CAMBERWELL QUARTERLY The magazine of the Camberwell Society No 179 Winter 2013/14 £1 (free to members) www.camberwellsociety.org.uk In praise of Wren Road – p8 Camberwell Farmers’ Market – p4 Austin’s of Peckhm Rye – p6 Contents Gazette Report from the Chair 3 LOCAL SOCIETIES, VENUES AND EVENTS The Farmers’ Market 4 We recommend checking details Austin’s of Peckham Rye 6 Brunswick Park Neighbourhood See Brixton Society website Tenants and Residents Association www.brixtonsociety.org.uk In praise of Wren Road 8 Jason Mitchell 07985 548 544 [email protected] Minet Conservation Association Book Review 11 020 7737 8210 Burgess Park, Friends of www.minet.fsnet.co.uk Madcap Violet 12 For meetings, events and updates on Burgess Park improvements Nunhead Cemetery Community Council 13 www.friendsofburgesspark.org.uk Linden Grove, SE15. Friends of [email protected] Nunhead Cemetery (FONC) Christmas Party 14 020 8693 6191 Butterfly Tennis Club www.fonc.org.uk www.butterflytennis.com Directory 15 Peckham Society Camberwell Gardens Guild Peter Frost 020 8613 6757 Membership enquiries to: Sunday 16 February 3pm An update Pat Farrugia, 17 Kirkwood Road, on archaeology in Southwark THE CAMBERWELL SE15 3XT (Christopher Constable) Goose SOCIETY Green Centre, St John’s Church MEMBERSHIP & Carnegie Library, Friends of www.peckhamsociety.org.uk EVENTS See the Friends’ tray in the Library or [email protected] Ruskin Park, Friends of Doug Gillies 020 7703 5018 Membership is open to anyone Concerts in St Giles’Church who lives, works, or is interested Camberwell Church Street SE5 Forum in Camberwell. [email protected] SE5Forum.org.uk [email protected] The Executive Committee is Cuming Museum elected annually at the Society’s South London Gallery Old Walworth Town Hall, 151 AGM. Meetings of the Executive 65 Peckham Road SE5. Walworth Road, SE17 1RY. Committee are usually held on Open: Tuesday to Sunday – 12pm- 020 7525 2332 the first Thursday of the 6pm, closed on Monday (Currently closed due to fire) month – please contact the www.southlondongallery.org Secretary for details. Members Dulwich Picture Gallery are welcome to attend as Southwark Friends of the Earth College Road, SE21 7AD observers with prior notice to Stephanie & Jim Lodge 020 8693 5254. the Secretary, Robert 020 7701 3331. Emails: www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk Wainwright (see inside back [email protected] cover for contact details). [email protected] Herne Hill Society Jeffrey Doorn 020 7274 7008 Sub-Committes on planning, the Wells Way Triangle Residents Membership: Herne Hill Society public realm, traffic and Association PO Box 27845, SE24 9XA transport, publications and local Andrew Osborne www.hernehillsociety.org.uk history form an important part [email protected] Lambethans’ Society of the Society’s work and all members are welcome to involve themselves in areas which interest them. The views expressed in the Camberwell Quarterly are not necessarily those of the Society unless clearly stated as such. The Camberwell Society is a registered Cover: Datchelor Place will be the first pocket space created. This is an artist’s charity (No 264751). impression of it how might look (see page 13) 179.2 Report from the Chair Getting about in Camberwell elcome to the winter segregation of cars and bikes is going edition of the to be the only way of preventing the WCamberwell Quarterly. tragic accidents that we have seen in Let me wish you all the compliments recent weeks, one of which was of the season and a healthy and unfortunately in Camberwell? happy 2014. Now to aviation: I see that I want first to talk about Lambeth has given the planning transport – trains, bikes and planes in go-ahead to the new helipad on top of fact. On the trains front, you will find King’s which will allow the air a photo on page 7 of the opening of ambulances to land there rather than Denmark Hill station. While this is in Ruskin Park. I am sure that the good news after all the disruption time saved will be critical when you caused by the works, I can’t help consider the work that they do with thinking, as a rush-hour user, that the major accidents in the south of designers have somehow missed a England. On the related topic of trick. To my mind, the redesign was a aircraft noise, Society member Nigel great opportunity to add extra station Haigh has now established a dialogue access points on Windsor Walk and with the right people at Southwark further down Champion Park. The Council, and I am sure that our views station seems to have been a victim Nick Holt will be taken into account. of its own success with the coming of Following the editor’s appeal in the London Overground, and the good news comes in the form of the the last issue for help with the resulting change in many people’s works for the Cycle Superhighway Quarterly, I am delighted to welcome travel patterns. We did have the that passes through Camberwell on Marie Staunton to the team and hope station designers come along to our its way to the Oval and beyond. There she will find the work fun and 2012 AGM and I might well take this is also a new cycle repair shop and rewarding. up with them. The queues in the café in Camberwell, to reflect the in- I hope too that you enjoy the mornings, both for tickets and to get creasing interest in cycling in articles in the CQ, and as ever, I am in and out of the station seem to have London. However (and here let me always happy to hear from members simply moved around the corner. say that I am not a cyclist), I must and non-members alike about Isn’t this what travel planning was confess to finding confusing some of Camberwell matters! meant to be about? the new road markings along When it comes to bikes, then Camberwell New Road. Then there is Nick Holt there is good news and bad news. The the bad news – surely complete [email protected] 179.3 Camberwell Green Farmers’ Market Eclectic bunch of stall holders provides a range of goodies efore dawn breaks over Romney Marsh local farmer BClive Ovenden, 55, is up at 4am selecting meat for Camberwell Farmers’ Market. It is Saturday and over the next five hours an Italian baker, two theatre designers, a jazz pianist, a couple of fruit growers and a former nursery teacher will make their way to Camberwell Green. An eclectic bunch of stallholders. Climate change forced Clive to stop the vegetable farming that had supported his family for six generations. “Now we get hardly any rain in summer. I have been on the land all my life and it is getting dryer and dryer,” he says. So four years ago Clive Ovenden is the sixth generation of his family to farm in the Romney the Ovendens switched to Marshes.“Climate change forced us to switch to lifestock from fruit and veg” livestock. Hebridean sheep, Sussex cows and other rare breeds graze free online funding site Kickstarter in future is bright. The Green is being range on their 500 acres in Kent June. “People we have never met remodelled – with a great space for which is also home to pigs, goats, invested up to £500 in us.” the market next to the buses and chickens, geese and ducks. Everything They are now setting up a shops – over the next year or two.” Clive sells comes from the farm shop/café to sell food and recycled Annette Cauneen from Urban which supports a butcher and his two furniture next to the Green. “We Farmers who runs the market talks of apprentices, Rebecca and Crystal (the come here every week to sell our more events like the Christmas trade is increasingly popular with home-made jams and chutneys and market to grow customers but keep girls) as well as Clive’s wife, daughter keep in touch with everyone who has the ethos of producers selling direct Zoe and son Ryan. supported us and let them know how to customer. From six generations to six the hunt for a shop is going.” Next to Barbara are Chelsea, 40, months – that is how long Pigeon Helen and Georgia live in and Karen from Thrognall Farm, 250 Hole, the stall opposite Clive, has Camberwell as does Barbara acres near Sittingbourne in Kent. been running. Grinning behind their Pattinson whose ten-year campaign Chelsea, who has the biggest smile jams and chutneys former theatre for a Camberwell market led to a free on the market, is always willing to designers Helen Steidl, 29, and stall for her SE5 Forum. This supplement her fruit and veg with Georgia Ellison, 28, tell how they ex-nursery teacher has seen business special orders. “Customers ask for all raised £21k in 30 days through the slowly building on the Green. “The sorts of things – dandelions, nettles and even thistles.” Chelsea and Karen pick the fruit and veg straight from the fields of Joan Attwood’s family farm every Friday. They enjoy the work, except for the cold when thermals are essential. Which is why Chelsea hopes her three children will get nice warm office jobs. It is the sun of his native Salerno that Marcello Rizzo, 47, misses. “When the weather is good I love the Green but when it is freezing it is hard to come.” Trained as an Arabic teacher he returned to the family trade of baking when he came to the UK, setting up his own business a year ago.