London’s Pocket Parks: Pinnacle Park, E14

This is a new public park space in Canary Wharf that’s only recently opened as part of the adjoining skyscraper towers development.

It’s built up on a slope, which gives people at the top nice views of the local area, but mainly as it’s also a sloping roof for the skyscraper utility rooms and, of course, a future cafe.

While the park is new, it sits on land that was also a park, of sorts, until just a few years ago, as the skyscraper was built on the site of the City Pride pub. The sloping garden just happens to be roughly where the pub garden used to be.

The park has a long winding path that snakes up to the top, along with stairs to one side, and the planting has been slotted in between the slopped path in corten steel planters. However, the use of corten, which is achingly fashionable for its lower long-term maintenance, does work well here as it provides a sharp colour contrast to the planting that fills the pots.

Although there doesn’t appear to be much seating as you enter the pocket park, as you go up, more wooden seating appears, and then finally, at the very top of the slope, long rows of stone seating areas give a view of the local area.

Admittedly, not the more exciting view, but that said, on my visit, some local builders were having lunch at the top, and were joined by a third as I was leaving. Also at the top are some bug hotels, and a spider had taken up residence right next to them, probably hoping for a free lunch as well.

The main attraction is that there is some seating in a patch of Canary Wharf that doesn’t have that much of it, surrounded by lots of rich and densely planted foliage. The park is next to Marsh Wall, a rather busy road, so it’s not the most peaceful location, although the surrounding glass wall does help to dampen the noise somewhat.

The road has an interesting history though, as it’s a new road that was created by the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) to run along the side of the old docks as part of opening up of the previously closed docks for new houses and offices. It cost £2.5 million when it opened, it was nicknamed the red brick road, because it had been paved with over two million ‘bricks’ (red concrete blocks) to reduce maintenance costs. It has long lost its redness, though, and now looks like any other road.

The road also lost the pub and its garden, but it has gained an interesting sloping garden instead.