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I knew, also, that I'd pass through Albion Millennium Green and Mayow Park for, remarkably, the first time ever despite living in SE23 for over twenty-four years but I didn't know I'd find a nature trail for spider spotters and I didn't know I'd discover a bronze and limestone war memorial of such architectural importance that it has its own Wikipedia page. Nor did I know that, tucked away in the middle of an estate I've skirted many times, I'd find housing blocks that would have been worthy of my Art Deco walk back in 2017.
Though these 'perambulations on the perimeter of' walks will never take the place of the more important, and far more social, TADS, London by Foot, London LOOP, and Capital Ring walks they will, hopefully, add another dimension to those walks and they will, gout willing - I've had another particularly nasty flare up, give me something to do when my walking friends are otherwise engaged.
A solo project if you will. But a solo project that will play second fiddle to the group(s) because one of the best things about walking is the social aspect. Luckily, the lack of people to chat with on the way round (and to go to the pub and for curry with after) was the only real downside of a walk I'd hoped would be interesting but feared would be boring. On a day when the temperature was nudging 36c I managed to turn in 20,960 steps and still be at home in time for a bath and an excellent BBC4 documentary about Liverpool soul funk hitmakers The Real Thing.
Postcode boundaries tend to take fairly arbitrary and haphazard routes, through people's back gardens, along railway lines, and crossing over private property so it's not possible to follow the exact route. It wasn't a big problem. I decided, when given a choice, I'd take the route that looked the more interesting. Through a park or cemetery, past a building of historical importance, or simply down a road with some pubs and shops on it. It will mean as these walks build up (if they build up) there will be plenty of repetition but I find that visiting the same places over and over again tends to, quite often, throw up new things. Places look different in different weather and in different seasons, certainly, but they also change because we change. No man ever walks down the same road twice because both that man and that road are in constant flux.
I turned into Camberwell Old Cemetery, a place I've been walking a lot during lockdown - a place, like most cemeteries, of tranquility and reflection. It's part of the second wave of cemeteries that followed on from The Magnificent Seven and if it's not as fancy as them it's not without charm.
The grave of Mayor Tayo Situ, a Nigerian who became the first African mayor of Southwark, is given pride of place as you enter the boneyard but his memorial is far from the most ostentatious on display. There's little uniformity of style in this cemetery. Modest crosses sit adjacent to large marble family plots like that of the O'Brien's below.
My curiosity was piqued by a gravestone to Mary Wood which specified she'd been KILLED in 1996. Some basic Googling revealed that 28yr old Mary had been run down by the car of an off-duty drunken policeman, Peter Wallace, in Peckham twenty-four years ago. The drunk driver the same age as his victim.
Camberwell Old Cemetery is hardly brimming with notables although Wikipedia lists a few. There's James John Berkeley, Chief Engineer of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway, detective Jack Whicher, and Irish nationalist Liam McCarthy but the only one I'd heard off was Frederick John Horniman, the Somerset born founder of the nearby Horniman Museum who died in 1906.
I didn't seek his grave out but simply enjoyed the diversity of the graveyard, its peace and quiet, and the gorgeous weather before crossing over to the Wood Vale strip, admiring the beaten up old cars that have for years been parked outside Libretto & Daughters butcher shop and picking up a copy of The Guardian in the ambitiously monikered Wood Vale Supermarket.
With the Crystal Palace Transmitter coming into view for the first time of the day and Afro-Australian daisies (according to my SEEK app) growing in a nearby garden I passed along Langton Rise and Westwood Park and in to the Horniman Gardens.
The Horniman Gardens are great (as is the Museum, not visited on this walk). Opened in 1901 and built (the museum) by Charles Harrison Townsend in the Arts and Crafts style the museum hosts a collection of stuffed animals (most famously a seriously overstuffed walrus that has become a symbol of SE23), ethnomusicological instruments, and masks as well as an aquarium.
It's a very child friendly place and if you ever visit when school's out that will soon become very apparent. There's an animal walk that used to host a lonely wallaby but now has sheep, goats, and alpacas (including Poppy - sadly hiding during this walk). There's crazy golf (the walrus, alas, ornamental rather than a hole), there's a sundial, there's a model velociraptor, there's outside musical instruments for kids to play on, there's a bandstand that sometimes hosts bands, there's a Dutch barn that sells beer and snacks, and there's an ice cream vendor. Sunday sees a small farmers market but, most of all, people come to sunbathe, take in the views, and look at the beautiful gardens themselves.
Or kick a ball round a concrete football pitch. It's hard to imagine what inspired somebody to concrete over a piece of grass to make a football pitch but judging by its shape and position the smart money says that this was once some kind of paddling pool or lake. The formal gardens are lovely (and looked amazing in those crazy days of March and April), there's a bench with a plaque to local MC and poet Stephen 'The Spaceape' Gordon who died of cancer aged 44 following a critically acclaimed career in the dubstep world collaborating with Burial, Kode9, The Bug, and Jerry Dammers.
There's a beautiful conservatory where my friends Dan and Misa got married eight years ago and there's also, and it's hard to miss, a 20ft totem pole carved from red cedar in 1985 by Tlingit Alaskan Nathan Jackson as part of an American Arts festival. It tells the story of a girl who married a bear but you'd probably need to be fluent in totem pole, to work that out.
I crossed the South Circular and went into the less celebrated Horniman Play Park or Horniman Triangle. Apart from a playground and a cafe it's just a grassy space for sunbathing. I'd not had lunch so I enquired about veggie burgers (as advertised) in the cafe. They didn't have any and in fact the only veggie thing they had available was chips so I ordered them. But I was unable to as they were only accepting cash and I wasn't carrying any (for obvious reasons). The card machine, the lady told me, was broken. In fact, she clarified, it had been "smashed to bits".
Ah well, my stomach would have to wait. I walked up the steep Sydenham Hill and turned left into the potholed Eliot Bank, a strange mix of somewhat stately houses and small tower blocks. I'd only been through Eliot Bank for the first time about two months ago and found it to be a short cut I'd previously been ignorant of. This time I took a right into Knapdale Close. I'd never been down there before. I passed a leather clad biker complaining of the heat, builders on their tea break, and a footpath took me to a block of flats, in fact several blocks of flats, that genuinely surprised me.
With their modest brick exteriors and municipal feel they could easily be ignored but I couldn't help see in Worsley House and the adjacent blocks that make up this area around Shackleton Close something of the Art Deco, the Bauhaus even. I thought they were rather lovely and as I passed on to Thorpewood Avenue I found myself marvelling at what appeared to be a rather splendid Arts and Crafts home and even the spire at the back of the Forest Hill library. I was in a good mood and I was appreciating the beauty of things I would once have not given a second look.
When I first moved to London, back in 1996, I was briefly unemployed and made very good use of local libraries. Forest Hill more than any. I'd do the crossword in there, study reference books, and hire out cassettes and CDs. Forest Hill being a diverse area I managed to advance my reggae education immeasurably by borrowing from its collection and it was none too shabby when it came to Irish and African music too.
The Forest Hill Pools have been another, on-off, mainstay for me too. I've not been for a while (for the shame) but I used to regularly dip in the old Victorian baths (built 1884) until they closed in 2006 and when, in 2012, a more modern pool opened I made good use of that too. Perhaps if I'd stuck to the swimming regime a bit more I'd not have become a victim of the ghastly gout.
From Dartmouth Road I turned into Clyde Vale because my map was showing me there was a green space, previously unexplored by me, near the railway line called the Albion Millennium Green. I was still hungry but the advert for pizza by a wheelie bin that led down a rubbish strewn alley didn't look too promising and nor did the footpath that took me to said Albion Millennium Green but the green itself was a small treasure, a little delight.
Overgrown in places but with benches placed unobtrusively round a small open space, there were posters for spider spotters and minibeast detectives and fun though it would have been to poke around in the hope of discovering a four spot orb weaver, a nettle weevil, or a harvestman my feet were demanding I continue with the walk and my stomach was feeling empty.
Back on Dartmouth Road I passed the For Your Eyes Only video shop (a video shop still open! In 2020!), The Hill pub (used to be The Malt Shovel which did quiz nights), The Bird in Hand pub (full of bitter racist men, many of whom seem to have restraining orders placed on them by their ex-partners and best avoided), and the far nicer Sylvan Post where I've enjoyed drinks with close friends like Michelle, Simon, and Shep in the past. In fact I've lived in the area so long I remember using the Sylvan Post when it was still a post office.
In BB & Friends I had a disappointing cheese toastie, a cup of tea, and a lovely can of Coke and then I passed down under the railway lines by Forest Hill station, looking through the windows of the not open yet but perfectly pleasant Dartmouth Arms, and followed Perry Vale and Dacres Road to the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Church. Again, I'd not come this way before.
Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and anti-Nazi dissident who wrote influential pieces on the church's role in secular society. In the mid-thirties he lived in the area and preached at a German speaking Protestant church in Sydenham and another in Whitechapel. On returning to Germany he became a vocal critic of Hitler's euthanasia programme and the Nazi persecution of the Jews and, in April 1943, he was arrested by the Gestapo. In 1944 he was moved to the Flossenburg concentration camp and in 1945 he was hanged there.
Bonhoeffer's teachings went on to influence Martin Luther King Jr among others and it's humbling to think such an admirable man had links to my area. The church built in his honour, sadly, was closed. As was the nearby Dacres Wood. Another nature reserve I had previously been unaware of and was hoping to have a nose around in.
No dice. I continued into Mayow Park (strictly speaking in SE26), a park I'd long been aware of but one I had, until this moment, never visited. I tried to buy an ice cream but, again, cash only so, instead, I wandered through the park where nothing much except, understandably, sunbathing was going on. If I was to come back later in the month though, I'd be able to enjoy a socially distanced outdoor performance of Puss in Boots. Can't see many of my friends being up for that.
I walked along De Frene Road, Perry Rise, and then, near the former site of a Savacentre, turned right and headed north along Perry Vale. It was there that I noticed, again - for the first time, the Livesey Hall and its celebrated war memorial. Built for the fallen workers of the South Suburban Gas Company of London who had died in World Wars I & II and designed by the Humberside sculptor Sydney March.
The panel includes the Rupert Brooke quote that I began my Cambridge TADS blog with back in August 2017 and the hall itself now boasts of being available to hire for weddings and birthday parties and showing all manner of sporting event on the big screen. There's even an amateur boxing club out back giving it a very old school inner London feel.
As I gradually climbed, in ever increasing heat, up Perry Vale and Blythe Vale the area revealed itself to be both community minded and also a little in decline. The former Perry Hill pub and a decrepit terraced house told one half of the story but a small and free book exchange - not the only one I spotted - with the obligatory warnings about Covid and hand sanitising told a very different tale.
When Blythe Vale reaches Stanstead Road, the South Circular and as close as this walk would get to Catford, you're presented with a garage adorned with a gorilla, what looks like a model of the Atomium in Brussels, and a space rocket and, more tempting still in the heat, the reasonably sized beer garden of the Blythe Hill Tavern.
Begrudgingly accepting a card for payment (what is it with these people? Why are they so desperate to handle potentially germ riddled coins and paper?) I took a pint of lager out to the garden and half-heartedly looked at the crossword and the suguru while secretly (and now not so secretly) wishing I had somebody to share my pint with. Truth be told, I felt a bit lonely.
It was pleasant enough but the lack of company didn't warrant staying for a second and it would be my first, last, and only pint of the day. A steep hill took me past surprisingly rustic and quaint houses (some would look more in place in Bath or Oxford) up Blythe Hill Lane and into Blythe Hill Fields.
Greeted by a selection of baseball caps perched on a fence (later to be echoed by a similar array of gardening gloves in Honor Oak itself) I reached the top of the hill, admired the views, and enjoyed, finally, a cool breeze. Tired by the heat, the pint, and maybe the cheese toastie I had a lie down in this humble but handy park. I just about fell asleep so knackered, and hot, was I.
Coming down off Blythe Hill Fields and now in an area known as Crofton Park I flirted with the idea of another drink (to cool me down more, obvs) in The Brockley Jack pub but, instead, decided to push on for home. From Stillness Road I turned right into Brockley Rise and crossed Stondon Pork by St.Hilda's (above), a church I like to imagine is built in the Brick Expressionist style and, if you squint, could almost belong more in Dortmund or Utrecht than in SE London.
Near here, and next to the currently still closed Buckthorne Cutting Nature Reserve, I crossed a pedestrian (and somewhat speedy bicycle) bridge over the railway line between Honor Oak Park and Brockley and soon turned left into Camberwell New Cemetery. Less interesting to me than Camberwell Old, it nevertheless contains the final resting places of forces sweetheart Anne Shelton, two Salvation Army Army generals (Frederick Coutts and Wilfred Kitching), a former champion boxer (Freddie Mills), a former champion weightlifter (William Pullum), and George Cornell, an East End gangster and former accomplice of "Mad" Frankie Fraser who was shot dead in The Blind Beggar pub in 1966 by Ronnie Kray.
Another celebrity, of sorts, lain to rest here is John Trunley, The Fat Boy of Peckham whose claim to fame seems to be his obesity. He weighed twelve stone at the age of four and just got larger and larger until he died, aged 45, of pulmonary tuberculosis in 1944. He'd toured music halls and people would laugh at his catchphrase 'I want to be a jockey'. They were different times.
Camberwell Old Cemetery abuts the wide open space of Honor Oak Recreation Ground and, from there, I came out at the bottom of Honor Oark Park itself. I climbed up there and dipped in to One Tree Hill, past St Augustine's church, for one last trip into history and one last meander down memory lane.
One Tree Hill is where a former pet rat, Chester, is unofficially buried. It's where Dick Turpin is said to have come to look down on London below and decide his next victim (the views are pretty special), and it's the site of the Honor Oak itself, where Elizabeth I is said to have rested on her way to visit Lewisham in 1602. There's an oak tree surrounded by railings now with a small information board in front of it but that's not the original tree. It's a replacement, a second replacement in fact, planted in 1905.
Once a part of The Great North Wood, One Tree Hill is still surprisingly wild in places and as you descend there are numerous overgrown paths you can explore and one suntrap of an open space quite hidden from all roads and even other parts of One Tree Hill.
You come out on Brenchley Gardens, a linear path which has served me well during lockdown - taking phone calls and reading books there regularly. From here there was just time to pop in the mysterious Jonathan's to buy a couple of beers to take home.
It had hardly been as full a day as many of my other walks but it had been surprisingly rewarding and I had learned more about my local area than I had expected to. There will be future walks around future postal areas but I can't say how many. I calculate that there are 121 central London postal codes (and something like 276 when you chuck in the BRs, CRs, DAs, ENs, HAs, IGs, KTs, RMs, SMs, TWs, and UBs that make up Greater London) in total so it's a project doomed to failure from the off. But, hey, let's see.
SE23 treated me well and when this fucking gout clears up I'll have a crack at SE15.
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