2012 and the threat to an iconic London landscape

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Greenwich Park boasts a row of chestnut trees that were young atthe time of the Great Fire, and 130 years old during the FrenchRevolution. As the sun shone yesterday, courting couples of theiPod age lay beneath the same branches that sheltered King CharlesII and his mistresses.
The sweet chestnuts are among London's oldest living things,surviving wars, the fall of empires, and the rise of the vast city.Now they, and their magnificent park, face a new challenge.
In 2012, Greenwich Park is due to host the equestrian competitionat the London Olympics which will, the Evening Standard can reveal,result in its partial closure for 10 months and the "pruning" ofsome historic trees. Holding the events in this unique place wasone of the London bid's most eye-catching promises. For the Gamesorganisers - and the British Equestrian Federation, the officialgoverning body of Olympic horse sport - it takes equestrianism to anew level of excitement and media profile. "It will be a stunningbackdrop," says Sue Benson, designer of the cross-country course."Can you imagine the pictures?"
And it brings one of Britain's more successful Olympic sports, intothe heart of the Games, with the park only a few miles from themain Olympic site. At the Beijing Olympics, the horse events are1,000 miles away, in Hong Kong. At the Melbourne Games, theequestrian competition took place in Stockholm, a differenthemisphere.
But a growing body of opponents, some in the riding world, say thechoice of Greenwich Park will seriously damage both the venue andthe sport it seeks to celebrate. "It just doesn't fit. The park istoo damned small," says Pippa Cuckson, former deputy editor ofHorse and Hound magazine and communications director for GreatLeighs racecourse, a potential alternative to Greenwich for thecross-country event. "My concern is that the sporting tests will becompromised, and it will make a fool of the sport."
"If I hear the words 'iconic site' again, I'll scream," saysMichael Goldman, a local resident who has used £1,000 of hisownto start a local pressure group, No to Greenwich OlympicEquestrian Events (Nogoe). "It doesn't make sense to have such anevent in an urban park and it has the potential to do real harm."
The stakes could scarcely be higher. For its combination ofdramatic, hilly landscape and long history, Greenwich Park, firstenclosed in 1433, is arguably the most important city park inBritain, certainly the only one that is also a Unesco WorldHeritage Site. It includes many other centuries-old trees, theobservatory, the meridian line, ancient f lower and herb gardens,Roman remains, a deer park, 70 species of birds and 14 species ofbutterfly. It is perhaps the most important single part of aGreenwich tourist experience that draws in 9.6 million visitors ayear, spending £532 million and directly supporting 8,300local jobs.
In any other case touching such a place would almost certainly beimpossible; under draft government planning guidance, even peopleliving near a World Heritage Site will be prevented from makingmore than minor external alterations to their homes.
WHAT is planned for the Olympics will be wholesale, if temporary,change, revealed here in detail for the first time. A 23,000-seatshowjumping arena, 550ft by 525ft, will be built on the lawnbetween the Maritime Museum and the observatory. (The originalplan, to build the arena in the grounds of the museum rather thanthe park itself, has been scrapped: it would have required thelengthy closure of a main road.)
Dozens of stables and a number of warm-up tracks, along withfacilities, will go up between the arena and the western, CroomsHill side. Most controversially, a 6.2km (3.9 mile) crosscountryhorseriding course will snake through almost every corner.
The locals' first concern is for how long they will lose theirpark. Olympics organisers say work on the arena, stables andancillary buildings is likely to closemost of the lower park forseven to eight months over the spring and summer of 2012. "Weanticipate starting major building works in March 2012 and willhand back the park about six weeks after the end of theParalympics," says Debbie Jevans, London 2012's director of sport.The Paralympics end on September 4.
There will be closures of similar areas for "two to three months"in spring and summer 2011, as smaller versions of the facilities(an arena without tiered seating, for instance, and only 30stables) are built for the test event that the IOC requires. MsJevans said work to prepare the cross-country course will start"about two years before, in 2010" but only small areas will berequired at any one time.
Most of the upper half of the park, including the observatory andparts of the lower eastern end, will remain open most of the time.Organisers said " minimal" complete closures would amount to"certainly not months, possibly not even weeks". But the closuresseem likely to damage the 2011 and 2012 tourist seasons, since theareas affected are the busiest parts of the park, closest toGreenwich town centre. The total area facing prolonged closureamounts to between a quarter and a third of the park.
Opponents' second area of concern is whether all the changes will,indeed, be temporary. The organisers say they will hand the parkback undamaged. After initially pledging to protect only trees of"ecological or heritage importance", they have now told theStandard that they will not destroy any tree.
The arena will be built in the park's only really substantialexpanse of open grass and measurements taken by the Standardsuggest it will fit. The ground is not flat. Ms Jevans said itwould be raised, on some form of artificial platform, rather thanlevelled. The area of the stables and warm-up tracks, sprinkledwith mature trees, is more problematic but Ms Jevans said that thebuildings would, if necessary, be "built around the trees".
The most sensitive issue of all is the cross-country course. Atmany Olympics, including this year's, the cross-country is on aseparate site from the showjumping and dressage arena, simplybecause it needs so much more space. Hong Kong's cross-countryevent will be held at a golf course and country club miles out inthe semi-rural New Territories. Sydney's cross-country venue was1.6km by 1.8km, twice the size of Greenwich. The BEF says Londonwill be the first time in Olympic history that the equestriancrosscountry has been held in a built-up area.
"To build a cross-country course you import a mixture of topsoiland sand and put grass seed on top," says Dane Rawlins, showdirector of dressage at Hickstead and an opponent of usingGreenwich Park. "You will have to rotovate the ground to get [theseed] to bite into the new soil." The park's tarmac paths will alsoneed to be dug out where they cross the course, he said, to avoiddamaging the horses' hooves.
The course plan seen by the Standard only skirts the Charles IIchestnuts but it will make five crossings of avenues and pathslined on both sides by closelyspaced and sometimes almost equallyvenerable trees. Hong Kong's crosscountry course is 10 metres wide- the Olympic standard. If that was applied in Greenwich, treeswould have to go. Ms Jevans said the course could narrow to fivemetres to get through the tree lines. "Why don't they go the wholehog and have a one-metre course run with Shetland ponies," scoffsRawlins.
Jill Butler, of the Woodland Trust, says the Olympics could damagethe park without actually meaning to. British Standards guidancerecommends against any kind of construction, even tracks or paths,within up to 15 metres of a veteran tree. "The majority of rootsare in the top 30 centimetres of the soil," she said. "Lots ofhorses going across them could cause significant change, and theolder the tree, the less it may be able to respond."
The other difficulty with many of the trees is that even if theirtrunks are more than five metres apart, their branches are too lowfor a horse and rider to pass beneath. Ms Jevans admitted some"pruning" would be needed With an old tree, according to JillButler, that is a potentially lethal operation.
"Cutting back of lower branches should be avoided or minimised inmature trees if at all possible," she said. "Because they are thebiggest branches, you are making a major change to the trunk of thetree. You're allowing air in and speeding up the process of decaysuch that the tree may not be able to outgrow the decay.
"These are very significant trees, and if you damage them it's notlike a building. There's nothing you can do to put them backtogether."
Officially, Greenwich's Olympic status is now set in stone, withthe local MP and council firmly in support. Even the local amenitysocieties are adopting a waitandsee approach. But a peasants'revolt to move at least the cross-country appears to be gatheringpace, with reluctant society officers being pressurised at specialmeetings by angry ordinary members.
BEF spokespeople did not return the Standard's calls but astatement on its website says it is "very happy" with Greenwich asa venue. Pippa Cuckson and Dane Rawlins have been accused of havingvested interests in moving the cross-country, which they stronglydeny.
"I am not flagging [Great Leighs] up as an alternative," saysCuckson. "The fact is there just isn't enough room at Greenwich toput in what's required. Nor will there be room for the spectators.Badminton [the main UK cross-country event] had 180,000 spectatorsand Greenwich will have room for far fewer. By having it there, weare denying the whole home crowd of three-day eventing the chanceto see the competition."
At a recent Standard debate, Olympics chief Lord Coe said havingthe equestrianism at Greenwich would open up the sport to newinner-city audiences. The blunt truth is that Greenwich will shutout not just potential new followers of equestrianism but also manyof the people who already watch.