Shrublands
Shrublands, Croydon
A postwar council estate situated in the south-eastern corner of Spring Park
When the woods and farmland of Spring Park were suburbanised in the 1920s, the part between Links View Road and Shirley Church Road escaped the process by its conversion to a 137-acre golf course. But after the Second World War, Croydon council responded to its acute housing shortage by compulsorily purchasing the course and filling the northern part of the site with prefabricated homes, flanking streets named after trees, bushes and shrubs. The southern part was retained as public open space.
The council built a permanent estate in the late 1950s and early 1960s with a mix of short terraces of houses and three-point blocks of low-rise flats. The houses had back gardens and the blocks all offered close access to communal greenswards and children’s play areas. Shops, a community hall (shown in the photograph above*) and a doctor’s surgery were among the amenities built on Broom Road. Fir Tree Avenue and the southern part of Gorse Road were renamed Shrublands Avenue.
The Shrublands estate now has 260 houses, most of which have been sold to private owners, and 770 flats and maisonettes, many of which remain in council ownership. In the late 1990s £5 million worth of improvements were carried out, including measures to improve security and reduce the fear of crime. In 2001 the council launched an action plan to further improve Shrublands’ housing and environment, and the health of its residents. All the council houses now have central heating, cavity wall and roof insulation and double glazing.
To the south of the estate is the 68-acre Shirley Heath, once known as Jackson’s Common, which has a mix of woodland, open heath, football pitches and play areas.