Issue 7 of The Lewisham Ledger

Opening up

A FREE NEWSPAPER FOR LEWISHAM

The Lewisham Ledger I S S U E 7 | J U N E /J U LY 2 0 1 9

Creating a cafe from scratch PA G E 13

From Lagos to Lee The SE13 bar with sax appeal

The tales of Tomisin Adepeju

PAG E 25

PA G E 1 0

Maritime man

Meet local hero Jim Radford PAGE 26

The good son

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Welcome to The Lewisham Ledger, a free newspaper for the borough. n each edition of the paper we run a special section on a different area of Lewisham, in addition to the usual borough-wide news and views. Previous issues have covered Catford, Deptford, New Cross and Telegraph Hill, Forest Hill, Brockley and Hither Green.

This edition shines a spotlight on Sydenham, with a special set of features that begins on page 16 with a photo-essay on Sydenham Garden – an inspiring community space that helps people improve their mental health and wellbeing through gardening.

The paper is now available to pick up in 160 places across the borough, from shops, salons and libraries to pubs, cafes and community centres. We also have dedicated stands at Lewisham Library and Goldsmiths, which take hundreds of copies each time. For a full list of stockists, visit tinyurl.com/llstockists.

This month marks one year in print for The Lewisham Ledger, which was crowdfunded in 2018 by more than 100 people. We now rely solely on advertising to stay in print and would like to say a big thank you to all the brilliant local businesses who’ve supported us over the past 12 months.

If you run a business or organisation and are interested in advertising in our next issue, published in early August, please get in touch via lewishamledger@gmail.com to find out more. As you can see from this edition, you will be in excellent company.

Thanks for reading!

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Mark McGinlay and Kate White

The Lewisham Ledger

Members of Extinction Rebellion Lewisham block a road during the rebellion in central London in April

Climate campaigners seek rebels for the cause The Lewisham branch of Extinction Rebellion (XR) is urging local people to join them in the fight against climate change.

Mariam Aslam became involved with XR – a global movement that uses nonviolent resistance to protest against climate breakdown and achieve radical change – after reading last year’s landmark report on global warming by the UN. It warned that the world must take immediate and drastic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next 12 years or face a climate crisis.

“I was overwhelmed after reading the report,” said the 24-year-old architecture student, who lives in Catford.

“Then I read about Extinction Rebellion’s blockade of the five bridges last November and thought, ‘This is amazing, this is what we need. We need people to be shouting out about this, because it’s not being heard.’”

Mariam went to an XR introductory meeting in Peckham and volunteered to start a local group for Lewisham. “We started it [the Lewisham branch] in November,” she said. “There were four members at that point and we now have over 300.”

Cover photograph Jim Radford by Paul Stafford Editors Mark McGinlay, Kate White Creative directors Andy Keys, Marta Pérez Sainero Type designers a2-type.co.uk londontype.co.uk Photographer Lima Charlie Features editor Emma Finamore Sub-editor Jack Aston

The group is currently organising a weekend for members to train in non-violent direct action. It’s planning various direct actions in the borough and also hopes to hold a street festival in July, where local organisations will have the chance to take stalls.

“We really want to create change in the borough,” Mariam said. “We know the council have declared a climate emergency, which is great. We want to ensure they’re doing everything they can to meet those goals of becoming carbon neutral by 2030.

“Mainly we want to connect, support and build other communities in Lewisham, because there are so many grassroots movements, so many faith groups in the borough. Lewisham’s so diverse and we want to bring all these different people into the conversation.

“There’s so much work going on, so many communities, and we just want to connect that and build resilient communities for the future, because that’s what we need in order to face this crisis.

“Previously climate change has been a very middle class, white movement, and we need to move away from that.

Climate change is going to affect us all and we need to look at doing things locally, building and supporting each other.

“Everything on a local level needs to change, and that change needs to come from us, from the people. It’s about people being involved in the kind of society and the kind of borough they want to live in, and I think we have real traction to make that happen.”

Brockley resident Juliana Westcott is building up the families branch of XR Lewisham, which has about 15 families

Contributors Rosario Blue, Julie Bull, Sarah Elizabeth Cox, Sue Foll, Helen Graves, Seamus Hasson, Josh Lamb, Alexander McBride Wilson, Peter Rhodes, Colin Richardson, Nikki Spencer, Paul Stafford, Alice Troy-Donovan, Luke G Williams, John Yabrifa Marketing and social media Mark McGinlay

signed up so far. “It’s a space that people who are new to XR feel safe to join,” said the 31-year-old artist and mum of two.

“A lot of people who’ve been in contact start with some sort of climate anxiety and after a few weeks of actively engaging in planning actions, talking to people and thinking about how they can change things or at least raise awareness, their anxiety has been remediated.”

The group is launching a parent-toparent support group and has begun a playground activists campaign. It is also starting a permaculture group.

“I’m quite excited to see what we can do here, locally in Lewisham,” Juliana said.

New Cross resident Louis Slater is another XR member. “The really lovely thing about XR is the people and the communities it creates,” said the 21-year-old software engineer and researcher, whose mum and sisters are also involved in the movement.

Asked why he decided to join XR, Louis said: “The science shows we are headed for ecological breakdown and social collapse as a result of that. But the message is not getting through to people through conventional means, whether that’s journalism or even some forms of protest.

“Until now people haven’t been listening and it hasn’t been at the forefront of the political agenda like it should be. It should be headline news in every single newspaper every single day.

“It’s urgent, and XR’s approach conveys that urgency. It’s being spoken about now and I think that’s a lot to do with XR.” To find out more and get involved, visit rebellion.earth and @xrlewisham

Editorial and advertising lewishamledger@gmail.com Follow us @lewishamledger @lewishamledger @lewishamledger lewishamledger.tumblr.com

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Magic moments

A tip-top guy

An organisation that seeks to empower, inspire and educate women by holding regular events and activities across south-east London has launched a new project called Moments4Seniors.

It got underway in June with a fashion show starring senior supermodels, with mayoress of Lewisham Barbara Gray as guest speaker. Next up is a coach trip to Eastbourne, which will set off from Bell Green retail park in Sydenham on August 2. Tickets for seniors cost £10.

The group behind the events is JustBe, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Founder and CEO Yvette McDonald said: “Moments4Seniors is a project that will provide events and cultural activities to enable our senior citizens living in Lewisham to achieve social inclusion.

“Many feel lonely and isolated as family members move away and feel society becomes more fragmented. We want to honour and celebrate our elders and all they have done and continue to do for us.”

JustBe was founded in 2009 when Yvette had a vision to bring a small group of women together of all ages, cultures, faiths and backgrounds through events and activities.

It has since engaged with around 5,000 women, encouraging them to relax, laugh, learn and grow.

Yvette has won numerous awards for her work, including a BME active citizens award for an outstanding BME community group.

For full listings of JustBe’s events, visit just-be.co.uk

JustBe founder Yvette McDonald

New Cross pub under threat The owners of a popular pub in New Cross have warned they will be forced to close if plans to turn the upper floors of the building into flats are approved, writes Josh Lamb.

The White Hart on New Cross Road puts on four nights of live music every week, ranging from traditional Irish music and jazz to local DJs until 3am on Friday and Saturday nights. It is also known for its craft beer offering.

The upstairs space in the gradeII-listed building is currently used as a guest house, but Wellington Pub Company, which owns the freehold, is hoping to convert it into four new flats with a reconfigured pub below.

Patrick Ryan, 30, who co-owns the pub with his brother Joseph, said that if the new homes are green-lit by Lewisham Council, customers can “say goodbye to late nights and music” as the business would become untenable.

He said the White Hart depends on its recorded and live music, which makes up 50% of its turnover, and said the development would “kill us, and any pub owner who may go in after us”.

“We offer a safe and creative space for everyone,” he said. “We encourage business in the area, and without us, other businesses may also go under.

Closure is detrimental to the area – if the pub shuts, it’ll be closed for at least two years.”

Pub manager Dan Beames, 34, said the pub has helped make the local area “vibrant and welcoming”, providing jobs for young people and space for local DJs to perform. He added: “We offer a family-friendly environment during the day, and at night we cater for the younger, diverse community with club nights. That is the kind of community we want to be a part of.”

Patrick said that Wellington has not listened to his concerns. “They’ve tried

The White Hart on New Cross Road

everything to get us out. At the end of the day, it’s their building. However, if they lose the pub business side to their asset, it’ll be a loss to the community.

They don’t seem to care about that.”

Staff at the pub are spearheading a campaign to save it and have launched an online petition to the council’s planning department, which has received over 3,100 signatures. More than 270 people have also objected to the scheme on the council’s website.

Patrick, who brews his own beers under the name Cellar Boys Brewery, said the pub will soon be launching its own session IPA named #savethehart, to further push the campaign.

New Cross ward councillor Joe Dromey urged people to object to the planning application, tweeting: “The fantastic White Hart in New Cross is under threat from a proposed development above the pub. It could limit its licence and jeopardise its future.

If you want to protect this wonderful pub and music venue, submit an objection.”

He said that none of the proposed flats will be affordable, adding: “We face a dire housing crisis, but this won’t meet local housing need.”

Wellington Pub Company did not respond to requests for comment.

To view the petition and the planning application and have your say, go to tinyurl.com/whitehartpub

Family and friends have paid tribute to Ken Johnson, longstanding owner of Kickstart Motorcycles in Lee, who sadly passed away in April aged 76.

Ken, who lived in Sydenham, was described as a “lovely man”, who was “full of positive spirit”. He was muchloved by motorcycle enthusiasts, business-owners, neighbours and other local people, even those with no interest in bikes.

Born in 1943, Ken started work at Deeprose Bros motorcycle dealers on Brownhill Road in Catford in 1958, and later moved to Deeprose’s other shop on Burnt Ash Hill in Lee, opposite the station. A motorcycle dealer has stood on the site since Tooley’s opened there in 1929.

In 1982 Ken took over the Lee shop from Deeprose and renamed it Kickstart Motorcycles. Former customer Jon Wright described it as the “oldest and best bike shop in south London” on the Catford Central Forum.

Customer and local resident John Kamau Savill was among a group of motorbikers who gathered outside Kickstart to ride from Lee to Gravesend crematorium for Ken’s funeral on May 8.

They were joined by many more bikers from Kent and its surrounds.

John said Ken, a noted MZ motorcycle expert, was a “lovely, cheerful, helpful man – a motorcycle dealer of the old school, [who are] fast disappearing”.

Ken’s wife Christine, with whom he had two daughters, Helen and Nikki, also served in the shop at times.

Helen said: “He was a lovely man, full of positive spirit and he knew all of his hundreds of customers by name. He would give odd jobs to young lads who he felt needed some guidance in life and gave work to people when he could who he knew were on hard times.

“He would repair and MOT bikes for people for free on a pay-me-when-youcan situation if they had fallen on hard times. He would lend tools to people to mend their own bikes in his garage if it was a small job as he knew if he did it the job would cost more.

“I have seen him take meat from the freezer to give to guys who he knew couldn’t afford a Sunday lunch with their families. He would pay the odd mobile phone bill for people too.

“He was a great dad, granddad and great-granddad, always buying little treats for the children. Lots of lovely things were said about him. He was a tip-top guy.”

Ken Johnson with his wife Christine

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Boost for local businesses A row of shops in New Cross is set to be transformed into a focal point for local enterprise and entrepreneurship.

The Enterprise Hub will be based in the heart of ShapesLewisham, the new creative enterprise zone (CEZ) for Deptford and New Cross.

Created by Goldsmiths, it will provide flexible and affordable workspace for up to 100 local businesses and offer help, advice and support to hundreds more, while also creating up to 80 new jobs.

The site, at 302-312 New Cross Road, is owned by Goldsmiths and is part of its New Cross campus. The refurbishment of the shops is part of a wider plan that will also see the historic Deptford Town Hall made more accessible for hosting community events.

Professor David Oswell, prowarden for research and enterprise at Goldsmiths, said: “The service will nurture innovative ideas generated in the Lewisham area and help them to grow into successful new businesses and social enterprise projects that benefit the community.

“Local residents have long suggested that the shops on New Cross Road need major refurbishment, so this is about taking the opportunity as we do this to give Lewisham a focal point for creative innovation.”

Tara Khorzad’s Lewisham-based fashion start-up is the sort of local business the Enterprise Hub will look to support. Tara grew up in Honor Oak and has lived in the borough most of her life.

A print designer by trade, she spotted a

Lewisham-based entrepreneur Tara Khorzad

Catford-based butcher David Oakman

Bangers and cash

gap in the market for colourful and fun festival wear and launched a collection of festival leggings in 2017.

In 2018, 25 London boroughs applied to the mayor of London for CEZ funding and Lewisham was one of the six that were chosen to become a CEZ last December.

The ShapesLewisham CEZ aims to better connect and amplify the creative community and help it develop stronger roots and more sustainable practices.

It also aims to protect the creative sector – which provides one in six jobs in London – by increasing affordable space for artists and entrepreneurs and boosting jobs and training opportunities for local people.

Last month Deptford Foundry, one of London’s largest purpose-built complexes of affordable artists’ studios, opened in the CEZ area. It offers 85 workspaces and studios to more than 100 artists and creative businesses.

Social enterprise and arts organisation Second Floor Studios & Arts acquired a 250-year lease on the building, meaning a creative community can grow and flourish in the space for years to come.

Each artist and business has pledged to volunteer for an hour each month with local charity and community projects.

Damien Egan, mayor of Lewisham, said: “I am delighted the mayor of London chose Deptford and New Cross as one of the capital’s first creative enterprise zones”, adding: “It will boost Lewisham’s creative reputation regionally, nationally and internationally.”

A local butcher whose business was in the “last chance saloon” has been saved from closure by a community campaign.

David Oakman joined the butchers on Muirkirk Road in Catford in 1993 and has owned the shop since 2006.

But supermarkets, the rise of online shopping and spiralling meat costs have led to tough trading conditions.

In January David was on the brink of laying off staff and said that “even then, it would have been up in the air how long I would last on my own. It was a bit of a last chance saloon.”

Catford resident and social media marketer Laura Williams was inspired to help after spotting a post about David on the Corbett Residents’ Association

Facebook page. She set up a Facebook profile for David – who previously had no social media presence – and within a couple of weeks he had 300 likes.

“People who live on the estate but had no idea he was there started using it and there were really positive reviews for the food,” Laura said. “People have been dropping the supermarket shop and getting their meat and fish from David.

“I was born and brought up in Catford and I’ve been here 38 years. I’ve always known the butchers to be there and I thought it was really sad that this service to the community could end. They’re really personable, they love a chat and what they don’t know about meat isn’t worth knowing basically.”

David said: “We’ve had around a 50% increase in trade since the campaign began – that is pretty standard now on a Saturday from what it was. One Saturday we increased our trade by 100% – it was our best Saturday ever.

“We’re getting a lot of new customers – once they’ve come in and sampled our products, like the homemade sausages, they appreciate the quality compared to what they’re getting in the supermarket.

“I try to do some really good special offers that more than compete with the supermarkets, if not better them.”

Local resident Emily Kohn said: “These guys are excellent, they work so hard, make awesome sausages and always know what red wine will go with their steaks. We couldn’t recommend them any more than we already do to friends and neighbours.”

Another resident, Nicky Nicholls, said: “Heading to Oakman is now part of our Saturday routine. I love their knowledge, our chats about F1 and the chance to catch up with other Corbetters in there. They’re certainly competitively priced against the supermarkets and you’re getting the quality.”

Robert Riley, owner of Prestige barbershop in Brockley

Combating cancer A Brockley barbershop hosted a unique outreach event to raise awareness around cancer.

Prestige barbershop in Brockley Cross welcomed experts from Macmillan Cancer Support to chat with customers and staff about the importance of cancer awareness.

They also answered questions on everything from signs and symptoms to work and welfare advice.

Prestige owner Robert Riley said: “Cancer doesn’t discriminate, so it’s been great to have an open and honest

conversation about the disease, as well as spreading the word about the help people can get from Macmillan Cancer Support.”

The charity’s engagement lead for south-east London, Perpetua Egan, added: “Macmillan wants to help anyone impacted by cancer find their best way through.

“Awareness events such as these bring Macmillan’s cancer experts right to the heart of our local communities, as not everyone has the time to visit the GP or they might have worries they don’t want to discuss with friends and family.”

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Bellingham boozer back in business A landmark pub in Bellingham is set to reopen this summer.

Historic boozer the Fellowship and Star on Randlesdown Road will open on June 14 thanks to a £4 million lotteryfunded restoration project. The vast space will feature a cinema, live music stage, music hub and cafe.

The grade-II-listed tavern was the first inn to open on a London housing estate as part of the “homes for heroes” movement after World War One. Boxer Henry Cooper trained there before his world-renowned fight against Muhammad Ali and it has welcomed musicians including Fleetwood Mac and Eric Clapton to the stage.

However, in later years the pub fell into decline, downsized and eventually closed. Phoenix Community Housing was then granted lottery funding to restore it to its former glory.

The pub is already promising a packed programme of performances, with Bez from Happy Mondays, This is England star Thomas Turgoose, Johnny Cash tribute band Cash and the London Astrobeat Orchestra all on the bill this summer.

The Fellowship will work with local breweries including independent craft brewery and taproom Brockley Brewery and Sydenham-based Ignition.

The pub cinema is also back in action and will screen its first film – SpiderMan: Far From Home – in July before an eclectic line-up of blockbusters and independent films is unveiled.

The Fellowship will be operated by the Electric Star Group, which runs further pubs in Leyton, Hackney Downs and Bethnal Green among others. Director Rob Star said: “I’m really excited to be opening a pub south of the river. I went to Goldsmiths in the mid-90s and lived in the area for almost 10 years, so it’s great to come back and open what will be our biggest venue to date.”

From the art Sydenham Arts is moving away from its annual 10-day festival model to offer a year-round programme of art and culture in SE26.

The new programme will include monthly film nights, chamber music concerts at St Bartholomew’s Church, multi-arts initiative Platform – offering everything from art and photography exhibitions to theatre – and #Sixty, a series of events for people aged 60-plus.

Next month the ever-popular artists’ trail will return for its 11th year, with more than 100 artists showcasing their work in over 20 local venues.

Sydenham Arts, which is based at the Sydenham Centre, will also continue its outreach work in local schools.

“Our mission as a charity is to provide, promote and advance the arts for the benefit of everybody in Sydenham,” said managing director Rachel D’Cruze.

“The quality of our programming means you don’t actually have to go into town; you can come home and it’s right on your doorstep.”

A breath of fresh air A local clean air campaign group is calling on as many people as possible to come along to an interactive community event to tackle air pollution.

Titled “A breath of fresh air: making our air cleaner and safer for Catford”, it will host inspirational speakers and workshops on ways to reduce pollution.

The group behind the free event is Clean Air for Catford, which has been investigating air pollution levels locally.

They’ve found that some parts of SE6, including areas near schools, have pollution levels that are “way over” the legal limit.

Guest speakers on the evening will include local campaigner Rosamund Kissi-Debrah from the Ella Roberta Foundation. People will be invited to suggest their own ideas and solutions in workshops and the group is hoping

The Sydenham Artists’ Trail is on July 6-7 and 13-14 from 11am-5pm. For full details on the artists taking part, visit sydenhamarts.co.uk/artists-trail

they will be encouraged to take action to reduce their own contributions to air pollution and cut emission levels in Catford.

The group’s Emily Steadman said: “I want to encourage as many people as possible to come along and chip in ideas for how we can tackle air pollution together.

“My children, and kids all over Catford, deserve to breathe safe, clean air. And we can make the air cleaner for everyone if we work as a team. We’ve got some really inspirational speakers and some exciting workshops planned – it’s going to be a great event.”

Above: members of the Clean Air for Catford campaign group

Come along on June 20, 6.45-9.15pm at the Archibald Corbett Community Library’s arts and heritage centre, 103 Torridon Road. Please register your interest via tinyurl.com/cafcatford

Spoken word artist Vanessa Kisuule performed at the 2018 festival

People’s parliament celebrates 10 years The Lewisham People’s Parliament is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.

The parliament, run by local advocacy charity Lewisham Speaking Up (LSU), was launched to help people with learning disabilities have a say on issues that are important to them and tell people in power what needs to change.

There are four meetings a year, which focus on topics such as housing, health, employment and benefits. Six elected parliament representatives then take what is said to decision-makers such as councillors, MPs and those delivering services in Lewisham.

Three years ago the project won Comic Relief funding and at that point LSU decided to “give the parliament a little more teeth”, said the charity’s selfadvocacy coordinator Marsh Stitchman.

“Over the last three years we have developed it into being a bit more challenging, and we want to make it even more so,” he said.

“It’s particularly relevant in these times of austerity that we’re still living

Above: the Lewisham People's Parliament meets four times a year

through, because people with learning disabilities often get left till last.

“We employ six people with learning disabilities as our reps, so it’s paid work for people, but the influence that it has on people – on their confidence and their ability to develop their skills at speaking and going to big council meetings and things like that – is really good.

“One of our reps, Peter, says he often feels that people with a learning disability, to quote him, get ‘swept under the carpet’ and are left till the end in society. It’s hard, because people find it difficult to speak up for themselves – they’re often shy, they’re bullied.

“I don’t like to use the phrase ‘giving people a voice’, because I think people have already got a voice. But what the parliament seeks to do is find channels for them to use their own voice.”

The Comic Relief funding comes to an end this summer, but the parliament has just received another three years’ worth of funding from the Big Lottery Community Fund – which Marsh said they’re “really, really happy about”.

Meetings are typically attended by around 50 to 60 people with learning disabilities. The reps chair the meetings with support from Marsh, whose job is then to “grease those wheels and get those meetings with the bosses and NHS managers, and support the reps to go along, say what people have said and ask, ‘What are you going to do about it?’”

For example, in October 2017 the group gave Lewisham Hospital five recommendations that would make life easier for people with learning disabilities visiting the hospital. They have just been invited to come back and check the services provided.

“It can take a long time, but there are concrete outcomes that can happen as a result of the parliament’s work,” Marsh said.

He hopes the next three years will see the parliament continue to grow and “develop a bit more forcefulness”, as well as expanding its horizons beyond Lewisham to London as a whole.

He also wants to increase its social media presence. “Obviously younger people with learning disabilities are coming through all the time and we want to find ways to get in touch with those people as well,” Marsh said. “[As an organisation] coming directly from people with learning disabilities we’re always looking for ways to extend that – people speaking their own minds and saying their own things in their own way. That’s the future for us.”

10 FILM

omisin Adepeju is a 29-year-old multi-awardwinning Nigerian-British film director. The writer and creator of a number of very successful shorts, he is now making his first feature film, Omo Dada – The Good Son, a continuation of his renowned short of the same name filmed at his home in Catford.

The Nigerian-British experience can be expressed in a number of different ways and mediums – and film is Tomisin’s chosen platform.

He explores faith, specifically the Christian faith; traditional Nigerian culture, such as respect for elders, wearing traditional attire and eating traditional Nigerian cuisine; and issues surrounding identity.

Born in Nigeria, Tomisin (full name Olúwatómisìn) moved to the UK aged 12 in 2002. To say it was a culture shock would be an understatement.

“I just remember thinking firstly there were a lot of white people everywhere,” he says. “And then it was cold – it really slapped me in the face.

We got out the airport and there was this stuff coming out of my mouth – my breath. I was just so shocked. We came during winter, so we went from extreme heat to extreme cold.”

It took Tomisin some time to reconcile the resentment he felt towards his parents for uprooting his life. “Now as an adult I’m like, wow, you guys sacrificed more than me.

You guys left a lot behind and didn’t look back. There were no regrets.

Yes they suffered, but they suffered smiling because they were giving us the opportunity of a better life and I love them deeply. I think I make films to make them proud of me.”

Tomisin struggled to adjust to his new life in the UK. He had gone from a well-respected, middle-class home in sunny Lagos, where he had friends and attended a good school at which manners and discipline were stringently enforced, to an unwelcoming school and stark differences in culture.

“I was incredibly shy and I didn’t talk to people, I was in my own world and I was bullied as well, because I was just so timid and I didn’t speak up for myself. But I think all of this culminated because of coming here and the change of cultures and not being British enough.”

Although the world surrounding him was British, Tomisin’s home in Catford was a Nigerian one – and he struggled to balance the two.

“I realised I had two different identities,” he says. “While I was this Nigerian kid, my Nigerianness wasn’t celebrated; it was mocked. So I realised I needed to be somebody else, and I struggled trying to find out what that was. I tried to be British. I literally wanted to be like the British people because my accent was mocked, my way of dressing was mocked, my skin tone was mocked.”

He discovered his love of film at the age of 14 when he watched Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. He admits it might seem an incongruous choice to ignite his passion for film, since it tells the story of a Jewish man in love in New York in the late 1970s – an experience Tomisin obviously couldn’t relate to.

But it was the way Allen drew the viewer into his characters and their world that captivated him.

“I watched films in Nigeria,” he says, “but [Annie Hall] was the first time a

T

Going to film school changed my life; it was a place to learn and grow

ANEWDIRECTION Tomisin Adepeju was determined to pursue his passion for film from a young age – and has gone on to win numerous awards for his craft. The acclaimed Nigerian-British director tells us more WORDS BY ROSARIO BLUE

film had a very profound impact on me because it made me feel emotions I hadn’t felt before. It transported me to a whole new world. It was just really brilliant, and I wanted to know what this thing was – what this medium was. And so I watched all his films.”

Tomisin, the eldest of three siblings, was a model son – he got good grades in school and did not get into trouble.

His parents expected him to study law and so he did, at Shooters Hill

Sixth Form College, alongside film, philosophy and ethics, and English language and literature.

“To please my parents I did law the first year of college, and I hated it, I really hated it,” he says.

He found the courage in the second year to give it up. “I just couldn’t be quiet,” he says, “because film, it changed me so much. I knew so clearly that I wanted to be a film director, that I wanted to make films.”

Above: award-winning film director Tomisin Adepeju

But having gone against his parents’ wishes, he had to fund film school by himself. It took him four years, working as an usher in a theatre in the West End, to save up the £14,000 needed to attend the MetFilm School at Ealing Studios, where he studied for his MA in directing.

He took his studies seriously. “I couldn’t mess about. It was my hardearned savings. I couldn’t just go there and waste that experience. Film school changed my life; it was a space to learn and grow. I was taught by Baftawinning directors. And just learning the craft – how to direct, how to write scripts – was really wonderful.”

Tomisin was influenced by directors like Spike Lee, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson and he naturally began making films that imitated their work. But the films he has become known for are all his own voice. The Nigerianness he was ridiculed for has become what he is celebrated for.

His short film Omo Dada – The Good Son is about a young Nigerian man, home visiting his family from uni when an unexpected guest turns up and he is forced to come clean about a big secret he has been keeping from his traditional Nigerian parents. It is filmed in Tomisin’s native language Yoruba, with English subtitles.

The film was wildly successful, winning eight awards and screening at over 60 international film festivals.

“I would say The Good Son is my first film, because it’s the start of my journey as a filmmaker,” Tomisin says.

“It explores who I am, and who I was as a 25 year old. And it really has shaped all the things I’ve made since.”

His second short, Marianne, filmed on Super 16mm film, won a further eight awards, and was followed by The Right Choice – an official selection at the Sundance film festival.

Tomisin’s most recent film is Appreciation. It is a visually stunning and deeply moving short film, about a Nigerian Pentecostal pastor who experiences a life-changing event that leads her to question her faith and all that she believes in. It, too, has been nominated for several awards and entered into numerous film festivals including the Oscar-qualifying Pan African Film Festival 2019.

Tomisin is now represented by United Agents in the UK and Creative Artists Agency in America, home to legendary directors like Jordan Peele, Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams and Ang Lee. He’s an exceptional talent and the epitome of resilience, fighting spirit, determination and perseverance – another success story to prove that being yourself is enough and no one can tell your story better than you can tell it yourself.

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grew up in south London so I’ve always spent a lot of time here. I’ve always hung out here, it’s what I’m familiar with, where a lot of my friends are. So when I wanted to start a business, I knew it had to be here too.

I wanted to branch out a little bit further than Peckham – even though it’s really popular, it’s already pretty saturated with bars and cafes – so I started looking a bit further afield, and instantly fell in love with Deptford.

It’s got loads of character, it’s really diverse, there are lots of different cultures and it’s also got this really arty scene and a really strong sense of community. There are a lot of people who really care about what happens in Deptford.

I wanted to open a cafe after spending time in Australia. Even though I did a media degree, I’d always had the idea that it would be really cool to own a bar.

The main turning point was spending two years living in Melbourne – I was so taken aback by the amount of small, quirky, unique, independent businesses in the city.

They were literally everywhere; little retro shops, little coffee shops, cool little bars.

Working in hospitality out there, in places that were really admirable – like the Black Cat cafe in Fitzroy, which was so cool – showed me that I could start one up too. That’s when I was inspired to do it myself.

When I came back to the UK the next step was writing a business plan, while continuing to work in hospitality, finding the spot in Deptford and putting an offer in on that. We finally opened last summer.

It’s hard to explain what running a cafe is like – it’s been the most intense experience. So much pressure. So much stress. And just the sheer amount to organise and get together. Nothing can quite prepare you.

I thought I’d done a really thorough business plan, that I’d prepared for everything, but there are so many factors to a business like this: the paperwork for legal requirements, the licensing – you’ve got to get a premises licence, you need a personal licence – and the physical space itself is another factor.

When we moved in, it was like moving into a new house that was completely bare and then having to fill it. It was a Subway before and the whole thing was completely gutted back to the brick.

Deptford is so historical – the building that Isla Ray is in is 200 years

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Rachael Dalton-Loveland, owner of Isla Ray in Deptford, talks about the highs and lows of turning a former Subway shop into a popular cafe and her optimism for the future AS TOLD TO EMMA FINAMORE

old, if not more. So stripping back the layers was really interesting – under the plastic Subway wall we found some really old wallpaper and fireplaces, and in the cellar there’s even an old cooker.

The flipside of that history is that old buildings have a lot of issues. The plumbing is really quite shocking – we’ve had three leaks already – and even though we don’t own it, as a longterm leaseholder it’s our responsibility to take care of the building.

Even if the roof were to fall in, technically we’re supposed to cover the expense. On top of running a business, it’s an added stress – and an added cost.

There were other worries when we first opened too. I got quite concerned because I know the word ‘gentrification’ could potentially be associated with us.

Although I’d done a lot of research on Deptford, I’m not actually from here and I was really worried at the beginning that people might pass judgment about it being a ‘bougie’ little cafe in this market with so much history. And a few places before we opened actually got paint-bombed.

I think people have seen that we’re community-focused though, so we’ve been accepted so far.

When it comes to gentrification, I think the responsibility lies with the council. They should make sure

everyone’s being supported in the way they need, keeping the balance and the rates affordable.

They’re the ones who can change the rates, say yes or no to this or that, grant you a premises licence or not grant you a premises licence. Our rates haven’t gone up yet, but there’s also the cost of licensing, insurance and VAT. That’s what a lot of people forget: pretty much every single thing you sell – 20% of that goes to HMRC, even if you’re not making a profit at all. I didn’t really understand that before. It’s basically another business tax, but then you have to pay your actual business tax, and your own tax.

I was really upset at one point, the lowest of the low, just before Christmas – we were losing money but working so hard. I don’t pay myself, and normally when someone works really hard they get good results, but for me at that time, working hard, working round the clock, not sleeping properly, it didn’t feel like we were getting any results.

And then the council taking this and that, and handing 20% of what little we’d made over to HMRC – that felt a bit messed up. That’s when I hit an alltime low, we were really struggling.

But there was no real choice but to carry on, and now I’m starting to feel the joys of running a cafe. We’re beginning to find our feet. Being in the community and seeing the regulars,

that’s so nice. We have a real variety of customers – for example a lovely group of Vietnamese men come in pretty much every day, we have elderly people coming in too, and obviously lots of students.

We’ve had people come in and say to us how nice it is that we’ve created such a welcoming atmosphere. As a team we pride ourselves on being really friendly to customers – and it’s not forced, it’s just how we are.

It’s a very casual environment, and I guess the music and the mismatched, bright decor sets the tone of a really chilled place. It’s not following a particular trend either, which is something that could potentially put off older generations.

We also involve the community with the exhibition space and the music, and we have workshops – for example, the other day we held an arm-knitting workshop – and we don’t charge, so people can essentially use the space for free.

We have reggae on Sundays, live music on Thursdays, DJs, we’ve had a couple of gigs – charity gigs too – and we’ve worked with Heart n Soul, a great local arts charity based at the Albany.

We’re the opposite of being exclusive, which a lot of places can seem these days. That’s just how we are, and how we plan to stay.

Above: Rachael Dalton-Loveland in her all-day cafe Isla Ray on Deptford High Street

Running a cafe has been the most intense experience – nothing can quite prepare you

14 C OM M U N I T Y logger Jane Martin began writing about her local area – specifically Crofton Park and Honor Oak – in 2012. Working from home, she was able to “use lots of local independent businesses” for lunch and coffee. “I began to realise there were very few people in the area who knew and used our cafes, bars and shops more than me,” she says.

She posted on the now defunct croftonpark.com before moving to the HopCroft community website, where she publishes four lengthy blogs a year on “key happenings and events”, keeping her thousands of followers upto-date in the interim via her Twitter account @JaneCanDoSE4.

She has since expanded her remit to include Brockley, Ladywell, Catford, Deptford and Hither Green, and doesn’t hold back on the detail, joking: “My ramblings are at least 6,000 words and often over 8,000 words. I always joke that you deserve a medal if you read to the end.”

She’s closely involved with the community and is something of a local legend, working hard to help businesses and other endeavours gain momentum.

“I passionately love south-east London and love spending time at local events and festivals. I now know so many people in the area and think we are very lucky living in such a creative, friendly part of London.”

Jane has seen businesses come and go since starting her blog. “Crofton Park has seen a slight decline in the last year, with the wonderful Mr Lawrence wine bar shutting a year ago and then Jam Circus closing at the beginning of [this] year,” she says.

“There are now quite a number of empty shop units on the high street but I am hopeful that new businesses are going to open up again soon.

“I feel very lucky that I live only five minutes’ walk from two very special places. The Brockley Jack pub is a great community bar that is also home to the wonderful Brockley Jack Theatre. The high street is also home to the Rivoli Ballroom, which is just beautiful. Over the years I have been to so many different things there – parties, discos, films and so on – and it is such a special place. I am really looking forward to celebrating my 60th birthday there later this year.” hopcroftneighbourhood.org.uk/ crofton-column

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Paul Browning has lived in Lee for nearly 30 years and writes Running Past, a history blog with a particular focus on Lee, Hither Green, Catford, Lewisham and Blackheath.

“It looks at how the past has influenced the current urban landscape, whether it be former farms; the large country houses of Lee, several with links to slavery; wartime bomb damage or postwar development; and at the bits of the past that remain,” he says. “Sometimes I go a little further afield, particularly when tracing the rivers and streams of the area.”

He also looks at places where “ordinary people came together – the churches, the pubs, the clubs, the schools and the shops. During 2018, I celebrated the centenary of some women getting the vote with a series of posts on Lewisham’s militant suffragettes – a group of women that I am completely in awe of.”

Paul was motivated to start writing after enjoying other local blogs, and thought he could add to the conversation by covering topics they didn’t, in an easily digestible format.

“The posts tend to be in bite-sized chunks – 10 minutes’ read at most.

It works for me in terms of writing and it seems to work for readers too; it is local history for the age of social media.”

Facebook and Twitter allow him to interact with his audience, who in turn, often inform his posts. “The writing has become quite an iterative process, in a way that wasn’t available to past local historians,” he says.

“A post I wrote for the 60th anniversary of the 1957 Lewisham rail crash is substantially different from the one first published, bringing in lots of recollections, some first-hand, some from relatives. It is so much better for that input.”

Paul has seen the area change a lot, including “big changes” to Lewisham town centre in terms of architecture, which he describes as a failure “on all counts... a rag-bag of styles which don’t seem to really fit together at all”.

He also laments the “austerityled public expenditure cuts and the impact on the cleanliness of streets and parks”, adding: “There have been massive cuts too to council services across the board that a 63% reduction in central government grant funding to Lewisham makes inevitable. I feel really sorry for the current group of Labour councillors trying to keep services going without the resources to do it.”

COMMUNITY He has seen positive developments too, including the “naturalisation of the Quaggy through Manor Park through the Quaggy Waterways Action Group and others, turning one of the most depressing parks in the borough into one of the finest. It has led to a significant increase in biodiversity there – with the iridescent blue blur of the kingfisher often visible.”

He adds: “I love Lewisham, it’s been my adopted home for the best part of 30 years. I can’t imagine living anywhere else now.” runner500.wordpress.com

Darryl Chamberlain started his blog – 853 – as a way to express his frustrations about local developments.

“I was brought up in Greenwich and found some of what was going on after the millennium didn’t really shape up to the promises that had been made before then,” he explains.

“One of my early inspirations was a Lewisham councillor called Andrew Brown, who represented Blackheath for Labour and used a blog to keep people up to speed with local issues.

Another Lewisham councillor, Sue Luxton, did the same – she was a Green councillor in Ladywell.

“There was a really vibrant local blogging scene in Lewisham about 10 years ago – Brockley Central and Transpontine were in their pomp then.

CHRONICLERS Local blogs can be treasure troves of information for residents and often publish stories that larger outlets can't or won't cover. Here are four must-read blogs that we have bookmarked...

WORDS BY HELEN GRAVES

Twitter and Facebook have sucked up nearly all of the information and creativity you used to get in local blogs, and that’s a real shame.”

Darryl has always been very involved in the community. “I had a crackers plan to help my local area by joining a political party and standing in a Greenwich council election. One night I went to a council meeting to see how it all worked, and was horrified by how a resident was treated in that meeting. I also noticed there were no journalists covering the meeting.

“Once I lost the election, I used the contacts I built up during that time to start digging into what was going on at the council. There was a lot of bullying going on in Greenwich council at the time, and this was when it did stupid things like cutting the

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J U N E /J U LY 2 0 19 funding for Blackheath fireworks, which had nothing to do with austerity as they were still spending money on their own private events. So it was an interesting time.”

Many of the stories he writes are related to current changes, which are “undoubtedly gentrification and austerity – we’ll still be dealing with those in the decade to come.

“New transport options and the expansion of Canary Wharf meant the area was changing anyway, but how a massive project like Lewisham Gateway – which will change the area forever – managed to get through with so little scrutiny should worry everybody.

“I’m reassured that Deptford seems resilient in the face of so much change. I think what will happen with Catford in the years ahead will be very interesting.”

Is he concerned for the future? “[It’s] very hard to say with all the wider turmoil, but the key will be if the Bakerloo line is extended – and how far it’s extended. A full extension through to Hayes would be a dramatic and positive change – just going to Lewisham will leave the rest of the borough behind. No extension would be very bad news indeed.”

853london.com From The Murky Depths is a blog whose creator prefers to remain anonymous due to their contacts with people working for local authorities.

It started life “primarily as a blog about new development and housing in Greenwich” and has since expanded to cover “much of southeast London and parts of east London and Kent”, going “beyond to cover

How a major project like Lewisham Gateway got through with so little scrutiny should worry everybody Left: Jane Martin, who blogs about Crofton Park, Honor Oak and the surrounding area.

Above: Darryl Chamberlain of 853

politics, transport, schools, hospitals and more”.

Like others, From The Murky Depths has seen many changes in south-east London over the years and says “a lot has improved”, adding: “It’s easy to forget how cut off it could sometimes feel and how limited options were. The DLR extensions, London Overground and even Southeastern have all become better.

Stations like Deptford get a better service than 10 years ago.

“Unfortunately some councils are often stuck way in the past. [They] are too parochial and not as forwardthinking as others in London and the UK. “There’s still massive potential in areas like Abbey Wood, Plumstead, Woolwich and... authorities [are] stuck in the 1980s when it comes to embracing change and urban design.

So much could be done for small

amounts and by seeing and embracing good examples elsewhere.

“Greenwich could use far more income from new developments to encourage walking and get people out of cars for short trips, along with investment in parks. [Recently] I’ve written about how they spend the least of any Labour council I looked into and could find comparable data on.”

One thing’s for certain: south-east London is an area that never sits still.

“Every trip to Greenwich or Woolwich reveals a dynamic area in flux. There are loads of nice places to eat now, new pubs by the river are opening [where you can] enjoy a riverside drink and there’s always new homes and developments going up. Like them or loathe them, it’s interesting to see changes and the views are constantly evolving. Looking out from Greenwich Park is fascinating.” fromthemurkydepths.co.uk

16 LEWI S H AM I N PI CT U R E S

WORDS BY JULIE BULL

PHOTOS BY SUE FOLL

Many co-workers at Sydenham Garden are referred to the charity by local healthcare professionals, to improve their mental wellbeing through gardening, conservation, creative work, arts and crafts and training

shoots of

RECOVERY

arrive at Sydenham Garden as the Sow and Grow group, for people recently diagnosed with dementia, is due to begin.

It’s one of many activities at the site that aims to improve the wellbeing of people with mental ill-health through the therapeutic value of gardening.

Founded in 2002, Sydenham Garden arose from the work of visionary GP Dr Jim Sikorski from Sydenham Green Group Practice.

Studying the causes of mental illhealth and the limitations of a purely medical response, Jim found a lack of meaningful interaction or activity was a common thread among his patients.

The site, formerly a nature reserve, had fallen into disuse when Lewisham Council gave it to Sydenham Garden in 2002. Its restoration involved huge amounts of effort and fundraising.

Today the Wynell Road garden houses a building for activities,

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The once-neglected space was transformed by local residents into a flourishing and much-loved community garden, which protects the wildlife that lives there while benefiting people's mental health and wellbeing

a greenhouse, raised beds full of vegetables, a nature reserve, a wildflower meadow and a pond.

At the second site on De Frene Road, the atmosphere is one of industry and teamwork. Here around 40 people take part in the Growing Lives programme, which has much more emphasis on vocational skills.

There’s a very particular ethos at Sydenham Garden. People referred to the project are not patients, clients or service users – they are co-workers who leave their diagnoses at the door.

Coordinator David Lloyd prepares a huge lentil stew as we chat. Everyone takes part in all aspects of running the place, cooking included – and they eat together too. David says this is a safe place to fail. “If you plant something and it doesn’t grow, it is really not the end of the world. A lot of people come here thinking that any small failure is a catastrophe. They find out that it’s not, that they can try again. People gain

A lot of people come here thinking any small failure is a catastrophe.

They find out that it's really not, that they can try again

in confidence, they get some belief in being able to overcome adversity.”

Later the garden will host a group of asylum seekers in conjunction with the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Many speak very little English and are profoundly traumatised. “No matter how hostile life outside of here might seem, for the time they spend here, they belong and they are welcome,” David says.

Others agree. “You don’t feel different here, there’s a proper community,” a volunteer on the Growing Lives programme tells me.

“These guys don’t label you. You learn something new all the time.”

The rain is coming down heavily by now, but as everyone gathers for lunch, not even the wet weather can dampen the feel-good factor around here.

Read the full version of this story on our blog at tiny.cc/sydenhamgarden

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community centre on Sydenham Road might not seem like the most obvious venue for a high street taproom, but for Will Evans and his business partner Nick O’Shea – who set up Ignition Brewery in 2016 with the aim of providing meaningful employment for people with learning disabilities – it makes perfect sense.

It’s an early evening when I call in to Ignition to chat to Will. I find him sitting at a corner table in the taproom, below a huge artwork depicting comical-looking figures with oversized teeth. He’s bright, engaging and very enthusiastic about the brewery and their overall objectives.

“When we first started the brewery we had a number of questions,” he says. “Firstly, can we make beer that is nice; secondly, will people buy our beer; and thirdly, can we do it in a way that creates a viable financial model.

Fortunately, the answer in all three cases is yes.”

In 2018 Ignition ran a hugely successful crowdfunding campaign to open the taproom at the front of the brewery, smashing their initial financial target to raise more than £24,000 from 290 supporters in just 35 days.

The taproom opened last September, allowing the team to sell their range of beers direct to the public for the first time – and not surprisingly, it quickly proved popular with the locals.

“We’ve been overwhelmed by the support of the local community,” Will says. “Sydenham isn’t yet that larger, go-to destination, so you rely on local people and they’ve been fantastic.”

The taproom has a wonderfully relaxed and welcoming atmosphere.

The large window at the front draws passersby inside and is ideal for watching the world go by. The wall on the far side of the room has just been whitewashed in preparation for an exhibition by a local artist.

In a room at the back the team brew a core range of three craft beers – a pale ale, a porter and an IPA. “The beer only has six metres to travel from container to tap,” Will says. “It really couldn’t be any fresher.”

Michael the barman happily holds the fort while Will tells me about the early challenges they faced – not least the huge clean-up operation at the back where they now brew the beer.

“Nick and I went in and had a, ‘Could this really be a brewery?’ moment,” Will laughs. “It certainly took a level of imagination. At that time [2017] we were just brewing and bottling and supplying to local shops, delis, restaurants and bars.

“Most of our production we now sell direct to the public. Our guys brew out back, make all the beer, bottle the beer and now we have this fantastic space for the public to come in and enjoy the beer that we’ve made.”

Of the eight staff on Ignition’s payroll, six have a learning disability.

Both Will and Nick have unpaid roles.

“In the UK, the unemployment rate for people with learning disabilities is around 94%, which is absolutely astonishing,” Will says, “especially when we’re at a time in our history when employment rates overall have rarely been lower.

“It’s fine to go and tell people, ‘Look, our guys have huge talents and potential. They’re loyal, they’re

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TAPPING

The beer only has six metres to travel from container to tap. It couldn't be any fresher

INTO THECOMMUNITY Ignition Brewery and Taproom in Sydenham is a business with a heart. We called in to find out about the great work they’re doing WORDS BY SEAMUS HASSON

reliable, they’re capable of doing really great work.’ But loads of people have been doing that for decades without any real impact, so the answer then is that if we show people how to do it, at least we’re proving our own story.”

Will hopes the example they have set will go some way to encouraging other businesses to find suitable roles for people with learning disabilities.

The success of Ignition has already inspired a brewery in Plymouth and

PHOTO BY ADAM HINTON

another in Norwich to follow their exact business model. “Most of what we’re trying to do is to grow and communicate what we do and try and change the behaviour of other employers. That’s very important to us,” Will says.

“Often the challenge [for people with learning disabilities] is that up until the age of 18, there is provision – and in some areas there’s actually quite good provision for 18 to 25s.

Above: Ignition Brewery and Taproom, which is based at the Sydenham Centre

However, after that you go from having a structure in your life to nothing. And this is one of the things our guys say. [Working here] means you’re not stuck at home all day by yourself, where you can feel isolated.

“There are qualities within our staff that many other employers would long for. And if you look at our brewing operation, it’s pretty slick. The bottling is all done by hand and we are, as our name suggests, a well-oiled machine.

“We’ll bottle a whole brew in about a third of the time we used to. The team are learning all the time and are brilliant at the job they do.

“Some of our team only work in the bar and others just work in the brewery, so it’s balanced to make sure that people are comfortable with what they’re doing. But there are always opportunities to try new things, so we assume parity first and foremost.”

Will’s background is in business start-ups and he has a particular interest in socially driven start-ups.

Nick is a macro-economist who has spent the last 20 years volunteering at the Tuesday Club, part of the provision for people with learning disabilities in Lewisham.

“I believe in businesses that are businesses, as opposed to being funded by charities or grants,” Will says. “A core business which has within its central purpose a clear value to society is an area that is going to grow and become more important.

“Younger generations and increasingly older ones are making decisions a bit more carefully on what they buy. If we can show that our beer is as good as anyone else’s and the same price, but this is what we deliver, then it’s an absolute no-brainer.

“Whatever your community or society needs, increasingly pure capitalism, where people go and deliver something and drain as much out of it is not a sustainable model and one that I think is past its time.”

The brewery is run as a social enterprise and any profit made is either ploughed back into the business or distributed among their charitable aims and other good causes.

“We’re professional because we’re first and foremost a business,” Will says. “If we don’t sell our beer then we go, as with anyone else. We have a slightly different model as to how we get there, but that is what is important.

“We have routine, there’s certainty, there’s rotas. People have to do their jobs but it’s a positive environment and there’s room to learn new things, to thrive and to enjoy yourself.”

I’ve certainly enjoyed my trip to Ignition and fully intend to call in again soon. If not for one of their monthly art exhibitions or whiskeytasting events, then certainly for a pint of their refreshing IPA.

20 SYDE N H AM S P ECI A L

Kitchen Skills Farah Hamid, owner

Kirkdale in SE26 was historically the main route from central London to Sydenham, or Sippenham as it was once called. Some say the street has been overlooked in recent times, but the variety of independent shops and cafes has ensured it is fast becoming a destination in its own right. Three local people tell us why they chose to base their businesses here AS TOLD TO COLIN RICHARDSON PHOTOS BY LIMA CHARLIE & ALEXANDER MCBRIDE WILSON

“My business is called Kitchen Skills and we’ve been open for two years.

Basically, it’s a little studio where we teach people how to cook. We’re not ‘cheffy’, we’re just home cooks, and our aim is to inspire people to try something a little bit different. Or if they feel they are lacking in basic cookery skills, we can help them with that.

“I’m a teacher by profession and I passionately believe it’s so important that children should learn this fundamental skill of cooking. We’re talking about the obesity crisis with children and, you know, the readymeal industry is great but it’s stopping young people from learning how to cook basic food, which is something my generation did.

“The whole idea is that it’s a nice little space where people can come, and if they want to bake, they can bake; if they want to try something a little bit more exotic, they can. We do everything from Indian street food to Middle Eastern street food, things like family favourites, healthy eating classes, and anything and everything in between.

“We have mother-and-toddler classes – where we deal with very young ones and we put different types of food out and they get to recognise what food looks like – and then slightly older children, all the way up to adults. We also have a lovely little garden where we’ve planted herbs and tomatoes and things, and children can go and experience picking things and using herbs in their cooking.

Mabel's Five & Dime Michelle Regan, owner

“I have lived in Crystal Palace for 19 years now and it’s unbelievable how things have changed around here.

Even though I live just up the road, I’d never really explored Kirkdale before. I had occasionally gone into Sydenham, but I’d never even heard of Kirkdale. Now, you hear of Kirkdale all the time.

“On Saturdays in particular, we see a lot of people who are on their way to get a coffee nearby; they’re not just passing through. I’m absolutely thrilled by the way Kirkdale is moving forward.”

“My shop, Mabel’s Five & Dime, is in the last parade of shops as you go up Kirkdale from Sydenham Station, just by the junction with Dartmouth Road. When I opened three years ago, there was little going on around here.

This place used to be a plant-hire business, but it had been derelict for years. When I had it fitted out, I had a kitchen put in at the back, because there was nowhere to get a coffee.

Now, I’m spoiled for choice.

“More shops are opening and people are learning about Kirkdale.

But so many people still don’t know about us. At least once a week, I get someone coming in and saying, ‘I didn’t know this bit was up here’.

Hopefully, word is getting around.

“I’ve lived in Sydenham for about 12 years. I’m actually an East End girl but I moved here to be with my partner. I really like it here; I wouldn’t move back. I live just down the road, so when this shop came up for sale, I thought, ‘Why not?’

“Mabel’s is a vintage shop. It’s very eclectic in here: clothes, furniture,

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Clockwise from far left: Farah Hamid from Kitchen Skills; Michelle Regan from Mabel's Five & Dime; Alex Thorp and Ben Schultz from 161 Food + Drink of people are moving here from east London. When I chat to them, often they’ll say they didn’t know anything about south-east London before.

They’ll say, surprised, ‘Oh, it’s really nice round here.’

“It definitely helps having the cafes up here, because on Saturdays I used to notice that the mornings would be quite quiet and then I’d get busy in the afternoons. People would be having their coffee and breakfast elsewhere and then they’d be walking this way later, whereas it’s constant all day now due to the cafes. We’re becoming a destination.”

161 Food + Drink Alex Thorp, owner

jewellery, glassware, crockery, cameras, you name it. It tends to be items from the 1950s to the 1980s that sell to my customers. My partner’s family have been in the house clearance business for over 30 years, and that’s where I get most of my stock. When the shop isn’t open, I’m sorting stuff out, washing everything, cleaning it. People think I work parttime, but, honestly, I don’t. If you work for yourself, you never work part-time.

“I’ve got lots of regulars now. Social media really helps. I put new stuff on social media and by that night, I’ve got people saying, ‘Can you hold it so I can come in and see it?’ When I opened, people mostly bought small things. Furniture was hard to shift. But now people come to me for big pieces of furniture. Local people ask me for certain things and I’ve definitely got a following around here.

“I get a lot of young couples coming in here who are new to the area. A lot

My shop was previously a plant-hire business that was derelict for years

“We’re a wine shop and bar and have been here nearly five years. We’re licensed to serve wine and we serve food with the wine.

“We’ve gone through different incarnations over the past five years.

We started off doing just a couple of days, brunch and evenings. Then we went up to doing more evenings and days. But that wasn’t sustainable; the passing trade isn’t here. So we’ve gone down to four evenings a week and it works really well.

“We’re quite specialist in what we do, the range we carry. We started a wine import business after about a year of being here. We import and wholesale wines. That’s my main job now.

“This is our shopfront and our home. We sell nationally and I run wine tastings around the country. We also do tastings here, two Wednesdays and two Saturdays a month. I’ve probably done 250 to 300 wine tastings since we opened.

“I’m originally from Devon, but I’ve lived in Sydenham for the past nine years. The area has changed hugely.

There are people who have lived here for a long time. I’ve never worked anywhere with such a nice, polite, friendly, warm and loyal customer base as here. The people are quite incredible. There’s a ‘type’ moving down here – they’re about my age, about ready to have their first kids, and then they have their kids and move further out again.

“I never, ever thought I’d say that Nando’s would be good for the area, but they’ve done a really good job in keeping the shopfront clean; it looks a lot cleaner than it was. And having The Greyhound and Mamma Dough, too.

When we were here more or less on our own as an evening place, I thought that The Greyhound opening would be negative for our business, but it hasn’t been; it’s been entirely positive.

“It’s really lovely here. Our immediate neighbours are businesses that have been established for a very long time and are visited by a lot of people. As for us, we do get people who wander past and wonder what we do and come back later.

“Some people are wary of coming in and then they walk through the door and find out we’re really warm and welcoming. The ideal thing is when someone comes in, drinks a couple of glasses of wine, has some food and then buys a few bottles to take home with them.”

22 LEWI S H AM L EG E N D ighty years ago, as the world hurtled inexorably towards war and Nazi Germany accelerated its hideous and murderous persecution of its Jewish citizens, Ruth Neumeyer – a young half-Jewish girl from Dachau aged just 15 – arrived in England at Liverpool Street Station with her brother Raimund.

Ruth and Raimund were two of an estimated 10,000 unaccompanied children of Jewish heritage who benefited from a hastily organised rescue effort mounted by the British authorities in the wake of the horrors of Kristallnacht.

Tragically, Ruth and Raimund would never see their parents Hans and Vera again. Hans – blind since the age of 14 but a talented musician and composer – would die in Theresienstadt concentration camp, while it is thought that Vera, a dance teacher, perished in Majdanek.

Although Ruth died in 2012 aged 89, her legacy – in the form of a remarkable archive of letters and other items marking her journey to England and her family’s connection to the Holocaust – has ensured that her family’s story is still being told.

Stored for decades in the Sydenham home she shared with her husband Ronald Locke and children Stephen and Tim, some of Ruth’s family archive is already a part of the Imperial War Museum’s Holocaust Gallery, with more material expected to be integrated into the restructured space that is planned to open in 2021.

Stephen and Tim – who were born and raised by Ruth and Ronald in Sydenham – have guarded and nurtured her legacy with love and

Below: Ruth and her mother outside their home in Dachau in the 1920s. The family were thrown out of the house by the Nazis.

Below left: the Neumeyer family on a hike in the 1930s

E

REMEMBERINGRUTH Ruth Locke arrived in London on the Kindertransport 80 years ago.

Following her death in 2012, her sons discovered hundreds of letters and other items in her Sydenham home that revealed her family's tragic past WORDS BY LUKE G WILLIAMS

care, with Tim recording much of his family’s history on a fascinating blog.

“During our childhood Ruth’s story was very much something in the background,” Stephen says. “It was not hidden but it was alluded to rather than described in detail.

“We knew our mother had come to Britain as a child and we knew her parents had been killed and that it was all very sad. But beyond the basic facts we didn’t know much of the detail.”

More information emerged in the early 1980s when Ruth was contacted by a Munich-based journalist who was writing a book about the Jewish community in Dachau.

“He came to London and suddenly lots of details started coming out,” Stephen says. “I think my mother realised that the things she had been bottling up were actually really

important for the rest of the world to know about, so during the last 30odd years of her life she decided she wasn’t going to be reticent about her experiences at all.

“She was invited back to Dachau for a commemoration of the Holocaust and Kristallnacht and she made it clear she would only come if they arranged for a proper plaque to the victims of the Holocaust in a prominent position in the main city square and if she got an opportunity to talk to local schoolchildren about her experiences.

To their credit the city agreed.”

However, it was only after Ruth died that the true extent of her archive became clear. It included, in Stephen’s words, “hundreds and hundreds of letters to and from family members before and after the war, her Kindertransport ticket, a teddy

Vera and Hans (centre) with their friend Julius Kohn, who died in Auschwitz. The two women on the left are unknown

bear she took on the journey and her dressing gown she took with her when she left Germany”.

“When Ruth was alive it was hard to take in the immensity of what had happened to her as a child,” Tim says.

“With her not being there anymore we felt a responsibility to go through everything and find out what was there.

“Clearing out the house was a process that helped me sort out my own thoughts about the family and Ruth’s past. I’d seen some of my mother’s photographs before but never her letters. They were tied up in tight bundles of string in a trunk on the landing. The more we looked, the more intriguing it became and the more questions I started to ask myself.

“Before she died I knew she had been in touch with the Imperial War

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LEWIS HAM LEGEND 23

J U N E /J U LY 2 0 19 Museum but I didn’t know that she had been interviewed by them about her experiences. You can access the interviews on the museum’s website.

When I listened to the tapes it was lovely to hear her voice again.

“The IWM said it’s an archive of great importance because it is so complete. They think it’s important to keep it all together and are happy to take everything. So with the IWM’s help we are currently going through and cataloguing everything.”

Stephen adds: “It’s amazing to think it was all sitting there in an attic in Sydenham for 56 years.”

Ruth and Ronald’s connection with Sydenham was longstanding, having moved to the area from Dulwich in 1956. They never moved again, staying in the same house on Charlecote Grove for the rest of their lives.

“They had been looking around for a while for a house and didn’t have much money. Once she moved in I don’t think she ever wanted to live anywhere else,” Stephen says.

“She was also a very staunch supporter of the local community in all its guises. She got local residents’ groups together. She was a part-time nursery school teacher at a nursery on Dartmouth Road.

“She was also a founder and trustee of Sydenham Garden, a therapeutic garden for people recovering from operations and mental health problems. She helped clear the site for the garden to be built and helped get the whole thing going. She was quite small but she wasn’t averse to wielding a machete or a chainsaw. Whether she was safe with them I’m not so sure!

“She was deeply involved in the creation of the Sydenham Society in

It's amazing to think it was all sitting there in an attic in Sydenham for 56 years

Above: Ruth's first day at school in Dachau.

Left: with her bicycle on Charlecote Grove, Sydenham in 2011

the 1970s, serving on the committee for a long time and was a founder member of the Forest Hill Oxfam shop, which was one of the first Oxfam shops in the country.

“There was hardly any local activity she didn’t touch in some way. She would get involved in anything to do

with the local Sydenham community, whether it was planting shrubs in bits of wasteland or telling people off for dropping litter! She believed in community responsibility in its widest sense and was happy to be friendly with just about anybody.”

Tim admits that his research and blog is – in some respects – symbolic of a desire to get to know his mother better, as well as preserve her legacy.

“When she was alive she was never very emotional about what had happened but it must have been so traumatic,” he says.

“To leave your parents in Munich Station at midnight and go to an unknown country and not know if you would ever see them again must have been so hard. She rarely confided what she really felt about it. I think I’ve come to understand her more through this whole process.”

Tim says it is vital for his mother’s story – and the stories of other Holocaust victims and survivors – to be told and preserved. “We have a duty to the future to remember what happened so something this ghastly never happens again.”

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axophonist Tunday Akintan and his wife Jasmine opened Lagos Bar on Lee High Road at the end of last year so they could share their love of music and food.

Tunday was born and lived in Lagos in Nigeria and came to London aged 17. “There was a place near our house [in Nigeria] where people used to go and play music and dance,” he recalls as we sit in his cosy bar and chat over coffee.

“As a young child I was drawn to the music and when I was about seven or eight I would run errands for the musicians just so I could be around them and watch them play. I still remember that joyful noise and the idea with Lagos Bar is to replicate that here.”

From an early age Tunday – who cites Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti as another musical inspiration – wanted to play the saxophone, but his father had other plans.

“My dad was very against music and there was no question of me having lessons. He just thought that musicians were a nuisance and that they didn’t have any money. He wanted me to follow him and become an accountant.”

However, Tunday began to teach himself to play other instruments by accompanying his mum to church.

“My mum is a big churchgoer so she took me with her and there I got to play the drums, the tambourine, the cowbell and all sorts.”

Tunday’s father had previously lived in London for many years and had family here, so when Tunday was older his dad asked if he wanted to study accountancy in the capital. “I said yes, although I knew in my heart I didn’t want to be an accountant.”

He went to stay with his father’s cousin in Elephant and Castle but after six months he dropped out of college and decided to pursue his own dreams. He found a music shop on Walworth Road where the owner let him pay for a saxophone in instalments and he bought books to teach himself.

One day he was on a 53 bus that took him past Goldsmiths in New Cross.

“When I first arrived in the UK I chatted to a girl at the airport who mentioned she was going to be studying at Goldsmiths. I just remembered that name and that you could study there, so I got off the bus and went in.

“I found the music department and introduced myself to Colin Crawley who was a music teacher there. I said, ‘I have come from Nigeria and I want to study music’.

“I didn’t have the qualifications to do a degree but he told me about a six-week summer course. By this time I had started playing drums and keyboard in local churches and I used the money I was paid to pay for the course.”

Over the next five years Tunday enrolled on dozens of short music courses at Goldsmiths and eventually got a place on a music degree. “Every time I did a course I asked what I could do next. I could paper a wall with all the certificates!”

He began to fund his studies by playing saxophone in bars and clubs.

“One night I got chatting to a DJ on the street. He noticed my saxophone

S

We spent months doing the place up.

Friends said we were mad and it was very tiring, but we did it

hitting the

RIGHTNOTE

Tunday Akintan has played the sax with stars like Amy Winehouse and the Foo Fighters. Now he and his wife Jasmine have opened a bar in Lee that combines their passion for music and food WORDS BY NIKKI SPENCER

case and asked me to come and jam with him at Cafe de Paris. The manager liked it so much he hired me on the spot and I played there for five years.”

For a while Tunday worked with Amy Winehouse. “I met her at a gig and we worked together before she was famous. I wasn’t surprised she got noticed. She had a passion and belief in what she was doing.”

Since then he has played saxophone alongside everyone from Jools Holland, the Foo Fighters, Songhoy Blues and Lemar to French rapper MC Solaar, and he also has his own band that tours and performs every year at the Southbank Centre.

He met his wife Jasmine at Goldsmiths and they have always talked about opening their own bar.

“I love making music and Jasmine loves making food and they go hand in hand. We just wanted to share what

PHOTO BY JOHN YABRIFA

we love with people who we knew would love it too.

“As a musician I am booked to play at other people’s venues all the time but I have always dreamed of creating somewhere of my own where I could play saxophone, where other musicians and DJs could play too, and people could come and listen and drink and eat and chat.”

After years of looking at places all over south-east London they finally came across the former Flames restaurant on Lee High Road and set about transforming it. “The vision we had would have been impossible if the bills were mounting up so we have done everything ourselves.

“We got the keys last July and spent months doing it up. We changed the entire place, removing the low ceiling and painting everything. Friends said we were mad and it was very tiring, but we did it.”

Above: Tunday Akintan, saxophonist and co-owner of Lagos Bar in Lee

All the fixtures and fittings are recycled, from the bar top, which they found on the street near where they live in Bermondsey, to the lights, which Tunday made out of old trumpets and trombones.

“Aside from making music, I love making things and using my hands,” he says.

Six months on, Tunday says he and Jasmine are overwhelmed at the response they have had to the bar.

“People often walk in and just say, ‘Wow!’ which is so lovely after all the hard work.

“We are only small but customers say we have created something very special and it’s personalised. Everyone who buys a drink gets to request a tune from me on the saxophone.

“We have big windows at the front and one evening recently a couple were walking past and stopped to look in.

“People started beckoning them inside and made space for them at one of the tables and they ended up chatting with everyone. We love the way that music brings people together.”

As well as playing live music and hosting DJ sets in the bar, they also have a space downstairs, where Salsa Motion offers salsa classes every Thursday evening. Lagos Bar is open during the day for coffee too, with the added bonus of being able to listen to Tunday rehearse.

“I usually practise for about seven hours a day so rather than doing that at home I now do it here.”

The final piece of the jigsaw has been put in place with the opening of their kitchen. They have started by serving a small European menu cooked by Jasmine on Friday and Saturday nights.

“We wanted to get everything else right before we started serving food,” Tunday says. “As they say in Nigeria, before you invite the king and queen you need to prepare the palace, and now the palace is ready.”

26 LEWI S H AM L I V E S Jim Radford performing at The Jolly Farmers in Lewisham or a veteran of the newspaper advertising industry and an activist known for his ability to make headlines, Jim Radford has little interest in selfpublicising. When we meet to chat at his home in Brockley, he smiles at the irony: “It was my friend Nick who arranged this,” he says. “I’m not very good at promoting myself.”

There is, it turns out, much to promote: Jim is the youngest known participant in one of World War Two’s most significant events – the seaborne invasion of Normandy by Allied forces on June 6, 1944. This month, at the age of 90, Jim will be one of an ever-dwindling number of remaining veterans to stand on Normandy’s shores at the 75th anniversary event.

After the war, having been appalled by the use of nuclear weapons, Jim became heavily involved in the British campaign against the US war in Vietnam and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Recounting his post-war career, he is articulate and fluent; but conveying the psychological aftermath of being part

to protest about their incarceration and even the Sun wrote a sympathetic news story.

Shortly after this – in 1968 – Jim set up the London Squatters Campaign, which was established to take over disused property to rehouse families who were living in inhumane conditions in hostels and slums. It also aimed to promote the influence of direct action. The Lewisham branch of the campaign still exists today as the Lewisham Families Self-Help Association, a small charity that manages around 48 local homes.

Jim moved to his current home in Lewisham in 1985. While he is bestknown for his sea-songs and shanties, he performs British and Irish folk and political and protest songs too.

His composition A Song for Stephen Lawrence was recorded by the BBC at Well Hall Road in Eltham and transmitted the night of the murder verdict.

For many years, the war was only discussed with other veterans. Now though, Jim – who was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 2015 – is anxious about the loss of firsthand history; a certain intimacy of knowledge and attentiveness to small detail held only by those who were actually there.

“I want to show you something,” he says, scouting around his living room for the June 6 anniversary event brochure. He turns to a page with what seems like a nondescript black and white photo taken by a drone, depicting a Normandy coastline one or two weeks after the fighting had ended. “You’ll see something no one else will see.”

Jim points me towards tiny dots that might be mistaken for grit or blemishes on old film. “Those are bodies. That water was full of dead men, floating, with life jackets on.

F

of the Normandy landings feels more difficult. “When the war ended, we put it aside. We got on with our lives.”

This silence was broken when Jim decided to write a song about his memories of the conflict. He has now performed The Shores of Normandy three times at the Royal Albert Hall for World War Two anniversary and remembrance events, and will do so again at the 75th anniversary of D-Day at Ver-sur-Mer on June 6.

The event will bring together several world leaders to pay homage to the British, American, Canadian and other Allied forces involved in the D-Day operation and the ensuing battle for Normandy. More than 4,000 men were killed on the first day of the invasion alone.

Before we meet, I see Jim perform at Ladywell Folk Festival, where he appears at ease singing sea shanties.

But it took him almost two years to be able to perform his own song – the first he’d ever written – in public, and several more years to write it in the first place. “I was emotionally involved with it,” he says. “I went back [to Normandy] and was moved by seeing the beach with children building sandcastles. That’s when I decided to write the song.”

The process involved revisiting experiences he hadn’t thought about for years (“it wasn’t all horror, but there was some horror there”), let alone trying to put it all into words that would make sense to others. “Lots of people knew me for years and had no idea I was a veteran.”

It was by happenstance that he became one. Born in Hull in 1928, Jim was just 15 when he set sail for Normandy as part of a Rescue Tug Service mission. The service pulled stranded landing craft off beaches – often while under enemy fire – and towed damaged ships to safety so they could be returned to Britain for repair.

He was too young to join the merchant navy but found a way around the age restrictions. “[In the merchant navy] they wouldn’t take you deep sea under [the age of] 16. But for some reason the tug companies weren’t on the same system. I got a job on a harbour tug at Hull and my plan was to transfer to a deep-sea tug, which I did within a fortnight.”

On June 5, 1944, just two weeks after joining the navy, Jim was told they would be heading to France the next morning. He set sail from Poole with an Allied fleet of 160 ships, acting as a galley boy – the lowest rank in the merchant navy – aboard the rescue tug Empire Larch. “I don’t think any of us slept for 48 hours,” he says. “I remember a continuous deafening bombardment at Arromanches.”

This experience is the story told in his song The Shores of Normandy, which the BBC invited him to perform at a 70th anniversary event in 2014.

It was relatively new for Jim to be actively invited into the spotlight by the establishment media. As an activist in the 1960s and 70s, he made the headlines for disruption: using his knowledge of journalists through work in newspaper advertising, his gift to

TR OY-DO NOVA N WO RD S BY AL ICE FFO RD PH OT O BY PAUL STA

THE WISE MAN AND THE SEA Meet Brockley resident Jim Radford – peace campaigner, activist, singer of sea shanties and Britain's youngest known D-Day veteran

the peace movement and later housing campaigns was to get publicity on the cheap. “I knew my way around Fleet Street and drank with lots of journalists so I knew who to talk to and what they wanted.”

Media and public attention was often sympathetic. In 1966, Jim and fellow activist Nicolas Walter were arrested after disrupting a Labour Party conference in a Brighton Methodist church and were sentenced to two months in Brixton Prison. The prosecution used an obscure 19th century ecclesiastical act to charge them with “indecent behaviour” during a church service.

Their protest had highlighted the hypocrisy of the then Labour government for projecting an outwardly religious image while supporting the Vietnam War. Around 1,000 people marched to the prison

Soldiers, many of whom never made it to the beach. It was like that not just on day one, but for weeks afterwards because it wasn’t anybody’s job to fish them out. They were left just floating and bobbing around, coming in and out with the tide.”

Today Jim visits schools with other veterans to share stories and educate children about the role of the Rescue Tug Service, which is still little known.

He is surprised that others are moved by his song. “It never occurred to me for a minute. I suppose because it’s my memories. It’s a story, and I’m telling it in simple words, but for some reason or other it just seems to have an emotional effect on people.”

Hear Jim sing sea shanties and other songs every Monday evening at The Jolly Farmers, 354 Lewisham High Street

28 H ISTORY ooking down at the derelict grave, you would never know its occupant once made international headlines.

Sections of stone edging and a shard of concrete vase remain, sunken into the turf. There is no headstone, nothing to suggest who rests in the deep plot, stacked beneath his wife and above two of their children. They are interred in a part of Brockley and Ladywell cemetery reserved at the time for people too poor to pay for a better burial.

Here lies John “Jack” Wannop (1855-1923): champion wrestler, boxer, coach, promoter, New Cross gym proprietor and a man so good at his game that he was once invited to give a private exhibition to the future King Edward VII. Last year I set out to uncover why Jack vanished from sporting history, and to bring back to life this workingclass celebrity and his slice of lateVictorian south-east London. It is a project full of brick walls and educated guesswork, and as an amateur historian who has just started an MA in history at Goldsmiths, it’s incredibly exciting.

Jack could fight a single match for five or 10 times an average worker’s salary. He packed great halls with spectators and trained the next generation of athletes. Riding a wave of popular pugilists crossing into music hall, in 1891 a play was written just so he could star in it.

In 1888 Jack could not find anyone in London brave or foolish enough to take him on, so he embarked on an American tour. Upon his return, a reporter from Sporting Life gave up

l

GRAPPLING withhistory WORDS BY SARAH ELIZABETH COX

Jack Wannop was a major figure on the Victorian New Cross wrestling scene – but his body lies in a derelict, unmarked grave. We look at the life of the oncefamous fighter and his contemporaries

Ted Pritchard and Jem Smith compete in the 1891 heavyweight championship at Wannop's Gymnasium in New Cross

trying to interview him because the crowd was too huge to get past. They published the names of everyone who came to shake the hand of “the most popular man in New Cross” instead.

Jack never quite hit the heights of John L Sullivan in the 1880s or George Hackenschmidt in the early 20th century, but this was an accomplished, popular man. So how did he end up in an unmarked grave?

Born near Carlisle, Jack was a carpenter by trade and would have likely taken up wrestling at a young age. At nearly 5ft 9 and 12-13 stone, he was considered a heavyweight boxer when he started competing at the age of 29, but wrestling at the time was pretty much unregulated. You could fight a nine-stone or a 20-stone man in one of half a dozen popular styles.

Grainy photos of Jack in his 30s show a handsome, burly man, thick round the middle with big, defined biceps. His hair was cropped to prevent grabbing in the ring, and his clean-shaven face contrasts with the luxurious moustaches fashionable at the time.

Jack moved to London around 1880 with wife Miriam and toddlers Joseph and Mary. They lived briefly in Wandsworth, then on Lewisham Road. The family expanded and moved to Batavia Road and Woodpecker Road in New Cross, then Merritt Road in Brockley before settling on Cottesbrooke Street, New Cross.

Census records suggest that two of their 10 children died in infancy and several in young adulthood. The body of Sidney, 22, was never recovered from the Somme but his name is listed on memorials in Deptford, New Cross and Pozières.

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Life for men on the New Cross fight scene was dirty, mean and often short

Jack’s first gym was based at the New Cross House, which was known in the 1880s as the Glass House.

Boxing and wrestling facilities were likely to have been on the first floor, with a ring set up in the back garden in fine weather. Local lads fought for fun, pride, cash, or jewellery. Jack once hosted a show of the finest local dogs, his 53lb bulldog Busybody by his side.

He later ran a boxing club at the former Lord Derby on Woodpecker Road and opened Wannop’s Gymnasium in 1891, close to the Five Bells on New Cross Road – but exactly where remains a mystery. The address does not appear in adverts or articles.

You either knew where to go or you didn’t. Jack really put New Cross on the map when he hosted the 1891 heavyweight championship between boxers Ted Pritchard and Jem Smith, and in 1892 he opened another gym at 41 Stanstead Road in Forest Hill.

New Cross was home to large entertainment venues including the enormous New Cross Public Hall – situated roughly where the Big Yellow Self Storage is on Lewisham Way today – and Amersham Hall on Amersham Vale. They both hosted Jack’s wrestling and boxing benefits to support local men and their families, alongside theatre, music and circuses.

My research into the New Cross fight scene has exposed stories of violence, tragedy and scandal, but these activities were also exercise, escapism, entertainment and occasionally a nice little earner for the young men of SE14.

In 1882 Tom “Curly” Thompson was dared to wrestle star rat-catcher and Deptford resident Steve. It soon transpired that Steve was in fact a donkey belonging to local fruit seller Alf “Nobler” Fry. Despite Nobler’s whispered advice into the donkey’s ear, Tom immediately flipped and pinned the animal to roars of laughter from the crowd. Steve was unhurt,

Above: Jack Wannop and Tom Thompson.

Jack is wearing the darker shorts. Images from Wrestling (1890)

by Walter Armstrong

thankfully, and got a pint of beer for his troubles.

Tom was dead at 37 and his funeral made the papers, but he too lies in an unmarked grave in Camberwell Old Cemetery, buried with four unrelated adults and four newborns.

Life was dirty, mean and often short.

Wrestler, boxer and agent Warren “Dais” Patte of New Cross and Catford expired in his 40s, months after the eighth of his 14 children. Brixtonbased wrestler, referee, author and Sporting Life reporter Walter “The Cross-Buttocker” Armstrong served time with hard labour for forging cheques. He lived until his 80s, writing regular amusing columns and letters and attending meetings of the first regulatory body for wrestling, yet we find him in his last decade admitted to the workhouse.

Jack’s gyms were egalitarian, and black boxers (I am yet to find any black wrestlers) were prevalent in south-east and east London at the time. Interracial boxing matches were common and a number of black fighters became well-known figures.

The Sisters Mills were siblings variously described as Creole, South American or Mexican, and they sparred daily in exhibition matches on Deptford High Street or on Jack’s lineups. The mysterious Shoreditch-based and Jamaican-born Ching Ghook or Hook, aka Hezekiah Moscow, was a Deptford regular. When Jamaican boxer Alec Munroe was stabbed to death in Whitechapel, 20,000 people are said to have lined the streets for the funeral procession.

On tour in America, Jack held his own against many opponents, but was beaten by white wrestler Evan “Chicago Strangler” Lewis and former black heavyweight champion boxer George Godfrey, a man the notorious John L Sullivan refused to give a title shot to because of his skin colour.

Jack still came home a hero, albeit one suffering from rheumatism, a dent in his pride and with a lot less money in his pocket than he had hoped for.

By 1908 he was still getting mail sent to Sporting Life. So why did he vanish? I expect a combination of factors, including the American “big break” not quite going to plan. He was born just a little too early, perhaps, and spent too much of his efforts training others. By all accounts, he was a kind and generous man, and he didn’t have the wild reputation attached to him that kept other fighters in the spotlight.

Following his death from “senility” in Greenwich Infirmary in 1923, a very brief obituary read: “Wannop was a strongly built athlete and a typical example of the old school. I saw him struggling along with a stick a few months ago, and although his powerful frame had not diminished, and his face was bronzed, it was apparent that he was not in robust health. Wannop used to run a gymnasium in New Cross, but it did not move with the times, and eventually, with the decline of wrestling, the place had to be given up.”

Jack played a pioneering role in popularising and professionalising the art of wrestling at a time when pugilism was rapidly moving from dirty and illegal brawling to regulated sport. He was a much-loved figure in the social and cultural life of New Cross, drawing thousands of visitors to the area while building a sporting community and social network.

Sarah blogs the Jack Wannop story at grapplingwithhistory.com and on Twitter @wrestling1880s

30 LEWI S H AM L E I SU R E

SOMETHING TO EAT Tagliatelle with lamb stock, rosemary and lemon The team from Marcella in Deptford tell us how to make one of their favourite dishes don’t throw away the leftover roasting juices or gravy. Instead reduce them down, add butter, something fresh and herby and a little citrus zest and you have yourself a delicious pasta sauce that is both rich and frugal.

Ingredients For the pasta dough 10g olive oil 500g 00 pasta flour 340g egg yolks For the sauce 80g butter 100ml meat braising juices or gravy (we like lamb best) 3 sprigs of fresh rosemary, finely chopped 1 lemon, zested Parmesan Method 1 To make the pasta, add the olive oil to the bottom of a big mixing bowl and add the pasta flour. In a separate bowl, weigh out your egg yolks.

2 Add the yolks to the flour, mixing with your fingers until a dough starts to form.

3 At this stage, tip the dough on to your work surface and knead for

CROSSWORD NO. 7 ACROSS

DOWN

6 ABDEGHIIJLNOOR (anagram) (4, 5, 5) 9 Thin cord (6) 10 Bright yellow flower (8) 11 Nought (4) 12 Christmas plant (9) 14 Loss of memory (7) 16 Badly behaved (7) 19 Trustworthy, upright (9) 21 On one occasion (4) 23 Large cooking pot (8) 25 Graham ____, Brighton Rock author (6) 26 Political canvassing (14)

1 Glass container (6) 2 Poison cure (8) 3 Lengthy (4) 4 Send away, reject (7) 5 Move restlessly (6) 7 Pub counter (3) 8 Most boring (7) 12 Damp (5) 13 Depart (5) 15 North Kent resort (7) 17 Mathematics of lines and shapes (8) 18 Forsake (7) 20 Wooden frame (6) 22 To do with dogs (6) 24 Furrow (3) 25 Got bigger (4)

SOLUTION

a few minutes until the dough is uniform in texture and there are no loose bits of flour.

4 Once you’ve done that, wrap the dough in cling film and rest it in

the fridge for a couple of hours.

5 Roll out your fresh pasta and cut it into thick ribbons of tagliatelle or pappardelle.

BY ALDHELM

6 Across is a famous one-time resident of Sydenham.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to the boil and add plenty of salt.

6 In a large frying pan, melt the butter and continue to cook

it until the butter becomes brown and nutty. Quickly add the meat stock to the butter to stop it from getting too dark or burnt.

7 Add the chopped rosemary and leave over a low heat. At this point, have a taste – if your meat juices are already rich and well-reduced then take the pan off the heat.

If not then keep the pan bubbling until the sauce thickens.

8 Next, cook your pasta. If you are using fresh pasta it will only take a couple of minutes to be ready.

Reserve a mug-full of pasta cooking water and drain the rest.

9 Add the pasta to the meaty sauce and get tossing. The more you toss the pasta over and on to itself, the more you are encouraging the starch in the pasta to bond with the savoury meatiness of your sauce. Add a little pasta water if it looks a bit dry.

10 Now lift it all with some lemon zest and turn off the heat. Grate a generous handful of parmesan into the pan and toss the pasta some more, so that the cheese melts and the sauce becomes even more savoury and unctuous.

11 Add a bit of pepper and more cheese and serve.

A lewisham LOCAL ernest Shackleton Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton was born in Ireland in 1874 and moved to Sydenham aged 10, where he lived on Westwood Hill.

Shackleton led three British expeditions to the Antarctic and was knighted by King Edward VII for his heroic efforts.

In 1914, on a mission to cross the Antarctic via the South Pole, his ship Endurance became trapped in pack ice and was crushed. The crew camped on sea ice until it disintegrated, then launched lifeboats to an inhospitable speck of land called Elephant

ILLUSTRATION BY PETER RHODES

We first encountered this dish in our well-loved copy of Marcella Hazan’s The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking and it has become a bit of a classic in the restaurant.

Marcella Hazan writes of the dish: “The tastiest part of an Italian meat roast is the leftovers: the rosemary-saturated garlicky juices and the bits of brown that have fallen off the meat.

“They usually end up tossed with pasta, which is then known as la pasta col tosco d’arrosto: ‘with a touch of the roast’.”

Although in a typical Italian meal the pasta course would come before the meat, with the fresh ribbons of tagliatelle tossed in the meat-juices while the joint is resting, it’s also a great thing to make on a Monday – eking out the weekend’s festivities for another day.

We mostly use lamb stock in the restaurant, but this technique works with just about any meat you can think of. Next time you make a roast dinner or a meaty braise,

WORDS BY JACK BEER

Island. From there, they embarked on a stormy ocean voyage of 720 nautical miles to reach the inhabited island of South Georgia.

Shackleton returned to the Antarctic in 1921 but died of a heart attack aged 47 in South Georgia, where he is buried.

ACROSS: 6 John Logie Baird, 9 String, 10 Marigold, 11 Zero, 12 Mistletoe, 14 Amnesia, 16 Naughty, 19 Reputable, 21 Once, 23 Cauldron, 25 Greene, 26 Electioneering.

DOWN: 1 Bottle, 2 Antidote, 3 Long, 4 Dismiss, 5 Fidget, 7 Bar, 8 Dullest, 12 Moist, 13 Leave, 15 Margate, 17 Geometry, 18 Abandon, 20 Pallet, 22 Canine, 24 Rut, 25 Grew.