Enfield Island Village is a modern housing estate in

Enfield Lock Enfield Lock is an area in the London Borough of Enfield, north London. It is approximately located east of the Hertford Road between Turkey Street and the Holmesdale Tunnel overpass, and extends to the River Lee Navigation, including the En ...

, in the

London Borough of Enfield The London Borough of Enfield () is a London borough in North London. It borders the London boroughs of Barnet to the west, Haringey to the south, and Waltham Forest to the southeast. To the north are the districts of Hertsmere, Welwyn Hat ...

, north

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. Before April 1994, Enfield Island Village formed part of the

Epping Forest Epping Forest is a area of ancient woodland, and other established habitats, which straddles the border between Greater London and Essex. The main body of the forest stretches from Epping in the north, to Chingford on the edge of the London ...

district of

Essex Essex () is a Ceremonial counties of England, county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the Riv ...

, but it was transferred to the borough of Enfield in

Greater London Greater may refer to: *Greatness Greatness is a concept of a state of superiority affecting a person or object in a particular place or area. Greatness can also be attributed to individuals who possess a natural ability to be better than al ...

when the housing development was created.

History

Enfield Island Village was built on land previously occupied by the

Royal Small Arms Factory The Royal Small Arms Factory (RSAF) was a UK government-owned rifle factory in Enfield (though some parts were in Waltham Abbey), adjoining the Lee Navigation in the Lea Valley. The factory produced British military rifles, muskets and s ...

. It is close to the borders of

and

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For gov ...

, and is adjacent to the

River Lee Navigation The Lee Navigation is a canalised river incorporating the River Lea (also called the River Lee along the sections that are navigable). It flows from Hertford Castle Weir to the River Thames at Bow Creek; its first lock is Hertford Lock and i ...

River Lea The River Lea ( ) is in South East England. It originates in Bedfordshire, in the Chiltern Hills, and flows southeast through Hertfordshire, along the Essex border and into Greater London, to meet the River Thames at Bow Creek. It is one of ...

, Cattlegate Flood Relief Channel, and Newmans Weir, as well as open countryside, including

. The site was decommissioned by the MOD in 1984 and was sold to

British Aerospace British Aerospace plc (BAe) was a British aircraft, munitions and defence-systems manufacturer. Its head office was at Warwick House in the Farnborough Aerospace Centre in Farnborough, Hampshire. Formed in 1977, in 1999 it purchased Marconi ...

(BAe). BAe together with Trafalgar House launched a joint venture company, Lee Valley Developments (LVD). In 1996, the land was sold to Fairview Homes, the housing wing of Hillsdown Holdings. Enfield Island Village Library

The housing estate was built by Fairview New Homes between 1997 and 2003 on a

brownfield In urban planning, brownfield land is any previously developed land that is not currently in use. It may be potentially contaminated, but this is not required for the area to be considered brownfield. The term is also used to describe land pre ...

site. It comprises a mixture of housing ranging from one-bedroom flats to five-bedroom houses. In line with national standards, 25% of the housing was designated as

social housing Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local. Although the common goal of public housing is to provide affordable housing, the details, terminology, d ...

, and some of the original buildings have been retained. The development has a central parkland area and a small shopping centre. The shops include a small supermarket, a

pharmacy Pharmacy is the science and practice of discovering, producing, preparing, dispensing, reviewing and monitoring medications, aiming to ensure the safe, effective, and affordable use of medication, medicines. It is a miscellaneous science as it ...

, and a Chinese

takeaway A take-out or takeout (U.S., Canada, and the Philippines); carry-out or to-go (Scotland and some dialects in the U.S. and Canada); takeaway (England, Wales, Australia, Lebanon, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and occasionally in Nort ...

. The Island also has its own general practitioner (GP), private fitness centre, and a new (2003)

primary school A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary e ...

– Keys Meadow in nearby Enfield Lock. A new library opened in 2008. The development is on a

flood plain A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudi ...

. However, the Environment Agency's assessment is that even without the

flood A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...

defences that surround the Island, there is even less risk of serious flooding (0.1%, or 1 in 1000 years) than in the surrounding area (0.5%, or 1 in 200 years). Enfield Island Village6

As it is a private development, residents are responsible for many aspects of life on the Island through the Enfield Island Village Trust. The Trust is responsible for the upkeep of common land, including the ornamental canal and parkland, utilities such as the waste water system, and for enforcing legal covenants covering the development. There was a campaign against the development by

Friends of the Earth Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) is an international network of environmental organizations in 73 countries. The organization was founded in 1969 in San Francisco by David Brower, Donald Aitken and Gary Soucie after Brower's split wi ...

and the

Action Group in the late 1990s. The campaign resulted in the Enfield RSAF (Royal Small Arms Factory) Review Panel being set up, informed by environmental reports carried out over ten years and including evidence from witnesses such as the Head of Land Quality at the Environment Agency and a team of environmental consultants. The review concluded that the site was safe for development and that campaigners' claims regarding rumours of dangerous materials were untrue. Planning permission was granted for the development, supported by the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...

and by the Enfield Enterprise Agency. It was developed as a model brown field development, with a clay cap at a depth of one metre under the topsoil. Safety inspections were initially carried out every six months, but this has now been reduced to annually.

In popular culture

The area was featured in a 2000 edition of the BBC TV programme ''

Panorama A panorama (formed from Greek πᾶν "all" + ὅραμα "view") is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film, seismic images, or 3D modeling. The word was originally coined i ...

'' focusing on brownfield land housing development.Panorama transcript
Retrieved 16 April 2011

Nearest places

Brimsdown Brimsdown is a neighbourhood of eastern Enfield in the London Borough of Enfield, north London, on the west side of the mid-to-lower Lea Valley. Geography The east of Brimsdown, that is, east of the eastern Lea Valley line is one of the boro ...

Waltham Cross Waltham Cross is a town in the Borough of Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, England, located north of central London. In the south-eastern corner of Hertfordshire, it borders Cheshunt to the north, Waltham Abbey to the east, and Enfield to the sou ...

* Sewardstone *

Waltham Abbey Waltham Abbey is a town and civil parish in the Epping Forest District of Essex, within the metropolitan and urban area of London, England, north-east of Charing Cross. It lies on the Greenwich Meridian, between the River Lea in the west and ...

Nearest stations

* Enfield Lock railway station *

Brimsdown railway station Brimsdown railway station is on the Lea Valley line that forms part of the West Anglia Main Line, serving the neighbourhood of Brimsdown in the London Borough of Enfield, north London. It is down the line from London Liverpool Street and is s ...

Gallery

Image:Enfield Island Village4.JPG, James Lee square Image:Enfield Island Village5.JPG, Former police station Image:Enfield Island Village8.JPG, Water tower on the island Image:Enfield Island Village9.JPG, Road bridge leading to the island spanning the

(completed 1998) Image:Enfield_Village_Island3.JPG, The Pattern Room Image:Royal Small Arms Factory.jpg, The machine shop File:Royal Small Arms Factory1.JPG, RSAF interpretation centre File:Gun Barrel Forge&Grindery.JPG, The former gun barrel forge and grindery File:Enfield Island Village1.JPG, Housing on the Island

References

External links

Official Website of the RSA Island Centre

* ttp://www.eiv.org.uk Official Website of Enfield Island Village Trust {{LB Enfield Enfield, London History of the London Borough of Enfield Buildings and structures in the London Borough of Enfield Districts of the London Borough of Enfield Areas of London Housing estates in London