The Old Deer Park is an urban green space of great significance for Richmond, Kew and London as a whole. Sweeping from the edge of Richmond down to the Thames, the park has evolved from a private royal landscape to a metropolitan open space offering a diverse range of amateur sports - from archery to rugby and golf. The park is very well served by public transport and forms the edge to the towns of Richmond and Kew.

Much of the land is in our ownership. We directly lease out the 147 hectares (363 acres) of The Old Deer Park. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, hold 132 hectares (330 acres) from The Crown under Old Land Revenue status.

The riverside landscape between Richmond and Kew has been the setting for a series of royal palaces, with designs by Inigo Jones, Charles Bridgeman, William Kent, William Chambers and William Nesfield. The King's Observatory, built by George III in 1769, sits at the centre of the whole park and on the original meridian line. It was however Lancelot Brown's vision of an Arcadian landscape which united Kew Gardens, Syon Park and the Old Deer Park. The three areas are included as Grade I in the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens.

The riverside parkland - with its ancient oaks, dry acid grassland and riparian pond, ditches and woodland - provides a series of important nature conservation areas. The Old Deer Park is part of a mosaic of habitats connected by the Thames which include the adjacent Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the heronry on Isleworth Ait and the SSSI tidal meadow at Syon Park.

Although the Old Deer Park is part of a wider landscape, recent changes in the maintenance regimes of the separate tenancies which occupy the land have over-emphasised the divisions between the spaces. The King's Observatory in the central part of the park has become hidden from the south park. The western edge with the towpath and ditch has become overgrown and neglected and intensification of sports facilities in the eastern part has led to pressure for further development.

We commissioned Kim Wilkie Environmental Design to produce a study to develop estate management policies for the ownership of the Old Deer Park - an area of major national importance as a historic and living landscape. The area requires coherent long-term management policies by ourselves, acting as responsible landowners with a remit to guide and promote good estate management, and we will work with all involved in the Old Deer Park, whether they are the local authority, tenants, amenity groups or residents.

The Old Deer Park has been surveyed and assessed and extensive discussions have been conducted with national and local authorities and with our tenants and local interest groups. The following general policies, projects and management recommendations have emerged from the study:

Our guiding policies

• Conserve and enhance the Old Deer Park as a historic landscape of great significance for metropolitan open space, public amenity and nature conservation.
• Prevent any further built development, where possible remove built intrusions into the park and concentrate on reinstating the parkland character of the landscape, re-opening vistas and connections across the park and removing intrusive elements.
• Encourage the continuing use of the park for a wide range of amateur, junior and youth sports and refuse professional sport developments.

Principal projects

• Reconnect Richmond Green with the Recreation Ground by continuing the public access route along the line of the 1848 railway bridge over the A316 Trunk Road.
• When it is possible to re-house volunteer groups from their huts in the car park, re-design the south-eastern corner of the park as a clearer, safer and more wooded surface car park, forming a green edge to the town of Richmond.
• Reverse the overplanting of the golf course and its edges, with particular attention to restoring the old pond and re-opening the meridian line and views of the King's Observatory from Richmond and the Thames.

General landscape maintenance

• Change mowing and planting regimes on the Recreation Ground to diversify the sward and create more of a parkland character with groups of trees between pitches.
• Review the management of the golf course to conserve dry acid grassland roughs and prevent leachate of fertilizers and pesticides into wilder areas and watercourses.
• Manage the riverside ditch, pond and woodland areas to encourage the habitat established in the south-western corner of the Royal Botanic Gardens to spread upstream.