College Plans to Put Path across Queen's Lawn

The College is planning to place a path across the Queen’s Lawn – a move which has raised controversy amongst some students. The path will run across the diagonal of the lawn, based on analysis of timelapse photography showing the most-used path by pedestrians crossing.

The aim of the initiative is to preserve the grass on the lawn, which often becomes severely damaged in winter, and to avoid the lawn becoming a “mudbath” as the rainy seasons approach.

Neil Alford, Associate Provost (Academic Planning), elaborated about the intent behind it: “We want to avoid churning up the Queen’s Lawn into a mudbath, which happens every winter! And at the moment this particular idea is in a pre-planning application stage. There is no guarantee it goes ahead – though personally, I hope it will.”

The initiative is part of the ‘South Kensington Masterplan’, an architectural vision for the campus published in December 2018 following consultations with 550 members of the community over preceding years. The masterplan also features projects that focus on opening up space and reducing congestion, such as creating a new street to align the Sherfield Walkway, pedestrianising a portion of Imperial College Road, and establishing new pathways between Queen’s Lawn and Beit Quad as well as between Dalby Court and Prince Consort Road. A donation towards the College is paying for some of the projects, with the remit being to “beautify the area around the Queen’s Lawn.”

Neil says he further discussed the Queen’s Lawn path with the Union President and Deputy President (Clubs and Societies), Abhijay Sood and Thomas Fernandez-Debets, after they took up office this year. This resulted in the matter being presented at the CSPB meeting for consultation on preferences for tiling, and at Union Council.

Neil elaborated: “I meet with Abhijay and Tom once a month, and that seemed a reasonable way to get student feedback – which I’m really keen on getting. I asked Tom to bring it up at Union Council because it is our intention to be as transparent as possible on these matters.”

Despite the 2018 consultation and publication date, many current students were surprised by the plan and were frustrated that they felt they had not been consulted. Alex Auyang, the President of the RCSU, commented:

“If they wanted student perspectives, at least consulting the Constituent Unions would have been helpful. We function on a lower level than they do, and I like to imagine that we are more in touch with the desires of the student body.”

Additionally, both he and multiple CGCU representatives felt that the plan was doomed to fail – specifically, that a path would be “ugly, not solve the issue, and cut right through a green space.” Fatima Khan, CGCU Vice President, clarified:

“Whether or not you put in a path, people will take shortcuts and walk across the grass anyway, it will get muddy regardless. It is better to not put in the path as people will take more varied shortcuts across the grass, meaning it will take longer to get muddy in a particular area. There are other methods of deterring people from walking across Queen's Lawn. For example, bushes – which ironically they removed recently.”

Alex also suggested alternatives: “I think they should consider other options, such as a gravel path. This way, the green space of the Queen’s lawn can be preserved and be free from a path of gaudy tiles.”

However, Chris Carter, the RSMU President, thought the opposite, and believes that the path will protect the lawn and “increase the amount of usable (and pleasant) green space on campus in the summer.”

There have also been concerns raised about the possibility of the construction of the path being a “slippery slope” to further development in the space – one of the few green spaces in South Kensington. Neil was eager to dissuade this notion:

“Definitely not! The purpose is to prevent the lawn being a real mudbath. We’ve already stopped putting marquees on the lawn to use it for graduation – that will not happen again, which is a good thing. Last time it happened, the grass just vanished. We want to preserve that part of the Queen’s Lawn, and we’re building the path in order to preserve it further. It’s certainly not a slippery slope, and we’re not planning to put any other structure on the lawn at all.”

The single area of agreement seems to be that a solution for the quality of the lawn needs to be found, given the damage it has sustained in past winters. As Alex put it, “there is an issue with the Queen’s Lawn state during the winter months. Honestly it looks like s***.”