The Dulwich Society - The Dulwich Society

Albert Booth (1928-2010)

Albert Booth (1928-2010)

Albert Booth was a resident of Woodwarde Road for some fifteen years from 1968.  He was described as one of the most modest and unassuming of Cabinet ministers and a steadfast left-winger who nevertheless faithfully backed the Callaghan Labour government’s controversial wage restraint policies during the famous ‘winter of discontent’. He was appointed Chairman of the House of Commons Select Committee on Statutory Instruments from 1970-74, Minister of State for Employment 1974 and Secretary of State for Employment 1976-79. Inside the Cabinet he was often at odds with fellow ministers over membership of the Common Market towards which he was hostile. After Labour’s defeat in the 1979 election he became the opposition spokesman on transport. He was elected Party Treasurer in 1984.

Booth was born in Winchester in 1928 and was educated at St Thomas’s School.  His family moved to South Shields and it was there that Booth picked up his strong Tyneside accent and where he attended a technology college, studying to be a draughtsman.   He was converted to the Labour cause at an early age, being a member of the National Consultative Committee of Labour League of Youth at 15 and an election agent at 23.  The following year he was Secretary of the Constituency Party in Tynemouth and a member of the Borough Council from 1962-65.  After proving himself in the 1964 parliamentary election he was selected two years later for the safe Labour seat of Barrow-in-Furness which he won comfortably over the local Tory candidate.  He became a member of the Tribune group and a close confident of Michael Foot, whose campaign for party leader Booth managed.

Albert Booth represented Barrow-in-Furness from 1966 until he lost his seat in 1983. This seat was always going to be a test of Booth’s conscience because of his commitment to the cause of nuclear disarmament. Much of the employment in the town was connected with the defence industry and with the building of nuclear submarines. It was characteristic of Booth, and also political suicide, that he would lead a march through Barrow protesting against nuclear weapons. The electorate of Barrow chose  the security of their jobs above the conscience of their MP.  After his defeat he typically declined a seat in the House of Lords of which he had always been hostile, instead preferring to take the job of executive director of South Yorkshire Passenger Transport. After failing to win the Warrington South seat in the 1987 election, Booth and his wife Joan, who he had met when they were both teenage members of Labour’s League of Youth retired to Beckenham where his wife predeceased him in 2008.

Last Updated on Wednesday, 21 March 2012 02:28

Harry Carpenter OBE (1926-2010)

Harry Carpenter OBE (1926-2010)
Neil Allen writes

My Dulwich neighbour, friend and fellow ringside boxing reporter for many years, Harry would have been amazed, even embarrassed by the warmth of the tributes he received in the press, and on radio and television, when he left us, this March, aged 84.

A master of microphone commentary, especially at amateur boxing where he was informed by his extraordinary card index system of fighters’ records, Harry was a private, often shy man, most relaxed at home, with a few press colleagues or a handful of companions in a semi private bar of his beloved Dulwich & Sydenham Golf Club.

I learned of his beginnings at first hand while we shared the challenge of our first two summer Olympics – Melbourne in 1956 and, four years later in Rome, where we agreed: “This 18 year old American light-heavyweight Cassius Clay, seems a bit of a character….”

Harry recalled that the first time he ever attended boxing was as a youngster at the old Crystal Palace in the Thirties just before it was burned down. His father, also called Harry, was vice-president of a South London amateur boxing club and also a follower of “the dogs”, so Harry junior, who left Selhurst Grammar School at 15, had his very first job with the Greyhound Express, ironically when no racing was taking place because of the war.  In 1941 he joined the Royal Navy and served as a telegrapher in destroyers for the rest of the hostilities.

He began writing about boxing for the weekly Sporting Record in 1950 but his first television commentary was from an amateur boxing show at the Rotax factory canteen in Willesden – a far cry, we agreed, from the world famous venues like New York’s Madison Square Garden where we remembered Joe Frazier beating Muhammad Ali (aka Clay) while Frank Sinatra was standing in front of the writers as an accredited photographer.

Outstanding at presenting both Wimbledon and major golf, Harry was earlier a staff writer for the Daily Mail from 1954 until 1962 when he joined the BBC full time.  The greatest event we ever reported together, we agreed, was the Rumble in the Jungle when Ali dramatically defeated George Foreman for the world heavyweight title in the exotic setting of Kinshasa, Zaire in 1974.

Harry, who was inducted into the Royal Television Society’s Hall of Fame in 2000, was also a devoted family man, survived by his wife Phyllis and his son Clive, once an outstanding golfer at Dulwich College, who now runs his own web site business in France.

Neil Allen has reported on international sport for The Times, The London Evening Standard, The New York Times and L’Equipe of Paris.

Last Updated on Wednesday, 21 March 2012 02:28

Bill Hale (1930-2010)

Bill Hale (1930-2010)

Older members of the Society will be saddened by the news of the death of Ian (Bill) Howe.  Bill was a stalwart of the Dulwich Society in the 1970s and 80’s and was an enthusiastic member of the Garden Group from the moment it was formed and it was there he made many friends including two very different but very remarkable men; Gerald Fairlie and Theo Frankel.  Both were expert gardeners and both devoted to Dulwich.  Bill was very pleased when he was asked to return to Dulwich to unveil the memorial stones to these two on the inner side of the wall at the entrance to the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Bill was born and grew up in North West Leicestershire, the son of Dorothy and Leslie Hale.  Bill lived with his sister at the  family home,  ‘Bird How’, 92 College Road and after Lord Hale of Oldham’s  death in 1985 the house was too large and two years later Bill and his sister decided to move back to their native Swannington.  In retirement Bill continued to support local projects such as the restoration of Swannington windmill and the establishment of a stand of birch trees on Swannington Incline.  ‘Bird How’ was demolished soon after Bill left, by the Dulwich Estate and the site redeveloped with six houses in a small estate named Dulwich Oaks.

Last Updated on Wednesday, 21 March 2012 02:28

Living In Dulwich

Living In Dulwich
Journalist Maggie Brown reflects

It is something of a surprise to find that you're settled so happily into your adopted village of London that you have stopped counting the years. The fact is I have lived in Dulwich and Herne Hill for 31 years, far longer than anywhere else, and brought up four children here, but never planned it that way. I think the fact we've settled in, with no plans to move, is down to the special Dulwich effect, a cross of greenery and charm, reminiscent of an outer London suburb, with the convenience of being so close to the centre. Oh yes, and of course, the schools. But there have been some staggering changes.

This area of South London was completely unknown to me, apart from the connection with John Ruskin, when, as a business journalist at Reuters in Fleet Street, living in Highgate, the hunt to find a decent house to buy in North London  proved hopeless. A number of Reuters editors then lived in Dulwich, and pointed out that if I got on a train at Farringdon, and went South, I could be in Herne Hill in a jiffy. In those hot metal days the trains even ran through the night, for the shift workers on newspapers. There remains a fair smattering of editors writers and journalists in Dulwich.

I arrived at 3.30pm on Spring afternoon, in 1978, took a peek at glorious Brockwell Park, went to view just one house, in Fawnbrake Avenue, and agreed to buy it on the spot. The old lady, who was moving to her sister's in Brighton, had been told by the estate agent the price was nineteen thousand pounds. As we ate cup cakes together, she told me eighteen thousand pounds was perfectly acceptable. It was faded, needed a lot of work, but was a glorious and solid four bedroom home with front and rear gardens. The servant's bells were in place. She warned me that there 'darkies' nearby, but no trouble. The next door house was owned by a former comic actor who'd been in Benny Hill sketches. I went home and told my husband, brought up in Holland Park, what I had done. He was shocked, but came to love that house. But it took so long for the old lady to move that we feared she never would.

So the year of waiting before taking possession of Fawnbrake Avenue were spent scouring East Dulwich, charming Crystal Palace Road, Barry Road.  Believe me, there were lots of faded, beaten up houses to be had, also at bargain prices, but I was worried then by what seemed their remoteness from public transport. And, believe it or not, East Dulwich really did seem rough and edgy, while West Dulwich, now a rather overlooked part of Dulwich, seemed a much safer bet. Lordship Lane was a frontier, fine for Indian restaurants and useful iron mongers, but absolutely not the entry point into the trendy yummy mummy suburb it has changed into. Now one of my daughters lives in Rodwell Road, and a former working man's pub, The Magdalen is her pricey neighbourhood eatery.

I date the formal transformation of East Dulwich to the arrival of the Blue Mountain Cafe in Northcross Road in the early 1990s. Suddenly a trendy editor descended from Chelsea and demanded to meet me there. But the year before that happened my Rodwell Road daughter had been randomly punched to the ground by a youth on the corner of Northcross Road.

In 1984 we'd moved to a ramshackle and neglected Victorian monster of a house on East Dulwich Grove, captivated by its large garden and open views to North Dulwich Tennis Club. (I'd been mugged in Fawnbrake Avenue and the walk from the station now frightened me). The occupant of the station house attached to North Dulwich Station around the corner kept a menagerie, and used the railway sidings to graze his goat, who was sometimes a mascot for Alleyn's School. The goat used to ramble over the tennis courts to  stick his head over our fence. The children's school friends used to invite themselves around, to feed the goat. The peacocks he also kept at the station house woke us in the mornings.The houses on our side were all pretty shabby in the 1980s. The vast one on the corner of East Dulwich Grove/Red Post Hill alas, had squatters. Then a fire burnt down the staircase. One evening, as I was tending to my second baby, burglars jumped like hurdlers over the fences. (In fact, burglars walked off the street, and frequently tried to break in to our house: we soon realised it was impossible to live without a burglar alarm switched on downstairs at night. My husband was also stabbed on North Dulwich station when he told off a youth for urinating down the stairs).

But instead of it being pulled down and having flats built on the garden the Dulwich magic took effect. A wealthy businessman with deep pockets from theatreland rescued the corner house in a labour of love, building the magnificent wall around the garden. The houses in between were then done up beautifully. But as Dulwich Village became swankier and City money came pulsing through, from the mid 1980s, the local  shops changed dramatically. The fishmonger, greengrocer, butcher, ironmonger (where Biff is now) and food store Cullens (Oddbins now) closed and were replaced. The Post Office moved across the road to its present location into what had been Green Onions, but managed to hang on. Most recently, Francis Jevons's interior design and antiques shop was replaced by Romeo Jones. So you can buy an excellent coffee, gourmet
food by the basketful, but not the daily necessities at sensible prices. The two stalwarts of the clusters of shops are The Village Bookshop, and Mr Green's Art Stationers.

On the plus side, the start of the National Lottery sixteen years ago has helped transform treasures such as the Dulwich Picture Gallery, with its generous policies towards local Friends, and Dulwich Park itself. North Dulwich Tennis Club, which was about to sink into decrepitude, has been rescued over the past six years, and now has scores of cheery children as members. The thing that needs investigating is the continuous installation of road humps, traffic measures, and traffic lights that seem, in total, to increase traffic congestion, rather than improve it. I think the local fee paying schools such as James Allen's should deliberately start favouring local applicants. I am also mystified by the sums of money sunk into North Dulwich Station,  which never seems to be fully repaired, as the ineffectual scaffolding suggests. But these are the minor irritations of living in a very nice place, too good to leave.

Maggie Brown is a media journalist for The Guardian and The Stage, and historian of Channel 4.

Last Updated on Wednesday, 21 March 2012 02:28