Chairman's Report
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Newsletter No. 77 – May 2013 Free to members Chairman’s Report In this Issue: Bob Flanagan Sadly, Sexton Keith Lucas finally left Lambeth employ- • Norwood in the ment at the end of March. Keith retired officially a couple Second World of years ago (see Newsletter 68, May 2010), but his War Page 3 temporary contract has now been terminated. There was no consultation with either FOWNC, or the Scheme of • R.C. Carrington Management Committee (SoMC) over this action. This FRS, Solar seems to me to have been yet another decision that Astronomer Lambeth may have not thought through properly… (1826–1875) Keith has served the Page 4 citizens of Lambeth • The Brockwell and the wider comm- Hall Estate in unity in South Lon- the 19 th don through his work in the cemetery for Century Page 11 29 years, in many • Wanderers vs . cases at a time of Royal Engineers great confusion and distress for individ- 2012 Page 12 uals and for families. He has also played a • Recent FOWNC major part in helping Events Page 14 preserve for future • Forthcoming generations what re- Events Page 14 mains of our historic cemetery. • A Bit of Mystery Keith chose to be Page 16 photographed by his Sexton Keith Lucas and the favourite monument, Grade II* listed tombstone of the tomb of the anti- John Britton (grave 5,235, quarian John Britton square 119 ) (1771–1857). This is a massive ‘henge’ of Millstone Grit designed by the architectural journalist George Godwin (1803–1887), now sadly shorn of its protective railings since the clearance work in this part of the cemetery. Keith reminded me of our first meeting in 1990 or thereabouts when we walked round the cemetery after Lambeth had resumed clearance operations, in my opinion a cynical action in response to the formation of FOWNC, and I had vouchsafed my determination to stop them. Whilst clearly he could not say too much as a Lambeth employee, I was left in no doubt where his sympathies lay. So I do feel as if we and the cemetery are losing an old friend. Anyway, in order to mark our respect for Keith and the debt we owe him the committee has decided to offer him Honorary FOWNC Membership, an honour not previously bestowed. We wish him a long and happy retirement at his family home in Cumbria. Councillor Clare Whelan OBE Congratulations to Clare Whelan, who was awarded the OBE in the New Year’s Honours List. Clare is very coy about her many achievements, but gives a lesson in time management to us all I feel. Clare and her husband John are well-known in Lambeth, having both served on the Council since 1990 and having been strong supporters of FOWNC since the early days. Clare started her working life at The Times and has held many positions on Lambeth Council including that of Mayor (2001–2). She is a mem- ber of the SoMC and the Management Advisory Group (MAG) and has thus been involved with the recent ground-breaking discussions over the future of the Cllr Clare Whelan OBE cemetery discussed below. Cemetery News At a joint SoMC and MAG meeting on 4 February agreement in principle was reached with Lambeth on a potential way forward on the difficult issue of grave re-use. This would embrace our key objectives of safeguarding all pre-Lambeth era monuments whilst not associating FOWNC with re-use of private graves where the actual location of the grave has been lost, which I feel would be unlawful given the legal status of the cemetery. The Council’s key objective of making provision to open the cemetery for new burials and thus provide an income stream would also be satisfied. We await detailed proposals from the Council in the form of a draft petition to the Chancellor. In line with this spirit of collaboration FOWNC supported a preliminary bid to the Heritage Lottery Foundation (HLF) to finance infrastructure works in the cemetery including restoration of the Catacombs. The bid was submitted towards the end of February and the HLF have responded in detail with some searching questions, the responses to which will help shape the form of the actual bid. Finally, I can report that the long-awaited infrastructure works to the entrance roads to the Cemetery will commence soon. The works will be phased so as to minimise disruption to the daily operation of the Cemetery and to the Curious Art Trail (see Forthcoming FOWNC Events, page 14), but will necessitate closure of the main gate for - 2 - a time. Up to 80 memorial roses will have to be rededicated in the new Rose Garden as part of the works. A leaflet explaining the need for this disruption has been produced by interim Cemeteries Manager Julie Dunk. Cemetery Conservation This year the National Federation of Cemetery Friends AGM is to be hosted by the Friends of York Cemetery Trust on 8 June. Nicholas Long and either Paul Graham, or I will represent FOWNC. The Association of Significant Cemeteries of Europe is holding its AGM in Amsterdam in September, although I doubt that anyone from FOWNC will attend. Finally, members may be interested to hear of a churchyard/burial ground conservation group Caring for God’s Acre . Details at www.caringforgodsacre.org.uk . What is the difference between a burial ground and a cemetery one might ask? Norwood in the Second World War Bob Flanagan Jill Dudman was intrigued by the note of the deaths of Charles and Hannah Mary Gaudern in 1944 ( A Bit of Mystery , Newsletter 76, January 2013) and looked them up on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website. They both died at their home, 10 York Hill Road, West Norwood, on 4 July 1944. Charles, son of the late Mr and Mrs Charles Gaudern, of Wansford, Northamptonshire, was 83 and Hannah, his sister, was 79. They and nine others were killed when a V1 flying bomb fell just behind the shops on Norwood Road at 13:15. Six houses were demolished and 20 others suffered severe dam- age. In Norwood Road, 30 shops were damaged, as were 10 houses in Ullswater Road. At 01:19 the next day a V1 fell near to the entrance to the cemetery, destroying the two pairs of large semi- detached houses (built 1824– 36) that stood where West Norwood Library and the Nettlefold Hall now stand. These houses had been bought by the Cemetery Company in 1936 when they moved their offices from 70 Cemetery Main Gate and Entrance Lodge c. 1900 King William Street in the City and rebuilt and enlarged Tite’s original gate lodge. In turn this too was demolished having been damaged by the flying bomb, to be replaced by the present lodge in 1950. Intriguingly, however, an aerial photograph from March 1946 appears to show the origin- al lodge largely intact. Finally, on 17 July at 05:12 a further V1 severely damaged the Crematorium and the east wing of Tite’s Nonconformist chapel, leading in time to their demolition in 1955 and the loss of the hydraulic coffin lift and other features (see FOWNC Newsletter 69, September 2010). - 3 - R.C. Carrington FRS, Solar Astronomer (1826–1875) Ed Cliver Richard Christopher Carrington was the pre-eminent solar astronomer of the 19 th century. In a ten-year span, he measured the elements of the sun’s rotation axis, discovered that the sun did not rotate as a solid body, and noted that sunspots originated at higher solar latitudes at the beginning of their 11-year cycle than at the end. But it is the solar flare that Carrington observed while engaged in his daily drawing of the sun’s spots in the forenoon of 1 September 1859 for which he is most remembered today. This was the first time that anyone had seen such a disturbance on the sun. Recently, films of solar eruptions made by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory have been made regularly as the current 11-year sunspot cycle approached its maximum. The solar events are linked to disturbances of the Earth’s ionosphere and magnetosphere and pose a threat to electrical power grids, airline passengers on polar routes, and satellite- and ground-based communications. Such ‘space weather’ effects have led to renewed interest in “Carrington’s flare” because, in a quirk of history, the first solar flare ever observed was associated with what remains the largest geomagnetic storm yet recorded. The 1859 magnetic storm has become the yardstick for a ‘super storm’ against which current large storms are measured. Moreover, a recent estimate indicates that the cau- sative flare observed by Carrington was the largest ever reported. The Redhill Observatory Richard Carrington lived an eventful, if tragically short life, and for a brief period from c. 1850–1865 ranked among the great scientists of his time. He was born to Richard and Esther Clarke Carrington in Chelsea on 26 May 1826. His father was in the brewing business, and later became joint-owner of the large Royal Brentford Brewery. After private school- ing, in 1844 Carring- ton entered Trinity College, Cambridge, intended for holy ord- ers. But as he later wrote ‘the tenour of my mathematical stu- dies… acting on mechanical propensit- ies to which I had always been addicted, gradually made it clear to me that I was more naturally adapt- Carrington’s Redhill Observatory from the cover of the Redhill ed for the pursuit of Catalogue of circumpolar stars - 4 - some physical science involving imagination and mechanical ingenuity…’ In the event, Carrington graduated in 1847, ranked 36 th wrangler in the mathematical tripos.