PopUp Updates

If you made it to PopUp Forest Hill, then you may have been lucky enough to participate in Jeni Johnson's Messy Maker event or Katrin Heuser's Yoga Gestalten. If not, fear not! They are both running new sessions in the New Year.

Peace, Prescence, Power

with Katrin Heuser, Rosanna Gordon, Maggie Richards

Join us for a nourishing day of yoga and meditation on Saturday 22 January 2011 from 10am to 4.30pm to help you move out of the January blues into a space of health and happiness.

Winter is typically a time of lethargy on one hand, and busy mental activity on the other, planning resolutions and rethinking our lives. Do you feel your best right now, at this transformative time of new beginnings?

This day offers a chance to stop, rebalance and find yourself through physical exercise, reflection and relaxation. It can help you become grounded, energised and open to the gifts the new year wants to give you.

Cost is £50 per person (£40 if booked by 31 December). For full details, see www.yoga-gestalten.co.uk/workshop.

Messy Makers

Jeni Johnson is a painter who lives and works from her studio on Havelock Walk. She is starting up art workshops for pre-school children on Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons from 1.30 till 2.15pm at Havelock Walk, and a morning class on Friday mornings from 10.45 till 11.15 at the Honor Oak Pub. She will also be running art clubs for children in school holidays.

Classes are £6 per session (siblings half price) but if you pay a term in advance it's £5 per session (siblings half price). The early spring term starts week beginning 17 January 2011 and will run for 5 weeks. Booking is needed as places are limited.
Please contact Jeni on messymakers@hotmail.co.uk.

A Traveller's Tale

With recent reports that ridership on the East London Line has increased from 40,000 per day in June to 70,000 in October, we thought we would see how the morning commute had changed since the introduction of the Overground services. Are trains any less crowded? The Chair of our Transport Committee, Andrew Reid, decided to see for himself.

08.14 – Honor Oak Park Station. My wife and I boarded the rear carriage of the 08.14 Southern service to London Bridge. She took the last available seat and I was left standing with a number of others. The back of the train was not overcrowded but I was told the front would be. Certainly, the opening of the Overground has relieved pressure on Southern services and, whilst pretty full, the service is generally acceptable except when they run short trains.

08.24 – New Cross Gate. I needed to change onto the Overground at New Cross Gate. I found I couldn’t get on the packed 0824 to Dalston Junction from Crystal Palace and was left, with others, on the platform. The next train, the 0832, had come from West Croydon and was also packed – this time, no doubt, with the lucky people of Anerley and Penge who have seen their service level triple from 2 trains an hour to 6. We all just managed to squeeze on at New Cross Gate but we left people standing on the platform at Surrey Quays. Frightening that this service, open for just 6 months, is already running beyond capacity during the morning peak. Opening the service to Clapham Junction in 2012 will result in more trains running on the core section of the East London Line – but will more travel options reduce congestion? I doubt it.

08.37 - Canada Water. I found I was standing on the train just opposite the single escalator down to the Jubilee Line platform. The carriage emptied in a flash as passengers sprinted for the escalator in order to avoid the crush and get to the front of the queues for Jubilee Line trains. There were queues to board trains in both directions with staff valiantly trying to get the doors closed and the trains despatched as people shoved to get on their way to work. I didn’t envy them and didn’t join them. I made my way back to Forest Hill station to confirm that, despite all the promises, the lights on the northern side of the subway were still not working!

Rest assured, the Transport Committee is doing what it can to improve the lot of Forest Hill and Honor Oak Park travellers. If you have any comments or issues you would like pursued, please email me at Andrew@ForestHillSociety.com.

The Englishman who Posted Himself

by John Tingey

This recently published book describes the exploits of a little known but endearingly eccentric Forest Hill resident. The local historian, Steve Grindlay, has been reading it.

In 1898 Willie Reginald Bray began a detailed study of the Post Office Guide which contained the regulations defining what could and could not be sent through the post.
Bray decided to put these regulations to the test and so he posted, mostly addressed to himself, a wide variety of unwrapped items including a shirt collar, the sole of a shoe, a bicycle pump, a turnip and a hat. Eventually he posted himself, and the long-suffering postman dutifully delivered him to his home in Devonshire Road.

Bray then turned his attention to autographs. He posted thousands of personal requests to the famous, infamous and largely unknown ranging from Churchill, Hitler and Santa Claus to the station master at Forest Hill station. Bray declared himself “The Autograph King” and few could dispute this. He sent out over 32,000 requests and received some 15,000 responses.

Reggie, as he preferred to be known, was born in Stanstead Road in 1879 and educated at St Dunstan’s College. His family moved to Devonshire Road in 1899 and in 1912 Bray moved to Queens Garth, Taymount Rise where he lived until 1939.

This meticulously researched book (in which Steve played a small part) describes Bray’s life in Forest Hill, and lists many of the challenges that he set the postal service. It is beautifully illustrated with many examples of both the objects that Bray posted and the autographs that he collected.

The book is available from Kirkdale Bookshop, 272 Kirkdale (020 8778 4701) and further information is available from the publisher and elsewhere  online.

Chair's Report

Thank you to everyone who came along to the AGM in October and to those who volunteered for the various committees. 

With budgets being cut, we’re relieved that the new swimming pools appear to be secure. However, the Horniman’s future is less clear. Although the Department for Culture, Media and Sports has ring-fenced the funding for the Horniman Museum until 2015, it is one of seven non-national museums for which they are hoping to find alternative sponsors by April 2011.  Contrary to initial rumours, there is no question of cutting these museums adrift without any financial support in the unlikely event that no new sponsorship arrangements can be found, but it will be difficult to arrange equivalent funding.
 
On the transport side, it has just been announced that the Thameslink programme will go ahead in its entirety but that the rebuilding of London Bridge will not be complete until 2018, instead of the original 2015.  This is a mixed blessing; a long term benefit with the Southern services from Croydon being replaced by direct Thameslink trains through to St Pancras (via London Bridge), but the delay will make it more difficult to get the Charing Cross service reinstated.  We will continue to lobby for this.

We have had a meeting with Tfl, LOROL (the people who run the new train service) and various politicians to discuss the Red Route.  There have been some changes as a result and a promise to move and fence off the commercial bins outside the station which should improve the appearance of the station forecourt. 

I know many of you prefer traditional methods of communication, so you can write to the Society at: Forest Hill Society, c/o 2 Perry Rise, LONDON,  SE23 2QL.  For those who are internet savvy, we are in the process of adding PayPal as a means for payment of your subscriptions; we will add the appropriate button to the website as soon as this is available.  If you have not paid your membership since October, then your membership is due now.  Please contact Belinda at the above address or email Belinda at membership@foresthillsociety.com if you are not sure whether your subscriptions are paid up. 

Wishing you a very festive holiday.

Little Russets!

How do you celebrate the birth of a child?  Sara and Tom Russet came up with a very special idea which benefits the whole community.

On the 13 June our first child, Nell Margie Russet, was born. Trying to think of an apt way to celebrate her arrival we happened upon the idea of planting a tree.  We wanted to bring our name into the equation so we decided upon a Russet apple tree. Living in a flat with little garden space, we thought that Albion Millenium Green was the perfect location as it is a lovely public space that we could visit even if we had to move away and the tree could be part of a bigger, community project. To this end we have ordered two trees which will arrive in the last week of January. As we need to clear the undergrowth towards the back of the orchard prior to our planting, it looks like we'll probably do it the first weekend of February.

Photo Competition

Horminan Gardens

SE23 is so photogenic with its great views, green spaces and varied architecture. So early next year, we’ll be launching a photo competition with the best pictures being made into a 2012 Calendar.

Horniman Clock Tower

We’re still finalising the details. In the meantime get your cameras ready for those dramatic winter shots of Forest Hill glistening in the snow.

Gridlock on Honor Oak Road

As you can see, some of our members have already sent us their photos.

"Welcome Aboard"

Louise House Memories - Early Years Centre

Sylvia Maguire came across our work on the history of Louise House on our website. For almost 25 years, she managed the Early Years Centre which was housed in the rear building (laundry block). The Centre closed in August 2008 when the whole of Louise House was due to be demolished. She felt that no history of Louise House could be complete without a few words about the Centre:

The Centre served hundreds of local children aged two to five over many years.  Skilled and specialist support was offered to the children, many of whom had special educational needs and/or behavioural difficulties. Support was also offered to their parents and carers.  In 1984, when I started at Louise House, the ‘crèche’, was in the west end of the building.  The other room was a community hall offering sewing classes and childminder pop-ins.  Prior to my time, I believe that there was a luncheon club for the elderly. 

During the 80’s, few schools had nursery classes so the crèche provided pre-school education for the 3 to 5's.  We had an excellent reputation and long waiting lists.  Later, as nursery classes opened, we developed more specialised childcare to support the children who would find integration into a nursery class difficult.  I was told that the crèche had been opened post war, to care for the children of mothers attending the health clinic based in the front building.

Memories of Louise House

The Open Day at Louise House on Saturday 18t September was a real success with all our tours fully booked The highlight was meeting Ethel Roberts, whose mother and aunt had lived at Louise House in the very early twentieth century. Ethel accompanied by her husband, Ted, and her son, Stephen, was visiting the building for the first time and for her it was a deeply moving experience. She very kindly shares her highly personal impressions.

Louise House has been a place of curiosity for me for most of my life and at nearly 85 years of age, it was high time my curiosity was satisfied.

The ‘Open House’ day offered me the chance to visit a place I had first heard about as a child. It was known to me and my brothers and sisters - six of us in all - as ‘the orphanage’ and it was our Mother and Aunt, Florence (left) and Eleanor King (below), who had been in ‘the orphanage.’ They were around ten and fourteen years old when they arrived there.

My Mother rarely mentioned her time at Louise House. On the rare occasions she did, it was clear to me, even as a child, that the memory was an unhappy one. My Aunt, who went on to become a headmistress and to receive an MBE from the Queen (see below) avoided the subject altogether and never told even her lifelong friends about her time there.

However, there was one particular conversation which sticks in my mind. I was about 14 years old and I was sitting in our kitchen with my Mother eating a boiled egg for breakfast. She told me that at Louse House the girls were given an egg for their meal as a special treat on their birthday! I thought even then that if an egg was a special treat, what must the meals have been like the rest of the time? She went on to explain that, when this rare treat happened, you would let your best friend dip her bread in your egg and she would let you do the same when it was her birthday.

My first impression of Louise House when I visited in September was that it was much smaller than I had imagined. The other overwhelming impression was that despite the passage of time, the building still had an air of sadness about it and I could only think of my Mother, Aunt and all those other young children living there, separated from their families. How many lonely tears were shed night after night? What made them happy? It doesn’t bear too much thinking about. After my visit and for the rest of the day I felt quite down and my consolation was that despite the unhappy start, my Mother had a large, loving family in later life who remember her with love to this day. Although my Aunt never married, she had a rewarding life and was loved by her family and those whose lives she helped in the years that followed.

---

Miss Eleanor Martha King, MBE was born in 1897 as one of six children. She was orphaned around the age of 10 years old and was sent to Louise House with her sister Florence. It is likely she had a much better education at Louise House than she would have had if her parents had lived.

Eleanor went into domestic service and on to study at Birmingham University from where she obtained a degree. She travelled and was, according to her niece, Ethel Roberts, “a confident lady, with a strong conviction that she had a job to do.”

She became the progressive headmistress of the Rosemary Street School in Bristol. The school was unusual for its time in allowing the parents to be involved, arranging camping holidays in the countryside for children and their parents. She also ran one of the first multi-cultural nurseries at a time when society was much less tolerant.

In 1953 Eleanor was awarded the MBE by the Queen in recognition of her outstanding service to the City of Bristol.  Miss King died in 1968 and in 1990 the City of Bristol erected a plaque in her honour on the Old Quaker Friars building in the

If you have personal information about Louise House, Stephen Roberts, grandson and great nephew of Florence and Eleanor King, would like to hear from you at stephenfroberts@gmail.com.

Honor Oak Station Improvements

You may have seen that Honor Oak Park Station is looking a bit of a mess at the moment – especially compared with the other slick stations along the London Overground line. The good news is that Network Rail is bringing forward improvement works. This includes renewing the staircase to both platforms, repairing and redecorating the footbridge and resurfacing sections of Platform 2. The bad news is that this work won’t be finished before March 2011 at the very earliest.

The problem is that work was delayed whilst Southwark Council dealt with the waste dumped in the land behind the station. Only once this work has been completed can Network Rail begin the essential job of building a new retaining wall on Platform 1. The whole platform will then be resurfaced. However, landslip behind this platform is a long-term problem and we’ve been told off the record that the job could easily take a lot longer than predicted.

So, whilst the station is in a mess anyway, Network Rail is going to “use the opportunity to bring forward some planned improvement works for the benefit of our customers and to avoid another period of work in late 2011,” London Overground (LOROL) tells us. They go on to say, “This has taken some complex planning which has resulted in a slight delay in the works commencing in earnest.  We hope that you appreciate this short delay will minimise the overall level of disruption for station users.”
As for lift access to the platforms, our advice is don’t hold your breath….

Timetable Changes

No need to rush - there'll be another in a minute

From December 12th, we’re getting two additional trains at 17:24 and 18:24 from London Bridge to Honor Oak Park and Forest Hill.  Unfortunately, the slot for these trains is just three minutes after the previous Forest Hill train so it will make little difference to waiting times.  However, it does mean that if you want to make sure you get a seat, then these are excellent trains to aim for because there should be plenty of room on board!

There will also be a later train from Dalston Junction to New Cross Gate which is timed to coincide with the last Southern train from London Bridge (leaving Dalston Juncion at 00:15, Canada Water at 00:31) and in May 2011, all overground trains from Crystal Palace and West Croydon will continue to Highbury & Islington.