A safe, peaceful place

Certain buildings and infrastructure hold a sense of familiarity. Some have been in place since the farm was first taken on by LB Newham. The Visitors’ Centre already appears on maps of the area in the late 1970s and was already a Council Parks’ building for community use within King George V Park when the Council took over the farm in 1979 and only became used by the farm when this expanded, contraversially at the time, into King George V in the early 1990s under the then Cabinet Lead for Leisure Services, now Baroness Lyn Brown. There has been talk several times over the past 40 years of upgrading it and, indeed, under the management of Community Links between 2009 and 2014, a Master Plan was commissioned of Adams and Sutherland for the farm which included an upgrade to the Visitors’ Centre which, sadly, never came into fruition before the farm was returned to Council management.

Other buildings evolved over time or were constructed when funding became available. The oak play barn, latterly used for events and activities, was also part of the Adams and Sutherland designs.

The conservation area pond bridge was once replaced in the 1990s by the Newham Conservation Volunteers and constructed with reclaimed wood and scaffolding. This was again replaced within the last 15 years by a recycled plastic bridge which still remains in place.

Most of the buildings present at the closure of the farm are still in place. However, the cow stall near to the King George V Park entrance has been demolished since closure due to it being structurally unsound.

The outdoor classroom at the eastern, Beckton Stansfeld Road end of the farm, opposite the Play Barn and erected and decorated with colourful murals during the tenure of Community Links, and the colourful recycled plastic picnic tables inside it were sadly burnt to the ground in a incident involving a few teenagers which went wrong on the evening Saturday 6^th September when five unidentified teenage intruders were reported to have been seen escaping from the farm over the fences.