Havelock Walk Open Studios - 9th,10th,16th,17th May

Dartmouth Road Concept Presentation

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):

38 Degrees: Election Hustings - 30th April

Following our unsuccessful attempt to organise election hustings, we are pleased to bring you news of hustings organised by 38 Degrees. This event will take place on 30th April at 7pm at the Honor Oak Pub, close to the Brockley Rise / Stanstead Road junction. Buses: 122, 171, 176, 185

Edible High Road Launch - 16th May

Family Fun Day - 4th May

Parliamentry Hustings Cancelled

The Forest Hill Society and Sydenham Society had arranged a Parliamentary election hustings for Lewisham West and Penge on Friday 24th April. Unfortunately we have to announce the cancellation of this hustings. This is due to difficulty getting agreement from the candidates regarding who should be included and excluded from the panel.

Initially we had invited only the five candidates representing parties with more than 1% at the last general election to take part. We were pressured by a number of the candidates to extend this invitation to all candidates. Having done this, it then proved impossible to get all eight candidates to agree to attend the hustings due to the presence of a candidate from Liberty GB.

In addition we did not wish to place the local church and vicar in the situation of hosting and chairing an event with a speaker from a party that does not accept religious freedom.

We wish to apologise to all members of the public who were looking forward to attending the event.

Issued by Michael Abrahams, chair of the Forest Hill Society and Annabel McLaren, chair of the Sydenham Society.

Reinstating Evening Peak Trains

The Forest Hill Society have received confirmation from Southern that most of the evening peak services that were canceled in January will be reinstated in the May timetable change (16th May).

The following services will run again from May (in addition to the existing 2 trains per hour):
16:27
17:06
17:38
18:36

The 18:06 will NOT be reinstated, continuing to leave a 30 minute gap in the evening timetable.

We welcome the reinstatement of these services which might make our journeys home a little better than they have been for the last four months.

SEE3 Town Team Meeting - 16th April

Parliamentary Election Hustings - 24th April (CANCELLED)

The Forest Hill Society and Sydenham Society have arranged a Parliamentary election hustings for Lewisham West and Penge on Friday 24th April at 7pm. This meeting is free and open to all.

All Candidates have been invited to speak and answer your questions on local and national issues.

This event will take place at Holy Trinity Church, Trinity Path, off Sydenham Park, London SE26 4EA.
Closest bus stops are five minutes walk away on Kirkdale, served by 122, 197, 176, 356. Both Sydenham and Forest Hill station are 10 minutes walk away.

Honor Oak Road Covered Reservoir

By Daniel Greenwood (local resident). In November 2014, flyers were circulated to residents around the Canonbie Rd/Tewksbury Lodge area about an ‘illustrative scheme’ to be exhibited for public inspection. Many local residents and members of the Forest Hill Society went along to find out more. We asked Daniel, who attended the presentation, to tell our readers why this site is so significant.

On a sunny Saturday morning last November, I attended a presentation by Thomas Wrenn Homes at The Forest Hill Friends Meeting House to outline proposals to build seven houses on the Honor Oak Road Covered Reservoir site. The Reservoir site is lodged between Canonbie Road, Honor Oak Road, Horniman Drive, and Liphook Crescent. The plans (for an ‘illustrative scheme’) showed the houses to be built on the site, which is, however, designated as a Grade 2 Site of Borough Importance for Nature Conservation. Access to the new development would be created from Canonbie Road. I did not have a chance to speak to Mr. Wrenn — since he was busy answering questions from concerned residents — but spoke to the development’s designer, Andy Smith. I suggested to him that an ecological survey was of the utmost importance, to which he responded by underlining the need for a ‘positive ecologist’ to survey the site.

As someone who was raised in SE23, the green spaces of the local area hold great meaning for me. The Reservoir site is one I never had the chance to visit as a child or teenager but others before me did have the opportunity. The site gets its name from an underground reservoir built into the hilltop of the Tewkesbury Lodge estate, which was formerly part of the extensive Sydenham Common. It was once owned by Thames Water and ceased to function as a reservoir 40 years ago. It was sold at auction in 1995.

An ecological study of Lewisham conducted by John Archer and Ian Yarnham for the London Ecology Unit (‘Nature Conservation in Lewisham’, 2000) noted that the Reservoir site ‘supports some of the most interesting grasslands in Lewisham and is home to several rare plants and invertebrates’. One such plant is the site’s colony of cowslip, which the study described as having ‘all but disappeared from most of London’. The Reservoir site was ‘the only place in Lewisham that cowslips still occur, except where they have been deliberately planted’. The ecological guide also celebrates the literary history of the reservoir; Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) lived on nearby Bovill Road and was inspired by his time at the reservoir as a child to write several poems.

This is not the first time the Reservoir site, a private area with no public access, has been threatened with development. In 1999, the Secretary of State rejected a planning application for housing following a Public Enquiry, due to the ecological value of the site. Residents who attended the presentation were obviously concerned about the loss of valuable space for nature. Some felt that the arguable weakening of planning regulations, through the introduction of the National Planning Policy Framework, has offered hope to Mr. Wrenn for building his plans on this precious green space. While Lewisham Council will be conducting updated surveys of their Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINCs) in 2015 and will solicit permission to access the Reservoir site, Mr. Wrenn is under no obligation to give his permission.

Nature in South London — which is not just confined to designated Nature Reserves — is being threatened by a new wave of building (which is not geared towards solving an affordable housing crisis), and the borough’s SINCs are in the firing line. Though no planning application has been submitted so far by Mr. Wrenn’s company, the Reservoir site could be threatened with development once again.