Mayow Park: Summer 2015 Update

By Alona Sheridan, Chair, Friends of Mayow Park. Alona updated us on activities at Mayow Park — a much-loved, 7-hectare public park located between Forest Hill and Sydenham.

Park receives Green Flag Award!

Fourteen of Lewisham’s parks were each awarded a Green Flag in July this year and Mayow Park was one of them. This was the 19th year of the awards, which highlight the value of parks and green spaces for their local communities. We must commend Glendale Lewisham for working to the standards demanded for achieving these awards.

In addition to general maintenance such as grass cutting and repair to facilities, Glendale has responsibility for maintaining the cricket square to a suitable standard for weekly matches during the cricket season. Cricket in Mayow Park looks set to stay and the most active home team, Caribbean Mix, is doing very well. The fixtures’ list is posted on the notice boards around the park.

For those who have not visited the park in a while, an outdoor ‘gym and trim’ trail was installed in January 2015. The equipment appeals to all ages and not only to fitness enthusiasts. An extensive range of fitness facilities now exists if we include the children’s playground and older children’s area, and tennis courts.

Having such a busy park requires a quality café, and Mayow Park has just that. Brown and Green opened in August 2014 and has proved to be an invaluable addition to the park.

Community group activities

Friends of Mayow Park’s (FOMP’s) gardening volunteers look after plant beds at the Triangle (near the café), which consist of a fruit garden and herb garden. These beds replace the original roses and bedding plants that were costly to maintain. Now, park users can pick leaves of herbs or taste the raspberries, admire the tall cardoon plants that bumble bees love, meander along the two woodchip paths or relax on the grass by the magnificent dawn redwood  tree. The orchard of eleven fruit trees, near the tennis courts, is now in its fourth summer and, with Lewisham Council’s approval, will receive additional fruit trees. Lewisham’s Nature’s Gym conservation volunteers visit three or four times a year, working alongside FOMP, to help maintain these areas (photo, below). Their blog recently featured our very own Mayow Park — see natureconservationlewisham.co.uk/category/natures-gym.

Mayow Park is also the home of Grow Mayow, an independent community garden, situated behind the café. Their activities and events have a great focus on gardening and the environment. A measure of their popularity was evident when £1,890 funding for beekeeping activities was awarded at the Perry Vale Assembly last November (2014). Congratulations to Grow Mayow for this success!

Special events

The bowling green of the former bowls club — which closed a couple of years ago — can be hired for special events, including parties and open-air film screenings. As part of Sydenham Arts’ Summer Festival, the film ‘The Wizard of Oz’ was screened on a Sunday evening in early July. Other summer events included Lewisham Council’s dog micro-chipping event, which was well attended by dog-owners, and Perry Vale Assembly’s successful ‘Lark in the Park’ community event.  

For more info, visit friendsofmayowpark.blogspot.co.uk

Let There Be Light — in the Horniman!

By Michael Abrahams (Chair, Forest Hill Society). Michael reports on a public consultation meeting that was hosted by the Horniman Museum in August regarding the redevelopment of two of its main galleries.

When the Horniman Museum was first opened to the public in 1901, its roof had large windows to let daylight flood into its galleries. Unfortunately, all of this direct sunlight eventually damaged many exhibits and it was not until the early 1980s that a decision was taken to permanently cover over the windows. Since then the South Gallery (which today contains African Worlds exhibits) has been one of the darker areas of the museum with no natural light.

The Centenary Gallery — containing the torture chair, merman and lots of puppets — is even darker. This area used to be a lecture room, with plenty of light coming in from the windows, but as it became a gallery all light was blocked out to protect the exhibits.

However, the Horniman Museum now plans to reintroduce natural light into these galleries in order to improve the general quality of the interior spaces, and to especially encourage more people to visit the exhibits on display in the South Gallery. The plan for the South Gallery is to install a daylight reflector below its roof light to deflect daylight onto the gallery’s barrel-vaulted ceiling and, therefore, prevent sunlight from directly hitting any displays. This would be augmented with electric lighting to enhance the visitors’ feeling of light and space, but without subjecting the exhibits to too much of the degrading effects of UV light.

The architectural design work for these improvements has been carried out by Rick Mather Architects, who have previously brought new life to Greenwich Maritime Museum and Dulwich Picture Gallery through their design expertise with exhibition spaces and in enhancing the use of listed buildings.

The South Gallery would be curated to include more of its objects from its internationally renowned Anthropology collection alongside many of the items currently on display in the Centenary Gallery. It would also include more interactive exhibits as well as places to sit to contemplate the collection. Meanwhile, the Centenary Gallery would be transformed into a studio space — part exhibition space, part interactive design space — in which artists and community members would create new, temporary exhibits.

Sadly, all of this work will involve the closure of these two areas of the museum for a period of 18 months, if funding is secured. The Horniman is currently finalising their Stage 2 bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund (having already received some initial funding) — to be submitted in December — and a decision is expected to be reached by March 2016. If successful, the museum would then plan to close the two affected galleries from September 2016 until March 2018.

This seems like a great scheme to bring further improvements to our wonderful local museum, and we wish the Horniman Museum every success in this project.

For more info, visit www.horniman.ac.uk.

Wednesday Walks in Forest Hill

By Sandy Pepperell

In March 2013 a post on the SE23.com community forum led to the formation of a walking group in Forest Hill. The aim was to get some exercise on our local hills and a group met in Canvas and Cream’s restaurant to plan how to organise it. People agreed that there should be a weekly walk of about an hour on Wednesday evenings, starting at 7pm (and ending at about 8pm). The walk would cover about 3 miles in this time period. The plan was to alternate starting points between Forest Hill and Honor Oak Park stations.

Two years later the walks continue (mostly) come rain, come shine and in winter and summer alike. In the ‘lighter’ months there are lovely green spaces all around us that we walk through (including in SE26 and the Southwark Woods), and in winter there are many interesting and historic buildings in the area to look at. Of course, the views from our hills are stunning all year round and one of the delights has been to see the effect of changing light and weather as we look north and south of our ‘ridge’.

So far, we have created over 30 routes and have found out some surprising details about the area from seeing it up close and from conversation as we walk.

Just getting out and about for an hour during the working week ‘recharges the batteries’ and, as well as providing some exercise, it is a chance to meet new people and find out more about where we live.

 
If you are interested in joining Sandy’s walking group (and you don’t have to commit to every week) please contact her at s.pepperell [at] btinternet.com