Beatrix Potter
Artist & Illustrator - Dulwich Picture Gallery 12 October - 22 January
Beatrix Potter, Artist & Illustrator, is the latest of the Gallery's popular Christmas exhibitions celebrating the work of well-known illustrators.
Peter Rabbit, probably her most famous character, may be universally known, but many of her most original works were neither reproduced nor exhibited in her lifetime, and her international fame rests on only a small part of her output. This exhibition offers a broad survey of her art in all its variety: early watercolours, together with early editions of the Peter Rabbit books - or the Little White Books as they were called.
Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) was born into a prosperous and artistic family living in South Kensington. Through constant practice, striving and experiment, she rose too a high level of competence in her drawing. The inspiration that she found during holiday escapes from London, especially to Scotland or the Lake District, is reflected both in her distinguished achievement as an illustrator of natural history and in the Little Books that began almost by accident. A modest woman, she never sought popularity through her art, but her books inspire a love of rural England. As a farmer and a pioneering conservationist, Beatrix Potter worked to preserve the landscape settings of her tales.
The pictures are being lent from both national and international sources. Private loans have made it possible to include less familiar materials, some never before exhibited.
The curator of the exhibition, and author of the full-colour catalogue, produced by Beatrix Potter's publishers, Frederick Warne, is Anne Stevenson-Hobbs, formerly Frederick Warne Curator of Children's Literature at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The exhibition is supported by Harvey & Wheeler of Dulwich Village.
The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe
These days Marlowe's plays are infrequently performed but the Dulwich Players, to mark the 400th anniversary of Edward Alleyn's purchase of the manor pf Dulwich and to celebrate the unveiling of his statue are presenting The Jew of Malta. The play was written for Alleyn to perform at the Rose Theatre on Bankside in 1592. It traces the story of Barabas, a rich Maltese merchant, from a man victimised by the local authorities, to a ruthless monster, consumed by lust, avarice and revenge. According to the Dulwich Players' director, Dave Hollander, it is important to consider that the pace and style of the piece do not tend towards heavy-handed tragedy - rather he firmly places it in the tradition of Renaissance black comedy. He says, "In general, despite the use of strong meter, the writing has a more direct, narrative feel than many Shakespearean plays."
The Jew of Malta will be performed at the Edward Alleyn Theatre, Dulwich College at 8pm 19-22 October. Tickets from The Art Stationers, Dulwich Village £6.
Conserving Rembrandt's Girl at a Window
Girl at a Window, signed and dated 1645 by Rembrandt, is Dulwich Picture Gallery's most famous painting and has recently undergone conservation. This is the twenty-fifth picture to be conserved with funding from the Getty Foundation. One hundred other pictures have been conserved under the Adopt an Old Master scheme.
The conservation has been carried out by Sophie Plender, Dulwich's consultant conservator for the last fifteen years. Sophie is also a Dulwich resident. The National Gallery generously invited her to work on Girl at a Window in their conservation studio.
The painting was revarnished 150 years ago and the surface cleaned sometime after World War ll. Recent cleaning has revealed an astonishing range of colours used in the girl's face: yellow, blue, green, orange, red. Also we can see more clearly now the remarkably bold highlight on the girl's nose - a great blob of white. In the right hand background is the much-darkened evidence of some kind of textile hanging, with a lozenge pattern and fringe.
The x-ray shows a mysterious structure at the bottom right corner and that Rembrandt tightened up the outline of her right arm and created a sense of leaning out from an enclosed space. There has been some damage to the fabric of the girls' left sleeve; a past restorer has made matters slightly worse by smearing over the damage. In addition, the painting was beginning to show some evidence of raised cracking and the picture's radiance was dimmed by old yellowed varnish. Fortunately the lining was sound, so no intervention was required there.
So, who is she? In France she was known as La Servante de Rembrandt, or La Crasseuse (roughly, The Sloven). Her very distinctive face certainly appears elsewhere in the work of Rembrandt and his studio, most famously in a picture in Stockholm, where she is older, and in another famous painting of a Girl with Dead Peacocks in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, where she is younger.
The elegant hand at the throat, and that curiously urchin-like face - these things combine with a technique that through the brilliant use of colour suggests warmth and life. Not a person then, but humanity itself.
London Festival of Chamber Music - 11th Season
Four of the London Festival of Chamber Music's Eleventh Season of concerts are being held at St. Faith's Church, Red Post Hill (see "What's On in Dulwich"). The theme of this year's Festival is French chamber music, with works between 1893 and 1927. These include quartets and quintets by Debussy, Ravel, Fauvre, and Milhaud ("La Creation du Monde" in the piano quintet version, the String Sextet by Vincent D'indy, and songs for voice and ensemble by Chausson, Ravel, Fauvre and Poulenc. With the addition of major works by Mozart, Schumann, Brahms and Dvorak, the Festival's programme has great variety and depth. Among the artists taking part are the English String Quartet (Diana Cummings,Keith Lewis, Luciano Iorio, Nick Holland), pianist Martin Jones, mezzo soprano Zoe Todd.
South London Gallery
The Gallery shows the work of mid-career British artists, and emerging and established international artists in an annual programme of contemporary art exhibitions.
Mark Dion : Microcosmographia 9 September - 30 October
Prehistoric reptiles, gigantic mammals and live piranhas are among the curiosities used in the work of American contemporary artist Mark Dion, in his first solo exhibition in the UK since 1997. The centre piece of the exhibition will be a life-sized replica ofa beached prehistoric aquatic animal, known as Ichthyosaur, with relics from the history of the natural sciences spilling from its belly. The work of another 'gentleman scientist', Jean Henri Fabre, provides the inspiration for Les Necrophores-L'Enterrement. A giant mole, crawling in giant beetles, will be suspended from the ceiling by a noose. The work pays homage to this untrained nineteenth century scholar who set out to prove he intelligence of insects through a series of bizarre experiments. Alexander von Humboldt (Amazon Memorial) consists of a decorative tank of live piranhas commemorating the man that Charles Darwin described as 'the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived'
Her Noise 10 November - 18 December
Visitors are invited to record music on the spot using the voice of Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, and to experience the vibrations of a sensuous sonic bed in the exhibition 'Her Noise'. The exhibition features six newly commissioned installations by international artists whose practice shares the use of sound as a medium to investigate social relations, inspire action or uncover hidden soundscapes. New installations by Kim Gordon, De Geuzen, Emma Hedditch, Christina Kubisch, Kaffe Matthews and Hayley Newman all involve high levels of participation and are set in motion only when used by visitors or performers forming a base for events, live music and performances.
The SLG, situated in Peckham Road, in is open Tuesday to Sunday 12-6pm.
In case you thought tidy gardeners were the best gardeners, think again. A serious dose of "untidiness" in Dulwich Park has produced a small explosion of butterflies and moths, feeding and living off plants most horticulturalists do their best to eradicate - nettles, bramble, dock and, of course, long grass.
Visitors to the park over spring and summer may have noticed that much of the perimeter has developed into a de facto "countryside walk", the path weaving its way through ever-denser stands of greenery. This was the result of pressure from the Dulwich Society and Dulwich Park Friends, who in April persuaded Southwark park managers to leave an unmown strip of up to 8-10 metres around the perimeter. Areas planted with spring bulbs were also left uncut, except for well-defined mown "rides". To its credit, Southwark, in the shape of Andy Chatterton, who is responsible for park maintenance issues, readily agreed.
The aim was to increase biodiversity, make the park more wildlife-friendly and also give parts of it a more countryside feel - which is, after all, what parks are supposed to provide. But it all happened much faster than anticipated. By early July, when the Wildlife Committee held a butterfly walk in the park - itself a hostage to fortune since butterflies find most urban parks sterile terrain - the number of species present took even Malcolm Bridge, who led the walk, by surprise.
Species sighted on the July 10 walk included holly blue, meadow brown, gatekeeper, comma, speckled wood as well as three types of whites, not least the pretty green-veined white. Malcolm, who is Surrey recorder for Butterfly Conservation and has been monitoring the park since the change of management in the spring, says there are now 16 species present - double the number a sterile grassland-only park such as Crystal Palace would contain. The lack of mowing has made an "amazing, enormous difference," he adds.
In fact, as he points out, the perimeter of the park, as can be judged by the names of the butterflies above, has turned into a mixture of woodland edge and meadow - both rich habitats for wildlife. If you add the adjoining playing fields and also the big gardens next door to the park fence - far enough from the houses and their resident horticulturists to have benefited from some productive neglect - an impromptu nature reserve of up to five acres may, in effect, have been created.
The walk itself, irrespective of butterflies, now provides a rich and distinctive landscape experience - with wonderful displays of cow parsley in spring and some impressive stands of nettle and longer grass later on. Some of those who came on the walk, despite being regular park visitors, had no idea it was there - which, before this year of course, it wasn't, in quite such form.
The park also contains two other notable species - the purple hairstreak butterfly and the horse chestnut leaf miner moth. The latter was first "discovered " by scientists in Macedonia in 1987, arrived in the UK - at Wimbledon Common in 2001 - and is now busy tunnelling its way through the horse chestnuts of Dulwich. Look at most eye-level horse chestnut leaves in the park and you will see the telltale brown blotches of its presence.
The purple hairstreak lives in the canopy of oaks but needs long grass below the oaks for its caterpillars to survive. The Society and DPF have asked Southwark to leave unmown "collars" below larger trees around the periphery and also want the perimeter left uncut this year. In parks as in gardens, it seems, less - at least in terms of how much time you spend interfering with nature - is often more.
David Nicholson-Lord (Wildlife Committee)
As chairman of the Trees Committee, I was very interested in David Nicholson-Lord's thought provoking article in the summer Newsletter. I admire his vigour in defending threatened trees. We have to be ever vigilant and take every opportunity to plant more trees and hedges. However, I think he is unduly gloomy about the general state of Dulwich's trees. A lot are continually being planted. Southwark regularly fills most of the empty tree pits or replaces failing trees in the streets and has planted a variety of interesting ones such as liquid ambers, gingkoes and tulip trees.
Although under the lottery bid 66 trees have been felled in the park, they were mostly dead, dying or small self sown specimens and this number was less than originally planned owing to pressure from the Dulwich Park Friends. As against this, 70 new trees are to be planted, a native hedgerow around the perimeter is planned and the grass will be allowed to grow.
Although bound to remove dead trees where they present a danger, the Estate plants an average of 40 trees a year and resists residents' requests to fell trees, where possible. Finally the Dulwich Society has also made a small contribution; 12 trees are flourishing in Long Meadow alongside Gipsy Hill and there is also a native hedge around the perimeter, 10 trees have been planted in Belair Park and 4 memorial trees in the village. It does therefore seem to me that the number of trees in Dulwich is actually increasing in spite of the occasional disaster.
Stella Benwell
In the afternoon of Saturday August 5th 1944 a V1 Flying Bomb exploded in the Co-operative Stores, Lordship Lane, when it was crowded with weekend shoppers. Twenty seven people were killed and forty two seriously injured. Rescue squads worked for two days and right through the night to recover victims.
It was Bank Holiday Saturday. My Mother, who worked at Beard's leather shop in Lordship Lane, was telling me what I could and could not do: "No, you cannot go to the cinema because I want you to come down to the shop this afternoon to help me bring the shopping home. Your Dad's going to meet us there." My Father had worked at Beard's for years but had been called- up, so my Mother had taken over as manager. He had been given weekend leave from his Army base in Staines.
Later that morning, my Mother phoned to say she had changed her mind. I could go after all, as long as I was at the tram stop at 5.30pm to meet her. I was hugely delighted. I loved going to the pictures but, because of flying bomb attacks had not been allowed to go for ages. So off I sped to my favourite place: the Capitol, Forest Hill. About half-way through the film we were informed that the air-raid siren had sounded. Some people left but I decided to wait until the end of the programme. When I got home I phoned the shop to tell my Mother I was back, but there was no reply. I tried again and again. The 'phone was ringing but no one answered. I assumed my parents had left early, so I ran from home, through Horniman's Gardens to wait at the gates for the No. 85 tram. I waited a long time. There were trams going from Forest Hill to East Dulwich but nothing coming in the opposite direction. Eventually, to my relief, a tram came into sight. The driver told kindly told me that all traffic was being stopped at Dulwich Library as there must have been an "incident" further down the hill. I crossed the road and got the next tram as far as the Library. I was told I could go no further, so explained about my parents. Understanding my predicament and being assured that I was sixteen years old; the sympathetic official let me through.
After so many years it is hard to recall details but it was a time of anxiety and a time of waiting. I sat anxiously waiting, opposite the devastation. I must have given some information. I know I received much kindness. The Salvation Army, who had their Citadel nearby in Shawbury Road, kept their eye on me as they took care of everyone; schoolfriends kept me company from time to time. Eventually I was told by those in charge that as it was getting dark, all that could be done for that day, with regard to rescue, had been done. I would be best for me to go home to get some rest. They would hope to see me the next morning.
I began to walk home through the back streets. I remember turning the corner of Langton Rise, looking up the hill and seeing someone walking towards me. As he got nearer, to my utter joy and overwhelming astonishment I recognised my own father beginning to run towards me. He eventually was able to tell me that his leave had been cancelled and that when we didn't answer the phone, he had spoken to a neighbour who had told him what she and her husband thought had happened. He was able to get compassionate leave at once, and had been to the house and, having found it empty, was now on his way to Lordship Lane.
My dear Father lifted from my shoulders all responsibility of identifying my Mother and of contacting family members. Gradually, together with so many other families whose relatives were killed in the devastation of that flying bomb, we learned to come to terms with our immense loss, and the fact our lives had been spared. One immeasurable blessing for me was the realisation that I needed to commit my life to the Lord Jesus Christ. As a child I had heard of Him at Lordship Lane Baptist Church, on the corner of Goodrich Road, where my parents had taken my brothers and sisters and me there from a very early age.
In 1978 I returned to live in East Dulwich and started to attend St. Barnabas Church in Calton Avenue. I gradually began to get to know members of the congregation. One day, while talking to someone named Ruth, we discovered, to our astonishment, that both our mothers had died in Lordship Lane on 5th August 1944. Ruth's mother had been in Hammett's, the butcher's shop next door to Beard's, the leather shop. I believe Ruth's mother worked there, in which case she and my mother would have known each other.
And now it is July 2005. I have been asked to write my recollections of that life-changing day. I do this with a deep sense of thankfulness to God for all His loving care over the long life he has permitted me, but also with an awareness of the deep tragedy and grief so many are experiencing at this time.
At the end of May, Valerie and I were privileged to participate in the end of year arrangements at Dulwich College International Scholl in Shanghai where we were guests of Dr Colin Niven, currently Master of Schools in China. This visit was to coincide with the completion of Colin's work of establishing the School.
From the airport we drove to an extremely modern city. Everything was immaculately clean and spacious with tall, new, well-designed buildings everywhere, each with pleasant open spaces and with much building still going on. Despite this it was still startling to be confronted by the modern façade of 'Ducks', the kindergarten school for Dulwich College, Shanghai, specially created for the establishment of the Dulwich educational system. Over two hundred youngsters, dressed like the Dulwich Ducks, were to be seen playing in the attractive, spacious grounds. There were excellent facilities for drama and other indoor activities within the lower school building.
The Middle School is a street away from Ducks, in a superb new building. It should be pointed out that the most senior of the pupils in this building are, at the moment between thirteen and fourteen years of age. They celebrated the end of term with a performance of "Grease" which would have done credit to any of the Foundation schools in Dulwich, a remarkable achievement after such a short time. All seemed to be extremely talented; one of the 'stars' already held prizes for speech presentation in India.
All the children looked happy and excited to be at the School, and without exception were well-behaved and courteous. The fact that the students came from completely different backgrounds added richness. The School insists that every child in its care learns Mandarin.
On the equivalent of Awards Day, I was honoured to be present when Dr Niven, the Master of the School gave his address. He virtually built the School with the touch of a magic wand from an unpredictable number of pupils to seven hundred in two years. The newly created house shield was named after Dr Niven; he did not know this this was going to happen until an hour before the ceremony and was immensely moved.
One of the highlights of the eight-day visit was the Silver Ball held at the Shangri-la Hotel. This was a fitting tribute from the international community of parents to honour not only the retiring Head but also the inspiration behind the idea of planting a traditional educational system from Dulwich into a foreign country. We were also taken to Suzhou, a two hour drive south of Shanghai, where work has begun on the third Dulwich School in China (the second being in Beijing). There, we enjoyed a visit to a group of marvellous fifteenth century gardens appropriately known as 'Scholars' Gardens' and had traditional Chinese tea at the beautiful 'Master of the Fishing Nets'.
by Ian McInnes
Post-war planning
The Dulwich Wood Park Estate was one of the Dulwich Estate's most imaginative post -war developments. Built in two phases between the years 1957-63, it received a Civic Trust Award in 1964 and was widely published in the architectural press under the heading of 'Housing for the Professional Classes', presumably to differentiate it from 'housing for the working classes'
The Estate had initially looked at redeveloping the area before the war. By 1945 the large houses on the site were in poor structural condition and were often divided into low grade flats that could only be let on short leases. Camberwell Council, who were under considerable Government pressure to find sites for social housing development, viewed the site as one ideal for compulsory purchase and it was included in the 1951 County of London Development Plan on that basis.
While the Estate accepted that they were going to have to accept some degree of council housing in the area, they felt that the loss of the Kingswood Estate and other sites in Sydenham Hill and Herne Hill was more than their fair share. They put up a strong case to retain the land for their own development and, after several acrimonious meetings with Camberwell and the London County Council during 1952-54, the Estate finally persuaded them to allow them to do so. However, as part of the agreement, they had to accept that the housing density would be much higher than had been normal in Dulwich in the past.
Interestingly, the Estate did not object too hard to the density increase, as they were keen to encourage families into the area in order to provide more children for the foundation schools. The severe pre-war decline in the schools' rolls, brought about largely by the lack of decent affordable housing for young families in the area, had been reversed to some extent by the Dulwich Experiment, where children from the outer London boroughs had been able to come to the schools with their fees paid by their Local Authorities. However, it was clear that this was only a short term solution, and not likely to continue if the Conservative Government lost office.
Dulwich Development Plan 1955-56
Russell Vernon of Austin Vernon & Partners, the Estate's architects, prepared a Dulwich Development Plan during 1955-56 which was accepted by the Governors early in 1957. Negotiations with the planning authority, the London County Council had not been easy. The key point, as the Architect said, was 'to decide what form of development could be carried out at the present time by private enterprise, and yet satisfy the authorities'. He noted, almost in exasperation, 'Since I submitted the draft development plan, which you approved, and gave me instructions to proceed further to obtain agreement with the Planning Authority, I have had many conferences and discussions with the planning officers. Many variations to the plan have been examined and improvements made.'
Planning consent for a mixed scheme of houses and flats was achieved in January 1957 at a density of 50 persons to the acre. The original plan showed two phases, the first between Dulwich Wood Avenue and Farquhar Road and the second between Farquhar Road and Dulwich Wood Park, including the gardens of Lowood House and Redbourne House. The second phase also showed a site for a future primary school.
The scheme was then marketed to potential developers and Wates expressed an interest even though the layout and house types were not their normal style. They were already working in the area and had just completed a row of semi-detached houses on the south west side of Dulwich Wood Avenue on the site of Oakfield House. Agreement was reached with them in July 1957 whereby they would develop the site within 3 years on the basis of a total ground rent of £2,409 per annum, the Estate providing the land for free. (At that time, before the advent of the 1967 Leasehold Reform Act, the Estate still gained most of their income from ground rents.)
Pilot scheme in Dulwich Wood Park
Phase 1 consisted of seven rows of L shaped 'Serial 2' houses (now known as Oakfield), a row of twelve 'Serial 3' houses accessed from Dulwich Wood Park, and three blocks of flats, Lowood, Knoll and Glenwood Courts. Despite the density the architects were keen to maximise open space and maintain the green leafy character of Dulwich. As the Architect reported in June 1957 'The layout has been prepared to eliminate roadways as far as possible, to preserve the trees and amenities, and keep the grounds in park- like condition without fences. The parkway character of Farquhar Road has been retained by the introduction of three somewhat high blocks of flats which will enable a large area of woodland to be retained'.
The 'Serial 2' Houses had two storeys and had relatively wide frontages. They had 3 bedrooms and an open plan living/dining room with large gardens. Access to the first floor was via an open stair into the dining/living room and was perhaps not ideal for family life as older children could not reach their bedrooms other than via the living area. Garages were in a separate block at the front of the site. It was obvious however that, in commercial terms they were space hungry, and in Phase 2 were replaced by rows of more conventional three storey town houses with integral garages. The rest of Phase 2 was made up of thirty 'Serial 3' houses and four more blocks of flats, Drake, Raleigh, Marlow, and Grenville Courts.
The 'Serial 3' houses were narrower terraces and had 4 bedrooms, the fourth bedroom being in the roof space, and were better planned in that the stair came off the entrance hall. There is also an interesting change of level between the living and dining areas which was nearly lost at the last moment when the Estate, giving final approval to the plans, requested its removal. Wates, or more probably the Architect writing on their behalf, objected strongly 'Not only does it take into account the natural slope of the ground but its retention gives an added sense of space to the living-room and an excellent vista from the dining room at the higher level into the garden'. The Estate relented.
The architects gave much thought to the appearance of the houses and used a range of external claddings which included painted render, tile hanging, timber boarding and cedar shakes. The 'Serial 3' house are the most interesting from a construction view point as they are built of brick cross walls with full width lightweight infill panels/windows in between, some of them prefabricated - prefabrication is of course the buzz word in new housing today!
High quality landscaping
The landscaping in the development was of high quality and Wates retained Derek Lovejoy, a highly regarded landscape architect at the time, to design it. Public art was also an integral part of the development and Wates paid for both a tiled mural in Knoll Court to the designs of Mr Reginald Brill, the then principal of the Kingston School of Art, and a sculpture called 'Mother and Child' outside Lowood Court by sculptress Patricia Rowland. At the unveiling ceremony Mr Charles Pearce, Chairman of the Governors, described Wates as 'not only builders but benefactors'. The sculpture was removed some years ago after the concrete started to come away and it was hit by a delivery van.
The blocks of flats were quite luxurious for the time and relatively expensive. The sales brochure noted 'the spacious living room is magnificent. Nearly the whole of one wall is taken up by deep continuous windows. The floor is of polished hardwood and, to supplement the space heating there is a radiant fire set in a bookcase and cupboard unit of Afromosia and Sycamore hardwoods. Ample electric points are provided together with plug in connections to master radio and television aerials serving the whole block.
New flats are popular
They were also popular, the Wates News of February 1961 reporting 'When Wates Built homes announced that a new block of eight-storey flats at Dulwich was to be released for sale on a certain Saturday morning in January, Mrs S E Channer made up her mind she would have the choice of top flats with the best views over London. So at 6.30 am, while the rest of Dulwich was still asleep, she was camping out at the door of the view flat to stake her claim'. She was not alone and was joined by a Mr Bullock at 7.30. The site foreman brought them tea while they waited for the show flat to open.
The Estate was well pleased with the overall development and at the official opening Mr Pearce, ever the enthusiast, called them 'right royal'. On his way into the flats he had apparently spoken to one of the new residents who was most enthusiastic. Mr Pearce concluded his opening address by saying 'You could not have anything better than this praise from those who have tasted the food and want to thank the cooks'.
The Dulwich Society Local History Group presents:
Victorian and Edwardian Dulwich Illustrated
Special Showing
The Bill de Baerdemaecker collection of unique photographs
With a commentary by Brian Green
Thursday 24th November at 7.45pm in the Old Library, Dulwich College