A Society for Forest Hill, London.
To contact the Society about our activities please email email@foresthillsociety.com
Support the Forest Hill Society - become a member today.
The Forest Hill Society has responded to the Lewisham Local Plan Consultation. While broadly supportive of the draft LLP, we would like to see some changes in priorities on some specific issues and these are described in the submission. We also feel some elements should be more precisely articulated all to bring a clear vision for the Forest Hill area over the next twenty years.
The Forest Hill Society’s (the Society) response to the Lewisham Local Plan (LLP) stems largely from the Forest Hill Station and Town Centre Master Plan (Master Plan) created in 2016 in partnership with the Society and Forest Hill-based Discourse Architecture. This Plan focussed on the urban renewal of the town centre particularly around Forest Hill Station and embodied many of the LLP’s Strategic Objectives, particularly around economic growth and housing and are reflected in this submission.
“We have a once in a 100 years’ opportunity to shape the centre of Forest Hill, reflecting the needs and aspirations of people who live and work in the area.”
Forest Hill Society will be undertaking gardening ‘tidy up’ from 2:30pm on Saturday, 29th August. Please join us for some socially distanced weeding, trimming and tidying up for the autumn.
Meeting point: Forest Hill station forecourt, 2:30pm.
Tools provided, no experience necessary just enthusiasm!
Face masks may be needed in some locations and please bring your own gardening gloves.
Over the course of 2017, Dartmouth Road will be under-going a makeover with the aim of improving the street for all road users. This will cause a fair amount of disruption as sections of the road will require a contra-flow system to be instituted — whereby traffic lights will permit traffic to flow in only one direction at a time — to allow work to proceed as quickly as possible without completely closing this important route for buses and other vehicles.
With £1.2m being spent on the project there are quite a lot of improvements that will be made, but they won’t transform Dartmouth Road into a high street ‘paradise’ since there are simply too many constraints to make that possible.
Pedestrians will see some of the greatest improvements, with slightly wider pavements where permissible, better-levelled pavements that don’t try to trip you up every few steps, and narrower roads which will be easier to cross in places. However, there will not be any pedestrian islands, and the scheme will not address the issues at the junction with the South Circular, as this is a TfL-controlled road.
Bus passengers will benefit from two new bus stops closer to the shops and swimming pools on Dartmouth Road. Buses will be able to move more easily because of the replacement of single yellow lines with double yellow lines, which will reduce the problem that buses have in trying to get passed parked cars. However, there will not be any bus-stop bays for the buses, so cars will have to wait for them to load and unload passengers.
Parking will be slightly improved, with a few additional parking bays located opposite the pool. In addition, there will be some loading bays on wider parts of the pavement, allowing for traders to load and unload without creating any pinch-points in the road. We are hoping that parking bays will allow parking for slightly longer than the current 30-minute limit. Residents’ parking will not be permitted opposite Holy Trinity School, as this location next to a bus stop and a pedestrian crossing outside the school is no longer suitable for parking.
Cars and other vehicles are expected to encounter smoother-flowing traffic on Dartmouth Road. While there may well be queues up to the traffic lights to join the South Circular, reducing the problem parking will ensure that traffic will flow smoother when it can and avoid having to wait for buses and lorries to manoeuvre past each other.
Cyclists will, unfortunately, gain little benefit from the scheme. Dartmouth Road is not cycle-friendly today and it will not be much better after this scheme has been completed. The best that has been suggested is that, by narrowing the road, vehicles will be less tempted to overtake cyclists without giving them the necessary space.
Although 2017 will not be fun for users of Dartmouth Road while the works drag on for at least nine months, we can look forward to a more welcoming town centre and a slightly improved road layout in 2018.
The RHS In Bloom It's Your Neighbourhood award for 2016 to The Forest Hill Society is.... "Outstanding".
Well done all those who have put in the hours and done the hard work (planting, pruning, building flower towers, etc) to make this award possible.
But we really need some additional volunteers to help keep up the good work and make Forest Hill look lovely. So PLEASE put in your diary Saturday October 15th at 2.30pm
to join us at Forest Hill Station to cut back, chop down, turn over and replant so that we are
establishing a good base for next year. Even if you can only spare half
an hour it would make all the difference
when combined with everyone else's half hour.
By Quetta Kaye (Chair, Environment Committee) A step in the right direction to brightening up the Perry Vale side of the railway has been our installation of towers of recycled tyres for planters. The next step will see London Overground Rail Operations Limited (LOROL) cleaning and smartening up their perimeter wall — although this work has been delayed due to the repairs to a collapsed sewer.
Meanwhile, the recycled tyre towers have been greeted with many approving comments. Cllr Susan Wise gained permission from Lewisham Council for the installation. James of Aeroarts worked with Rockbourne Youth Club to spray-paint the tyres (donated by A.A. Tyres & Wheels of Stanstead Road), and Forest Hill Society volunteers filled them with plants just as one of July’s torrential downpours began. So the planters had a really good initial watering and the staff of the All Inn One pub have taken over watering duty (when access is possible).
Bringing colourful plants to the town centre as a way to brighten our environment, while at the same time encouraging bees, insects and other wild life to flourish, is very rewarding at many levels. The constant care and attention of a dedicated few has resulted in the Forest Hill Society being able to enter the RHS’s In Bloom “It’s Your Neighbourhood” competition for the fifth year — having been awarded “Outstanding” for three successive years. At the time of writing we haven’t heard this year’s results which will be announced on 21st September. This year the judge was impressed by the work that has been done to brighten the station area and the street corners — he even took photographs of the tyre towers! He also liked the idea that some local businesses have adopted nearby planters and are taking care of them, and that some of our Edible High Road trees are in their second year and continue to flourish.
LOROL also has a competition for various categories in their Best Station award for which we have also entered — again the results have yet to be announced.
LOROL and the Forest Hill Ward Assembly have contributed towards the cost of renewing our planters and the Horniman Gardens has donated spare plants, while we have endeavoured to plant species which are self-seeding, environmentally friendly and require minimal maintenance. This has not always worked, partly because of the extremes of weather, but also because for some bizarre reason people continue to use the planters as rubbish bins. Tipping paint on lavender is not conducive to growth!
To continue this work we need active volunteers. If you would like to join us in tidying up the planters, general pruning, cutting back the aromatic lavender and planting bulbs for Spring flowering in the tyre stacks, we will be organising an afternoon for doing just this on Saturday, October 15th, meeting at the station forecourt at 2:30pm. Not suitable for children because of the passing traffic; protective gloves, secateurs or scissors, a trowel and a spare plastic bag would be useful. If you have none of these items, just come along anyway and enjoy being creative in our town centre to help those awards continue.
The Forest Hill Society has written to object to this development: "We believe that dividing the ground floor retail unit to provide access to the upper floors is detrimental to the retail unit because of the reduction of its size and the poor design quality of the frontage. This will affect the future viability of the retail unit at a time when Dartmouth Road is at last coming back to life as a retail area, with promised street development and many small businesses starting up. We do not want to see any of the retail units suffering a reduction in their viability."
The new notice board of the Forest Hill Traders Association at the station is a welcome addition to our neighbourhood. However, a few yards away, in front of WH Smith at the pedestrian crossing to London Road, is a minor blight on our streetscape. There are three poles, one with legitimate street signs and directions to bus stops, but the other two are inexplicable, misleading, redundant, or all three.
One of these puzzling poles has three signs: one to a Police Station which has been closed for three years; one to a Post Office in the vague direction of Brockley or Catford but which, of course, has been located right behind the sign inside WH Smith for about five years; and a broken sign to the Horniman Museum — or at least to the ‘Horni’ or the ‘Jseum’. Times move on and buildings and organisations come and go but this peculiar pole remains.
Even more baffling and irritating to me is the “Emergency Help Point” pole, with no explanation of who is responsible for it, who will help in an emergency and how. But what kind of emergency? Victims of crime, in a neighbourhood which no longer has a police station? Or Confused and Lost in Forest Hill with its misleading street signs? I have a picture in my mind of Lewisham Council providing this help point in the far-off days when money was less tight and of a Council employee, even now, sitting in a dusty office in a corner of Laurence House waiting patiently for the emergency calls which never come. But, I don’t even know if the Council is responsible for it. I have long resisted the temptation to press the button but maybe if I do, I will find out!
Gardening volunteers needed on Saturday 30th April, meeting at 2.30pm in front of Forest Hill station to clip, weed and replant to get ready for our entry to the Royal Horticultural Society's "It's Your Neighbourhood" 2016 - and more importantly to make our town centre look nice.
Please bring a trowel, secateurs or scissors and gardening or other protective gloves. No experience needed, but as we will be working in close proximity to the road this activity is not suitable for children.
Saturday March 5th Trash Mob/Flash Mop, 2.00pm in the station forecourt:
The Forest Hill Society is joining the national "Clean for the Queen"
weekend with a litter pick up and wash down of the underpass in Forest
Hill town centre. We have the pick up grippers, the protective gloves
and the attractive plastic tabards and collecting sacks.
We just need
people to lend a hand for about an hour to make our town centre a
pleasanter place to work and shop. If helping on the underpass feel free to bring along sponges, buckets, and any household cleaning liquids.
Quetta Kaye
(Chair, Environment Committee) provided information for this report.
Are
you concerned about the environment — globally, nationally, locally? If so, you
should join the Forest Hill Society!
Think globally
On the
global front, the Society organised a public meeting in June when local author,
Dr David Cotton, alerted us to the dangers of climate change (as published in
his recent book, ‘Climate Change — A Wake Up Call’). Some of the questions that
he has been researching for the last eight years and posed in his presentation
were: What role has the human race played in climate changes? What will happen
if we continue burning fossil fuels? Will we be able to produce enough
renewable energy in the future?
...but
plant locally
Locally,
our work on improving the environment in Forest Hill’s town centre has
continued with the planted areas in the forecourt and on the platforms of
Forest Hill station, and with the tubs of trees and flowers for the Edible High
Road project. These planted areas attract lots of attention and many pleasing
comments from passersby and commuters, but they need volunteers to keep them
looking healthy, attractive and ‘doing their bit’ to freshen the air that we
breathe. Watering plants during the summer months is one of those tasks that
needs to be done regularly. Following the Climate Change meeting, Dr Cotton and
his wife, Gail, volunteered for mid-week watering of the station’s planters —
which they continue to do. You, too, could contribute by pouring water from
your bottle onto a different planter each time you pass by — or by contacting
the Forest Hill Society with an offer of help.
Despite
the vagaries of the British summer, the efforts of our very dedicated (but
small) group of volunteers have succeeded in bringing colour and greenery to
Forest Hill’s town centre. The station and street planters have looked really
good with different combinations of colourful plants, which included sunflowers
generously donated by Horniman Gardens. This idea seems to have worked well
and, with any luck, a good proportion of the plants should survive to bloom
again next year. The Edible High Road tubs, too, should last through the winter
and beyond. We will learn the decision of the Royal Horticultural Society’s
‘London In Bloom’ judges on 15th September. [We were awarded 'Outstanding' -Ed]
However,
it never fails to amaze me that — while many people stop to tell us how pleased
they are with the work we do, and how the flowers brighten their way to work
and shop — other people think the planters are really rubbish bins or the
plants are there for the taking rather than community enjoyment. In the spring
I actually saw someone pulling some bulbs out and popping them into a shopping
trolley!
For
those of you interested in volunteering, a work afternoon at Forest Hill
station is being organised for Saturday 19th September (meeting at 2.30pm) for
trimming the station’s lavender bushes, and generally cutting back and tidying
up the planted areas. Please look at the Forest Hill Society’s website for more
details on how you can help with this or, if you see people snipping away,
please don’t be shy, join in — if only for half an hour. If you have them,
trowels, secateurs, gardening or other protective gloves — along with a spare
plastic bag — would be very useful to bring along. Without volunteers, we are
not able to try and make Forest Hill a brighter place in which to live and
work, and to do our bit to protect our natural environment.
...and
brew locally!
After
distributing hop kits for Forest Hill Society’s Community Beer Project in the
spring, we decided that Platform 1 of the station was not a suitable place to
grow hops as originally thought; instead, a number of individuals have been
nurturing hop plants in their gardens. We hope to harvest everyone’s hops this
autumn and brew our very own ‘Forest Hill Pint’, and will soon know how
successful this venture has been.
Following the publication of the consultation document by Lewisham Council regarding improvements to Dartmouth Road, the Forest Hill Society has responded with some of our concerns and priorities around the scheme.
Welcome more parking and longer parking times
Welcome more / better positioned bus stops serving the town centre
Welcome opportunity to reduce street clutter
Wish to see double yellow lines for the north section of Dartmouth Road, and improved parking enforcement
Concern over pedestrian priority crossings with unclear enforcement measures
Would like to see improvements for cyclists around Forest Hill
Below is the presentation provided in the Forest Hill Ward Assembly and SEE3 Town Team Meeting for some of the concepts for Dartmouth Road. There are still many further months of consultation to agree the detail of the scheme. The Forest Hill Society has some concerns about the current designs, but we welcome the opportunity to see a transformation of this road.
Proposals for road narrowing, to allow for more space for pedestrians and parking:
Proposed areas of the road for existing and increased parking, and drop-off at the pool:
Proposed additional bus stops for the centre of Dartmouth Road (outside the pool and The Hill):
The bid for £113,000 from the Mayor of London’s High Street Fund has been successful. The bid was submitted by SEE3, V22, and Lewisham Council with the support of the Forest Hill society.
The
funding will help improve public space on Dartmouth Road and will help
to develop a long-term cultural strategy. Plans include animating the underused spaces outside Forest Hill
library, Louise House and Forest Hill pools, to ensure they are a key
feature of the place.
V22 have also received Arts Council funding to renovate the old
laundry at Louise House and the rear garden. The plan is that in a year
from now there will be an integrated space around the library, Louise
House and the pools that will provide a welcoming area for a range of
events, markets and other community activities.
This grant adds to the £600,000 from Transport for London for
pedestrian and road improvements from the library to the junction with
the South Circular. The initial concept design work is now underway to
see how the public realm can be improved with views being sought on
areas such as parking arrangements.
It
is still early days but we know that Lewisham Council have been successful in
their bid for funds from TfL to improve Dartmouth Road (north). In total it
appears that £650,000 has been allocated over the next two
years to make substantial changes to a key section of the high street.
There
are a number of challenges in the stretch of road from the swimming pool to the
station, these include; lack of parking/too little time in parking bays,
parking away from bays blocking the road and the footpath, difficulty for
pedestrians crossing the road, lack of provision for cyclists, and poor use of
public spaces outside Sylvan Post and Heron House.
We
are expecting consultation by Lewisham Council to identify priorities and find
solutions that are right for shops, shoppers, school children, and bus routes.
We will keep you updated about the plans as we find out more over the next few
months.
For some time now, one of our top priorities as a Society has been to reinvigorate Forest Hill's High Street.
To this end, we started the Food Fair, planted various locations in the town centre and reconvened the Traders' Association. We also received some funding from the Local Assembly to decorate the fronts of vacant units with a Horniman theme, with the aim of linking the Museum with the town centre and bringing some of their 750,000 visitors shopping here.
The first of our projects was the boarded up shop at 43 Dartmouth Road, which we decorated with a portrait of the Walrus before he went on his summer holiday to Margate.
Our next piece will be appearing soon - keep your eyes peeled. In the meantime, additional photos of RUN's piece outside the Sylvan Post can be found on Dan Needham's Flickr page. Our thanks to Dan for documenting the process.
Forest Hill has been in the property press a number of times recently. On Location Location Location there always seem to be people priced out of the local market, and stories of Kirsty and Phil in local cafes.
However, another recent piece - "Lets Move to...." In the Guardian in April raised a number of different questions that made me think that it is sometimes good to look at things from an outsiders point of view rather than your own comfortable angle.
This article, written by Blackheath resident and architectural critic Tom Dykhoff basically said that the town centre 'looked' rubbish. He didn't mean the quality of the shops or local businesses. He meant the visual appearance of the place, particularly when seen from the South Circular (which is, I suspect how he did his site visit).
We have some lovely shopfronts, some interesting buildings and some nice artwork. But in between all of this there is a lot of rubbish. Uncared for buildings, derelict shopfronts, blank advertising hoardings, poor conversions, a LOT of street clutter, poor signposting, and a general lack of coherence.
The town centre is a Conservation Area and this should mean we see a gradual improvement as new works take place. But I'm not sure that is what's happening. We really need a much clearer view about what would work better, what improvements we would like to see, and how we think the area could work in the longer term.
In the last issue of the newsletter we talked about ideas for a new town centre vision possibly using the Neighbourhood Planning provisions of the Localism Act. This could be a 10 year plan to take us to 2023.
What seems really important is that we all take a very good look at the town centre, possibly from an outsiders point of view and have a good think about what could be better. Over the next year we will be asking for your ideas!
Hilary Satchwell, chair of Forest Hill Society development committee, architect and urban designer.
We are delighted to announce that Aga's Little Deli will be the first stall from our Food Fair to move in to permanent premises.
Aga signed the lease to 49 Dartmouth Road (next to Question Bar) on 7 July and will be throwing open the doors to her new Deli and Cafe at noon on Sunday, 16 September.
There will be many, many tasty surpises in store including an oyster bar and lovely argentinian wine, cheese, olives, bread and many more delicacies. Take your friends with you and welcome this wonderful addition to our town centre. They will be there till 9pm, but go early to make sure you are not disappointed.
Rest assured that Aga will be at our next Food Fair as well and we are working with other stall holders to find them premises. Hopefully Aga will be the first of many stallholders to fill our vacant shops.
Thanks to the determined efforts of a dedicated band of volunteers, Forest Hill, Kirkdale and Sydenham's joint bid for upto £100,000 of government funding to revitalise the High Street has won one of 13 Portas Pilot grants in the second round of bidding.
With £100,000 of matched funding towards town centre improvements for Forest Hill and Sydenham from the Phase Two development of Bell Green and a further £15,000 from Lewisham, the pilot will concentrate on three projects.
Jack & Jill
Two high street shops will be renovated for creative community engagement, exhibitions, showcasing local products, business workshops, ‘pop-up’ events and as a Town Team base
Shop Revolution
A high impact project with lasting sustainable benefits will renovate upto 12 vacant units, letting them to an eclectic mix of businesses and organisations, including successful Market Makers traders on a Pop Up or trial basis.
Market Makers
More than a market, this will build on the success of the Forest Hill Food Fair, to pilot markets on a rotational basis across the area, with the aim of finding long term tenants for our vacant units.
Richard Hibbert, Chairman of the Forest Hill Society said "These are exciting times for Forest Hill. The Town Centre has been the top priority of the Society and the Forest Hill local assembly for the past two years and we are beginning to see the results of our efforts. We are already seeing signs of revitalisation in Dartmouth Road ahead of the pools opening in the next couple of weeks.
"We have managed to get graffiti removed from various shops and buildings in the town centre, won an Outstanding award from the Royal Horticultural Society for the planting outside the station, revitalised the Trader's Association and hosted three successful Food Fairs. The Portas funding will focus our efforts for the next stage and enable us to deliver the town centre that local residents want.
"We firmly believe that this investment in our high streets is another important step in our founding aim of making Forest Hill an even better place to live and look forwards to working with the other members of the Town Team.
"Particular thanks are due to Ed Holloway, a Forest Hill Society member, who put a lot of time and effort into enhancing the first bid and turning it into a winning bid in the second round."
Film cameras came to Forest Hill at the end of March, when Sydenham cameraman Sean Cameron and Forest Hill architect Ed Holloway took up our call for someone to make a video to support our bid for £97k Portas Pilot funding.
The fund offers 12 areas across the UK a share of £1.2 million to regenerate their High Streets. The video was a precondition of entering. At the 11th hour, Sean and Ed took up the challenge and spent a mad three days zipping through Forest Hill, Kirkdale and Sydenham interviewing some key folks with big plans for the area.
As Ed says on the film, “We could show you all the negatives, but you know that already – they are common everywhere. What we’d like to show is the unique stuff…the people, the places that make these spaces activated. There’s a lot of energy and enthusiasm around here and we want to show you just how good it is.”
The pair took a special interest in local businesses that ‘blend’ such as Canvas & Cream, Stag & Bow and Alhambra. All of these mix community and cultural activities into their core retail trade. Our bid aimed to unite all three High Streets. trendy Forest Hill, quirky Kirkdale (still in Forest Hill Ward and the original Sydenham High Street) and leafy Sydenham, home of the annual arts and music festivals. It was great to meet Sean and Ed, and amazing to find out how many people we knew in common or could put each other in touch with. In the weeks after filming many fantastic working relationships were consolidated and formed.
Sean’s allotment buddy, Ky Lewis, put on an exhibition of pinhole photography at Alhambra. Kirkdale local Aaron came along to the private view and interviewed her as part of a film he is making about Kirkdale for his portfolio. Vicar Ed Olsworth at Holy Trinity on Sydenham Park lent us his beautiful church hall for a photo-shoot.
Kirkdale Village Traders and Community Group needed a room for a public meeting. The Grove Centre on Jews Walk loaned us its small hall. (Lucky, as more than 50 people turned up!)
Alhambra has always had culture and community at its core with a programme of exhibitions, classes and events. Over the past few weeks I have been overwhelmed by the goodwill coming our way as Kirkdale Village, which I chair, makes its final push to get our Street Beautification project complete in time for the Sydenham Festival Arts Trail in July.
Kirkdale Village was awarded £1000 by the Forest Hill Assembly last year, which the Kirkdale Traders have match-funded. With aspirations bigger than our pockets, we planned planters, signage, street art, trees… At the May Local Assembly meeting we reported on progress. By the end of the night we were talking to Kerry Hagger from the Arts Befriending Service about an inter-generational mosaic project, and to pop-up cinema queen Erica about another arts project. Someone else put us in touch with St Barts School.
Sydenham artist Joyce Treasure offered to do some fabulous street art (plywood paid for and supplied by Wooster & Stock). Joyce kindly allowed us to reproduce one of her artworks. Forest Hill printmaker Sam Topping quite out of the blue, offered to run our Schools’ Flag-making Project and to print the flags, and a staff member from Kelvingrove School came into the shop and expressed a firm desire to get involved, too!
Following up on Stag & Bow’s Local Traders’ Loyalty Card last Christmas, Janis Hendrikson at JH Skincare on Kirkdale has volunteered to develop a local currency or loyalty card scheme.
A local lady, Diana Hawk, has enlisted Urban Design students from UCL to help us position our new bike stands and planters. We’re on the hunt for a forklift truck - hopefully a local company will lend us one.
Sadly our Portas Pilot bid was unsuccessful. There is a second round of applications, so we will put in again. (More on this in our next edition.) Who knows if we will succeed? But, in a way, I feel as if we have already won. Working together on the application has brought us so much closer with some excellent new alliances.
If you’d like to meet local businesses and get involved, there’s a new networking group run by our very own marketing rock star Louise Brooks of Bake (www.bakelondon.co.uk). She’s also chairing a new Empty Shops Group. Check out the Kirkdale Village Facebook page www.facebook.com/kirkdalevillage, and you can pop into Alhambra to talk to me, www.alhambrahome.co.uk. When Sean offered to start a Kirkdale Village television channel back in March, I wondered what on earth he was going to put on it. Now it seems there is no shortage of filmworthy material!
Becca Leathlean runs Alhambra Home & Garden at 148 Kirkdale (free event Fri 29 June), and chairs the Kirkdale Village Traders and Community Group.
