The Dulwich Society Journal for Autumn 2021.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, “To lose one officer of the Society may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.” Both Dr Colin Niven and Ian McInnes have served the Dulwich Society for long periods. Colin for ten years and Ian for thirteen. We are extremely grateful to them for the dedicated service they have given.
Their retirement from their offices does not mean that we will lose their service in future. Colin can be expected to remain a contributor to this publication while Ian will continue to be a very active member the Local History group where his informed articles and frequent talks are so very well received.
In his final ‘Chairman’s Comment’ he speaks of the continued progress of the Dulwich Society. but also reminds us of unfinished business; the two large and prominent redevelopment sites, one in the centre of the Village and the other at the former Grove Tavern on Dulwich Common which are a total disgrace and have been for some years. It is possible that we may also find there is another - it is understood that Dulwich Prep London has handed back the nineteenth century ‘Brightlands’ building, which stands on the prominent corner of Gallery Road looking towards Dulwich College.
It is interesting that when Ian mentions in the news column that yet another new developer has taken over the former ‘Gilkes’ site ( and is to rename it ‘Soane Place’, he ends by saying that the new developer has an application lodged with Southwark Council to ‘value engineer’ the approved design. ‘Value engineer’ is shorthand in the building world to mean cost cutting, usually by using inferior materials and finishes than originally proposed in the planning application. The resulting development might therefore look nothing like the one first envisaged.
The way that the Dulwich Estate can avoid both criticism and delay of major building projects on the Estate, is to carry them out itself, rather than selling off the land to developers, many of whom have not the slightest interest in Dulwich other than to extract as much money from such a deal as possible.
The Dulwich Estate has shown that it can carry out its own major developments; after a lot of teething troubles and steep learning curves it is to be congratulated on the way it sympathetically redeveloped the Crown & Greyhound into an attractive pub with excellent amenities including a much-needed small hotel. Recently, it has also redeveloped the old dairy site in Croxted Road into an attractive new medical centre, shops and housing within a good timeframe. It may be too late to do anything about Soane Place but it should bring both the Grove Tavern and Brightlands sites back in-house as a matter of urgency and carry out its own redevelopment schemes.
Reminder The postponed 58th Annual General Meeting will be held at 8pm on Tuesday 14th September 2021 at the Crown & Greyhound First Floor function room. Drinks and nibbles will be served after the meeting. Further information is available on the Society website at www.dulwichsociety.com. This is of course subject to the government Covid-18 guidelines and members will be informed by email if we are advised to hold the meeting over Zoom instead.
This is my 51st chairman’s comment, and my last, as I will be standing down as chair of the Society at the AGM on the 14th September after 13 years. Looking back at what has been achieved, the Society is in its 58th year and remains in good shape; our specialist sub-committees are active, membership is up, and our relationship with local stakeholders like the Council and the Estate is positive. We promoted the formation of residents’ associations and there are now a number of active groups on nearly all the major residential roads in the area and many of the smaller ones. The Society’s Journal, now in its 210th edition is seen as a real member benefit and the monthly eNewsletter, now on issue 94, has been keeping members informed on local issues and events since December 2013. The Society has also moved on to social media with active Society and Local History Twitter accounts.
The range of shops in the Village and West Dulwich has definitely improved, the long awaited ‘Simply Fresh’ has been a plus, as has Gail’s and Rocca - and there are more restaurants and cafes to come. The Dulwich Estate has taken a more hands-on approach to selecting its tenants and we have seen the benefits with shops like the butcher, ‘Proud Sow’, and the shortly arriving cheese shop. There was much concern over the closure of the old post office and its relocation to Rumsey’s the chemist - but we need not have worried as the service levels and efficiency of the new facility have been a revelation. And even the conversion of the Crown and Greyhound into a hotel was finally completed.
What other things has the Society done? We helped to kick start the reimagination of the Herne Hill Velodrome, we supported the creation of a new school and health centre on the old Dulwich Community Hospital site and, after 20 years of pressure, TfL finally extended the 42-bus route to Sainsbury’s in East Dulwich. We promoted the use of the Council’s CGS funding to repair the historic fingerposts and posts and chains, as well as contributing towards the refurbishment of Rosebery Lodge in Dulwich Park - now used most days by the Dulwich and District u3a. We persuaded the Estate to allow the historic burial ground to open to the public for Open House and the Dulwich Festival and we have installed a number of local history information boards. We have given grants to support the enhancement of the woods and Dulwich Park as well as ‘green screen’ installations in local schools. In conjunction with the Dulwich College Archive, we have paid for all the historic court rolls and estate maps to be digitised. To mark our 50th anniversary in 2013, we funded a number of plaques to commemorate residents killed by bombs in WW2, and we also installed a modern version of the former ‘red post’ which once stood at the junction of Red Post Hill and Herne Hill.
The closure of the Grove Tavern in 2012 remains a problem, and we still don’t know what the Estate intend to do on the site. The Council’s installation of an electrical recycling bin in a prominent place in the Village makes one despair and the delay over the construction of the new houses on Gilkes Crescent has also been a disappointment. The centre of the Village has had an unattractive hoarding in it for over five years - hopefully the new owner will be starting work soon.
Looking back over the past 13 years the impact of school and through traffic has always been a major discussion point. I can only speculate as to what my successor will be able to say about them in the years to come.
Outcome of the Special General Meeting Held on 28th June 2021
Following the end of the meeting, the Zoom reports on participants and voting were downloaded and cross-referenced with the membership list and the votes were then counted and validated. The results were as follows:
Motion 1: That the process for appointment of members of the Society’s sub-committees and all minutes of their meetings must be published on the Society’s website, including declarations of interest.
The motion was carried by 90 votes to 53, with 4 abstentions
The Society's Executive Committee had already agreed to this motion and, following the Executive Committee meeting in July, a more detailed statement about the process for the appointment of members of the Society’s sub-committees will be prepared and published on the Society's website, along with minutes of the future sub-committee meetings, including declarations of interest.
Motion 2: The Society must undertake a formal, independent and impartial survey of its Membership about the remit the Membership wishes the Society to adopt with regard to the Society’s long term policy position on Travel and Environment. The findings of this consultation with Members to be published in full on the Society’s website and available on request to all members.
The motion was rejected by 79 votes to 67, with 3 abstentions.
The Society’s Response to the Boundary Commission Consultation
The Dulwich Society is the largest amenity society in south-east London with over 1150 household members. While it accepts that some changes need to be made to make sure that all constituencies have roughly the same numbers of voters, it does not support the current radical plans to change the constituency boundaries of the current Dulwich and West Norwood constituency and put large areas of Dulwich into a Dulwich and Sydenham constituency. These are our reasons:
The constituency has been called Dulwich and West Norwood since 1997. It was an amalgamation of the former Dulwich and Norwood Constituencies (both formed in 1885). The proposed changes would be a fundamental change to historical precedent.
Dulwich and Sydenham are separated by a line of sports fields along the South Circular backed up by a large area of woodland (formerly part of the historic Great North Wood) extending from Lordship Lane though to Crystal Palace Parade. There is no road link between the two areas other than Sydenham Hill/Kirkdale and College Road (approximately a mile apart) and there is no direct rail connection between them. There are also no existing community connections between Dulwich and Sydenham, both see themselves as stand-alone centres.
The proposed revised constituency cuts across existing community ties. Dulwich's community connections are with Norwood, Herne Hill and Brixton backed up by roads (and bus routes) and railways. Likewise for shopping, faith centres, G P Surgeries and the main cemetery. The Dulwich Society, the local amenity society in Dulwich works closely with the amenity groups in Herne Hill and Norwood.
Parts of West Dulwich will be located within the new Streatham and Norwood constituencies and there are concerns that matters affecting West Dulwich will not receive the attention required.
Herne Hill has developed a distinctive character within the current Dulwich and West Norwood constituency. The proposals mean it is now split between three constituencies which makes no sense, and which will cause problems when raising issues or concerns with MPs and authorities.
In summary, the plan to link Dulwich with Sydenham should be reconsidered and Herne Hill should remain with Dulwich; West Dulwich (Lambeth sections) should be in the same constituency as the rest of Dulwich.
Echelon Parking in Dulwich Village
Finally, after over 20 years of discussion and the Society being told many times that it would only happen when the echelon parking was replaced by parallel parking, paid parking has arrived in front of the northern shops in Dulwich Village. It seems that the impact of the LTN’s has finally persuaded even the most reluctant trader that it is a good idea. The controlled hours are 8.30am-6.30pm (Monday to Saturday) and allow an hour free and up to a further two hours paid for through the PayByPhone app on your phone - and this includers the free hour. Those without a smart phone may not be able to use it and the Society has asked local councillors to help find a solution to those users who are not so tech-savvy. It also raises the question though, whether paid parking should be extended to other areas of the Village like Gilkes Place where vans can be parked for months on end, denying users of the parish hall any space.
Soane Place, Dulwich Village
Aquinna Homes, the new owners of the former S G Smith workshop site, have changed its name - formerly known as ‘The Gilkes’ it is now to be known as ‘Soane Place’. As members know, Sir John Soane was the architect of the Dulwich Picture Gallery which had a major influence on art gallery design throughout the world - being the first to use roof lights to light gallery interiors. Soane was also the architect for other famous buildings including the Bank of England and the recently restored Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing but, most famously of course, there is his own house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, now the Soane Museum. Whether he would appreciate his name used for a small housing development where the houses will be ‘exquisitely specified’, we can only guess but, we suspect he might have hoped for something better - the new owner has a current application with Southwark Council to ‘value engineer’ the approved design which will make it less visually attractive.
Bridging the Ambrook
Funding of £2300 from the Dulwich Society to the London Wildlife Trust has enabled a new bridge to be placed across the Ambrook stream which flows down to feed Dulwich Park lake from the Woods. The Society is looking at other requests from the from London Wildlife Trust for financial assistance for further work in the woods to improve paths due to heavy footfall during the pandemic.
Alastair Hanton (1926-2021)
When Alastair Hanton retired as chair of the then Traffic & Transport sub-committee (now renamed Travel & Environment) he remarked that one of the outstanding issues he would leave to his successor was the question of poor passenger access (especially for the elderly or disabled ) to and from the platforms at North Dulwich, West Dulwich and Sydenham Hill stations. He dryly said that the issue was slowly rising up the pile on Network Rail’s list of things to do.
There is no question, that Alastair would have ensured that Dulwich’s application would not be overlooked. Playing the long game was his forte and coupled with his logical mind and command of mathematics he must have been a formidable chess player. He had a strong commitment and hearty appetite to serve on the many committees which aroused his interest and concern. This dedication gave him opportunities to sow the seeds for future major shifts in national and local transport policy especially towards greater emphasis on cycling.
He also practised what he preached, invariably turning up at Dulwich Society executive meetings with his bicycle clips in place having sprinted from another, earlier meeting. His dedication to local affairs dated back to the earliest days of the Society and he served as secretary in 1968 and treasurer in 1970-71.
Few of Alastair’s initiatives were carried out in his name, he preferred to work through existing structures. He was always alert to any ‘loose’ funds available from local government which he referred to as ‘a little bit of money’ and which he often managed to earmark for local traffic initiatives - pedestrian crossings on Dulwich Common and Gallery Road or improvements to road junctions with sympathetic tree planting at places like Alleyn Park and Half Moon Lane. He was one of the drivers of the rescue of the Herne Hill Veleodrome when it faced a very uncertain future and would later serve as one of its trustees.
What was so interesting about Alastair’s various campaigns was that they were so varied. He was no one topic enthusiast. While his first love in later life might have been cycling,he was equally active in other areas such as children’s road safety and traffic calming. He also found time to serve as deputy chairman of Christian Aid and fostered the creation the Fairtrade movement to improve the livelihood of third-world farmers. He set up the Ethical Investment and Research Information Service (EIRIS) to advise pension schemes and investment trusts on how ethical the companies were that they were doing business with. And of course, all of the forgoing took place after Alastair had retired!
Alastair Hanton was born in North London in 1926 and attended Mill Hill School but spent the war years as an evacuee at St Bees, Cumbria before going up to Pembroke College, Cambridge to read Mathematics and Economics in 1948. Newly graduated, he was recruited by the Colonial Development Corporation, being posted to Malawi (then Nyasaland)to plan public works projects. His next career move was to the Industrial & Commercial Finance Corporation, party formed by the Bank of England to provide long-term finance to medium sized companies. From there he progressed to Unilever and in the 1968 to Rio Tinto; in both of which companies he worked at financial analysis and capital investment projects.
It was while at Unilever’s economics and statistics division that he hit upon a scheme to cut the costs of collecting and processing the small amounts due from the company’s ice cream vendors by obtaining their permission to allow the company to deduct the amount due, direct from their bank accounts. From this process sprang the concept of Direct Debit which was accepted by banks in 1964, but only after six years of relentless campaigning by Alastair Hanton. From here his attention turned to concern that so many of the population did not have a bank account, either because they could not afford the bank charges or were handicapped by the restricted opening hours. His solution was to provide a national bank through the post office system. The idea was taken up by Labour politicians and in 1968 the National Giro was created.. Hanton was appointed director of operations and was later deputy managing director of the new National Girobank. Once, when asked why he had been awarded his OBE in 1987 when he retired, he modestly replied that ‘he worked for the Post Office’.
Future of KIngswood House
Since the start of the pandemic, Kingswood House with its library and community rooms has been closed to the public. The much-valued public library has been relocated to an empty shop in Seeley Drive as a click and collect facility. Naturally, the Friends of Kingswood House, who have supported the house over so many years are disappointed. They claim that the building is in a poor state of repair and water is entering through the roof and damaging the once splendid interior. They have made representations to Southwark Council over the matter and believe that Kingswood House requires a major institution such as a charity or university to take over the building.
Southwark Council is now seeking to select a private sector partner to bring forward new proposals for the operation and management of the property. It is keen to see Kingswood House become a centre of activity for people who live, work or visit the south of the borough, and to bring the House up to modern day standards while ensuring it remains an asset for the local community. The invitation to tender says that this is an opportunity to create a multi-purpose centre that provides a mix of studios, co-work spaces and spaces for activities and events that could generate an income and better serve the local community. This would help the upkeep and maintenance of the House, which needs investment for its restoration. It also adds that it expects the successful proposals will be anchored in a philosophy of added social value for the local community. The building is being offered on a ten-year lease with a possible extension to 25 years depending on the offer. Tenders were due in at the end of August.
Kingswood House is a Grade II listed building located in the middle of the Kingswood Estate, in the southern end of Dulwich. Constructed in 1811 as the home of a wealthy lawyer, William Vizard, it was substantially rebuilt in the early 1890s by John Lawson Johnston, the inventor of Bovril, indeed it was sometimes known as Bovril Castle. In WW1 the house was used as a convalescence home for wounded Canadian soldiers and it was later acquired by Sir William Vestey, a prominent meat retailer. The LCC compulsorily purchased the site for Council housing in the late 1940s and the early 1950s construction of the surrounding estate retained the building as a community centre and library. It has been run on that basis for nearly 70 years, thought it has always been difficult to find users from the wider Dulwich area as it is hidden away within the estate and few realise it’s there.
Plans for a major restoration project at the Crystal Palace Subway, a Grade II* listed structure part located underneath Crystal Palace Parade, are taking shape following successful bids for £2.8m of grant funding from the City of London and Historic England. This follows on from previous smaller scale funding bids over the last few years including one, in 2015/16, to provide safe access to the subway on the Southwark side of Crystal Palace Parade. Local businesses, residents and other local organisations contributed - including the Dulwich Society which secured a £16,000 grant from Southwark Council’s Cleaner Greener Safer scheme.
Designed by Charles Barry Junior the Subway was opened to the public on the 23rd December 1865 and allowed first class passengers to walk directly into the Crystal Palace exhibition spaces from the station without have to go out in the open and cross a busy road - the Victorian equivalent of the fast-track system that business class flyers have when checking in at airports today. More recently and following the setting up of the FCPS, the Subway has intermittently been used for cultural and community events and it is the intention that this kind of activity will become more frequent following the completion of the project.
The proposed design by Sydenham based conservation architects, Thomas Ford & Partners, who will improve site accessibility and give it a more sustainable future, as well as removing it from Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register. The plans include new stairs down from the park and a new roof - there was a glazed roof originally but the site has been largely open to the elements since the main buildings burnt down in 1936. In their supporting statement the architects say that the new roof needs to address a number of critical requirements not the least of which is to facilitate the use of the space beneath, but it also needs to respect the historic structure, provide security and be easy access to for regular maintenance. Few can disagree with the analysis but, when looking at the design, there remains a nagging feeling that it could have been more structurally adventurous. In its day the Crystal Palace was at the forefront of building technology with its use of prefabrication and standardisation. The new scheme is functional. and it will work well, but it is not as exciting as one might have hoped.
Bromley Council and the Friends of Crystal Palace Subway (FCPS) are working in partnership and the project is currently in for planning approval. It is envisaged that restoration work could be complete towards the end of 2022 and the subway will remain closed whilst the works are carried out. For further information see www.Bromley.gov.uk/CrystalPalaceSubway and join the council’s mailing list to receive further updates.
The first round of consultation by the Boundary Commission for England on its proposals published on 8 June for a new constituency map for England closed on 2 August. But there are two further rounds of consultation. In the spring of 2022 there is a consultation and public hearings on the Commission’s revised proposals: if these are further revised as a result - and they usually are - then there is a further and final written consultation in late 2022 before the Commission produces its definitive report by 1 July 2023.
The redrawing is the third since the 2011 Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies Act brought in equalisation of the electorate of constituencies to within exactly 5% either side of the arithmetic mean. The first one was abandoned in 2013 when the Liberal Democrats in the Coalition withdrew their support for it: the second was completed in 2018 but never put to the House of Commons for its assent. The first two were based on a statutory reduction from 650 to 600 in the number of seats: we are now back at a statutory total of 650. The eventual outcome is be implemented without parliamentary involvement.
London gets just two additional constituencies, but substantial changes are proposed for all but 12 current constituencies. The proposal for the current Dulwich and West Norwood seat, as foreshadowed in the 2018 report, is that its 4 Lambeth wards pass to a revised Streatham constituency and to a new Clapham and Brixton seat, while the four core Dulwich wards are joined with four Lewisham wards now in Lewisham West and Penge to become a new constituency of Dulwich and Sydenham.
The proposed change is plainly of major importance to local political party organisations based on current structures, not least as sitting members have to work out whom gets nominated where. But it does not directly impact on local service provision: local authority and ward boundaries are unaffected.
Possible grounds for objection can include the breaking of local ties, or a serious division between one part of a proposed constituency and another, for example by a main road or river or - in Dulwich’s case - a hill! Inevitably there are closer ties with neighbouring wards, such as Herne Hill or Gipsy Hill or Champion Hill, than with the most distant ward - in this case Bellingham. And it may be that some Sydenham wards will wish to be in with Catford or Peckham rather than Dulwich, and will make representations accordingly. Any changes in one area inevitably have knock-on consequences elsewhere: it is a fluid jigsaw. The proposed name is also open to consultation: Dulwich and Sydenham would not be the only proposed constituency to share its name with a golf course!
The experience of 2018 demonstrates that the Commission is truly responsive: what came out for this area was very different to its original proposals. So we will be watching with interest.
{The Boundary Commission for England website is highly informative: htpps://boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk}
This popular calendar with photographs by Brian Green of monthly images of Dulwich scenes with space to write appointments, will be on sale at The Art Stationers, Dulwich Village from September. It makes a useful an inexpensive gift to send to lovers of Dulwich everywhere.
Helen Frankenthaler: Radical Beauty
15 September 2021 - 18 April 2022
Dulwich Picture Gallery presents the first major UK exhibition of woodcuts by the leading Abstract Expressionist, Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011). Shining a light on the artist’s ground-breaking woodcuts it will showcase works never shown before in the UK, to reveal Frankenthaler as a creative force and a trailblazer of printmaking, who endlessly pushed the possibilities of the medium.
Ranging from Frankenthaler’s first ever woodcut in 1973, to her last work published in 2009, this major print retrospective will bring together 38 works on loan from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, including Madame Butterfly (2000), East and Beyond (1973) to reveal the enormous diversity in scale and technique in her oeuvre. Challenging traditional notions of woodcut printmaking, the exhibition will reveal the charge and energy behind Frankenthaler’s ‘no rules’ approach, arranged thematically to spotlight the elements crucial to her unique style of mark-marking, from experimentation to inspiration and collaboration.
At the age of only 23 Frankenthaler created her influential oil painting Mountains and Sea (1952), the first work produced using her signature soak stain technique - pouring thinned paint directly onto canvas from above to create broad expanses of translucent colour. It was a breakthrough that would propel Frankenthaler into the spotlight of the New York art scene at a time when Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning dominated. This technique went on to influence the artists of the Colour Field school of painting, including Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, and had a profound impact on her printmaking career.
Opening ten years after her death, ‘Radical Beauty’ examines Frankenthaler’s revolutionary approach to the woodcut, positioning her as one of the medium’s great innovators. In the same way as she did with her earlier paintings, Frankenthaler defied the limitations of what is often considered the most rudimentary of printmaking techniques; she found new dimensions to the medium, experimenting with different orientations and colourways,and a variety of new tools and methods. What resulted is an incomparable body of work, where prints appear painterly and spontaneous with expanses of colour and fluid forms.
Highlights include Frankenthaler’s first woodcut East and Beyond (1973) created by printing onto multiple blocks to avoid negative space. The work holds a sense of tangible colour and form, but at the same time has a fluidity that sets it apart from other artists at the time such as Jasper Johns. Other standout works will include Cameo (1980) and Freefall (1993), which further demonstrate how Frankenthaler accepted the challenge of woodcut printmaking and found ways to make it yield to her approach. In Cameo, Frankenthaler introduced a new layered approach to colour and used her distinctive “guzzying” technique - where she worked her surfaces with sandpaper and in some instances, dentist drills, to achieve different effects.
A key focus of the exhibition will be Frankenthaler’s masterpiece, Madame Butterfly (2000). Sharing its title with the 1904 opera by Giacomo Puccini, the triptych’s light pastel colours and stained marks show Frankenthaler at her most expressive and lyrical. Created in collaboration with Kenneth Tyler and Yasuyuki Shibata from 46 woodblocks and 102 colours, the work measures over two metres in length and will occupy an entire room in the exhibition, along with a work proof and study to explore the complexity of its evocative title. In this print, and in others in the exhibition we can also understand Frankenthaler’s working process and how each collaboration propelled her forward creatively. The exhibition will include all six woodcuts of the series Tales of Genji (1998), a highly ambitious body of work for which Frankenthaler employed her soak-stain technique- this time painting with water-based colours onto sheets of plywood. Working with Tyler and his studio of printmakers once again, they embarked on a process of constant experimentation and a journey of trial and error to achieve Frankenthaler’s vision.
For the first time ever Claude Monet’s Water Lilies and Agapanthus (1914-1917) will travel to the UK for a special display at Dulwich Picture Gallery as part of its major new exhibition Helen Frankenthaler: Radical Beauty. It will be shown alongside Frankenthaler’s monumental painting Feather (1973) in a one-off visual experience that will reveal similarities in ambition and approach.
Water Lilies and Agapanthus is on loan from the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris as part of a new special partnership with Dulwich Picture Gallery.
In my last article readers may remember that I was advising of the risk to our wildlife of a repeat of last year’s May drought. On the day that the magazine went to print the heavens opened and what followed was a deluge that persisted through May, so the immediate risk to nesting birds was waterlogging. Clearly Robins are canny enough nesters to accommodate this as I have seen and had reports of fledglings but I am less sure of the Blackbirds and Thrushes. The numbers of singing male Blackbirds seem to be down by about fifty percent this year so we will have to watch for further evidence. Nationally Blue and Great Tits appear to have poor brood survival due to a mismatch between hatching and the emergence of winter moth caterpillars, but Long Tailed Tits are earlier nesters and there are now family parties around. Brian Green’s renowned headbanger of the last issue can now relax.
The unpredictability of the weather clearly is having far reaching consequences. Last year there was an abundance of Orange Tip butterflies in May with good availability of Garlic Mustard, their larval food plant. This year I did not see a single one. I can only think that the May deluge drowned the lot at the moment of emergence. Perhaps that too was the fate of the winter moth caterpillars but the dependence of the ecology upon small insects most of which pass us by unrecognized could not be clearer.
Wendy Gibbs sent me a report of an active flock of brown Blackbird sized birds that descended into her garden. This was a crèche of young Starlings, birds that have alas become less familiar in our gardens. Characteristically after fledging a region’s immature Starlings flock together as a crèche in which they remain until about July. This would appear to assist the survival of inexperienced young birds with safety of numbers against marauding Sparrow Hawks of which we have a few.
There have been not too many unusual reports this year. Kite Buzzards and Peregrine Falcons have been seen overflying and a parishioner reports that the St Lukes church Peregrines have been very vocal, presumably not interrupting worship. Cuckoos were heard twice in the woods during May, not this year the radio tagged BTO bird, which is apparently still alive and transmitting, but not from the Dulwich golf course. An additional sighting was by Steven Robinson who saw a Great White Egret overflying East Dulwich. This is a new colonist to this country from mainland Europe following the now very widespread colonization of Little Egrets.
My most notable record for this summer came from Rita Green whose old apple tree was visited by a pair of Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers. These little Woodpeckers were frequently to be seen in Dulwich during the 1970s and 1980s but have become rare, perhaps associated with the loss of mature elms to the Dutch Elm disease. Martin Bagley has reported an occasional sighting but I have not seen one here for many years. They are not easy to see as they are much smaller than Greater Spotted, being nearer the size of a Nuthatch and spending more time in the tree canopy. It is sometimes known as the Barred Woodpecker as the familiar oval white secondary wing patch of the Great Spotted Woodpecker is replaced by a pattern of transverse wing bars. They also have red head caps which can give rise to confusion as juvenile Greater Spotteds also have this. The best way of becoming aware of them is through their call as they are quite noisy, the call reminding one of a loud angry Blackbird. Like the Greater Spotted they do drum during the breeding season but a little quieter and longer. It is to be hoped that more of us will be able to see them here again as they favour traditional natural woodland.
The second half of the summer in Dulwich is the time for Butterflies and Dragonflies. Apart from the ubiquitous Small (cabbage) Whites, butterflies are so far in short supply. Migratory Red Admirals are beginning to appear but our home grown species are yet to be seen in numbers. On a walk through the woods the usually abundant Speckled Wood Butterflies appeared to be absent. What we lack in butterflies we may be able to make up with Dragonflies and Paul Collins in what regrettably was his last report before leaving Dulwich saw both the large Emperor Dragonfly and the Red Eyed Damselfly over the park lake. However on a walk through Norwood cemetery where there is a large area of undisturbed grassland over the historic graves I was pleased to find thriving colonies of both Ringlets. and Marbled White butterflies which may have been there for generations. Of interest I noted that the Meadow Vetchling (Lathryus pratensis) was growing in abundance which I have not noticed elsewhere in Dulwich.. This is a yellow flowered member of the pea family which should be good as a food plant for Common Blues. Its presence may be historic and date back to more rural times. The area does show the value of allowing undisturbed space for nature.
Your reports and photographs are important for my wildlife articles and nothing in nature is trivial. In these difficult times we just need to notice it to confirm that it is still there.
Peter Roseveare Wildlife Recorder (tel: 020 7274 4567
The honey locust tree, Gleditsia triacanthos, is an attractive deciduous tree from North America, introduced to this country at the beginning of the 18th century. It has small pinnate leaves and curious banana-shaped pods which turn dark brown when ripe in the autumn. The bark is a purplish grey with distinct ridges. It has become a popular ornamental tree in warmer parts of the United Kingdom. But, thanks to its rapid growth and tolerance of poor conditions, it is now regarded as a major invasive environmental and economic weed in parts of the USA and in agricultural regions of Australia.
The word “honey” in its English name derives from the edible pulp inside pods, long used by the Cherokee to make beverages.
Trees found in the wild have vicious-looking spines - “triacanthos” means “three-spined”. It has been suggested that these evolved as protection against larger grazing animals. Most of the specimens planted in parks and streets are Gleditsia triacanthos var. inermis, a thornless cultivar, but there are several trees with spines at the north-eastern end of Albrighton Road (off Dog Kennel Hill) and another one in Idmiston Road, close to the junction with Chancellor Grove.
There are several examples in Dulwich Park. At least one, at the east end of the Park north of Rosebery Gate, appears to be the ‘Sunburst’ variety with bright golden leaves in spring. To the north of Dulwich, there is an attractive avenue of young trees along the Walworth Road.
There is a mature Gleditsia just outside the Dulwich Estate offices near the statue of Edward Alleyn. Nearby, a younger specimen in the garden of Dulwich Picture Gallery commemorates Stella Benwell (1920-2013), chair of the Dulwich Society Tree Committee from 1985 to 2008.