Perambulations on the Perimeter of .... SE6:Stray Catford Strut.

The theme of yesterday's postcode related perambulation, around SE6, was that of animals. Cats obviously, it was in Catford, but not just cats. There were squirrels, coots, moorhens, geese, and all the usual suspects. Not just in living form but in the form of paintings and statues.

 

The famous Catford cat on Catford broadway for a start. There would also to be another theme to the day but I wouldn't fully understand what that was until right at the end of the day's walking. I'd left home at 11am and headed down Honor Oak Park. I grabbed a copy of The Guardian at a local shop and noticed some fresh anti-fascist graffiti on a nearby wall. I thought how sad it is that we're still having to fight fascists and fascism in 2023.

Turning down into Brockley Rise I noticed the road was blocked off by at least five police vehicles. There was a lot of noise, including someone chanting something to the tune of wedding reception staple Hey Baby, and there were lots of people lingering around but I couldn't work out what was happening. I rubbernecked long enough to chat with a couple of locals (equally as bewildered as me) and to see a vicar jump out of a car and walk towards the scene as if on some urgent business.

I thought I'd have a look on my phone later and see if I could find out what was happening but I didn't hold out much hope. It seemed a better idea to focus on my walk, my perambulation around the perimeter of SE6, and that started properly in Blythe Hill Fields (which is divided by SE6 & SE23). 

I took a steepish walk up Lowther Hill and then along Brockley Rise into Blythe Hill Fields proper. The views are so good from up there and it's so near my home I wondered why I don't come more often. The fields were full of people walking their dogs or kicking footballs around. There was, as ever, a 'trim trail' but nobody seemed to be making much use of it.

Blythe Hill Fields is on the edge of the former Great North Wood which extended from Deptford to Selhurst. The Great North Wood was once crucial to London's economy, providing wood for shipbuilding and charcoal and tannin for leather as well as an area for pigs to graze. The fields still contain a few great oaks. Something that wasn't guaranteed back in the 1930s during the Great Depression when the land was nearly built on. Local pressure prevented this and that's really rather great. I love how you can see across to Hilly Fields to the north and how they almost mirror each other.

I took photos of the various skylines the vantage point affords one views of. To one direction, the Shard and across the river into the City. To another, Canary Wharf and the skyscrapers of the Isle of Dogs. Yet another sees the new tower blocks of Lewisham looming into view and, if you're inclined, you can head to the other side of the park to take in views of Croydon, Surrey, and Kent.

There's a sign up telling visitors about the biodiversity of the fields. Sowing goat's beard, bird's foot trefoil, and various clover representing for the flora and bats, tawny owls, and peregrine falcons (all absent on a February afternoon unsurprisingly) giving it up for the fauna. Blythe Hill Fields was also part of national tree planting scheme to celebrate George VI's coronation in 1937.

Coming out of the fields, I cut down the charmingly titled Montacute Road, past the large blue house below, and into Ravensbourne Park Gardens. I've lived little more than a mile away from here for over twenty-seven years and had not, until yesterday. ever visited Ravensbourne Park Gardens. I'm not sure I was even aware of its existence.

It's not big but it's rather pretty. The daffodils were just about in bloom and there was a pleasant cinder path that weaved its way past a playground and on to a road called Ravensbourne Park which would bring me out on the A205/South Circular near both Catford and Catford Bridge stations. They're virtually right next to each other but they're on different lines.

I crossed the train lines, and the Ravensbourne river, and stopped to take a photo of some graffiti that boasted of a love of eggs (rather than just a recommendation of 'love eggs') before turning into Catford Broadway itself, not one of London's most illustrious thoroughfares it must be said, and pulling up, for the first time ever, at the Broadway Cafe.

I sat down with my Guardian and ordered cheese omelette, chips, and beans with a couple of large slices of buttered bread. A cup of tea too that was served, almost proudly, with a Tetley teabag still in it. The food was really good but there was a lot of it and by the time I finished it, or nearly finished it, it was getting cold. I'd go again though.

I carried on through Catford shopping centre. Past Costa Coffee, Iceland, a yoga centre, the rather lovely (and very reasonably priced Catford Mews cinema where I mad use of their facilities), and a series of market stalls blasting out reggae and selling baseball caps, plastic dartboards, and t-shirts with Jamaica written on them. I resolutely did not stop at Evans Food for lamb, oxtail, and beef. As an Evans I would like to reiterate my vegetarianism in the wake of this association.

Near the big cat statue (by Owen Luder - a big Brutalist name who was responsible for Trinity Square in Gateshead and Portsmouth's now demolished Tricorn Centre), the shopping centre opens up on to Rushey Green and the rather peculiar, if intriguing, piece of public art above. It's not labelled and I can't find anything out about it on the Internet but I quite like it.

Rushey Green's got a fair bit of history and there's a board outlining a lot of it. It's covered in dirt but you can just about read it. It tells of how Rushey Green was once an ancient settlement on the banks of the Ravensbourne. By 1745 it had become a small hamlet and around the year 1810 some cottages were built here. Because the land was boggy, rushes would grow and that's how it got its name.

When the Lewisham to Beckenham railway was opened in 1857 the area began to rapidly develop and it was around that time that people stopped swimming and boating in the, then much wider, Ravensbourne. The area suffered a great deal of damage during World War II and that's why, now, you can't see many old buildings.

The Catford dog track (also used for speedway), built in 1932, did survive the war but closed in 2003. The former Black Horse and Harrow pub is reputed to be a former haunt of Karl Marx and Spike Milligan went to school in Catford. The band Japan formed in Catford in 1972 and, a decade or so before that, my mate Bugsy's dad grew up on Catford's Canadian Avenue. In more recent news I had my first ever Covid test there back in 2021. I was positive which meant a few lazy days at home watching TV in the run up to a very quiet Xmas.

There's another unusual piece of public sculpture, a Turkish eatery, a Wetherspoons, and a Ukrainian flag and messages of peace, love  and support on Rushey Green too. I turned off into Ringstead Road, stopping to look at a cat - a Catford cat, and made my way down to Mountsfield Park. I'd walked through here with Mo in baking heat last summer and attended a festival there with Paola some years ago but it's still not a park I know well.

I certainly didn't know, until yesterday, that there was once a stadium, The Mount, there that could hold 50,000 people and that, during the 1923-24 season, Charlton Athletic played their home games there. There were even plans to merge Charlton with another local team, Catford South End. The press nicknamed this team, one that never came to exist, The Kittens.

It's a pleasant park. Quite sparsely populated yesterday. It's got a bandstand, a trim trail - of course, good views - standard in these parts, a pleasant looking and colourful cafe - I was still full of omelette and chips, and a kid's playground. The park's story begins in the 1840s when a Mr Henry Stainton built Mountsfield House for his son, Tibbats. Henry Tibbats Stainton became a well known entomologist and authored a celebrated book on butterflies and moths.

Tibbats died in 1892 and in 1905 the grounds around Mountsfield House, as well as some open pasture, became a public park and that's how it remains to this day. I left the park on to Stainton Road (I love how doing these walks and researching what I see helps make sense of at least some of the road names - though others, as you'll see later, are harder to comprehend) and then followed a fairly uneventful stretch of suburban semi-detached housing along Brownhill Road (A205 again so very busy) and Verdant Lane. The highlight being this high chair and table combo with a ginormous Sports Direct mug. Just imagine a toddler glugging back a small ocean's worth of milky tea in that.

Verdant Lane is not a lane that, for the most part, lives up to its name. There's a Pasture Road and a Further Green Road leading off it as well just to rub it in. Judging by the few businesses scattered between the semis a better name would have been Car Wash Lane. Or maybe Tyre Supplier Street. You could almost smell the rubber.

Eventually I came to the surprisingly large Hither Green Cemetery. I'd had a look at its Wikipedia page and not heard of any of the interred notables but it looks like a peaceful place to visit a deceased loved one. The crematorium was even prettier with a small lake and a fountain providing a very calming sensation. Almost hard to believe the bustling South Circular is just down the road. But, from the road, you do get an amazing view of the Crystal Palace Tower. It looks particularly enormous from this angle. Almost like the Eiffel Tower.

LOVE FOR ALL HATRED FOR NONE is the unequivocally positive message you can read on the walls of the Tahir mosque. It was near the mosque, and a Shell garage, that I turned right into Whitefoot Lane. The sun back out again after a brief overcast spell, it wasn't long before I reached Forster Memorial Park. Again, another new one for me.

A sign informs visitors that London is one of the greenest cities in the world (61% of the city is green space) and that the park is populated with oak, ash, poplar, and Scots pine trees. Shrubs come in the form of hawthorn and field maple with cow parsley and garlic mustard being summer visitors. The rotting wood and fallen leaves provide homes for beetles and hoverflies and elsewhere in the park you may see butterflies, foxes, and squirrels.

As well as lots of birds. Robins, tits, crows, and wood pigeons as well as nuthatches, goldcrests, sparrowhawks, woodpeckers, and parakeets apparently but all I saw was lots of geese and lots of young men playing football. For my shame I didn't even visit the mysteriously named Piggy Island.

The open part of the park descends into a more densely wooded region and there you can read more about the history of the area. Tradition has it that the land once belonged to Elfrida, a daughter of Alfred the Great. Factually, the earliest known owner is King Edgar (943-975) who granted the manor to the Benedictine Abbey of St Peter's in Ghent. It was owned by the monks until 1415 when Henry V gave the property to the new Carthusian Priory of Bethlehem in West London.

By 1904, much of the land had come into the ownership of Henry Forster, later the first Baron Forster, the MP for Sevenoaks. He served as a government minister during World War I and it was in that conflict he lost two sons, John and Alfred. In memory of his sons and their sacrifice, he gifted his land to the people of Lewisham. Forster Memorial Park was formerly opened by Dorothy Lubbock, Baron Forster's daughter in 1922. Baron Forster himself went on to be Governor General of Australia but with no male heir the title died with him in 1936.

 

I continued along Whitefoot Road, past the impressive modern block called Aurora House and the evidently much older St John the Baptist church. Photogenic those these buildings were I was soon more taken with a sign watering motorists to watch their speed as there may be ducks, or other waterfowl, crossing the road here.

I had reached the curiously named Peter Pan Pool (or Southend Pond if you don't go for the whole JM Barrie thing). Yes, just outside Homebase and off the busy A21/Bromley Road there's a little pond full of squawking geese and ducks. It's got an island in the middle of it with a statue of two people arm in arm, one whispering to the other. I've no idea what it's all about but it certainly piqued my curiosity.

The Ravensbourne runs into, and out of, Peter Pan Pool and just south of nearby Beckenham Hill Road you can easily fall into that river in Peter Pan, or Peter Pan's, Park. I followed Beckenham Hill Road down to the brick modernist spaceship that operates as St Augustine's Catholic Primary School and Nursey and turned into Beckenham Place Park.

The borders of SE6 only impinge slightly on the park, it's mostly in BR3 with some parts in BR1, but it's always worth a look round. I wandered over to the lake. You're allowed to swim in it but there are plenty of signs warning you about how cold, and how deep (3.5 metres in places), the water is. It wasn't the weather for swimming so of course nobody was in the lake.

As with my two previous visits (the first one on a Capital Ring walk nearly three years ago) I was astounded by how big the park is - and how beautiful it is. I looked at the big squirrel statue, saw a guy on a park bench drinking a can of strong cider and circled round the Homestead Cafe and a shop selling ice creams for dogs and dog toys. A few more degrees and I might have had an ice cream myself.

Instead I was feeling ready for my first pub stop of the day, that Guardian crossword won't do itself, but when I looked at my phone it seemed there were no pubs for quite some time. Possibly a blessing in disguise. I left the park via Dunfield Road and soon picked up the dual carriageway A2218/Southend Lane.

Perusing the map I noticed a nearby street with a rather surprising name so I took a minor diversion to have a look at Adolf Street. Now there must have been lots of good people named Adolf over the years but when I hear the name, the same for you I imagine, there is one particular person springs to mind.

Part of the F had, like one of Hitler's balls, come off the sign at one end of the street but at the other end the name was writ large and proud. Nearby you can find King Alfred Avenue and Elfrida Crescent, roads which at least pay homage to the area's history. But Adolf Street? The Internet couldn't help me on that one.

A little bit further along Southend Lane you can dip down a snicket into Southend Park (I'd been unable to find a way in during a previous perambulation - to be fair I'd not tried that hard) and that's what I did. Whereas Beckenham Place Park had been full of people (and dogs), Southend Park was almost completely empty. As I went in a couple walked past me and then a cyclist and as I left a jogger passed me but, other than that, it was just me and a low flying parakeet who had this rather sorry looking green space all to ourselves.

Once I'd returned to Southend Lane the large Sainsbury's of Bell Green was looming ahead and I was pretty much on the home straight. Past the gaily painted birds and under a railway bridge I joined the Waterlink Way and walked alongside the Pool river until it reached its confluence with the Ravensbourne. The late afternoon light bathed the scene in a wistful glow and when I stopped to look at a tree whose roots were coming out of the ground creating a small pool beneath it I thought, for a moment, it was home to a colony of nesting bats.

Sadly, it wasn't. I followed the Ravensbourne for a bit longer and, under a railway bridge with a kingfisher and a submerged shopping trolley painted on it, emptied out into a none more glamorous retail park with a large branch of Wickes and another of Halfords.

I cut under the A205 and popped in, for the first time ever, to the Catford Bridge Tavern. Guardian crossword, pint of Red Stripe, phone on charge, and rugby on the big screen. England were beating Wales in the Six Nations (they'd go on to win 20-10) and, to be honest, nobody was giving it much attention. If I was around Teddington, as I was the previous Saturday, I rather suspect it'd be a different story.

As I left the pub and followed the South Circular back to Honor Oak Park I thought I'd put my camera away for the day but as I reached the Honor Oak pub on Brockley Rise, a nice enough place but the scene of all the police shenanigans at the start of my walk, I noticed two placards:- FUCK THE FASH and DYKES AGAINST FASCISM.

Pasted on a nearby bus shelter was a sign informing locals that a noted neo-Nazi, Nicholas Raymond Hill, was operating out of the Catford area. As a prominent member of Patriotic Alternative, Nicholas Hill is responsible for espousing and disseminating an alarmingly large amount of racist hate speech and encouraging racist hate crimes. I understood what had being going on earlier in the day, I understood that graffiti I'd seen this morning, and I even wondered about the wisdom of having an Adolf Street so near to where pond dwellers like him live.

It could have been a depressing note to end what had been a lovely day's walking on. But it wasn't really. Nicholas Hill's views are not popular in Catford and they don't seem remotely representative of most of the people who live and work there. I found it a joy to walk around and suck in all the multiculturalism and history of the area. That's something a hate filled inadequate like Nicholas Hill will never be able to do. I like to imagine the giant Catford cat statue one day coming to life and walking to Nicholas Hill's house and taking a massive smelly shit through his letterbox.