The Dulwich Society Journal for Summer 2017.
Starting on a positive note, the Half Moon Hotel re-opened on 20th March. Fullers, the new tenant, have not only done a great job in enhancing the building’s historic features, their range of food and drink means that it is full every evening - and the 12 bedrooms upstairs, named after the astronauts who have walked on the moon, are booked solid for several months ahead.
Moving on to the Crown and Greyhound, in the last issue of the Journal I reported that it would re-open in April - how wrong I was! But the good news is that Mitchells and Butler took over the building just after Easter and fitting out work is finally underway. The projected ‘soft’ opening date for both the pub and the hotel is now 16th June.
No one locally thinks the Crown and Greyhound project has been a success - it’s nearly three years since the pub closed and the impact on footfall for the shop keepers at the north end of the Village has been substantial. There is also now growing concern that the redevelopment of the S G Smith workshop site (now called the ‘Gilkes’) will be delayed and cause even greater loss of business. Political uncertainty has impacted on the housing market and there is a growing fear that the site might be left vacant for a while.
It now transpires that the site is not owned by McCullogh Homes but by Moat Housing Association, a major social housing provider. It was known that Moat were going to take over the affordable housing part of the development but it was not realised until recently that they were also the site owners. McCullogh Homes have worked with them on other developments so the arrangement is not unusual, but what is a worry is the delay in starting work. At a recent meeting of the monitoring committee of local residents set up by local MP, Helen Hayes, and Village Ward Councillor Jane Lyons, the planning officer dealing with the project reported that he had made it clear to the developers that they should engage in a constructive dialogue with local stakeholders, particular the nearby schools - something they have not done in any meaningful way. McCullogh originally said that they were likely to start work this summer, then in September, but it would appear that the earliest they can now start is next year as they have yet to submit any detailed approval applications to the Council. The most important of these is the Construction Management Plan which will set out the site access routes and the times when lorries can go into the site.
Lack of footfall in local shops is also a problem at the Park Hall/Croxted Road shops in West Dulwich. This will be exacerbated by the recent announcement that the local Lloyds Bank branch is to close, possibly as early as July. Over the last few years the local traders have been working hard to build up trade with the famers’ market, the regular fairs and the ‘Love West Dulwich’ competition. The closure of the bank would be a real loss to the area.
The potential loss of local services is further illustrated by the Royal Mail’s plans to close the local sorting offices in East Dulwich and West Norwood. Luckily the Alleyn Park sorting office appears to be secure, for now, but the thought of having to go to Camberwell and Anerley to pick up undelivered post is not a happy one, especially if you do not have a car.
Footfall is not a problem that East Dulwich has and members will read elsewhere of the sad demise of the East Dulwich Society. The Dulwich Society has agreed to expand its remit in the area - one which has not been properly represented at the Dulwich Community Council for many years.
The Dulwich Society invites members to
Summer Drinks at the Dulwich Picture Gallery Pavilion
on Monday 26th June 2017 from 6.30pm to 9.00pm.
This is a special event to enable members to visit the Gallery's temporary pavilion and enjoy the Gallery gardens on a summer evening. There will be two walks starting at 7.00pm (the Gallery Garden Trees with Daniel Greenwood of the London Wildlife Trust) & 7.30pm (a walk around the outside of the Gallery looking at the history of its development by Society Chair Ian McInnes)
Wine and soft drinks will be served in the Pavilion.
If you would like to attend, please click on Eventbrite https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dulwich-society-summer-drinks-tickets-34137801082 to reserve your place at the event.
Alternatively please email
There is a limit on numbers so please reserve your place(s) as soon as possible and by no later than 12 June 2017.
Entrance to the Pavilion will be via the main Gallery entrance gates on College Road. Disabled access is also available via the Gallery Road entrance.
Cycling Quietways As many will know, construction of the proposed Quietway along Calton Avenue and Turney Road has been delayed by extensive local consultation. Southwark Council has resolved to build it, but not before carefully considering an alternative design for the crossroads in the Village proposed by a group of local people. This design is based on three mini-roundabouts. The Council has also recently announced another proposal for a Quietway: this time between Peckham Rye West and Dulwich Village. It would run along Woodwarde Road. The Council does not yet have specific proposals on this route. At this stage, general concerns and ideas are being sought. Based on this the council will formulate proposals and initiate consultation.
‘The Gilkes’ Development Stalls: Local MP Helen Hayes and Village Ward Councillor Jane Lyons have set up a small monitoring committee comprising representatives from Resident Associations close to the site and the Dulwich Society. Despite being told by Council planners that it was essential that they engage constructively with local stakeholders, McCullogh Homes, the owners of the site have done so in a very half-hearted way and the aim of the group is to encourage them to be more proactive. Some basic site investigations have been carried out but none of the detail planning approvals, including the construction management plan, have yet been submitted. It seems unlikely that work will begin until at least 2018 and there is growing concern that the site will be left vacant.
Judith Kerr Primary School, Half Moon Lane:
The closing date for public comments on the Dulwich Estate’s planning application to build new almshouses on the open site next to the Judith Kerr Primary School was 16 April. The site is currently used as the school’s playground and many local residents are concerned over the potential impact of the development on the school’s pupils. While many agree that the historic almshouses at the Old College are no longer fit for purpose, they question whether this is the right location for a new building.
Dulwich Estate Creates a P.R post: Following an advertisement at the end of last year, the Dulwich Estate has appointed a part time media relations and communication manager. This is a new departure for the Estate, and a welcome one. Karen Wood, a local resident, has been appointed - she has extensive experience in public sector and charity communications and comes from a central Government marketing and media communications background where she worked on a wide range of UK public policy issues.
East Dulwich Society Closes Down: At an Extraordinary General meeting held on 21st February the East Dulwich Society was wound up. The Society had been inactive for nearly five years, its membership had been dropping and many of its committee members had moved away. More recently, its bank had informed it that they were going to close its account as it was considered to be dormant. About ten members were present and all agreed to the winding up and suggested that all the remaining funds should be transferred to the Dulwich Society which already has around 60 members in the area.
The Dulwich Society is happy to extend its remit into East Dulwich but needs more volunteers from the area to keep it informed of particular local issues and concerns.
The Historic Bus Shelter South Croxted Road
At the southern end of South Croxted Road, on the corner of Alleyn Road and almost opposite the Paxton Green Medical Centre, stands a unique oak framed bus shelter. Although the No 3 bus has been running down this road to and from Crystal Palace since Edwardian times, the shelter did not start life here.
The 1959 Dulwich Estate Board Meeting Minutes describe the negotiations with Camberwell Council to relocate the shelter (originally a tram stop) from elsewhere in the borough, though they do not tell us where it used to be. The actual land for the shelter was acquired from the adjacent property, No 1 Alleyn Road, as part of negotiations over a lease extension on an older house that was demolished in the late 1960s - the current house on the site dates from the early 1970s.
Southwark Council is supposed to be responsible for the shelter’s maintenance but has not made a particularly good job of it. Despite appearances, the structure is solid (though it does lean slightly), the main problem is that some of the cedar shakes on the roof have disappeared and left the roof structure exposed to the elements. The Dulwich Society has received Cleaner Greener Safer (CGS) funding for basic repairs but there is a concern that the Council just want the shelter removed. Local residents have made an application to Historic England to have the building listed - it is an attractive feature in this part of Dulwich and one well-used particularly by children at the Kingsdale School.
Blooming Good! Belair Park is looking a great deal better since it was criticised in these columns a few issues ago. Maintenance has improved, the lake is looking splendid and the wetland proving to be a fascinating area for all ages to study. The ‘dog-walkers’ path and hedge, the inspiration of Angela Wilkes and the late David Nicholson-Lord and part-funded by the Dulwich Society to provide a screen to the railway embankment and a wildlife corridor is firmly established and proving of great benefit. The recent public meeting at Belair voted to maintain the height of the hedge to around head height. Even the groundworks by Thames Water have produced some unexpected results with the blooming of numerous wildflowers on the new banks.
There are three visits coming up shortly to which all are welcome.
Coach visit to the Oxford Botanic Garden and Waterperry Gardens, Tuesday 20th June
Our annual coach outing is on Tuesday 20th June to the University of Oxford Botanic Garden and Waterperry Gardens. Full details of the visit are in the brochure Dulwich Gardens open for Charity and on Dulwich Society’s website. We will be leaving from Dulwich Picture Gallery at 8.30am, returning at 6.15pm.
Tickets are £30 each and can be purchased on the Eventbrite website (www.eventbrite.co.uk, search “Dulwich Society”) or from Will Anderson, 141 Rosendale Road, London SE21 8HE (cheques payable to “The Dulwich Society” and a stamped addressed envelope please). Non-members of the Dulwich Society are welcome. Enquiries to Will Anderson
Visit to the Inner Temple gardens, 11am on Wednesday 28th June
The three-acre Inner Temple gardens are a relatively unknown haven of tranquillity and beauty in the heart of legal London, its wide lawns sweeping towards the river bounded by spectacular herbaceous borders. Our tour will be conducted by the Head Gardener, Andrea Brusendorf, the first woman head gardener in its 800-year history, now celebrating her 10th year in the role.
We will meet at the main gate to the gardens in Crown Office Row, Temple, EC4Y 7HH and our visit will last about an hour. Nearest tubes: Temple, Blackfriars.
Tickets are £12 each and can be purchased on the Eventbrite website (www.eventbrite.co.uk, search “Dulwich Society”) or from Jeremy Prescott, 142 Court Lane, London SE21 7EB (cheques payable to “The Dulwich Society” and a stamped addressed envelope please). Enquiries to Jeremy Prescott
Visit to the Royal College of Physicians’ Medicinal Garden, 10.30am on Thursday 13th July
The Royal College of Physicians’ garden of medicinal plants contains over 1000 species, almost all with a link to medicine, whether as a herb used in folk medicine, a pharmaceutical drug or named to commemorate a Physician or honour a contribution to science. The garden surrounds the Grade 1 listed building designed by Denis Lasdun. Our visit will be conducted by Professor Anthony Dayan, Professor of Toxicology at Bart’s Hospital and a Garden Fellow.
We will meet at the main reception, Royal College of Physicians, 11 St Andrews Place, Regent’s Park, NW1 4LE. Coffee etc will be available from 10.30am; the formal tour will start at 11am and will last about 1½ hours. Nearest tubes: Regent’s Park, Great Portland Street, Warren Street.
Tickets are £10 each and can be purchased on the Eventbrite website (www.eventbrite.co.uk, search “Dulwich Society”) or from Jeremy Prescott, 142 Court Lane, London SE21 7EB (cheques payable to “The Dulwich Society” and a stamped addressed envelope please). Enquiries to Jeremy Prescott
Open Gardens in Support of LINKAGE
Sunday 11th June, 2-5pm, 115 Dulwich Village, SE21 7BJ. Come and enjoy this lovely large garden with yew and box topiary. Several sections with herbaceous borders, shade planting, gravel plants, scented area and summerhouse with roses, clematis and young wisteria. Entry £3.50 in aid of local Dulwich charity Link Age Southwark, children free. Free street parking, dogs on leads only. Garden unsuitable for wheelchairs.
Sunset Soirée, Sunday 25th June, 6.30-8.30pm. Fountain House, 102 College Road, SE21 7HW. Enjoy this year’s Sunset Soirée gala party in aid of Link Age Southwark, in this leafy Dulwich garden. Tickets £25, includes a welcome glass of champagne, delicious canapés and soft jazz. This large mature garden in a beautiful setting has a natural and rural feel. Artist’s studio, pergola and wildlife pond with toads, dragonflies and newts at the end of the garden. Wheelchair accessible. Tickets available from www.linkagesouthwark.org or from 020 8299 2623
Garden, Sunday 23rd July, 2-5.30pm, 4 Piermont Green, East Dulwich, SE220LP.Come and enjoy this newly redesigned garden, with live music from Open Road. A makeover was sparked by the death of a beloved old apple tree, resulting in a new look for this upsidedown L-shaped garden. Out with the vegetable patch and in with a gravel garden, a new brick-edged lawn and a white border blooming in the free space. Entry £3.50 in aid of local Dulwich charity Link Age Southwark, children free. Homemade teas and plants for sale. Free parking on side streets nearby.
Peter, who died at the end of March aged 91, was one of the founder members of the Dulwich Society in 1963. Chairman for a short time in late 1969, he was an active member of the Society’s team which negotiated the Scheme of Management with the Dulwich Estate in the early 1970s. A Society vice president for over 25 years, only resigning last year, he lived in a house in Village Way which he designed and built in the late 1950s.
As a boy he lived in Dunstans Road in East Dulwich. He won a scholarship to Alleyn’s School in 1936 but decided to go to the Henry Thornton School in Clapham instead - supposedly because he wanted to commute by tram. The school was relocated to Chichester during the war and he joined the army in 1944, serving in India until 1947.
Deciding to become an architect, he studied part time at the Regent Street Polytechnic while working for Farmer and Dark. He then joined the office of Michael Rosenaur, an American architect, who had won the job to build the Time Life building in Bond Street. Now listed Grade II, the building was one of the first office buildings built after WW2 and is best known for its sculptures by Henry Moore. From 1952, he was senior architect in charge of projects in the London office of Australian architect, W Wylton Todd. A period in the Distillers Company Architects’ department was followed by a stint with Leeds architect J G L Poulson - between 1967-1970 he was in charge of the practice’s London projects including Cannon Street Station and Elizabeth House in front of Waterloo station. From 1970 he was in private practice, initially with two other partners, Lack Burdett Lawson, and then on his own. The firm did many British Telecom projects but Peter’s main interest was building conservation.
He was active in the Royal Institute of British Architects, sitting on their cladding standards committee, and was their representative on the Southwark Conservation Area Advisory committee for over 40 years, from the late 1960s - he was still attending meetings at Tooley Street only a few months ago. He was also an active committee member of the Thorney Island Society in Westminster.
A friendly and approachable man, with his dark coat and black fedora he looked like you would expect an architect to look.
Her first name and her natural blonde hair were clues to her Nordic ancestry, although her early years were spent in what was then called Tanganyika, East Africa where her father practised as a doctor. After independence and the creation of Tanzania, the family moved to Haslemere. Ingrid was aged 12. Art was always her passion and she studied History of Art at St Andrew’s and then gained a post-graduate degree in teaching at Queen Mary College, London. She worked in numerous schools in the UK and Singapore. For the past twenty years she has been a volunteer at Dulwich Picture Gallery where she worked as a guide to both children and adults.
Ingrid’s more recent approach to art seemed to personify the old army adage, ‘If it moves salute it, if it doesn’t, paint it’. In 2012 she had an Epiphany moment when she discovered the work of street artist, Stik, in East London. Street art immediately became an art form she embraced and very much made her own. Blank walls on the ends of terrace houses presented opportunities for Ingrid. When she ran out of these in Dulwich, then the various hoardings erected by builders became possible new temporary canvases. The one advantage of the seemingly endless alterations to the Crown & Greyhound allowed the mural by Phlegm to remain on show far longer than Ingrid could have hoped for. She charmed houseowners, Southwark Council and developers into agreeing to allow her to commission her murals. She used charm again, accompanied by her steely determination to persuade a disparate bunch of internationally known street artists to paint them. Most of the costs of these endeavours was met by Ingrid and her understanding husband.
The common theme of the murals is that they interpret pictures in Dulwich Picture Gallery - when Ingrid could channel the artist’s inspiration in that direction - which was most of the time. It took a little longer for Dulwich Picture Gallery to accept Ingrid’s vision of this form of art but it has become one of its most effective advertisements. It therefore seemed quite fitting that Phlegm and Run friezes around the hoarding of the temporary exhibition pavilion in Dulwich Picture Gallery garden whose painting coincided with her death should become her epitaph.
In 1967 Dulwich celebrated its 1000th anniversary with a wide range of festivities which included a pageant watched by an estimated 15,000 people at Belair, Gallery Road, a procession of fifty bands and floats, a big evening music concert, also at Belair. The celebrations concluded with a grand firework finale. Numerous Dulwich schools took part in the pageant and also in an art competition and there was a display of the work at the then newly opened North Peckham Civic Centre. Many children also embarked on a Dulwich history project. A special post box was placed in the Village and a commemorative handstamp marked the Millennium - today these turn up as collectors’ items on EBay.
Only a few weeks before the pageant and procession of 19th June 1967, a local group of enthusiasts attending a film-making class at Kingswood House decided to film the event. What they produced was a remarkable record of that one day. Teenagers who took part in 1967 are now old age pensioners! The 23 minute film was remastered by the Dulwich Society three years ago and copies of the DVD have since sold out. Now it can be accessed on YouTube by Googling Dulwich Society on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-DLcin3Ybs
The Dulwich Players present
The Tempest : by William Shakespeare
with original music written by Paul Grimwood
To be performed at the Edward Alleyn Theatre, Dulwich College
Wednesday 12th, Thursday 13th & Friday 14th July at 8pm
Saturday 15th July at 3pm and 730pm
Prospero, Duke of Milan, is robbed of his dukedom by his brother and exiled with his daughter, Miranda, to an island full of ‘strange noises’ and inhabited by spirits. Twelve years later, those who banished them are on the high seas near to the island. However, Prospero is no ordinary man; with his ‘rough magic’ and help from his spirit Ariel, he conjures up a tempest and brings together his enemies to the island. This magical tale, enhanced with original music written for this production, and with its themes of revenge, reconciliation and love is suitable for adults and children (recommended age 9 years and upwards) alike.
Tickets available from Dulwich Players Box Office : 07936 531356 or email :
The Royal Mail has decided to close the sorting offices in East Dulwich and West Norwood for ‘operational’ reasons. There is no obligation on them to consult local users but, following pressure from Helen Hayes, the local MP, two public meetings were held in the middle of April. Royal Mail cites changing demand in postal services, more parcels and less letters, but appear not to appreciate that going to Camberwell to collect undelivered mail is not an easy option for many people, especially the elderly. Currently the sorting office in Alleyn Park is planned to remain in operation.
The U3A nation-wide is aimed at retired and semi-retired people.
Here in Dulwich and District we are nearly four years old, have five hundred members and are growing fast. We have monthly Open Meetings with guest speakers and also the opportunity to meet people and sixty five interest groups which cover a wide range of topics. These groups are for members to enjoy any activity they choose, with people who share similar interests, be they a pastime, hobby, language or academic field.
Please look at our website or phone us - and come to a monthly Open Meeting to get to learn more about us. All are welcome.
Web address www.dulwich-u3a.uk
Phone number 0843 8860 980 (7 pence /minute) We will return your call.