used to image they were ancient ruins. Only as I grew older did my father tell me that the creek had been dammed and walled as an outdoor swimming hole, which he used to visit as a child. Under the silt of thirty years, you could still uncover the concrete floor of the swimming hole.
Today the ruins of the swimming hole in Soper Park have been replaced with a vibrant, naturalized creek, which has become a thriving ecosystem for significant species such as the brown trout. Between 1995 and 2001 the City of Cambridge undertook a naturalization of the creek in Soper Park in an effort to bring the creek back to life from a “sterilized” swimming hole, to a cold water creek. The stone walls of the creek were largely removed, and where the creek had been straightened and dammed, the project attempted to return the creek to a more natural and historical route. Indigenous grasses, trees and shrubs were planted alongside the creek to prevent erosion and provide habitat for animals. Continue reading
The Lower Lea Valley, currently undergoing a massive redevelopment project in preparation for the next Summer Olympics, underwent a number of equally remarkable transformations as London’s heavy industry migrated to the city’s eastern periphery in the second half of the nineteenth century. In this talk, Jim Clifford explored some of the findings of his PhD dissertation on the environmental problems created by half a century of urban-industrial development, and the challenges this history poses for redevelopment.
