Wandsworth Society The Bedside Edition 2009 The Chairman’s Christmas Message I am writing this with tomorrow being the Society’s final day of involvement in the 5-week long Ram Brewery Public Inquiry. Tomorrow will involve a visit to the two development sites – the Brewery and Capital AY Studios site and the Cockpen House site in Buckhold TURD Road – accompanied by the two planning inspectors OPEN FORY & SALUNCH appointed by the Secretary of State and representatives A of the developers Minerva, the Mayor of London and FRID the Council The visits will be followed by a walkabout of the town centre and, in the afternoon a minibus tour of viewpoints outside the town centre. Watch the glass screen The Inquiry has involved a group of us working as a close team to prepare and distil a tight planning case, organise an expert witness to dispute the developer’s perspectives of the impact of the proposed development upon the town centre, and try to groom me to take the stand as the Society’s presenter of its evidence – both of the written proof of evidence and photographic, the latter presented as a slide show to the Inquiry, and to be cross-examined. The extraordinary skills, knowledge and persistence of Tony Taylor, Philip Whyte and Shirley Passmore to help prepare the Society’s case should be acknowledged by us all with amazing back-up from many others, including a patient, long suffering wife who produced the very lengthy typed scripts. We started detailed preparation in August and it is now the beginning of December. This has been the biggest and most challenging issue Service • Repairs • Bodywork tackled by the Society in the last decade or so. I think MOTs by Arrangement we held our own. The outcome of the Inquiry will be known in about 6 months time we expect. All Makes Welcome Specialists in VW, Audi, Meanwhile, of course, the world moves inexorably on as, Citroën and Peugeot for example, Springfield Hospital – a meeting tonight at which we are represented – roads, open spaces, planning applications, future London and Borough Tel: 020 7924 2477 development plans, meetings – the Christmas party next week, vie for our attention and enjoyment. www.mwrmotors.co.uk Opening hours: Mon-Fri 8.30am – 7pm, Sat 9am – 3pm The New Year – 2010 very nearly! – fast approaches and 10 minute walk from Clapham Junction the Society must look forward and establish its future 11–12 The Arches, Latchmere Road aims and aspirations, build upon its strengths, tackle its Battersea, London SW11 2DR weaknesses, try and get the wider membership – you!! – to get more involved and assist us in our work to continue seeking improvements and new goals for the future of Wandsworth’s built environment, its commons, rivers, and so forth. We must think too of how to get the next generation interested in its locality. There is still much to do. A very happy Christmas to you all. 2 Chairman John Dawson 210 Beechcroft Road SW17 7DP phone 020 8785 0077 Vice-Chairman Wandsworth Phillip Whyte 49 West Side Wandsworth Common London SW18 2EE The Bedside Edition 2009 020 8874 4745 Society Secretary the post of secretary is presently unfilled Greetings Treasurer Peter Farrow 5 Windmill Road SW18 2EU nvariably cook gets a little Is it too much to insist on figgy phone 020 8874 3274 I agitated as the winter solstice pudding and a cup of good cheer Membership Secretary approaches, no doubt with good once a year? Gill Gray cause. The seasonal banquet looms 1 Keble House Manor Fields large. Almost certainly fresh figs, nd good cheer is hard to find Putney Hill SW15 3LS gold-leafed dragées and the like are A here at Newsletter Towers phone 020 8780 0866 more difficult to find, and it is not this year. It seems it may not be difficult to believe that the agencies long before we will not be the only Committee are unable to provide reliable ones to look down on our readers Sheila Allen flunkies as once they were. from a great height. Rumours have 13 Earlsfield Road SW18 3DB abounded, Newsletter Towers may phone 020 8874 2341 A certain licence is accepted, we see soon no longer be the only tower Bruce St Julian-Bown ourselves as a reasonable chap, give on the block. But where we are a 39c Heathfield Road SW18 2PH phone 020 8871 3872 and take, but – there was muttering figment these others are not, but Iain Gray in the ranks, the words fickle and talking of figs, go slowly to the back Studio 8 Royal Victoria demanding were heard. But we cover, stopping on the way at the Patriotic Building SW18 3SX derive no little comfort that it has delights within. And be of good phone 020 8870 4567 been so since time immemorial. cheer, it may not happen! Valerie Taylor 35 Fishponds Road Contents SW17 7LH 020 8767 3814 Linda Ulrich An Ugly Monster 4 6 Spencer Park SW18 2SX Goodbye to All That 6 020 8874 5648 Arrowheads and an armadillo 8 Wild in the City 9 Meetings Team The Society Soirées 11 Valerie Taylor - Aviva Walton Contact of the interesting kind 15 Wendy Cater - Brenda Ferry Chez Bruce 20 Jenny Massey - Catherine Headley Diana Godden Hop-frog and Le Bal Des Ardents 21 Policing in Wandsworth 26 Newsletter Team A brief history of a Roehampton Villa 28 Peter Farrow Iain Gray The Emanuel School Archive 30 Wendy Cater The Ghost of Christmas Presents 34 Coachman’s Corner 38 Distribution Team Journey’s End 40 Paschal Allen - Iain Gray - Gill Gray Gray’s Eulogy 42 Jan Passey - Charles Walton Ornament, memory and the cosmopolitan city 44 Wendy Cater A voyage of a lifetime 48 Sub-Committee Interesting Wandsworth Plant Records - 2009 50 Convenors Wandsworth Historian 51 Roads and transport Wandsworth Museum 52 Linda Ulrich Dates for your diary 2010 53 Open Spaces The South London Botanical Institute 54 Bruce St Julian-Bown Planning Phillip Whyte The front cover is of various houses in Wandsworth adding to the festive spirit. 3 An Ugly Monster in search of peace The United Nations Building in New York UN thrives here, feeding on the city’s may be a bit of a carbuncle but its heart’s deep democratic mulch. in the right place, as JOHN GIMLETTE discovers. Replete with beef and beetroot (‘Red Flannel Hash’) I tottered down to 1st, and through the visitors’ gate. The frontier of UN-land is made up of flags, t’s strange to think that, amongst a long alphabetical tail wagging its the bristling towers of Manhattan, way from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. I there exists a tiny, independent It seemed odd to be leaving cranky territory. Although it covers only Manhattan for this slightly ascetic 18 acres and has no inhabitants, political Utopia. Not only are all American rules don’t apply here; it has visitors frisked and x-rayed, but every its own tax system, its own stamps, item of incoming mail is sterilised. and its own police force (complete with dogs and furry blue hats). It even Ironically, this city of peace was once has its own army, which it borrows an area of abattoirs. Back in 1946, from everyone else. It is of course, the not everyone was happy with the site United Nations. – or the choice of New York (Britain, in particular, objected). Alternative It’s a curious sight, four great slabs suggestions included the Black Hills of of concrete and glass: one upright, Dakota and the middle of the Niagara one flat, one afterthought, and the Falls. Perhaps daftest of all was the largest, sagging like a couch. As idea that the United Nations should with everything else at the UN, the become a ship, and float around the architecture’s the work of a committee world dispensing wisdom and peace. – although Le Corbusier held sway. For years, his 1949 masterpiece, Today, the most striking feature ‘Scheme 23A’, dominated the skyline of a visit is the artwork. For an (and even appeared in films like organisation struggling along in Batman and Live and Let Die). Now, hundreds of languages, art says it all. however, it looks rather shrunken I spotted stained glass (by Chagall), and pale, like a faithful old computer. shattered globes, a guitar made That, I suppose, is the trouble with from a Kalashnikov, swords bashed modernism; it can suddenly look into ploughshares (thanks to the defunct. Soviets), a huge knotted gun (courtesy of Luxembourg) and a gallery of Along the East River, tour boats pull secretary-generals woven into carpets. in close, and mock the slabs. ‘All the Only the Chinese had misjudged rooms are identical,’ jeers the guide, the mood, with a huge frieze of the ‘to stop ‘em arguing whose is better!’ Kunming railway, hacked out of ivory. Meanwhile, other New Yorkers Inside, I queued up behind a party of barely seem to notice this cuckoo in young German soldiers, and joined a their nest. Perhaps they’ve enough guided tour. It was a slick operation, cuckoos of their own. Before my and I discovered that I was roughly visit, I stopped at the nearby ‘Comfort the 37 millionth customer since 1952. Diner’, an old steak-and-eggs joint on The guides wore blue Mondrian suits, 45th and 3rd. The waitress said, ‘We and were like airhostesses without get loadsa princes and presidents in aeroplanes. It was said they could here.’ ‘Which Princes?’ I asked, but offer tours in over twenty languages, she neither knew nor cared. To New including Swahili. Yorkers, no one matters as much as themselves.