This multi-award-winning wetland park offers the community a valuable piece of countryside right at their doorstep. The beautifully designed landscape includes recreational areas, spaces that promote creativity and imaginative natural play, and a variety of habitats that support wildlife.
Visitors to this blossoming parkland can expect to see a variety of wildlife throughout the year including water vole, great crested newt, reed bunting, snipe and emperor dragonfly.
Flood protection
A primary role of Beam Parklands is flood protection. The park provides safe storage of 450,000m3 of water – equivalent of around 180 Olympic swimming pools – that in turn protects neighbouring homes, businesses and areas identified for current and future employment. There will be times, a couple of days each year, when parts of the site are underwater. However, the paths and bridges have been designed to withstand flooding, and the habitats that have been created are representative of environments that experience regular flooding.
Free car parking is available on Ballards Road
Walking trails part surfaced most routes suitable for wheelchairs
Well-controlled dogs welcome
London Borough of Barking and Dagenham
Oval Road North,
Dagenham,
Greater London,
RM10 9EH
Beam Parklands is located in east London in the floodplain of the River Beam, a tributary of the River Thames which also forms the boundary between the London Boroughs of Barking & Dagenham and Havering. The site is located amidst the industrial and residential legacy of the Ford works, in one of the most deprived parts of the country.
The area provides a wealth of diverse habitats, having remained largely untouched and unmanaged throughout the 20th Century as a result of a smallpox isolation hospital being located at its centre.
In recent years, the site has also functioned as a flood storage reservoir, protecting homes, schools and businesses in the area including Barking power station which provides approximately a third of London’s electricity.
The site had been badly neglected for many years and became a magnet for anti-social behaviour before the Land Trust took it on and opened it up to the public in 2011.
London Borough of Barking and Dagenham looks after the site on a day-to day-basis
London Borough of Barking and Dagenham
Email: suzanne.king@lbbd.gov.uk
Tel: 07976800230
