BEDSIDE 2013 1 Seasonal Greetings from The High Chair How time fl ies, another Christmas is close and hopefully you have all enjoyed the past year with good health and have done those things which you ought to have done and left undone those things that you should not have attempted. Decorating and DIY come to mind! Wandsworth as a place to live continues to thrive but the changes which we see with each new completed building seem to bring less sky and more crowding on the roads, trains and buses. Thankfully we have many green open spaces which have been safeguarded from encroachment. Our rivers, the Thames and the Wandle, are underappreciated and as far as the Thames is concerned not used for navigation nearly as much as is possible. The paths beside each are continuing to be enjoyed by many but there are still gaps in the walks along the riverbanks. During the year we have organised many different activities for members which we (the Executive Committee) hope that you have enjoyed. The attendance for the Thursday evening events has been most encouraging and other midweek walks or visits to new places of interest have been well supported. I must however make a renewed plea for more help from members. The Executive Committee, Sub-Committees and lots of other stalwarts do a tremendous job with keeping the Society on the straight and narrow but we would love to have the assistance of those who may be able to take us “off piste” once in a while! We are in the process of revising the website which will be launched in the New Year but we do need the help of those, possibly younger members, who have strengths in computing to help when launched. I understand that the post would be called a webmaster or possibly webmistress but I will not go further as I might get into deep trouble! Have a very happy Christmas and I hope a joyful New Year. Philip Whyte, Chairman 2 THE WANDSWORTH SOCIETY President Iain Gray Shirley Passmore Studio 8 Royal Victoria Contents Patriotic Building Chairman SW18 3SX Philip Whyte Seasonal Greetings from the High Chair 2 020 8870 4567 49 West Side Wandsworth Valerie Taylor Country life: positively immersed 4 Common SW18 2EE 35 Fishponds Road 25 years on... 6 020 8874 4745 SW17 7LH A Visit to the Holy Land 7 Vice-Chairman 020 8767 3814 Situation vacant Linda Ulrich Rare hybrid oak discovered in Wandsworth 8 6a Spencer Park SW18 2SX Biodiversity in Wandsworth 10 Secretary 020 8874 5648 John Dawson Our Rivers: The Wandle, the Thames, and 210 Beechcroft Road Meetings Team the West London River Group 12 SW17 7DP Valerie Taylor, Wendy A Gem of an Idea 14 020 8772 4282 Cater, Jenny Massey, Catherine Headley, St Luke’s Music Society 10 years on 17 Treasurer Diana Godden Society Soirées 19 Norman Holmes Flat 7 Tiffany Heights Newsletter Team City of Food 20 59 Standen Road Celia Jones, Nigel Muriss Wandsworth’s Clinical Commissioning Group 22 SW18 5TF Distribution Team Smarter Mobility, Shared Space... Where Next? 24 020 8877 9616 Paschal Allen, Iain Gray, One Working Day 26 Membership Secretary Jan Passey, Wendy Cater, Wandsworth Museum – a success story 30 Gill Gray Peter Farrow, Gill Gray 1 Keble House Manor Fields Sub-Committee Mulberry Place at Trinity Hospice 32 SW15 3LS Convenors How Neighbourhoods Change 34 020 8780 0866 Roads and Transport A Snake in the Grass 38 Committee Harry Waddingham Cabaret Mechanical Theatre 40 Sheila Allen 61 Magdalen Road London Down in the Tube Station at Midnight 42 13 Earlsfi eld Road SW18 3NE SW18 3PB 020 8874 8784 Adventures of a Victorian Perambulator 46 020 8874 2341 Open Spaces Forthcoming Society Events 48 Bruce St Julian-Bown Bruce St Julian-Bown Gray’s Eulogy 49 39c Heathfi eld Road SW18 2PH Planning George Aubrey Lyward and Geoffrey Cholerton Smith 50 020 8874 6966 Philip Whyte Marcus Aurelius and life-centred funeral ceremonies 54 The Society’s website is Richard Steele and Wandsworth 57 www.wandsworthsociety.org.uk Shorts Film Fund 60 Front cover: some of the presents Peter Farrow hopes to receive A Good Send-Off 62 BEDSIDE 2013 3 Country life: positively immersed by Mark Haworth-Booth s some readers may recall, my raspberry patch in our old vegetable remote farmhouse where Coleridge is wife and I left Wandsworth – garden, which is netted to exclude reputed to have composed his poem after 30 years of married life rabbits and is therefore safe from ‘Kubla Khan’ in 1797. We went so that Ain the borough – in autumn foxes. The mother duck managed to I could write a piece on Coleridge, the 2009. We have just completed our shepherd her ducklings, just after poem and the place for the Exmoor fourth year in North Devon. Although hatching – when they were small Review. The farm is set beside Culbone we nip back to the capital every now enough – through the rabbit wire Combe, a wooded valley which and then, we feel positively immersed to the safety of the pond. In high descends to the delightful Culbone in our new habitat and community. summer we had a total of 24 assorted church, set in a hamlet near the ducks and ducklings. I’m not sure what seashore. The church is the smallest One of the main events this year was happened to the lost seven – possibly one still regularly used for services the arrival of four Mallards – a drake some of the mature ducks left, in England. Mr Richards of Ash Farm and three ducks. Unfortunately, they perhaps also some young drakes left is the churchwarden and his wife is saw off the pair of moorhens that for territories of their own. Did the fox the organist. I believe that they are raised four dusky chicks last year. get any? Impossible to say. The ducks often also the congregation. The However, the Mallards in their turn are a great hit with visitors young and reredos is by Voysey. The church is bred successfully. I‘ve just counted old. A charming six-year-old named kept in funds by contributions from eight young drakes, eight females, Amélie came to see and feed them the many walkers on the South West plus the paterfamilias, already in his three times with her grandmother and Coastal Park (SWCP). This reminds breeding plumage. Although the pond made the spirited drawing illustrated me to mention that I have so far is full of insects and water plants, I here. walked, with a friend who visits feed them twice a day – their food from London, from the start of the being pellets that fl oat. I can’t give SWCP in Minehead (in Somerset) them ordinary duck food because to Crackington Haven (in Cornwall) when I fed them on shore a dozen – which is between the better-known pheasants would join in. The fi rst time towns of Bude and Boscastle. The I used the fl oating pellets, broadcast wonderful summer was great for onto the pond, the pheasants rushed walking, of course, with dazzling to the water’s edge and then looked displays of Honeysuckle, Heather, reproachfully at me as if to say: ‘This Foxgloves and many other wild is most unfair – you know perfectly fl owers. well that we can’t swim’. The ducks suffered repeated nest failures for Recalling the walk reminds me in turn various reasons. The fi rst brood to of the recent visit to the southwest hatch was on one of the duck rafts by Simon Armitage. The poet decided I made, using a pallet, buoyed by to walk the SWCP from Minehead to milk containers and covered by a Penzance, fi nishing with a jaunt to the willow hurdle. Rosebay Willowherb Scillies. He set up the walk troubador- and Watermint had colonized the My wife and I treated ourselves to a style, performing at a different local raft, giving the sitting duck some B&B break this Spring at Ash Farm, venue each evening in return for protection from the summer heat Culbone, on the northern edge of supper, a bed and a sandwich for next wave. The other nest was in the Exmoor National Park. This is the day – plus whatever his audience 4 THE WANDSWORTH SOCIETY cared to put in a sock he passed programme. Graham came round at the end of each reading. over from West Somerset to I heard Simon twice – once in a give a lecture in Barnstaple converted chapel in our village called in October, launching a Heavenly House, and the following series on ‘Sustainability’ evening at the Plough Arts Centre in which I helped organize Great Torrington. The fi rst was most for the North Devon Green memorable as it was so nice having Party. The talk was about the this distinguished poet entertaining us tradition of pasture farming, in a drawing room, with lots of well- with some arable, at which behaved children lying on cushions Britain excelled, producing at his feet. I was impressed that he healthy foods from grass- told different jokes and read different fed stock. This tradition poems on the second night, to a much lasted from 1750 to 1950 larger audience. There will be a book, but was ousted in the age to be called Walking Away. of oil and subsidies. Now we have a perverse agriculture Long ago, when Rosie and I were of constant inputs which, pondering leaving London for the ironically, reduce the country, our friend Olive Cook – a organic life of the soil and writer who lived in Saffron Walden the nutritional value of our – would encourage us by saying that food.