‘Predatory culture’ – challenge to Dulwich College continues

Boys boarding school Dulwich College has been rocked in the last week by allegations of a culture of sexual abuse and harassment amongst its students, targeting in particular young women attending local schools with which the College has links, notably James Allen's Girls School (JAGS). A demonstration planned for last Friday by pupils from local ...

Green Onions re-opens – Stefan Finnis (1974-2021) remembered

Green Onions, the much loved health food and record shop in Clifton Rise, New Cross, has reopened after a period of closure.Sad to report that the co-founder of the shop, Stefan Finnis, died on 15 January 2021. There's a lovely collection of photos and memories of Stefan online, and a book of remembrance in the ...

Vigil to remember victims of patriarchal violence – Telegraph Hill Park

There was a vigil in Telegraph Hill Upper Park last night (20th March 2021) 'to remember victims of patriarchal violence' . A list of women killed by men stretched across the ground ending in Sarah Everard,  recently killed while walking home in Clapham.Those present read out the following together: 'We lay down flowers and light candles ...

Captain Syder and The Pirates of the South China Sea

Located alongside one of the circular pathways in Ladywell cemetery perched at a perilous angle lies a family headstone whose inscription is all but weathered away. In a serendipitous moment when undertaking tombstone research the sunlight caught the stone and the bare outline of the word 'Pirates' was briefly visible!  Other lettering revealed the name ...

Haberdashers, Hatcham and Slavery

[UPDATE - September 2021 - Haberdashers schools have now confirmed that they are removing the Aske part of their name, as well as dropping their archaic motto of 'serve and obey'. The New Cross school will 'seek to re-purpose the statue of Aske at Hatcham College... and aim to contextualise it in a way that ...

SAFA House, Arklow Road SE14 – Lady Flo’s and more

If you haven't been down Arklow Road for a while you might be in for a surprize, the new Anthology Deptford Foundry housing development is complete and lived in with little trace of the former industrial landscape.  A statue on site of a human figure with propellors hints at its former use as the location for ...

Work to the Lane

THE LANE The mature hawthorns along this lane are probably the oldest trees in the park. Mentioned in the Edwardian tales of “Young Philip Madison” by local author Henry Williamson ‘Away [from the crest] in the distance, under much-climbed thorn trees, played the hatless children.’ We have dug out a width of the brambles and ...

Jack London and the 1902 Cavilla family murders

Located amidst the bosky acreage of Brockley cemetery in an unmarked grave lies the last resting place of five members of the Cavilla family, whose lives were tragically ended in September 1902 in a brutal murder that shocked the nation. An unemployed house painter called Frank Cavilla, aged 34 years of Batavia road, New Cross, ...

Harold Moody & W.E.B. Du Bois – Queens Road SE15 as international anti-racist clearing house

A blue plaque at 164 Queens Road, Peckham, commemorates its status as the one time home of Dr Harold Moody (1882-1947). Moody moved from Jamaica to London to become a doctor, and established his first GP practice at 111 King’s Road (now King’s Grove), Peckham, in 1913. In 1922 he moved to nearby 164 Queens ...

Recent radical street art (New Cross, Brockley, Deptford)

From the radical canvas that is the streetscape of South East London, a few recent interventions in the social fabric...Up against the wallSeen on the bus stop outside Goldsmiths in New Cross today (20 February 2021):The full text reads: ' We are all outlaws in the eyes of England / In order to survive we ...