Issue 8 of The Lewisham Ledger

Pub with a punch

A FREE NEWSPAPER FOR LEWISHAM

The Lewisham Ledger I S S U E 8 | A U G U S T/S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 9

On

song The life and lyrics of Laolu PAGE 16

The return of a Bellingham boozer PA G E S 2 2 , 2 3

Snapshots of SE8

Centre stage

The photographs of Thankfull Sturdee

Meet local actor Taylor Bradshaw

PAG E S 1 8 , 1 9

PA G E 2 1

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Welcome to The Lewisham Ledger, a free newspaper for the borough. f you’re a regular reader of the paper (and we hope you now are!) then you will know that each edition has a special section on a different area of Lewisham, in addition to the usual borough-wide news and views.

This issue shines a spotlight on Bellingham and Beckenham Place, with a set of features that begins on page 22 with a visit to the newly reopened Fellowship and Star pub.

Our cover star for this issue is local singer Laolu, whose debut EP has been streamed more than 220,000 times on Spotify since its release last year. She talks about making music, Motown and mental health on page 16.

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

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 since our launch last year.

If you run a business or organisation and are interested in advertising in our next issue, published in early October, 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!

i

Mark McGinlay and Kate White

The Lewisham Ledger

Nadine Hibbert, chair of the Friends of Frendsbury Gardens, stands in the peaceful green space

Community puts down roots in local garden A group of residents from Brockley who transformed an abandoned area of land into a thriving community garden are looking for volunteers to help them with the finishing touches.

Frendsbury Gardens, located between Pincott Place and the railway track on the Brockley and Nunhead border, was once a fly-tipping hotspot, with knives, syringes and rubbish regularly discarded there.

Determined to take a proactive approach to the issue, a group of residents got together to draw up a plan for a community garden.

With support from Lewisham Council, lottery funding and other sources, not to mention years of hard graft, they turned the area into a beautiful green space and in 2013, Frendsbury Gardens was awarded a Green Flag.

Nadine Hibbert moved to the area nine years ago and has been chair of the Friends of Frendsbury Gardens for the past five years. She has worked tirelessly to source funding and volunteers to continue the good work on the garden and create an open, accessible space that has helped to improve community cohesion, safety and wellbeing.

Cover photograph Laolu 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 garden, which is now a haven for wildlife, offers weekly events including sessions to improve the health and wellbeing of more isolated members of the community, as well as therapeutic gardening.

There’s a free after-school club to keep teenagers off the streets and classes for children under five that include bug-hunting, pond-dipping and story time. The project works closely with local partners, schools and voluntary organisations to provide employment and educational opportunities. It has also become a place where the community can come together.

“The garden is a great place to meet people if you don’t know anyone,” Nadine said. “People come here to chill out and read a book. Parents bring their children here so it’s a good way to meet other parents with kids.

“The garden is based in an area of social housing, next to the Honor Oak Estate, where many families do not have access to a garden and have limited access to outdoor play space.”

The garden includes beds for growing fruit, vegetables and herbs, all of which can be harvested by the community for their own personal use. The variety of plants grown means there’s something for everyone.

Nadine said: “People come here to pick mint for their Pimm’s, or rosemary for their lamb roast. Turkish families will take the seeds from the sunflowers and roast them.

“We have grape vines in the garden and Syrian residents use the leaves to make dolma. They know which leaves to pick so the grapes grow better. People can just take what they need so it means less food goes to waste.”

A lack of shelter has limited the usability of the garden, so to ensure the space can be utilised and enjoyed all year round, a sheltered outdoor classroom and performance space is currently being built.

In keeping with the community spirit of Frendsbury Gardens, schoolchildren, local residents and visitors have been encouraged to get involved in the build by decorating hundreds of tiles, which will create the protective roof.

“There will be 700 tiles with a dome at the top to let in the light and give a stained glass window effect – think Sistine Chapel,” Nadine said.

The classroom is being built entirely by volunteers and this summer they are calling for local people to come and join them.

“No formal building skills are necessary; if you would attempt an Ikea flatpack then you have the skills needed,” Nadine said.

Tools and hard hats will be provided, along with a free lunch from local restaurant Parlez.

Experts from engineering and design company Ramboll, whose projects include the extension at the Tate Modern, and Mace, construction manager for the Shard, will be on hand to ensure everything runs smoothly.

Now Nadine is looking forward to the opening ceremony, which is set to take place in September.

“It has been a real community effort,” she said of the space. “Together we’ve created a lasting legacy.”

To volunteer with the outdoor classroom building project this summer, visit tinyurl.com/frendsbury for full details, dates and to register

Contributors Rosario Blue, Seamus Hasson, Ronnie Haydon, Alexander McBride Wilson, Dani Moseley, Colin Richardson, Nikki Spencer, Paul Stafford, Alice Troy-Donovan, Luke G Williams

Editorial and advertising lewishamledger@gmail.com

Marketing and social media Mark McGinlay

lewishamledger.tumblr.com

Follow us @lewishamledger @lewishamledger @lewishamledger

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New Cross could get 33-storey tower

Firefighters hold charity car wash

Firefighters from Forest Hill will be rolling out their fire hoses for a car wash to raise cash for charity.

Drivers from SE23 and the surrounding area are invited to have their cars washed by firefighters for a donation fee of their choice. Last year the day raised £550, which the team hopes to beat this year with the help of the community.

All cash raised will be donated to the Fire Fighters Charity, which provides support to serving and retired firefighters suffering from physical and mental illness. It also offers a confidential hel-

pline which gives impartial advice.

Firefighter Joseph Tranter from Forest Hill Fire Station said: “We’d like to invite everyone to come and have their cars washed by our firefighters to help us raise funds for this fantastic charity.

“All proceeds will go towards a range of support programmes including physical rehabilitation and psychological support for serving and retired firefighters and their families too.”

Firefighters from Forest Hill Fire Station are hoping to raise hundreds of pounds for charity this month

The car wash will take place on August 31, 12-4pm at Forest Hill Fire Station, 155 Stanstead Road

Resident's phone mast battle A controversial mobile phone mast installed on a block of flats in SE4 is finally set to be removed following a local resident’s court battle – but he fears the fight is not over yet.

The phone mast was fixed to the roof of Forsythia House on Pendrell Road

by Cornerstone Telecommunications Infrastructure Limited (CTIL), a joint venture between O2 and Vodafone, in April 2017.

Residents who live in and around the block said the high levels of radiation emanating from the mast were a health risk to local people and said that residents and nearby schools were not consulted on the plans.

But CTIL and Lewisham Council argued that the structures were “pole mounts” not masts, meaning the installation fell under permitted development rights and could be erected without full planning permission. Council officers refused to take action to remove it.

Local man Nigel Mawbey applied for a judicial review against the council and in February last year, the high court ruled that the council’s decision was “irrational” and the word “mast” should be interpreted broadly. The secretary of state – who wrote a letter to the court in support of Nigel – and CTIL were interested parties at the hearing.

Nigel said: “The case focused on the definition of the word ‘mast’. By excluding poles that support antennas from this definition, CTIL were creating a loophole that allowed the installation

on Forsythia House to benefit from permitted development rights and so they could build with impunity in the face of strong opposition in the local community. Both the council and CTIL knew well before construction that local people would oppose the masts in this location. There was no community consultation and nobody was informed.

“The council’s legal department bought into this ‘loophole’, relying on the misuse of definitions in an industry paper written in a large part by CTIL, rather than using well-established statutory construction methods. The planning department however happily referred to them as masts!”

The phone mast was installed on this block of flats in SE4 in 2017

CTIL appealed the high court’s ruling and in June this year, the court of appeal unanimously upheld the judgment of the high court, concluding that the correct place to find a definition of a word like mast is in a dictionary.

Following the verdict, a spokesperson for CTIL, which has since rebranded as Cornerstone, said: “Cornerstone can now confirm that we are intending to remove the remaining telecommunications equipment on Forsythia House.”

The council’s legal bill for the judicial review, which it was required to attend, cost £7,500. It did not participate in the appeal that followed.

The council granted a lease over the roof of Forsythia House to CTIL for the installation of the mast, but according to Nigel, a freedom of information request revealed there are no records within the council of an authorisation process or which official signed the lease.

Campaigners told The Lewisham Ledger they are concerned that the installation could become de facto legal by April 2021, when the four-year window for the council to take enforcement action ends.

Asked about CTIL’s intention to remove the equipment, Nigel said: “In light of CTIL’s aggressive and underhand behaviour in other locations, I am treating this with significant scepticism.

“Having dedicated well over two years to convincing the council to follow the law, I’ll believe it when I actually see it come down and moreover, when the lease over the roof is surrendered.”

Proposals to build a 33-storey tower on the Sainsbury’s site in New Cross Gate have caused concern among some local residents.

Developer Mount Anvil, residential property group A2Dominion and Sainsbury’s are hoping to build 1,500 homes on the land – including a minimum of 35% “affordable” homes – along with “enhanced green spaces”, a new Sainsbury’s store and flexible workspace.

The Sainsbury’s superstore was facing closure due to TfL’s plans to use the land to extend the Bakerloo line. But the developers said that if the scheme goes ahead, it will allow the store to stay open, securing 230 jobs while allowing the new Tube station to be delivered.

Most of the proposed buildings range from three to 13 storeys in height, but the masterplan also includes two towers of 25 and 33 storeys, which will be located next to the railway line to the north of the site.

In a post on the Telegraph Hill Noticeboard on Facebook, one local resident noted that the taller building is the same number of storeys as 1960s tower block Centre Point by Tottenham Court Road station.

Another resident said: “I realise we need more affordable homes and don’t object to new homes being built but the scale of this is ridiculous.

“It is already almost impossible to squeeze on to a train from 7.30 to 10am, and we also lack the roads, schools, GP practices and other essentials for such a large number of homes.”

A third said: “If you live near the bottom [of Telegraph Hill] it is going to leer down on us.”

But a fourth said: “Can we appreciate that there is a housing crisis in London and the way to stop it is to build homes.”

Responding to residents’ concerns, the developers said their designs have addressed feedback from local people, heritage views and nearby conservation areas. They said they have lowered building heights along the conservation area boundary following community consultation.

They added: “Mount Anvil, A2Dominion and Sainsbury’s are committed to engaging with the local community and are finalising proposals which will deliver more homes for all Londoners while preserving nearby conservation areas, creating new green spaces and ensuring local amenities are not placed under pressure.”

A planning application is expected to be submitted in September.

The tower could be built on the Sainsbury's site in New Cross Gate

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Pamphlet published on Steam Down A local writer has produced a pamphlet about a weekly jam in Deptford that has been described as “London’s most important jazz night”.

Steam Down or How Things Begin is a celebration of Steam Down at Buster Mantis, which Emma Warren uses to show the universal way things are when new culture is being generated.

The pamphlet evolved out of a book she published earlier this year called Make Some Space, about another key venue on the London jazz scene: the Total Refreshment Centre in Hackney.

When she discovered Steam Down, Emma was “blown away” by the fact it existed. “I loved it instantly”, she said.

The pamphlet looks at the links between the night and Deptford’s rich music culture and history. “Nothing comes from nowhere, and Steam Down is inextricably linked to some very Deptford stories,” Emma said.

“I had this realisation when I was there one night. I was thinking, ‘I’m in

Steam Down at this moment in time but I’m also under an arch in [1980 film] Babylon, or I’m at a dance that Shaka’s doing with Saxon.’

“There was tons of sound system activity happening in Deptford and all around south London during the 1970s and 80s, which was incredibly inventive, incredibly skilful and required huge amounts of resourcefulness from the men and women who made it happen.

“Obviously there’s a requirement to be resourceful when you’re living under oppressive systems and you’re dealing with explicitly racist situations, as was the case in the 70s and 80s.”

The pamphlet begins with an evocative description of a Wednesday night at Buster Mantis, with the Steam Down Collective “ready to refract afrobeat, dub, grime, bassline, hip hop and jazz through an energetic dance floor prism”.

Both audience and musicians, Emma writes, are gathered under the arch on a shared floor to “dance and commune: to make a vibe, not just catch one”.

Emma Warren's new pamphlet on Steam Down is a must-read

She talks of how the music offers a sense of kinship and community at a time when “state safety nets have been dismantled”. There’s no charge to get in, just a bucket for donations, ensuring the night remains accessible to all.

Even the name Steam Down is itself connected to “collective ownership and sharing”, Emma points out. It’s derived from oil down, the national dish of Grenada that is traditionally made for large weekly gatherings of family and friends.

Emma has been documenting music culture since the early 90s, when she became a founding contributor at influential dance music magazine Jockey Slut while at university in Manchester.

The Lee resident has made documentaries for radio, worked at magazines including The Face and has written for many other publications. She’s passionate about youth work and mentoring and was involved in Brixton-based magazine Live, which was run by young people.

Speaking about Deptford, Emma, who has known the area for many years,

said: “I like how you can see layers of signage across time. Lots of the phone numbers on the shops are from before when they changed the London phone numbers. Some of them are 01.

“There are shops that are not there anymore but the signage is still there and it hasn’t really been removed and tidied up, so you can see all the layers of all the people who have been there.

“AZ Halal Butchers for example shows up in the footage that was taken in 1981 on a Thames TV programme about the [St Paul’s] Crypt and it’s still there. And I really like the name of the shop Housewives Cash & Carry.

“I like the fact you can walk from that really busy road in New Cross, that arterial, Roman road that takes you up to London, all the way down to the Thames. Plus I really like eating at Hullabaloo – and Buster Mantis of course.”

Steam Down or How Things Begin is published by Rough Trade and costs £7.99

New lease of life for former Kennedy's sausage shop An important old building in Deptford described as a “sleeping beauty” could be revived if plans are approved.

Peckham-based architect and heritage expert Benedict O’Looney is hoping to restore 64-66 Deptford High Street on behalf of its owners, the Lobo family.

The property was built in the late 1700s and in the 1920s it was taken over

by Kennedy’s, which ran sausage shops and factories across south-east London and Kent. When the Deptford branch closed in 2007 the property was bought by the Lobos, who run their own meat shop from the space.

“I have really high hopes for this project. It’s just the kind of thing we like to do, which is to rescue unloved and messed-up buildings and try to breathe new life into them,” Benedict said.

“It’s a very early timber-frame house associated with the royal dockyard artisans and the plethora of carpenters and woodworkers. It’s a particular building type that pitches up on the margins of

the capital, in places like Peckham and Deptford and Greenwich. There were thousands and thousands of them in 17th and 18th-century London. They’ve all been cleared in the City and in Westminster and in central areas, but in the poorer neighbourhoods a few of them survived. They’re special buildings.”

Speaking about the first time he explored the property, Benedict said: “We were like, ‘We need to go upstairs and see what’s above this old shop.’ So we got a ladder and climbed up there and found this time capsule from the 1920s.

“If you look at the walls, you can see this strange palimpsest of all these different wallpapers and paints. It tells us an awful lot about intensive inhabitation through the 18th and 19th centuries.

“In the corner there was this pile of biscuit tins. They all said ‘Chiltonian’ on them, with these beautiful, bright, floral patterns. Chiltonian had a beautiful, massive biscuit factory in Lee, where the Chiltonian industrial estate is now.

It turns out they made a fortune selling

biscuits in the First World War. The only way into the tins was with a can opener.

Maybe they were sealed like that to send them off on ships to distant places.

“Presumably the biscuits were sold in the shop – either that or whoever worked there had a serious fondness for them, because there were about 20 or 30 tins up there.”

This building at 64-66 Deptford High Street could be restored

He added: “Deptford is a rich and interesting place. I love the way it runs from high to low – from the worldclass baroque church St Paul’s, which is of international significance, to these crunchy old 18th-century timber-frame structures that somehow survived.

“The other thing that buoyed me up was watching The Secret History of Our Streets on Deptford High Street. In some ways it could be described as the best one [of the series] because Deptford has lost the most.

“All of the back streets were filled with these little artisans’ houses and they’ve just gone. While there’s a kind of thread of it that survives on Deptford High Street, the whole hinterland both sides was cleared. And so it tells that story, which is a really tough story.

“That’s another reason why we want to try and restore this structure and highlight its significance. It’s part of this legacy of all these amazing carpenters who built Deptford. It’s a dormant sleeping beauty.”

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Age against the machine

Read all about it Children and staff from a New Cross school held their second annual book festival last month, with author visits, readings and other literary events.

Storyteller Wendy Shearer opened the week at St James Hatcham Primary School by telling spellbinding tales from Greek myths. Dr Julia Hope from Goldsmiths spent a sunny afternoon in the school’s outdoor classroom, telling stories to the youngest pupils.

The young people’s laureate for London, Theresa Lola, also led a poetry workshop for year five and six pupils. Destiny from year six said: “My favourite event was writing poetry with Theresa Lola. She helped me to unleash my imagination.”

Another festival highlight was a visit by young Tasmanian author Samuel J Halpin, who wrote The Peculiar Peggs of Riddling Woods. Samuel managed to simultaneously make the children laugh and send shivers up their spines with his talk about scary tales of suspense.

Tosin from year six said: “To sum up the book festival in three words – exciting, inspiring and fun!”

A cultural festival that celebrates the creativity of older people is coming to Lewisham this autumn.

It will feature more than 70 events, ranging from live music, theatre, dance and film to exhibitions, workshops, talks, pop-up choirs and large-scale outdoor performances. Nearly everything will be free or “pay what makes you happy”.

The festival is aiming to challenge people’s perceptions and attitudes towards getting older, while celebrating

older people and highlighting the ways in which creativity can help us age well and make a radical impact on quality of life.

It is being produced by the Albany in Deptford and participatory arts company Entelechy Arts, which is based there.

Events will range from a 21st century tea dance created with residents of local care homes to an evening with 68-yearold drag legend Lavinia Co-op, who has been raising hell – and eyebrows – for as long as she can remember.

Gavin Barlow, festival co-director and CEO of the Albany, said: “[The festival] is a brilliant showcase for the work so many inspiring community, creative and voluntary organisations are doing in the borough, and we’re excited to see what new relationships and partnerships might come out of it.”

Age Against the Machine – Festival of Creative Ageing runs from September 13 to October 6. For full information, visit ageagainstthemachine.org.uk

Forest Hill says goodbye to Stefania A memorial service for Stefania Bada, a much-loved homeless woman from Forest Hill, took place at Sydenham School on July 20.

Stefania was well known in the local community and her sudden death as the result of an infection has caused a huge outpouring of grief.

More than 470 people have donated £8,000 to her memorial fund through a page set up by Forest Hill resident Clare Phipps, while other local people and businesses flooded the underpass where she used to sit with flowers and messages of sympathy.

Stefania was born on July 22, 1977 in the town of Lanciano in central Italy.

She moved to London eight years ago, where she met her partner David.

Filmmaker and photographer Martin Andersen got to know the couple when he filmed them for a music video by Danish band Lowly for the track 12:36.

He had also been working with them on a photography book about their lives.

He said Stefania had lived in Forest Hill for the past five years. “Many of the local Forest Hill residents would each day pass by Stefania in the underpass

by Forest Hill Station, where she would

An upcoming festival will showcase the creativity of older people

Children from St James Hatcham school at this year's book festival

Slow progress at Catford crossing A hazardous road crossing in Catford is set to be made safer for pedestrians... but not until 2021.

The junction where Torridon Road meets busy Brownhill Road, which is part of the south circular, is used regularly by people walking from Catford to Hither Green and vice versa, as well as those needing to catch the 202 or 660 bus on the Hither Green side.

But there are no pedestrian crossings at the junction, with those on foot given just seconds to cross the south circular before the traffic lights change.

A spokeswoman for TfL said: “We Residents said Stefania Bada brightened up their community PHOTO BY MARTIN MASAI ANDERSEN

sit from early morning till late evening,” he said. “She was a caring person who always shared a big smile and a thumbs up to passersby. She was always ready to help carry buggies or heavy bags up and down the stairs. Stefania brightened up our community. She was always nice to everyone even though she herself didn’t have an easy life.”

The Rev Edd Stock, who led Stefania’s memorial service, said: “Stefania gave us far more than we ever gave her. She taught us what it was to be human, what it means to love, what it means to be compassionate, what it means to care for others.

“Even though she went through great struggles herself she showed this great humanity that I think we’re going to lose by her death.”

are working on improvements along Brownhill Road and in agreement with Lewisham Council we are proposing taking the Torridon Road scheme forward to provide pedestrian facilities on all arms of the junction and will now work on concept designs before consulting.

“Our proposals are for three arms of the junction to have pedestrian phases, which will be signalised. The junction is currently walk with traffic only.”

Asked about timings for the work, the spokeswoman said: “We plan to consult before next spring and then for work to start the following year.”

Crossing this Catford junction on foot is a perilous exercise

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Time to talk Three community talks aiming to reduce urban youth violence and promote unity will take place at the Midi Music Company in Deptford this month.

The Real Talk series will open up conversations on the issues surrounding youth violence in a supportive space. It will encourage people to share thoughts and experiences and work together for solutions and positive change. Anyone who lives, works or has an interest in Deptford and the surrounding area is welcome to attend the free series.

The talks will last around two hours, with guest speakers, local experts, an experience-sharing session and a musical performance.

Prior to each talk, award-winning psychotherapist Glenda D Roberts will offer drop-in, one-to-one sessions for anyone who would like to speak confidentially about their experiences, fears or concerns in a private setting.

Real Talk will conclude with the development of the Deptford Pledge, a community-defined promise of how local people will support one another and put an end to youth violence.

The series begins on August 14 with a talk titled Young People and Policing.

It will ask why we have seen a rise in violence within our communities and the effect it is having on young people, parents and community members.

Speakers will include Nickiesha Barnett from the Lewisham crime reduction team and William Willson, former Trident, Metropolitan police and founder of Flipping Youth Prince’s Trust International. There will also be a Q&A with a young person affected by crime.

Then on August 21, a Young People and Community talk will ask whether young people are being misrepresented in the media with a discussion on race, gender and community. It will also ask how we can celebrate youth and counter negative stereotypes.

Speakers will include the inspirational Beverley Glean, founder and artistic director of Irie Dance Theatre, which is based at the Moonshot Centre in New Cross.

The final talk on August 28, Young People, Opportunity and Enterprise, will look at career opportunities available to young people in the worlds of music, business, sport and the creative

Political map under review People across Lewisham are being urged to have their say on proposals to draw up new council wards and ward boundaries within the borough.

The public consultation, by the Local Government Boundary Commission for England (LGBCE) is open now until September 2. After all representations have been considered, LGBCE will publish its draft recommendations in December.

It will then hold a further period of public consultation, with the final proposals expected to be published in May next year. The new electoral boundaries will come into effect at the local elections in May 2022.

The review will look at the number of wards, boundaries and names, as well as how many councillors represent each one. At the moment there are 18 wards in Lewisham and LGBCE said it is “minded to recommend” that the number of councillors, currently 54, stays the same.

Any new wards must deliver electoral equality, with each councillor representing roughly the same number of electors. Wards should as far as possible reflect the interests and identities of local communities. The last ward review took place in 1999 and was published in 2002.

Professor Colin Mellors, chair of LGBCE, said: “We are asking local people and organisations to help us draw up new wards for Lewisham. As we develop the recommendations, we will take into account local community

Entrepreneur Cephas Williams is one of the speakers taking part in the Real Talk series PHOTO BY LIMA CHARLIE

industries. Midi Music’s founder Wozzy Brewster and south-east London-based entrepreneur Cephas Williams, who is founder and director of Drummer Boy Studio and the 56 Black Men campaign, will speak at the session.

Midi Music’s Andrea Jeffrey-Hall said: “Young people are at the heart of what we do at the Midi Music Company.

“With funding cuts, we have had to reduce our music classes for children and wanted to do something for young people, particularly 11 to 16 year olds [who are] increasingly dealing with issues of serious youth violence.

“Midi Music provides an alternative to formal education and helps young

people find out more about the industry through a range of courses, events and seminars, and guides the careers of emerging artists like Signkid, a deaf, hip-hop sign language rapper.

“Music is the glue that brings people together. The Real Talk series is a call for the community to come together and find a positive and lasting solution to serious youth violence and its causes.”

The talks will run from 6-8pm at the Midi Music Company, 77 Watson’s Street. To RSVP, visit tinyurl.com/ realtalkmmc. Dr Roberts’ one-on-one sessions will run before each talk from 4-6pm

New directions for Lewisham locals Gardening, pottery, performing arts and even balloon design are just a handful of the varied classes for adults on offer with Adult Learning Lewisham (ALL) from September.

Computing, glasswork, book-binding, illustration, art, floristry, food, health, haircare, languages and maths are other options to choose from, while further sessions cover employability, preparation for British citizenship and mindlift courses for adults living with mental health issues.

Local resident Louisa Chastney signed up to a floristry course last year as she wanted to spend her free time doing something more creative. After mastering the basics, she is now making a career out of her new-found skills.

She said: “When I came across the floristry course at ALL, it ticked every box. And unlike many other courses out

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An art class run by Adult Learning Lewisham

Lewisham is currently split into 18 wards with 54 councillors

there, it was actually affordable. I’m now on my fifth course and in just a matter of months, my confidence and skill set have grown immensely.

“As well as now being well on my way to becoming a freelance wedding florist, I feel happier and more confident in general and I have made some fantastic new floristry friends.”

A spokesperson for ALL, which is run by Lewisham Council, said: “Adult education brings us together as citizens to work on projects with others and get more involved in our community.

“It is for everyone at every stage of life, whether you want to support your children on a family learning course, gain a skill that may lead to a career change or do yoga or pilates to stay fit and healthy.”

identities as well as ensuring electoral equality for voters.

“If you have a view about which communities or neighbourhoods should be part of the same council ward then we want to hear from you. And if you think a road, river or railway makes for a strong boundary between communities in your part of Lewisham then this consultation is for you.

“We will carefully consider all evidence that is provided during this phase of the review, whoever it is from and whether it applies to the whole of Lewisham or just a small part of the borough.

“Residents will then have a further chance to have their say after we publish our draft recommendations in December.”

To enrol on a course or find out more, visit lewisham.gov.uk/adultlearning

To give your views, go to consultation. lgbce.org.uk/node/17020

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heatre can help tackle knife crime. You might doubt me – but hear me out. According to the Evening Standard, 40 knife offences are reported to the police every day. But all we hear about is the need for more police on the streets; the need to contain the problems we face; the gangs these young people must have been part of for it to happen to them.

Well, I’m here to tell you a different story. I’m an actress and writer – that’s my job. Being part of Lewisham Youth Theatre (LYT) as a teenager and now as a trustee has shown me another way. I’m not talking West End glamour here – I’m talking Catford, south-east London, and working with budgets that seem to get tighter by the project.

Every year more than 700 kids from Lewisham borough come through our doors. Over 70% are from deprived backgrounds. Some have mental health conditions, some have been excluded from school, some have just lost their way. Come what may, we take them in. LYT is free and all we ask for is commitment and respect.

Life as a teenager can be hard. I always hear people say, “Kids should be at home, not on the streets” – but maybe that’s easier if your parents have a big house or can pay for you to go to nice after-school clubs. At LYT kids know they are safe, they know they are valued. They know we believe in them and that goes a long way.

Drama can be transformative. It’s about being in a place where you feel you belong – a “safe haven”, as some of the kids call it – where you can be yourself and try new things without fear.

I’ve seen loud and disruptive kids become thoughtful; quiet kids find their voice; and teenagers struggling with self-worth find their inner value, all through creating and playing different characters and working together on a piece of theatre.

I was born and raised in the heart of Catford. From the age of eight I already knew I wanted to be a worldrenowned actress. But before I’d even hit my teenage years I had accepted that this was a pipe dream.

Growing up in the borough of Lewisham was always eventful and more times than not, in a negative way. McDonald’s in Lewisham was always the hangout spot, for the person you fancied or the school rival you wanted to settle the score with.

Your day would start off happy, safe and family or community orientated, but you knew, no matter what the security checks or police presence, that by a certain time you’d need to leave because something was always guaranteed to kick off.

There weren’t any youth clubs I can think of, but there were dance, drama and sports clubs in and around the area. These were great because it would allow young people from different schools to mix and get to know each other.

This would create a connection and then when it came to school rivalry, sometimes it could be easily diffused because it would be like, “Nah, I know him, I did dance with him a couple of months back, he’s cool.”

But these were four-week programmes, which, although effective, were only short-lived. LYT is a pillar, because it has been running consistently for more than 30 years,

Dani Moseley joined Lewisham Youth Theatre aged 14 and it changed her life

t

WORDS BY DANI MOSELE Y

A positive path Lewisham Youth Theatre is a lifeline for young people in the borough – but as funding cuts continue, it needs more support

belief in myself as a creative grew and I watched others experience the same.

Not everyone who attends LYT wants to be an actor – some have gone on to work as stage managers, IT consultants, teachers and more.

Others who previously might have struggled to find work are now in employment.

As for me, I’ve been in TV shows on Sky and the BBC, modelled for MAC and won a script-writing award with Channel 4 and the British Urban Film Festival for a co-written feature film.

I do voiceovers for commercials and radio and facilitate workshops in schools around social-based issues. It’s a far cry from the nine-to-five office job that was expected of me.

Organisations like LYT are not the entire solution to keeping young people off the streets, but they are a major tool in getting them motivated and thinking more positively and productively about life and their place in the community.

You get to play different characters, putting yourself in someone else’s

Lewisham Youth Theatre kept the dream alive for me, pushing me to be more and do better changing the lives of young people for the better.

When I was 14, Helen Stanley from LYT came to my secondary school and did a drama workshop. She let us know that if we had enjoyed it, we could explore acting further by joining LYT. I was there.

My first production through LYT was a National Youth Theatre “connections” festival, in which I played a captain at war. I marvelled at how professional yet nurturing the company and its directors were.

I had already accepted that I was never going to drama school and would never be on a TV or film set. I was resigned to this being as close as I would get. But LYT kept the dream alive for me, pushing me and others to be more and do better.

They took us to theatres we couldn’t afford to go to, allowed us to explore devised and scripted work, gave us bigger roles so we stepped up and supported those who struggled to read or weren’t fully confident yet.

How many organisations do this in our borough for free? Other than chicken shops and fast food restaurants, where can young people with little money go to hang out?

LYT helped me hone my craft and build my confidence and compassion.

I met so many different people, with different needs and backgrounds. As I grew up through LYT, my ability and

shoes, so you can see people differently and gain a better understanding of why people do the things they do. Growing up, where else truly allows you to explore this for free outside of school?

LYT believes so much in the voice of its young people that it created a young members’ committee, where young people get to have a say in new projects and help run events throughout the year.

Recently our young people have been sharing their experiences with representatives from the mayor’s team at City Hall, where more connections were made as funding cuts continue to rise.

The GLA understands why places like LYT are vital to tackling the violence on our streets – and it’s time that central government starts to listen to these young voices too.

If we do not see more support for services like ours then we really will be failing a generation. When we invest in our future by investing in our young people, that’s when we’ll see change.

Children in Lewisham – and London as a whole – are amazing.

Every time I work with them as a writer, director or mentor I feel inspired. Give them the space to find their voice, a place to articulate their dreams, a platform for the future and they will surprise us all.

TH E LE WI S H A M L E DG E R

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urrounded by the Birds Nest pub, a new complex of trendy shipping containers and encroaching housing developments, the boating community on Deptford Creek is Julian Kingston’s hidden home – and one he has fought hard to hold on to.

“I’ve been here 33 years and survived the construction of the DLR and numerous attempts at eviction,” he says.

As we sip tea on Julian’s boat, ducks waddle about and the creek gradually fills with green tidal water.

Despite the tranquillity of the site – seemingly shielded from the noise and pollution of Deptford Church Street – there is an ongoing “pitch battle” for the boaters to remain on the water.

“For that reason we’re in the throes of becoming a cooperative,” says Julian, a boat builder by trade who discovered the site in 1986 when it was abandoned and overgrown.

The boating community in this part of the creek now consists of around 15 barges and smaller vessels, but it was deserted when Julian first settled here. For weeks before moving in, he trawled through the muddy creek to clear it for his boat, hauling out bikes, sewing machines and parking meters.

“I found this thing with a pointy wing and thought, ‘Oh God, it’s a bomb’. It turned out it was an oxygen cylinder, but there was a moment of heart-in-mouth.”

Since 2011, Julian has been trustee of the Lenox Project, which aims to build a full size replica of the Lenox – a naval ship that was built in Deptford Dockyard in 1678 – on a site being redeveloped into high-end riverfront housing.

Julian is one of six people working on the project, with the support of a large network of local residents. It grew out of Convoys Opportunity, a campaign group established when plans to develop the site first emerged.

“We were trying to argue that this was an incredible opportunity for the local community [to shape the future of the site]. We knew there needed to be not only a celebration of history but something far more practical given back to the community.”

The Lenox Project plans to bring employment, education and specialist training opportunities to local people, as well as a naval tourist attraction to complement the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, which is visible downriver from the former dockyard, now known as Convoys Wharf.

The wharf, once used by Rupert Murdoch to store paper imported from Norway for his newspapers, is now owned by a Hong Kong-listed conglomerate, Hutchison Whampoa.

It plans to build 3,500 new homes on the site, plus a primary school and a public walkway to the river.

Due to pressure from the Lenox team, the latest masterplan for the scheme now also includes the replica ship. For Julian, retrofitting a sense of local pride and “enthusiasm” is at the heart of the Lenox Project.

“The reason for choosing to build such a large boat isn’t just for the impact. It’s also because we can really indulge in a whole cross-section of skills training – going right from traditional skills, transferable into historic building restoration, to the numeric controlled modern shipbuilding technology.”

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up the creek Julian Kingston tells us more about the project to build a full-size replica of the Lenox – a naval ship constructed in Deptford 340 years ago WORDS BY ALICE TROY-DONOVAN

Convoys Wharf will be the largest housing development in Lewisham borough and the next instalment in the steady march of luxury builds along the Thames waterfront. The site will consist of 15% “affordable” housing, but as Julian points out, “Lewisham Council’s definition of affordable and the ordinary Joe in the street’s definition of affordable are completely different things.”

The challenge has been convincing Hutchison of the project’s value. “If it’s run properly, it will make money.

But getting hard-nosed businessmen to see that is a different matter altogether.”

Other projects completed by Hutchison include skyscrapers and luxury apartment complexes, mostly in Hong Kong. “[The Lenox] is an unnecessary complication in their very simple lives,” says Julian. “Their simple lives are to build expensive flats and sell them for a fortune.”

Lewisham Council raised a number of issues with the company’s initial development plans, but the decision was taken out of its hands by then-

PHOTO BY ALEX MCBRIDE WILSON

mayor Boris Johnson, following a letter from Hutchison complaining of “unreasonable” demands imposed by the council and local groups.

By a stroke of luck, Johnson took a liking to the idea of the ship and insisted Hutchison include it in the plans. It is now written into the site’s masterplan as a section 106 condition – the piece of legislation that, in theory, ensures developers contribute to existing local need as well as making a profit for shareholders.

In addition to the Lenox Project, Hutchison will contribute towards construction of a primary school and will pay £6 million over three years to TfL for the provision of transport links and infrastructure.

World-renowned architect Terry Farrell is responsible for the masterplan which, says Julian, “lacks any spark of individuality”. But thanks to the inclusion of the Lenox, the Convoys Wharf website is able to talk about reestablishing “a sense of place and identity that is unique to this part of London”. In fact, Julian says, Farrell’s original design for the space

Above: Deptford resident Julian Kingston

By building such a large boat, we can indulge in a whole crosssection of skills training

“could be anywhere”.

The Convoys Wharf website also claims the project will complement the existing historic high street. Julian disagrees: “It will kill the high street as we know it. I think what might inevitably happen is that you’ll get less and less landlords in the street because one will sell to the other to make the shopfronts bigger.

“It needs some real, close work

by Lewisham Council and their conservation officers, and Historic England as well. Not nearly enough of that street is listed. You’ve only got to look above ground-floor level and the street is as it was 150 years ago in most places.”

After eight years, the campaign is still going strong, despite attempts by the developer to “burn us out”, says Julian. For now, the primary barrier to the project’s success is not volunteer fatigue but funding. “How do you get a backer when the landowner is against you?”

With the Convoys Wharf scheme yet to begin and expected to take 15 years to complete, the Lenox team are refocusing on the short-term in order not to run out of steam.

They are currently raising funds to turn a disused 18th-century building into a visitor centre. So far the campaign has secured more than £226,000-worth of pledges through crowdfunding, including £50,000 from the mayor of London, with a target of £415,000 by August 12.

As well as housing a permanent display of maritime artefacts, the Deptford Dockyard and Lenox Visitor Centre will run events and skills training in woodwork and boatbuilding.

“It’s a standalone project which we can focus on now,” says Julian. And it is, quite literally, a step closer to constructing the Lenox itself.

“The building is about as close as you can get to the site that we’ve been allocated for building the ship,” he says. “We have to start at small beginnings.”

16 MU S I C

aolu, whose full name Oláolú means “God’s wealth” in Yoruba, was born and raised in the heart of Lewisham – and still lives here today.

“Yep, south is the best,” she says. “It has the flavour, it has the cultural essence of everyone. I don’t mess around with south, you know.

I’m south-east London through and through, can’t no one tell me different.”

Laolu discovered she could sing at the age of 10 while auditioning for her primary school choir. She couldn’t understand why everyone was so excited by her voice until she sang later on for her mother, who was also blown away.

As a kid, she and her best friend used to recreate the music videos of late-90s girl group Cleopatra. She later went on to study music at college and commercial music performance at university.

She decided she wanted to pursue music professionally after a college project performing acoustic sets. “The guitarist and the teacher of the class were like, ‘You know you can really do this music if you really want it.’ And that made everything click. I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to be a singer.’

“To have two people telling me I could really do this and I had the potential to really be something big – I was just like, ‘OK, let me put my all into it, let me just do everything I can possibly do to get there’, and it literally hasn’t stopped since.”

Laolu began her career working with the likes of Ms Dynamite and Katy B, but then she encountered a number of setbacks that led to a breakdown and deep depression.

This lasted almost three years, forcing her to question everything in her life, including whether she should continue making music.

“It was multiple things,” she says.

“It was music, relationships breaking down, dodgy managers... It was just, you know, really weird things, like producers withholding your music, and you’re like, ‘Give me my songs, give me my songs’. I literally had a whole EP that I had to just let go, because the producer wouldn’t give me my music.”

Laolu’s brother was the one who helped her find the strength to put the situation behind her and move forward. “He was just like, ‘Look, I know you wanted to put out this project, but you’re going to have to let it go. It’s better to just be free from it.’”

Laolu now views the experience as a valuable lesson, firm in the belief that what is for her will not pass her by.

She had to start from scratch and received a lukewarm reception when she announced she was working on a new EP. But she proved people wrong with the release of All In Me, her first EP in November 2018. The first single Buffering has scored over 100,000 streams on Spotify alone.

Laolu is an independent artist; she is not signed to any record label and funds every part of her music herself.

All In Me, the EP’s title track that was also released as a single, is a refreshing and masterful blend of a forgotten R&B sound, moody electronic beats and floaty, soulful vocals. The lyrics, on the surface about love, have more to them than meets the eye.

“The last EP I did by force to get out of depression and I wrote [the track]

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I thought, OK, let me put my all into it – and it literally hasn't stopped since

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WEALTH

OF

TALENT

Laolu's debut EP has been streamed more than 220,000 times on Spotify since its release last year. The Lewisham-based singersongwriter talks making music, Motown and mental health WORDS BY ROSARIO BLUE

All In Me as a conversation that I would have with depression,” she says.

“After I wrote that song I was like, ‘I’ve put it to bed. That’s it, it’s done.’ I wanted to put out this project that tells everyone why I stopped making music for so long, what’s been happening with me, where I am now and where I plan to go.”

She says the meaning of the tracks has also changed over time. “So Right was originally a love song, but to me,

PHOTO BY PAUL STAFFORD

when I released it, it meant having a new lease of life, feeling free and feeling whole within yourself.”

Laolu has learned some valuable lessons that she advises anyone entering the industry to be aware of.

“It’s definitely about the circle that you keep around you,” she says.

“Unfortunately there’s a lot of BS people in the industry, friends who only want to be around people who are popping, and once they stop popping

Above: Laolu, pictured at the Brookmill pub on Cranbrook Road

they are gone. Don’t have ‘yes people’ around you and lawyer up! I don’t want to be signing no 360 deal.”

A 360 deal is one where the record company takes a portion of the artist’s earnings from live performances and other revenue, not just from record sales. “The one thing they always drilled into our brains in school, in uni, in college is to read your contract.”

Laolu has lots of projects in the pipeline, with new singles now in the final mixing stage, including her cover of Gladys Knight’s If I Were Your Woman. She was asked to record it by independent record label FrtyFve in honour of 60 years of Motown.

Laolu’s cover does the original more than justice: it makes the hairs on your neck stand up. It was recorded in just one day as she was booked to fly to LA the next morning. “It was manic,” she says. “We searched high and low for a pianist and we couldn’t find one that week. I was like, ‘You play the chords on the guitar, I’ll record the vocals, and we’ll sort it out when I get back.’

“While in LA I was trying to find a pianist in the UK. Then my producer was like, ‘Actually, I got my Rhodes keyboard fixed.’ So he did all that, then we sent it to my brother to mix and master and it was solid.”

To accompany the cover, Laolu recorded a short documentary edited and filmed by Searchmike. In it she discusses her love of artists from Motown records and the influence the era has had on her as a musician.

She says: “When Motown was out there was no Logic [music recording software], there were no computers, nothing. So they usually had to do onetake wonders or two-take wonders.

“It was not easy, so when you listen to these songs, think of all the practice, think how meticulous they were about everything. That artistry, that essence: that’s why Motown is Motown.”

In Laolu’s frank discussion on mental health and some of the difficulties associated with the entertainment industry, she’s not only making her mark as a musician and fiercely talented singer-songwriter – she’s also blazing a trail for new artists to help them feel better equipped if they are facing the industry as an independent.

So what’s next? “The Buffering video is dropping soon,” she reveals.

“It was shot in LA in the desert. I’m really excited for everyone to see it, it was such a fun video.”

She has also teased a project that might be an EP, or better yet an album.

“The songs are recorded,” she says, “but the theme of the project is not concrete yet, so that’s what we’re working out.”

Whatever she decides, one thing’s for sure: this talented Lewisham local is definitely going places.

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

n the 1890s Deptford was changing at a rapid pace. The newly formed London County Council had started to demolish rows of overcrowded slums, replacing them with new homes and amenities.

Determined to document the old houses, shops, pubs and streets before they were swept away forever, Deptford resident and press photographer Thankfull Sturdee began to capture them on camera.

Around half of the 147 images he took appear in a fascinating new book

by Sarah Crofts, which tells the story of Sturdee’s colourful life and work and gives an intriguing insight into the Deptford of yesteryear.

The photos range from Attwood’s toy shop on Evelyn Street, closed in 1899, to the old varnish works on Trundley’s Road, once called Knackers Lane. An eating house on the high street nicknamed the “pudden” shop, pulled down in 1907, is another gem.

Sturdee also photographed the original Harp of Erin beer house, which was last kept by a “well-known” character called Johanna Boyle.

Following its demolition, the Harp was rebuilt in 1897 but has since closed.

A further frame depicts a characterful, weatherboarded house on Edward Street that was once home to the Cushion family. The property was knocked down in 1902.

It contrasts with another image of a rundown house and backyard on Mill Lane, which was filled with flies and rubbish. The lane was reportedly “one of the most notorious thoroughfares in London” and a rendezvous for ne’erdo-wells and criminals.

Sturdee also gives us a glimpse of Old Joe’s secondhand clothes shop, which was among the buildings on Watergate Street condemned for clearance and pulled down in 1896. It stood opposite the Fishing Smack pub and Fishing Smack Alley, where the crowded dwellings were said to have been “particularly insanitary”.

Thankfull was born in 1852 on Broomfield Place (now Evelyn Street). One of the earliest press photographers, his career began to take off in the 1890s and his first byline appeared in the Penny Illustrated Paper in 1893. He worked for a variety of publications, including the Daily Mirror from 1911-23. A former colleague remembered him as a “great storyteller and practical joker”.

Sturdee photographed anything topical or likely to be of interest to the public, from the St John’s train crash of 1898 to polar bear cubs in the zoo to the skeleton of an 8’4” man.

A specialist in crime photography, he once said: “It was nothing for me to be called away from my Sunday dinner to photograph a badly decomposed body that had just been dragged from the river.”

The Deptford photos however were predominantly a personal project, which Sturdee gave and sold to Deptford Borough Council. “So much of the area was changing, and that’s what spurred him on to take the photographs,” Sarah said. “He knew he had a legacy which he wanted to make sure was captured somewhere.”

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The book costs £12 from thankfullsturdee.blogspot.com

This page, clockwise from right: a prize bull at the market; the east end of Church Street; St Paul's Church; old houses on Watergate Street, now gone

As a press photographer, his subjects ranged from crime scenes to polar bear cubs to the skeleton of an 8'4" man

TH E LE WI S H A M L E DG E R

LEWIS HAM IN PICTURES 1 9

A U G U ST/SE PT E MBE R 201 9

Above: the bandstand in the old recreation ground at Sayes Court.

Below: a wooden house on Crossfield Lane, just before it was demolished in 1902

FOREVER

WORDS BY JACK ASTON PHOTOS BY THANKFULL STURDEE

THANKFULL

TH E LE WI S H A M L E DG E R

THEATRE 21

A U G U ST/SE PT E MBE R 201 9

ewisham’s Taylor Bradshaw only graduated from university earlier this year, but he has already landed a 12-month spot on the cast of Mamma Mia! The feel-good musical, featuring classic tracks from Abba, has been running in the West End for 21 years – the same age as Taylor himself – at the Novello Theatre in Aldwych.

Taylor treads the boards as playful Eddie, a waiter at the taverna on the musical’s fictitious – and fairly actionpacked – Greek island, alongside his colleague and partner-in-crime Pepper, performing to hundreds of people every show. Having kicked off his tenure in June, it was only a matter of months ago that he was still studying musical theatre at London’s ArtsEd performing arts school.

“I was flabbergasted,” Taylor laughs.

“It [getting a role in a big production] was the dream from the beginning.

I’m overjoyed, grateful, every day.

Everything’s switching now and I’m getting my feet on the ground.”

It’s a moment he seems to have been rehearsing for his whole life.

Born in Lewisham Hospital and growing up in Brockley, Taylor fell in love with dancing through his sister, who attended classes at the Scott ’n’ Wiseman School of Performing Arts in Forest Hill (now Studio 23). As a child he used to watch her shows and was captivated from the off.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to do that,’” he laughs. “Tap, modern, street jazz, ballet, singing, drama… whenever my sister had rehearsals I’d be standing on the side doing the same dance. I knew all the dances to every single senior piece.”

Taylor’s parents encouraged a keen interest in all activities from an early age: karate (he holds a black belt), art club, chess club, debating club. “I tried everything,” he says. “And then I said, ‘I want to do performing arts.’”

He went on to study at the prestigious Brit School, an environment just as motivating as the one he had with his family at home.

From there he moved to ArtsEd – whose glittering alumni include people like Julie Andrews, Martin Clunes and Tuppence Middleton – and from which he graduated with a BA in musical theatre before landing his role in Mamma Mia! With his graceful, dancer-like way of moving, easy confidence and glowing CV, Taylor makes his route to the stage appear easy – which, of course, it hasn’t been. “A few months ago it wasn’t like this,” he says. “Not sleeping, trying to practise everything, all the time. They say put 10,000 hours of practice into something and you’ll be good at it, so I just fit everything in when I can. I like to work hard.”

During his degree Taylor began auditioning and taking part in as many performances as possible, even performing at the Olivier Awards last year, before going on to help present at the awards this year. It all led him to a life-changing opportunity to try out for Mamma Mia! He sang Don’t You Want Me by The Human League at his audition, before performing a routine from the show.

He also had to tell jokes and bounce off another character, Pepper. He clearly impressed: he got the part.

Taylor seems so confident it’s hard to imagine him fazed by anything, but

l

Getting a role like this is the dream – I'm overjoyed and grateful every day

taylormade Taylor Bradshaw is only 21, but he's already won a role in West End hit musical Mamma Mia! The rising star, who grew up in Brockley, tells us why he was born to perform WORDS BY EMMA FINAMORE

Above: Taylor Bradshaw.

Top: with Danny Nattrass and Cameron Burt in Mamma Mia!

PHOTO BY BRINKHOFF/MÖGENBURG

a debut role in a West End show must be fairly daunting. Does he ever get stage fright?

“I can see where it comes from,” he reflects. “If you worry so much it goes into a cycle, especially something like opening night – you’re fine, then backstage, about to go on, you’re like ‘Oh, wait... I’m going on to a West End stage in front of important people, like a thousand people.’ It’s scary, especially if you make a mistake.

“It [the show] gets into your body though. Then you can just relax into it and experiment. That’s why I love that I’ll be in a show for a year – I can find so many different things there.”

He really does experiment too, with devices like a character diary that he writes for Eddie whenever he has a

spare moment: “I just write down character stuff from his life before, brothers who live away, he just lives with his mum, he’s the smart kid at school, the types of holidays he likes going on… If I’m in it for a year I may as well see how far I can go with it.”

Obviously the music and dancing is as much a part of Mamma Mia! as the characters. Taylor says he’s lucky enough to dance lots of old-school jazz with a bit of funk, which he was pleasantly surprised by when starting the job. Even though he’d already watched the film many times (it’s his “guilty pleasure”, he says, along with Legally Blonde) he actually watched the stage production for the very first time after landing the part, during rehearsals.

“I watched it here,” he laughs, gesturing towards the Novello, “and I was like, ‘Oh my God it’s actually amazing!’ The concept, the lighting, the party at the end... yes!”

That enthusiasm hasn’t waned, either. Taylor talks passionately about his show highlights, like Voulez-Vous – “It is such a good number. No matter how tired you are, once you hit that C note, you’re like, ‘Come on!’ And the lights are flashing and there’s great choreography… it’s just a good vibe on stage.”

Then there’s the eight-minute finale, a medley of feel-good singalong hits like Waterloo, Dancing Queen and of course, Mamma Mia. “Everyone loves it,” says Taylor. “When my dad came to watch he came backstage afterwards singing it.”

As well as relishing the moment, he’s also ambitious about the future and reels off productions he’d love to have roles in, such as Fame, Hamilton, Memphis, Dreamgirls, The Tap Dance Kid – “such an underrated musical” – and Rent, as well as plays – “anything at the Young Vic” – and an idea for a new production he’s had: “I’m ready for a Muhammad Ali musical to come out.”

Taylor also wants to pursue dance further, citing Five Guys Named Moe, The Scottsboro Boys, Hairspray and Cats as dream shows for this.

He’s incredibly enthusiastic about the craft that goes into building a whole production too – in fact he hopes to write his own show one day.

“The backstage routine is just as impressive as the front routine,” he says. He paints a vivid picture of a brightly coloured, bustling and dynamic world, chaotic but also moving like clockwork.

A key part of the show’s mechanics for Taylor is his working relationship with Danny Nattrass, who plays Pepper. The two are good friends, having come through ArtsEd together.

“We’ve known each other for years,” says Taylor, “and it’s made it so much easier; we’re just comfortable with each other, we understand each other.”

In spite of the kudos that comes from appearing in a top name West End show, Taylor gives off the vibe of someone who cares little about bright lights and big crowds – he does musical theatre for the love of it.

“Theatre and the arts are just so important,” he says. “The freedom people have to express themselves, that’s what we need – we don’t give ourselves time anymore. Just taking the time to open your eyes, look around you and take inspiration from it, and see the beauty, is so important.”

He’s just as appreciative of the beauty indoors at the Novello, when the curtain goes up: “Maybe I’m still in the honeymoon stage, but I’m loving it.”

22 BEL L I N GH AM & B ECK E N H A M PL A CE SPEC IA L

h t o na er

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t the fel

WORDS BY LUKE G WILLIAMS PHOTOS BY LIMA CHARLIE

s h w ol ip

The spectacularly restored Fellowship Inn in Bellingham reopened as the Fellowship and Star this summer. We trace the history of the remarkable project and talk to some of the principal figures involved

round a

or Pat Fordham, the reopening of the restored Fellowship Inn in Bellingham – now named the Fellowship and Star – has been a highly emotional experience.

The 75-year-old community activist, who received an MBE for her services to the borough of Lewisham in 2011, is the founding chair of the board of Phoenix Community Housing, London’s first resident-led housing association, which has overseen and driven forward the Fellowship project.

Speaking to The Lewisham Ledger, Pat stresses the transformative effects of the development.

“Back in the day, the Fellowship was a family pub but then for a while it turned into somewhere quite nasty,” she says. “People didn’t really go in there anymore. I only ever went in there twice, for a party and a funeral, so I didn’t have any real feelings about it.

“I visited the [restored venue] the week before last. I’m on a mobility scooter – I drove through the front door and could move all around wherever I wanted to go. The sun was coming in through the skylight and it felt like I was back in time.

“It’s really beautifully done. Looking across the floor I could imagine people getting up and dancing, being involved, having parties, christenings, weddings, whatever. I choked up and felt quite tearful. It’s as if someone

has waved a magic wand over the building.”

Magical and somewhat miraculous too, the Fellowship’s restorative journey is an inspirational tale of what local community activism can achieve.

Built on Randlesdown Road in the 1920s, the Fellowship was the first British pub to be located on a housing estate, in this case London County Council’s Bellingham Estate.

Not only was it a pub, but the Fellowship also contained a popular performance venue, which played host over the years to numerous musical acts, including Fleetwood Mac and Eric Clapton.

Famously, the pub also acted as the home and training base for legendary British boxer Henry Cooper, as he prepared for his iconic 1963 heavyweight showdown with Muhammad Ali (turn to page 31 to read the full story).

However by the early 21st century, years of neglect had seen the Fellowship fall into a state of desperate disrepair.

Enter Phoenix, the not-for-profit housing association of which Pat Fordham is such an integral part and which owns and manages more than 6,000 homes in Lewisham.

Jim Ripley, chief executive of Phoenix since 2007, takes up the story.

“I inspected the Fellowship in 2007 and it was in a very sorry state. It was derelict and dangerous apart from the one bar being used.

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Left: Rob Star and Yarda Krampol from the Electric Star Group in the pub's newly restored cinema

“Around this time so many pubs in this area were closing and developers were descending on them to turn them into flats. The Fellowship was the only pub left in the area.

“We negotiated with the council and bought the freehold. At one point a developer had bought a lease on the pub which we were concerned about, but we eventually managed to get the freehold and the leasehold.”

In 2013, the Fellowship was given grade-II-listed status for being a “remarkably complete example of an interwar public house”, while in December 2014, Phoenix was awarded a grant of £4 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund to restore the building.

“The grade-II listing was great for us because it allowed us to apply to the Heritage Lottery Fund,” Jim points out.

Without funding, he says, “It wouldn’t have been sustainable economically to restore it and run a business from it. It would never have paid back the money it would have taken to restore it.

“Our vision was to create apprenticeships and jobs and create a legacy, but most importantly a pub that was true to the original idea behind the Fellowship, that it be a hub of the community.”

The spectacular restoration includes a pub, which reopened on June 14; a cinema, which enjoyed its first screening on July 2; and a function

room. A cafe will also be opening on the site later this year.

Jim admits that as the various sections of the Fellowship have gradually been completed and opened, he has felt “a bit surreal”.

“When it finally reopened, it was incredible, I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “It was pretty emotional. In life you don’t often get the opportunity to see a project through like this.

“I’ve been working on this over such a long period of time. Each step has been momentous, from buying the leasehold, to getting the freehold to negotiating with the Heritage Lottery Fund, to seeing the building work go ahead.

“I’m very privileged to have seen a project through like this. Everyone in Bellingham seems excited by it. It’s given the whole place a buzz. I can only hope it will be everything we said it would be at the beginning – that it will bring visitors and jobs and pride to the area.”

The passion and pride that Pat and Jim possess is echoed by the company that Phoenix has entrusted to operate the business: the Electric Star Group.

“We had to get a partner for the pub who bought into our vision,” Jim emphasises. “It was a long process but we found Electric Star and they’ve been brilliant.”

Electric Star’s founder Rob Star is an entrepreneur who cut his teeth

organising parties, raves and festivals.

With five other pubs already part of his group, Rob has now added the Fellowship and Star to his portfolio and is bringing his natural sense of the theatrical and the big occasion to Bellingham.

“A pub these days can’t necessarily just be a place that sells good food and drink,” Rob explains. “People want something more in terms of entertainment – whether that be music or drink tasting or cocktailmaking events.

“As soon as I walked into the Fellowship and saw the scale of what was being restored, and the

The pub's journey is an inspirational tale of what community activism can achieve

opportunities with the cinema and cafe and function room, it ticked a lot of boxes.”

Rob passionately endorses Phoenix’s vision of the Fellowship and Star as an integral part of the Bellingham community, as well as a welcoming hub for a wide range of activities that seek to bind local people together.

“The most important part of the project for us is that people know we are here and we are up for doing stuff,” he says. “No matter how crazy an idea people think they have got, I want them to come forward and tell us.

“That’s what makes a pub great – people coming in and doing things and not just us dictating what goes on.

“We want to put a really wide range of events on – whether it’s a play by Greenwich and Lewisham Young People’s Theatre or a DJ gig, a yoga class or a social event for local pensioners.

“We are open to anybody from the local community putting ideas forward and saying what they would like to see in the venue.

“If people can get together and organise, we will provide the space.

We’re not charging a hire fee to use any of the spaces because we want to get people in to see and experience the Fellowship and Star. We want as many people from the local community to come as possible.”

The man whom Rob has entrusted with the day-to-day running of the Fellowship is general manager Yarda Krampol – the duo having previously been business partners in the famed east London street food market the Last Days of Shoreditch.

When he speaks to The Lewisham Ledger two weeks after the pub’s opening, Yarda admits he has been “working around the clock” for weeks on end, yet his voice, initially a little weary, soon hums with enthusiasm and elation as his passion for the project resonates.

“Operation-wise I’m happy,” he says. “We’ve got a strong team in place and most of the staff we have hired are Bellingham residents.

“In terms of customers the response has been very positive. We’ve already had a quiz night and the DJ night we had with Thomas Turgoose from This is England was packed so it’s been a very positive start.

“The opening was delayed by four months, which was frustrating but we spent that time connecting with the local community, making sure residents really knew about the project.”

Yarda pinpoints Jim Ripley’s role as essential in the resurrection of the Fellowship. “Without Jim we wouldn’t be having this conversation. He’s such a people person and such a visionary.

He could foresee what could happen to this building. He deserves massive credit.”

While the Fellowship and Star is looking to the future, Yarda also emphasises that it will remain ever conscious of its long and varied history.

“I think as you enter the building you get a feeling of the old and the new. The interior design is new but reflects the heritage of the building as well.

“The history is still breathing through the walls, we have just added a modern operation on top of it.”

24 BEL L I N GH AM & B ECK E N H A M PL A CE SPEC IA L iscovering a hidden gem in London is always a great buzz. It gives you a sense of really having lived in the city and a slight smugness that comes from knowing something that not many other people do. I made one such discovery recently when I called in to the Bellingham Bowling Club on a sunny midweek evening.

Tucked away behind a row of houses on Bellingham Road, this thriving community asset boasts an impressive clubhouse with two large halls, a kitchen and a well-stocked bar. Outside, a spectators’ balcony overlooks two immaculate, full-sized bowling greens, with fantastic views of the city in the distance.

So well hidden is the Bellingham Bowling Club that I’m told some of the residents living on the street are unaware that it exists.

“I live about a five-minute walk around the corner and when I come here, I feel like I’m on holiday,” club president Richard Morrison tells me.

“It’s so relaxing, with beautiful views.

“I was at a meeting here last night; we try to open the facilities up to the community and there was a scouts’ AGM taking place. We just sat out here and watched the sun go down, and all the lights of London twinkled on. It’s just wonderful.”

Sitting on the balcony chatting to Richard and some of the other club members as a friendly match is played out on the green below, it’s easy to see what he means. The club is an oasis of calm, the perfect setting in which to while away a long summer’s evening.

Ray Bauer moved to the area last May and after googling local bowling

d

AT THE

ALLWELCOME BBC Tucked away behind a row of houses in SE6 is the Bellingham Bowling Club, which opened in 1912 and is still thriving today.

We popped in for a chat with some of its members WORDS BY SEAMUS HASSON n PHOTOS BY PAUL STAFFORD

clubs, he joined Bellingham one month later.

“This place has been an absolute godsend,” he says. “I love the game – I’ve heard it said that it takes five minutes to learn but a lifetime to master. The facilities here are fantastic and we’ve got great people like these guys here and others.”

Ray joined the club during a difficult period in his life. His marriage had broken down and being new to the area, he didn’t know anyone. At the bowling club he discovered a passion for the game and what he describes as a “family of friends”.

“Over the past couple of years I had suffered terribly with depression and this place has been such a lifesaver,” he says.

“There are widowers here as well as other isolated people or elderly people

who aren’t quite ready to throw in the towel yet. We’ve got people here in their 90s still playing bowls, as well as riding fast motorbikes,” he laughs.

“We’ve got one 90 year old who does,” Richard confirms. “He’s president of the Bexleyheath motorbike club, I think it is. He’s still riding his Suzuki 650 and plays bowls.”

The bowling club was founded in May 1912, when Henry Forster (later Lord Forster), then MP for Sevenoaks, cast the first jack and bowled two bowls to officially open it.

Forster was born in Southend Hall, which once stood on the corner of Bromley Road and Whitefoot Lane.

He donated the land that is now the Forster Memorial Park to the public in memory of his sons, Alfred and John, who were killed in World War One.

More than a century later, the bowling club is still going strong – but the image of bowls as a game for well-heeled retired people is changing.

Bellingham has a number of young players such as talented 15-year-old Arun Kairon, who had just got through to the Kent semi-finals the night before I visited.

“It is, as Ray says, like a family here,” Richard says. “But we’re very keen to welcome new people. Bowls is enjoyed by people of all ages – my grandchildren who are nine and 11 absolutely love it here.”

Paul Buck is the club’s director and a bit of a dab hand on the bowling green. He’s been playing at Bellingham for 13 years and says it is open to people of all abilities.

“There are different levels,” he says.

“You can play in the nationals, which

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It's said that bowls takes five minutes to learn and a lifetime to master

is Bowls England competitions. There are also Kent competitions and then there’s the local competitions.

“We’re in a league called the PCL, then you’ve got another one on a Thursday night called the North West Kent. There are so many aspects to what you can get involved in.”

For many people though, it’s as much about the social side as the sport.

“It’s very difficult to get people to come up here but once they’re through the door, they love it,” Paul says.

“I think if you’re welcoming to people when they first come, they’re going to want to come back. You go to some clubs and they can be a little

bit funny about new people coming through the door.

“We’ve had couples where one of them has sadly passed away and it offers a refuge for the remaining partner. It’s a reason for them to get out of bed in the morning. Loneliness is a killer, and it’s great because they come and socialise rather than be sitting indoors. It keeps them going.”

The club has a real community feel to it and members muck in and help wherever they can. All the work is done by volunteers and only the guy who cuts the grass gets paid. The management committee takes care of everything, including the running of the bar, the food, the finance, the grounds and the entertainment.

The clubhouse overlooks an immaculately maintained bowling green

The club has regular open days for the public as well as hosting barbecues in the summer and once a month, locals can tuck into a Sunday roast at a very reasonable price. During the winter they play short mat bowls indoors, as well as organising cards sessions and darts tournaments.

Then from March through to the first week of October, the greens are in full use from 10am until nightfall and beyond. “We’ve actually had candlelit bowls when it gets dark,” Paul says.

The club has over 70 members and in a bid to attract a more diverse membership and increase the number of female players, they have forged partnerships with the local branch of the WI, as well as a newly formed residents’ association in the area.

Paul encourages anyone who fancies a game to come along. “There’s nothing better than going out there, having a bit of exercise with the sun on your back and then coming up afterwards and offering to buy your opponent a drink or a cup of tea.”

To join or attend an open day, visit bellinghambowlingclub.co.uk

26 BEL L I N GH AM & B ECK E N H A M PL A CE SPEC IA L or the longest time, Beckenham Place Mansion has been hiding in plain sight in one of London’s least known and most under-used parks. But, since the spring of 2017, this 360-year-old stately pile has shimmered into view, thanks to its reinvention as a hub for all manner of community activities.

In 1757, wealthy property developer and MP John Cator, whose family also built the Cator Estate in Blackheath, bought land at Stump’s Hill, midway between Beckenham and nearby Southend.

By 1762, he had built Beckenham Place Mansion on the site. It was his rural retreat in what was then the depths of the Kent countryside; his “party palace”, as the building’s current overlord, Tim Wilson, puts it.

Fast forward through the centuries to 1927, when the mansion was acquired by the London County Council. That’s when it began its incarnation as clubhouse for the local golf club. And that’s how it remained until three years ago, save for the duration of World War Two, when it was used as a prisoner-of-war camp.

In 2016, Lewisham Council, now the owners of the mansion and the surrounding land, announced plans to redevelop the park with the aid of a £4.9 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. This meant the eviction of the golf club, who, understandably, bombarded the council with petitions opposing the redevelopment. But to no avail.

Last month, the transformation of Beckenham Place Park – which at 96 hectares is one of the biggest council-owned parks in London – was

f

the

place WORDS BY COLIN RICHARDSON

to be

With an impressive new swimming lake in the grounds and an array of community and creative space within, Beckenham Place Mansion is buzzing

celebrated with a launch event on July 20, which saw the mayor of London Sadiq Khan open the newly restored lake as a public swimming pool.

Dating back to 1800, the lake was filled in during the last century but now looks set to become south London’s answer to Hampstead ponds.

Spanning more than 930 feet long by nearly 150 feet wide, it has a maximum depth of 11 feet and a shallow end for paddling. A swimming session costs £3, with £2 concessions.

Other new features include an adventure playground, a wet woodland and the revived ornate gardens, while the grade-II-listed homestead cottages and stable yard have been carefully restored following a fire in 2011. Part of the stable block will house a new cafe from the team behind Look Mum No Hands – a cafe, bar and cycle workshop based in Clerkenwell.

The mansion stands aloof from the redevelopment of the park. It wasn’t included in the plans. Instead, Lewisham Council looked for someone to keep an eye on it until such time as funding could be found to restore its crumbling fabric.

Enter Tim Wilson, one of the moving spirits behind Peckham’s “cultural quarter”, Copeland Park and the Bussey Building.

“The council showed us lots of different buildings,” he says. “They showed us this one, but we didn’t really know what to do with it.

We’re used to larger scale industrial buildings and warehouses. But they asked us to take it on because the golf course was closing and they didn’t want to leave the building unoccupied.

“They said, ‘Would you like to take this on for an interim period and set

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Left: the new swimming lake in Beckenham Place Park.

Below: Cigarette Records

something up?’ I said, ‘Can I live there?’ And they said, ‘Sure’. So I said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

That was in November 2016. “It was all hands on deck,” Tim recalls. “There was a lot of work to be done: replacing the boiler, cleaning out some of the rooms. There was a lot of dusting; a lot. We officially launched in March 2017 and by early 2018 we had all the tenants that we have now.”

The soaring atrium of the building is open from the ground floor to the roof, where a domed cupola keeps out the rain and allows light to flood the space below.

On the first floor there’s a balcony from where you can look down into the hall. Off it are the self-contained flats where Tim and four other staff members live. Further rooms up here have been turned into spacious artists’ studios; others into offices.

On the ground floor, the grand hall gives way to a number of equally impressive rooms, each with the original ornate plasterwork on the walls and ceilings. Two are used for special events, such as weddings and dance parties. Others serve as a yoga and pilates studio, offices for community groups and a sewing workshop.

In the basement, there’s a cafe, which is open seven days a week, a new bar and Cigarette Records, both of which are open from Wednesdays to Sundays. The building is also home to a personal trainer, a reflexologist, painters, photographers, sculptors and a lighting and sound technician.

At various times, it plays host to meditation classes, dog-training sessions and singing workshops, to name but a few of the activities that keep the place buzzing all year round.

Helen Corke has managed the building since January, having previously worked at Copeland Park.

Above: blue skies at the mansion, which is grade-II* listed.

Right: paddle-boarding on the new lake. Paddle boards and canoes are available for hire

It was a real travesty when the building was closed up and people weren't enjoying it

“A lot has changed in the time that I’ve been here,” she says. “The bar was just an empty room, which we’ve now fitted out. And we’ve also started our Thursday street food markets. Plus we have free workshops and classes, the community-based things.

“We’ve taken on two additional part-time staff to help us manage everything. It’s a new venue so it’s like we’re a new team. Everyone is learning together.”

Sophia Lyons was one of the first artists to take a studio space in 2017.

She had always wanted to be an artist, but her parents didn’t think there was a future in it, so she went to business school instead.

After that, she had children, ran a sandwich-making business and worked in the music industry. But then she got breast cancer and everything changed.

“I’m absolutely fine now,” she says.

“But it was the turning point, when I re-evaluated everything. I was still having treatment and one day I went to the National Portrait Gallery to see the BP portrait awards. I was looking at this lovely painting and I said to my

friend, ‘I could do that’. And I got a tap on the shoulder and this person said, ‘But you didn’t, did you?’ I thought, ‘Well, I didn’t, but I’m going to start now because I know I can.’ And I’ve painted my heart out ever since.”

Sophia mainly works in acrylic. Her art is eclectic, ranging from figurative pieces to abstract canvases to landscapes. One huge canvas propped up against the wall, a lovely, almost monochrome image of wild flowers and grasses, was inspired by walks in the park with her dog, Buckley.

She and some of her fellow artists host regular open studio days. For her, they have been so successful that she now makes a living from her art.

She loves what has been done with the mansion. “When it was the golf course, it was just for the elite few. I feel sorry for the golfers, I’m sure it was very nice and everything, but it was a real travesty that this building was closed up and people weren’t enjoying it like how they are now.

“It has been brilliant and the guys who’ve built it up have done it in such a nice way. They’ve made it just right.”

Owain Jones owns and runs Cigarette Records, a crate-digger’s paradise in the mansion’s basement. “I started off buying record collections,” he says. “I’d take a few that I wanted and then I’d sell the rest to friends cut-price and maybe I’d make my money back on a collection to buy some more.”

That eventually morphed into an online business. And then, in January last year, he took the plunge and opened his shop.

“A shop space was always the dream,” Owain says. “But everything was so hideously expensive that it wasn’t feasible. So I’m lucky that here it’s good value for what they offer me.

And now the shop has overtaken the online stuff, which is a real dream come true because it means that we have two strong revenue sources.”

Although the shop is open five days a week, Owain, with the help of four part-time employees, seems to work the whole week round. When he’s not travelling to view record collections or to rummage at boot fairs, he’s meeting other record dealers or DJing at parties in the mansion.

“Another thing we do is run charitable DJ and music workshops for local school students. I feel quite selfish at times, because I hedonistically sit around and listen to music all day. I work hard for the money, don’t get me wrong, but it’s that feeling of giving something back.

“It’s been really nice to see the change that’s happened with the building. I remember it was, obviously still is, a little bit shabby and needing some work, but it was a lot worse before they came in and brought a bit of life into it.

“When I first moved to Beckenham, I remember walking across the park and getting shouted at by the golfers because I was walking across their playing area. A lot more people are using the park now. I can walk across the green without getting told off.”

Beckenham Place Mansion is a great success story. In just over two years, the building has been transformed from a decaying hulk into a thriving community centre. But its future is not assured.

“It was always meant to be a shortterm lease,” says Tim Wilson. “We’ve overrun that and we’re looking for an extension. But Lewisham Council will, at some point, need to do renovations, even if it’s just to improve it structurally. And in that case, we would most likely have to move out.

“Our hope is that the lease will be extended for a number of years while they raise the necessary funding.”

28 BEL L I N GH AM & B ECK E N H A M PL A CE SPEC IA L

f you talk to the Reverend Doctor Martin Thomas (or “Father Martin” as he is more comfortably referred to in the parish) about his work, you discover very quickly how blurred the lines have become between church and community.

The handsome red-brick church of St John the Baptist on Bromley Road is one of four he is in charge of (the others are the churches of St Luke, St Barnabas and St Mark, all in Downham), but it’s the one that demonstrates its versatility with the greatest brio.

“I have a big team working with me – 10 priests altogether – and we see ourselves as being here for the whole community; for those who come to church regularly and for people who don’t”, says Father Martin. “We have to be available for anyone in the parish who needs help of whatever kind.”

That, if you think about it, is a huge job. Like all vicars, Father Martin “lives above the shop” (in the handsome white cottage behind the church) and he is on call at all times.

“You do get a lot of people coming to your door, and quite often they can be aggressive,” he says. “We have to be careful. You just get wise to the dangers, and make quick decisions about whether someone is a potential threat. I have CCTV in the house and a video entryphone, so we have all the security provisions in place.”

Father Martin remains philosophical about the pressures of the job, and seems genuinely fond of the community he serves.

“I came to the area four years ago,” he says. “Before this I was in the East End, heading another team of churches in Plaistow and Canning Town. It was a much more chaotic area, more violence, murder and drug abuse than here.

“Catford and Downham are more settled communities. A lot of people have lived here for a long time and while there is crime, there’s almost a villagey feel to it.”

However, the parish does face serious challenges. “This area is in the top 10% for deprivation on the IMD [Index of Multiple Deprivation],” says Father Martin. “The majority of the residents are working poor, and a large number of people who come to us for help have mental health problems and issues with alcohol and drugs. So it’s really important that we engage strongly with stakeholders locally.

“We have a great relationship with Phoenix [housing association] next door; a lot of their residents come to the church. At Christmas we have our fairs on the same day so that visitors can come to both. We have a community nativity in the church and the chance to listen to Bible stories, but it’s not a service as such. Local councillors and our MP Janet Daby have all been to many events here.”

And there are many events. I visit St John’s in the middle of its week-long arts festival, which includes concerts, plays, dance displays, exhibitions and more. Then there are the regular community groups for young parents, pensioners and teenagers.

St John’s also has a strong musical tradition, with a very fine choir that sings at the main Sunday service.

“In the morning it’s ‘smells and bells’ [in the high Anglican tradition] with priests in vestments and the

I

ON A WING & A PRAYER WORDS BY RONNIE HAYDON

PHOTO BY PAUL STAFFORD

Father Martin Thomas, team rector at St John the Baptist, talks about the highs and lows of tending to his flock on the Bromley Road and beyond

choir, relatively formal preaching and communion. We also have an informal Sunday afternoon service at 4pm with songs accompanied by the piano and an external speaker; this is called StJohn’s@4.”

The music is important to Father Martin; it was music, rather than religion, that drew him to the church in the first place. “I was brought up an atheist, but at university I was a singer.

I sang at King’s College, Cambridge and at York Minster and I found the daily offering of services intensely moving. I felt the pull to ordination when I was about 20, but managed to run away from it for 15 years.”

He worked as a teacher abroad before finally coming back to Britain and following his calling. Like many vicars of his generation, he has embraced all aspects of his profession, from social welfare to social media.

“Something else we’re starting, which again fills in the gaps left by overstretched local services, is parish nursing,” he says. “Our parish nurse, Becky, is a registered district nurse whose role is to help people communicate with their doctors, understand their prescriptions and access health information.”

Social media is another way an organisation like St John’s can interact with the wider community.

“We have funding for an online missioner, someone who’s dedicated solely to social media. She controls our Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts. She’s paid for five hours a week but she works nearer to 30, to be honest. It’s really unusual to have someone doing this; usually it’s the vicar trying to cope with it.

“We see huge engagement on social media from people who aren’t in the least bit ‘churchy’, particularly when it’s about something that touches the local community, like the geese.”

Ah yes, the geese. They flock to the Peter Pan pool, just outside Homebase, opposite the church, every year. Then, every day, during breeding season, they walk across busy Bromley Road, a seemingly unconcerned line of geese and goslings waddling in the teeth of the speeding traffic.

“It’s a huge drama,” explains Father Martin. “People rush into the road to stop the cars. We’ve lost three birds this year, two goslings and one adult.”

Search #BromleyRdGeese on Twitter and you’ll see what all the fuss is about. There are films, pleas to

Above: Father Martin Thomas outside St John the Baptist church

We're here for the whole community – those who come to church and those who don't

drivers and to TfL, and sweet pictures of geese and goslings enjoying St John’s lush front lawn. St John’s and Phoenix have succeeded in having a “wildlife crossing” sign put up on Bromley Road, but drivers are usually going too fast to see it.

Campaigning continues for traffic calming measures, and it’s not just for the geese, as Father Martin explains.

“That road cuts through the community. We have crashes every few weeks. We keep appealing to TfL but they won’t do anything. Recently the bus stop was demolished and a man was knocked down when a car mounted the pavement. Luckily one of the clergy was on hand to assist.”

It seems the power of prayer isn’t enough to stop people driving like idiots, but the role of the church as a community platform to help those who need it is becoming ever more effective.

It’s not just the geese that flock to St John’s. As public services are cut to the bone, and those in distress are left to flounder alone, it’s churches like this, with their foodbanks, practical services and ever-open doors that provide the sanctuary all too many people need.

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n an interview in 1977, the great Sir Henry Cooper remarked: “You only get out of life what you put into it. I earned my living as a boxer, but you can still conduct yourself in a gentlemanly way.”

These words serve as an apt introduction to a man whose fists may have wrought violence and destruction across 55 professional boxing contests, but whose geniality and warmth of personality endeared him to the nation.

Lambeth-born and Bellingham raised, Henry was that rare commodity – a boxer who was not only admired, but also genuinely loved. Across the 300 or more years that the sport of boxing has held a significant position within the collective British imagination, arguably no pugilist has been as widely and intensely loved as “our ’Enry”.

When he died on May 1, 2011 the country was deprived of one of its great post-war heroes – a man for whom the respected television commentator John Rawling coined the perfect epitaph: “He was a good boxer, but an outstanding man.”

The only boxer to ever be knighted – in recognition of his charitable work as much as his sporting prowess – Henry’s popularity traversed boundaries of class, age and gender.

To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling’s If, he was as comfortable displaying the “common touch”, pouring pints

I

OUR

’ENRY WORDS BY LUKE G WILLIAMS

Boxing legend Henry Cooper grew up in Bellingham and trained at local pub the Fellowship for his epic fight against Muhammad Ali. We take a look at his extraordinary life for punters at the Fellowship Inn in Bellingham, as he was “walking with kings” while dining at Buckingham Palace.

Henry was a staunch royalist – who had a portrait of the Queen Mother on his wall – and was at the same time suspicious of jingoism and avowedly opposed to racism in any form, as evidenced by his advocacy of the AntiNazi League, a group formed in 1977 to counter the rise of the far right.

Born in 1934, Henry and his identical twin brother George, as well as his older brother Bernard, were initially raised by parents Henry and Lily in Camberwell, but in 1939 they moved to a council house in Bellingham on Farmstead Road.

After brief spells in Sussex and Gloucestershire when they were evacuated – during which time their Bellingham home was hit by a German parachute mine – the Cooper brothers returned to south London in 1941.

Henry stayed on Farmstead Road with his parents until 1960, when

he married his beloved Italian wife Albina. “It was a tight community,” he later said of his formative Bellingham years. “We all pulled together.”

Henry and George attended Athelney Road school and outside of school hours supported the family finances any way they could. Paper rounds, wood chopping and selling balls retrieved from the local golf course were among the innovative enterprises that put extra pennies in the collective kitty.

Henry and George’s entry into boxing came aged nine, courtesy of a neighbour who spotted their physical prowess and directed them to Bellingham Boxing Club.

Henry, naturally left-handed, nevertheless fought in the orthodox fashion and assembled an impressive amateur record for Eltham Boxing Club, winning 73 of 84 contests and competing at the 1952 Olympics.

Henry and George turned professional in 1954 under the management of the wily Jim

Wicks. Although George would not ultimately match his brother’s fistic achievements, the two men were always extremely close.

“The only time we parted was when I got married,” Henry later recalled.

“Even then, George came to live [with me] at Wembley until he was married.

“We went to school together, we went boxing together, we were together in the army. We look alike, we think alike, in temperament we’re similar and often we catch ourselves repeating each other’s remarks.”

Henry’s boxing career advanced quickly, and although he lost challenges for the Commonwealth, British and European titles in 1957, a famous victory against highly rated American Zora Folley the following year was the precursor to a points victory against British and Commonwealth champion Brian London at Earl’s Court in 1959.

Henry went on to successfully defend his British and Commonwealth titles on numerous occasions, earning

Henry's geniality and warmth of personality endeared him to the nation

Left: Henry Cooper at the Fellowship Inn. Below: showing off three Lonsdale belts a contest against one of the rising stars of world boxing in 1963 – a loudmouthed and undefeated 21-yearold American named Cassius Clay.

Rather than prepare for the fight in his usual environs of the Thomas A Becket pub on the Old Kent Road, Henry moved his training base to the Fellowship Inn in Bellingham, where the ballroom was converted into a makeshift gymnasium.

The influential American magazine Sports Illustrated reported: “For weeks he [Henry] lived at the Fellowship, taking his meals there, training in the back room when a wedding reception or tea party did not interfere.”

On an unforgettable night at Wembley Stadium, Henry’s preparations at the Fellowship almost paid off. His famed left hook smashed Clay to the canvas in the final seconds of round four – a moment that remains one of the most iconic in British boxing history.

For a few seconds a famous Cooper victory looked assured, but Clay recovered his footing – barely – and then in the interval before the following round his senses also returned, via a helping hand from some illegal smelling salts administered by his corner.

Henry was stopped while still on his feet in round five after suffering a terrible cut, with Clay labelling him “the toughest fighter I’ve ever met”.

As for Henry, the magnanimous way he reacted to unfortunate defeat was typical of his generosity of spirit.

For the next few years he reigned supreme in Britain while Clay – who later renamed himself Muhammad Ali – went on to become champion of the world.

Ali granted Henry a rematch for the world title in 1966, in front of 46,000 fans at Arsenal’s Highbury stadium.

Once again, Henry’s tendency to cut around the eyes proved his undoing as the referee stopped the fight in Ali’s favour in round six.

Henry subsequently added the European crown to his British and Commonwealth belts, before controversially losing all three titles in his final fight against Joe Bugner, a decision rendered by referee Harry Gibbs that was greeted with disbelief and catcalls by the fans.

In retirement, Henry, the first man to be twice named BBC Sports Personality of the Year, was much in demand as an after-dinner speaker, expert summariser and television personality – roles he fulfilled with distinction and integrity.

However, it was his more low profile – and unpaid – engagements at local boys’ clubs, sports clubs and boxing gyms that gave him the most pleasure.

When he died in 2011, a few days shy of his 77th birthday, old rival turned great friend Muhammad Ali was among those to pay tribute to a man whose prominence in British sporting folklore is assured.

“I am at a loss for words over the death of my friend, Henry Cooper,” Ali said. “Henry always had a smile for me; a warm and embracing smile.

It was always a pleasure being in Henry’s company. I will miss my old friend. He was a great fighter and a gentleman.”

TH E LE WI S H A M L E DG E R

S HOPS 33

A U G U ST/SE PT E MBE R 201 9

ichelle Morden never expected to wind up in Lewisham. “I always said I would never live in a city – then I ended up in London via Milan,” she muses, as she shows me round her elegant shop, Zenubian, on Hither Green Lane.

Michelle hails from the Seychelles – and growing up in the island nation, around 900 miles from mainland east Africa, has had a big influence on her approach to life.

“You realise when you live in the Seychelles that possessions don’t matter so much,” she explains. “It’s experiencing life that matters, the growing of food and spending time with family.

“It was a revelation – discovering how much people cloak themselves in stuff, because they get stuff pushed at them all the time.”

In keeping with this, the offering at Zenubian is the antithesis of massproduced, throwaway culture. Instead, it presents a thoughtful, hand-picked selection of fair trade, artisan goods and holistic services, with the aim of “inspiring a better world”.

Michelle is committed to sourcing goods made from sustainable materials and from ethically maintained sources – and is passionate about championing independent craftspeople.

Her eclectic range of stock includes oils, incense, natural body products, crystals, art, carvings, jewellery, textiles, home decor, furnishings, lighting and ceramics.

“The reason I like what I sell is because I know all the effort and hours that people have put into it,” she says.

“The pieces are unique, everything comes out slightly different so customers buy one-offs. There may be only five examples of each piece.

“Although this shop is chock-full of colour, I might be able to choose you one piece, in one colour that just ‘pops’. See that cushion?”

She points to a deep yellow cushion adorned with a heron motif. A canvas with the same print sits behind it.

“Say you have a really plain living room with an Ikea sofa and a couple of chairs. You come here for one piece, like that heron. It will bring you joy, that one piece of colour.”

We might be going a bit Marie Kondo here, but the joy of considered shopping is what Zenubian is all about.

“People stop at this shop because something about the colours draws them in,” Michelle says. “Through the colour they pick out I can often determine what sort of person they are, whether they’re a communicator or a teacher, or if they need some grounding. Colour therapy, if you like.”

Zenubian also offers healing workshops in the light and airy studio behind the shop, which Michelle rents out to an increasing number of practitioners in the community.

Recent events in the studio have included capoeira, drumming and mindfulness, and Michelle has a number of regulars who use the space to great effect throughout the week.

Debi and Oren entertain children with music and stories on Mondays, Chloe Dupre’s yoga class is on Wednesdays. Freelance therapists love the studio, not least because, at £5 an hour, it must be one of the cheapest to rent in the borough.

“I don’t make very much money from it, but I want to facilitate this

m

Seychellois culture is very mixed and most of all, they treasure their environment

THE CORNER

THE SHOP AROUND

Michelle Morden, the force of nature behind holistic hub Zenubian in Hither Green, tells how she went from the Seychelles to SE13 WORDS BY RONNIE HAYDON

growth of interest in self-care,” Michelle says.

“If you look at the way the NHS is going – cuts everywhere – and the effect they will have on our health and mental wellbeing, our very humanity, I think we need these services to be affordable.

“We need this creativity and energy at the grassroots. I think that if you nurture these things at the roots, everyone will prosper.”

Recently Michelle has been nurturing her own roots, and those of her six-year-old son. She feels privileged to be able to show her little boy the two distinct lands of his birth.

One’s an archipelago of 115 islands in

PHOTO BY LIMA CHARLIE

the Indian Ocean, and the other one’s, er, Hither Green.

“My mum is Seychellois, my dad’s from North Cheam, but I found out after my shop had moved from its tiny Ladywell premises to this road, two years ago, that my paternal greatgrandparents lived in Hither Green,” says Michelle.

Small world. I imagine the little boy enjoys his trips to see his grandparents.

“Oh yes, and it’s important that he connects with where he is from.

Back in January he and I travelled to the Seychelles – January is our only opportunity to close the shop, because no one wants to buy anything.

Above: entrepreneur Michelle Morden in her shop Zenubian

“The whole vibe out there is different, so my son gets to run around in shorts and T-shirts every day, and help my mum and dad in their gorgeous garden. They grow copious amounts of bananas and pamplemousse.

“Every time we visit we get a tour of the garden, and my son learns about important skills like sewing and growing your own food. Where we live in Lewisham, we also have a garden.

He loves to watch things grow.

“My parents moved a lot when I was a child, because my father was a chef, who worked in south Wales, Cheshire and Kenya. I think everything I saw and all the cultures I became a part of influenced the way I choose the pieces for this shop.

“Even the name, which combines Zen philosophy and our Nubian, African roots, represents the multicultural, Creole-speaking society I grew up in, and the London I live in.

“Seychellois culture is so very mixed. Its roots may be British and French colonial but its history of spice exporting means it’s a fusion of Italian, Chinese, Indian and all different religions.

“There’s never any friction; you couldn’t be racist because basically everyone is different. Obviously there’s a divide between the rich and the poor, but wealth is not the sole defining factor. Most of all, the Seychellois treasure their environment. All these are values I want my son to grow up with.”

It’s this multicultural, creative atmosphere that Michelle wants to celebrate in Zenubian, so it bothers her a little when people don’t revel in its difference.

“Someone walked past the shop the other day, and I heard him say, ‘I don’t understand that shop’”, she says. “I was incredulous and thought to myself, ‘What exactly is it that you don’t understand?’

“Then, I thought a little more about it and realised there are some people who don’t see value in creativity that they don’t recognise. Sometimes this attitude does have an impact on me and I ask myself, ‘Am I being too African, too cultural?’

“But not everything in here is African. Agnes who creates the jewellery is French, and Rowena, who made that wonderful heron cushion – she comes from the north of England.

“In the end, I have to laugh. I pitied him in a way, because I know my shop isn’t for everyone, and I can’t hope to appeal to everyone. Whoever is supposed to come, will come.”

And with that suitably Zen observation, Michelle turns her attention to a customer who’s just walked in, helping to bring a little more colour and joy into a grey Lewisham day.

34 LEWI S H AM L E I SU R E

SOMETHING TO EAT Caponata This tasty recipe from The Larder in Ladywell is a Sicilian classic The Larder was launched in 2014 by local foodies and friends Katherine Purse and Cynthia Lamptey, who met while collecting their children from nursery.

Both working in busy careers at the time, the duo decided that setting up a general store and deli would be “much more fun” and a great way to pursue their passion for delicious food and local produce.

The Ladywell Road shop is a “traditional general store and delicatessen with a modern twist”, featuring a carefully chosen selection of cheese, charcuterie, craft beers and wines, jams and chutneys, tea and coffee as well as fresh bread, fruit and vegetables.

Katherine and Cynthia champion London produce, with many local suppliers including Cooper’s Bakehouse in Brockley, Boulangerie Jade in Blackheath and Catford Honey. Their sausage rolls and scotch eggs come from Wellbeloved butchers in Deptford.

This caponata recipe

ILLUSTRATION BY JESSICA KENDREW

is one of the first dishes Katherine cooked for the shop. She says the blend of aubergine, tomato, capers, olives and raisins creates a “wonderfully rich, sweet and sour dish” that is full of flavour.

It’s delicious served with crusty bread and salad leaves, or with roast chicken, pork, barbecued foods or halloumi. A truly versatile dish that tastes good warm or cold, it’s great the next day too, when the flavours will have intensified.

Each family and region will have its own recipe, but this version, which is gluten-free and vegan, is The Larder’s favourite variation.

Ingredients 2 medium aubergines diced into 1-2cm cubes 1 red onion, finely chopped 1 garlic clove, chopped 2 celery stalks, finely chopped (optional) 400g tomatoes – we

CROSSWORD NO. 8 ACROSS

DOWN

9 CEEHNOOPRRY (anagram) (5, 6) 10 Atmosphere (3) 11 Group of small islands (11) 12 Equipment (3) 13 Woodwind instrument (4) 14 Wall hanging (8) 16 Senior government law officer (8, 7) 19 In an unassuming way (8) 21 Bath stopper (4) 23 Wrath (3) 25 Think very hard (11) 26 Poorly (3) 27 Unnecessary (11)

1 Italian ice cream (6) 2 Supermarket paying point (8) 3 Slow-moving creature (5) 4 Print font (8) 5 Turn, spin (6) 6 Germinating (9) 7 Bad-tempered (6) 8 High pub seat (8) 15 Foretold (9) 16 Desire to succeed (8) 17 Large sailing ships (8) 18 Trustworthy (8) 19 Folklore wizard (6) 20 Most sensible (6) 22 Thick oil (6) 24 Remove clothing (5)

SOLUTION

use a mix of roast tomatoes, peeled and deseeded plum tomatoes and either passata or tinned tomatoes 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 tbsp brown sugar 40g baby capers 50g pitted olives sliced into halves or quarters – we use green, but black work well too 40g raisins or sultanas

BY ALDHELM

9 Across was a famous resident of Bellingham.

4 tbsp olive oil Pine nuts or parsley to serve Method 1 To draw out any bitterness from the

aubergine, sprinkle the cubes with a couple of tablespoons of salt and leave for about 20 minutes, then rinse and pat dry.

2 We prefer to oven-

roast the aubergine as it needs less oil than cooking in a frying pan.

To do so, place the aubergine cubes in a roasting tray and toss with two tablespoons of olive oil and just a little salt. Cook at 170°C (fan oven) for 40 minutes until soft and creamy, but just browning around the edges.

3 In the meantime, pour the remaining two tablespoons of oil into a large frying pan and add the onion, garlic and celery if using. Cook over a gentle heat for 10 minutes until soft and golden.

4 Add the chopped tomatoes or passata and simmer for five minutes.

5 Add in the balsamic vinegar, sugar, capers, olives and raisins. Stir and simmer gently for another 10 minutes.

6 Once the aubergine is ready, remove from the oven and pour over the tomato sauce mixture. Carefully combine together.

7 Sprinkle with pine nuts or parsley and serve.

A famous LOCAL David Bowie David Bowie was born David Jones in south London on January 8, 1947.

The year of 1969 was a key one for Bowie, and coincided with his time in Beckenham.

In March he moved to a flat on Foxgrove Road and in April he met Angie Barnett, whom he married the following year.

He launched a folk club (later known as Beckenham Arts Lab) at the local Three Tuns pub and co-founded the Beckenham Free Festival. That summer he released his single Space Oddity, which came out five days before the Apollo 11 launch and reached the top five.

In the autumn of 69, he moved to a flat in Haddon Hall on Southend Road and in November, he released his second album, which featured the track Memory of a Free Festival, in homage to his Beckenham event.

ACROSS: 9 Henry Cooper, 10 Air, 11 Archipelago, 12 Kit, 13 Oboe, 14 Tapestry, 16 Attorney general, 19 Modestly, 21 Plug, 23 Ire, 25 Concentrate, 26 Ill, 27 Inessential.

DOWN: 1 Gelato, 2 Checkout, 3 Snail, 4 Typeface, 5 Rotate, 6 Sprouting, 7 Cranky, 8 Barstool, 15 Predicted, 16 Ambition, 17 Galleons, 18 Reliable, 19 Merlin, 20 Sanest, 22 Grease, 24 Strip.