For years, the former gasworks site has sat locked behind railings, inaccessible and largely forgotten by the surrounding East Ham community. Once home to a prominent gasholder and bordered by the historic Back River, the site holds a rich industrial and natural heritage hidden from public view. The proposals will bring it back into community life, delivering approximately 900 homes alongside a 6.7-hectare park and reopening land that has been closed for two decades.

A JTP Engages process with the local community helped shape the masterplan. This included a site tour and walkabout, an AI table, a giant ideas wall, and co-design sessions with the wider design team, including representatives from the Berkeley Group and Match Landscape Architects. The event welcomed over 100 attendees and gathered hundreds of comments. Feedback on landscape, community facilities, and movement through the site fed directly into the proposals, including a local shop, nursery provision, and a dedicated social space for girls and young women within the play areas.

Up to 1,200 sqm of employment space is proposed across the masterplan. This includes a mixed-use building with a convenience store, café, and children’s nursery, helping to anchor everyday community life. A community sports pavilion will serve as a multi-use, community-focused hub for East Ham, celebrating the site’s industrial heritage through bold, expressive design and striking metal detailing. Positioned to maximise views of and access to the adjacent park and playground, it will function as both a visual landmark and a welcoming centre for sports and wider community use.

This previously inaccessible and low-quality land will be transformed to enhance biodiversity and public access, with a variety of densely planted areas alongside spaces for relaxation, sport, and leisure. Tree-lined streets, rain gardens, and soft planting will weave the neighbourhood into the wider park, which sits within Metropolitan Open Land. Along the eastern edge, swales and wetlands will trace the historic Back River, enhancing biodiversity and supporting sustainable drainage. The new public park will include a playground, multi-functional sports areas, and a community pavilion, as well as new walking and cycling routes. References to the site’s industrial past will run throughout the landscape and architecture, from the gasholder’s footprint marked in paving, to sustainable drainage tracing the route of the lost waterway.

Buildings have been designed with a height strategy sensitive to the existing context, using a material palette of brick and metal that reflects the former gasholder. Low-rise townhouses will line Leigh Road, while taller buildings will be located at the northern end of the neighbourhood, furthest from existing residents, reaching heights reminiscent of the historic structure.

“Transforming this brownfield site presents a rare opportunity to open up a significant part of East Ham, restoring nature and providing public access while delivering much-needed homes for Newham. The community’s input shaped real decisions, from play spaces for teenagers to the location of a future nursery. Our proposals will create a neighbourhood and park designed to work for the people who already call East Ham home, as well as those who will move in.”

Emmet O’Sullivan, Partner at JTP