Authored by Clarence (Singapore), MSc Living Planet with Ecology, Evolution and Conservation
When the majority of Imperial students imagine Silwood Park, they picture a verdant, enigmatic, and green campus filled with flora and fauna rarely found at other campuses such as South Kensington or White City. In many respects, they are correct – every depiction of Silwood Park is valid!
As a representative of this lesser-known enclave at Imperial, I wish to shed light on the student experience, activities, and community at our natural parkland campus in Ascot, Berkshire.
An overview of Silwood Park
Silwood Park serves as Imperial’s outdoor research facility, covering 77 hectares and featuring habitats like freshwater streams, lakes, an “ancient” woodland, and open meadows. A quick search on iNaturalist, an application for documenting and sharing biodiversity observations globally through a network of naturalists, reveals that 1,436 species of plants, animals, and fungi have been recorded on campus, with an additional search on eBird indicating that 111 bird species have been identified thus far.
More intriguingly, Silwood Park is the location of various long-term field research initiatives, with the Nash’s Field Experiment and the Blue Tit Project being two of the more prominent studies conducted here.
Student life at Silwood Park
The campus predominantly houses postgraduate students engaged in projects related to ecology, conservation, and evolution. Many of us belong to several clubs based at Silwood Park. Notable examples include:
- Chicken Club – responsible for caring for the chickens kept behind our halls of residence
- Book Club – who meet regularly to talk about books of interest in their reading lists
- Gardening Club – who tend to the allotments within our community garden
- Conservation Club – who organize nature walks and conservation-related activities for students on Silwood Park Campus.
Being part of the broader Imperial student community, many of us also engage in activities from clubs based in South Kensington!
Informally, we have clubs that partake in sports such as badminton, basketball, and pickleball (my personal favorite!), either at the multi-use games arena (MUGA) on campus or in indoor sports facilities in nearby towns like Bracknell or Ascot.
In addition to club functions and classes, we host numerous community-led events on campus. Silwood Park has its own student council that organizes and manages such activities, ensuring a lively and dynamic student life! Recently, we’ve held the Silwood language exchange, where our predominantly international community gathered to share languages and cultures over several weeks, and we celebrated our annual Chinese New Year event at the year’s start, where everyone came together to prepare dumplings and couplets to welcome the new lunar year. We’ve also had community-organized parties marking festivities from around the globe (such as Carnival), or simply parties held for the sheer joy of celebration.
However, my favorite campus event must be the weekly pub quiz, organized by our student community. It has become a part of Silwood culture that the teams losing the pub quiz are responsible for hosting the next one, and I can proudly say that I hold the record for the highest number of pub quizzes set this year. Despite my countless losses in pub quizzes owing to my lackluster general trivia knowledge, there’s always a great time to be had with excellent company and a good pint of beer.
Silwood Park: my home away from home
Although just a 30-minute walk from the lively vibe of civilization (e.g., the train station and the nearest village), life at Silwood Park has never seemed dull or deficient. Beyond the multitude of events and activities, we enjoy a warm and inviting community composed of students from around the globe. We all cherish nature, appreciate our stunning campus grounds, and