Follow us on Twitter @DulwichSociety
Join Dulwich Wood Ward Councillors Catherine Rose and Andy Simmons in an online meeting to discuss the Cox's Walk footbridge and adjacent trees including an update on the design, next steps and a questions and answers session. Advance registration is required, see here.
Dulwich Wood Ward Meeting 8.00pm-9.30pm, Thursday 14 July.
Dulwich celebrated the Queen’s Jubilee in style in June 2022 with a talk on Royal Dulwich by the Local History group, a Tree Trail by the Trees group, a Flower Festival at Christ's Chapel, a children’s treasure hunt in the Village, crocheted post box toppers, flower flags in East Dulwich and street parties galore.
Craig Bowhill, a student at King's College London, is looking for the insights of Dulwich residents for a dissertation research project. As part of his final year of BA Geography at King's College London he is undertaking a study into the development of urban villages in South-East London and how it affects residents. He has a short, anonymous, online questionnaire to record your views which will then be used in his research project. All data collected is completely anonymous and any question which you do not feel comfortable in answering can be skipped. The questionnaire can be found here.
There will be a service of celebration for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee at 2pm, Thursday 2 June at Christ’s Chapel conducted by Rev. Tim Buckler, Dulwich College Chaplain, together with a Jubilee Flower Festival (free admission) during which Marilyn & Norman Harper will play the organ and Brian Green will lead short tours of the Chapel. Also on view will be an art installation inspired by the Chapel’s ‘Instruments of the Passion’ stained glass, by local artist Angela Wright.
Thursday 2 June: 2pm service; 3pm tour; flower festival until 5pm.
Friday 3 & Saturday 4 June: 11am-4pm flower festival and organ music. Tours at noon and 3pm.
Dulwich Village is decorated and is celebrating the Platinum Jubilee with a free children's local history treasure hunt. Bring your under 12s, pick up an entry form from Green's Village Toyshop & Art Stationers, Village Books or other shops and answer the 10 questions about Dulwich for a chance to win a £10 voucher. There are seven prizes up for grabs - one for each decade of Queen Elizabeth II's reign.
The historic post cart, decorated with flowers, will be displayed in the Village over the weekend.
Our AGM on 9 May 2022 was well attended at the Dulwich Room in the Crown and Greyhound, Dulwich Village. It was good to see so many of our members in person following our meetings having to be online, and especially good to hear what our volunteers have been up to during the past year. There are so many people working to improve our community, from gardens to planning, from history to wildlife, from trees to travel. Our volunteers deliver our beautiful and informative quarterly Journal which keeps down our postage costs and thus makes more of our income available to help improve the amenity of Dulwich. In the past year we have made grants to many local groups, details are in our annual report and accounts, available in pdf form here.
Following the local elections on 5 May 2022, the councillors listed below were elected:
- Dulwich Hill: Maggie Browning, Jon Hartley
- Dulwich Village: Richard Leeming, Margy Newens
- Dulwich Wood: Catherine Rose, Andy Simmons
- Goose Green: James McAsh, Portia Mwangangye, Charlie Smith
- West Dulwich: Judith Cavanagh, Fred Cowell
Full details for Southwark can be found here and for Lambeth here.
Photo credit: Hello Social London, hellosocial.media
Dulwich Festival is back live and in person, following its move online due to the pandemic. The 29th Festival offers forty events, many of them free, with a diverse programme of art, music, literature, comedy, walks, talks and more.
The Dulwich Society is hosting four local history events. On 14 and 15 May, Ian McInnes is guiding two walks around Dulwich's Mid Century modern estates as a complement to his recently published book 'Dulwich: Mid Century Oasis'. And on 18 May Brian Green will give a talk, 'Hell's Bells', about the Dulwich Picture Gallery and Bell House during World War Two, in person with an online talk following a week later on 25 May. You can book for these and other events here.
Artists Open House bookends the Festival as usual, offering over 400 local artists in 180 venues. Participants include Bell House which is opening its doors to show works from more than 30 artists, and designer turned sculptor, Nicole Farhi, who will exhibit in the home of Dulwich Prep London’s first female Head Master, Louise Davidson. Details of all the artists exhibiting can be found here.
Start typing ‘Is Dulwich…’ into a search engine and the first suggestion that comes up is ‘Is Dulwich safe’. For those of us who live here the answer to that is probably ‘yes, it is safe’. Yet in MoneySuperMarket’s Top 20 burglary hotspots, SE21 comes fourth, so how do we reconcile these two viewpoints? The Met Police’s website details around 50 total crimes a month in Dulwich, of which around 6 are burglaries. This places it in a ’low’ crime rate category with 4 crimes per 1,000 residents, compared to 8 per 1,000 for London as a whole. So not quite the hotbed of crime you might imagine from that Google search or those ‘burglary hotspot’ claims.
This does not mean that our local police officers are complacent, however. There are police officers assigned to each of our wards: Dulwich Hill, Dulwich Village, Dulwich Wood and Goose Green. The local Safer Neighbourhood Teams (SNT) work closely with their Ward Panel, a group of community members that meets quarterly with the SNT to set local ward priorities and hold the SNT to account for issues affecting our community.
For almost 50 years our logo was a swan, taken from a woodcut by engraver Thomas Bewick. It was arbitrarily chosen by John Westwood, an editor of the Society’s then newsletter and its use has become increasingly outdated as swans have not been found in Dulwich waters for at least twenty years. Apart from the dearth of Dulwich swans, the intricate lines of the image, especially as they have been copied and recopied many times, did not translate well to modern use, causing our logo to look increasingly forlorn, especially online. So we commissioned a new logo to better reflect our identity.
James Alexander of Jade Design has designed a logo that will help carry us forward for the next 60 years. James grew up in Dulwich and knows the area and the Society well. His company has been involved in many local projects, notably the design of the beautiful ‘Dulwich 400’, the history book produced to mark the quatercentenary of the foundation of Dulwich College.
Sydenham Hill Wood is a nature reserve loved and used by many but that popularity comes at a cost. As visitor numbers soared in the 2020 lockdown and stayed high, heavy footfall has taken its toll on the woodland. London Wildlife Trust needs your help to restore over 300 metres of the main paths in the wood, helping to keep walkers away from sensitive ground flora and undisturbed areas on which wildlife such as nesting birds and hedgehogs rely. From 22-29 April London Wildlife Trust needs to raise at least £50,000 via The Big Give’s Green Match Fund for this work. The Big Give & The Dulwich Society will match donations up to a total of £10,000, meaning your gift could be worth twice as much. Restoring the paths is expensive – recent improvements cost £18,000 for 150m – so your support is valuable in protecting this special place. Donations open 12.00pm 22 April - 12.00pm 29 April. Donate here.
Dulwich candidates for the local elections on 5 May 2022 are as follows:
Dulwich Hill
Conservative: Edith Okparaocha, Rupert Watson
Green: Myrtle Bruce-Mitford
Labour: Maggie Browning, Jon Hartley
Liberal Democrats: Tara Copeland, Tom Rogers
Dulwich Village
Conservative: Tristan Honeyborne, Clive Rates
Green: Piers Holden, Christopher Langdon
Labour: Richard Leeming, Margy Newens
Liberal Democrats: Raghav Parkash, Richard Wingfield
Reform UK: Paul Randolfi
Dulwich Wood
Conservative: Lindsay Chathli, Peter Heaton-Jones
Green: Guy Fairbairn, Vincent Matley
Labour: Catherine Rose, Andy Simmons
Liberal Democrat: Aiken Furlong, Iain Johncock
Goose Green
Conservative: Qin Hong, Michael Poole-Wilson, Adam Van den Broek
Green: Philip Collins, David Jennings
Labour: James McAsh, Portia Mwangangye, Charlie Smith
Liberal Democrats: Clare Donachie, Michael Green, Sophie Roach
Women's Equality: Claire Webb
West Dulwich
Conservative: Irene Kimm, Sharon Turner
Green: Su Opie, Kim Thornton
Labour: Judith Cavanagh, Fred Cowell
Liberal Democrats: Jeremy Baker, Christine Hinton
Herne Hill Forum are hosting a hustings on 28 April. Free but register here.
Photo credit: Hello Social London