If you look at our page on Chiswick Eyot, you will see that the island is home to invasive flora and fauna which contribute to its susceptibility to erosion. Preventing the erosion of the island is of continuing importance. To this end, for many years one of OCPS's most popular community activities was pollarding the flourishing osiers (willows) and replanting the decayed ones so that the osier roots would help hold the island together as their ancestors had been doing since at least the 18th century. In recent years, we have arranged that this large and sometimes precarious job of pollarding be carried out professionally. But, in conjunction with Thames21, as discussed on the page link above, we have been working on stabilising the Eyot, in part by building 'natural' revetments. In order to make these, we now gather up the cut branches (withies) – it is with this we need your help (see Withy Bundling below).

Withy bundling

The pollarded withies need to be gathered into bundles to be used in the bank stabilisation work (see below). We organise a day early in the year when we hope lots of people will join us on the Eyot for an hour or so.  It’s fun and rewarding for adults and children. You’ll need to wear wellies but no tools are needed. The Eyot needs your help……click here for more details


Bank stabilisation

A great deal of work has been done in recent years on the stabilisation of the north bank (the Mall side) of Chiswick Eyot. This work involves driving stakes into the mud – these were bought by OCPS with the generous help of Fuller’s Brewery – then weaving withies (willow branches that were pollarded on the Eyot earlier in the winter) through the stakes to make fences and then securing bundles of withies and brushwood behind the fences. The idea is that mud will be trapped and will pile up: we are happy to report that it is doing so very satisfactorily.

This work has been organised by the charity Thames21, with the help of local volunteers.

More recently, we have built similar revetments on the south bank, in front of the reed beds. Here too, mitten crabs have been burrowing into the bank and undermining the reeds so that clumps of these stablising plants were falling into the river. 

In 2015 we were very pleased to learn that a PhD student from the Natural History Museum was to start work on a 3D scan of the whole of Chiswick Eyot, to see exactly what erosion caused by mitten crabs is taking place. This would allow us to make more informed decisions about how best to tackle the problem. The work on Chiswick Eyot is now an approved River Restoration Centre project and Martin Richardson has been maintaining the listing under case histories. Please take a look at the record on their site.
https://restorerivers.eu/wiki/index.php?title=Case_study%3ASaving_Chiswick_Eyot