Camberwell Quilting
Our previous blog likened Burgess Park to an embroidered bed spread, covering the remains of a pre-war community with a new green quilt. Did we sound a little underwhelmed, perhaps a touch unexcited by what we saw on a chilly February day? Well, maybe we did.
So we are making a brief return visit to Camberwell, to explore three gems which decorate the edges of our quilt and which have been retained within the hemline of the Park. As with other historic items such as the Bridge to Nowhere and the lime kiln (briefly featured in the preceding blog), today’s jewels represent fascinating fragments of the former landscape: delightful, curious, but frustrating in their disconnection from both the park and the modern cityscape which surrounds it.
Addington Square
Addington Square lies at the western extremity of Burgess Park and is intimately linked with the construction of the Grand Surrey Canal (from ‘inland’ Surrey to the Surrey Docks and the Thames) in the first decade of the 19th century.
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addington_Square) tells us that one Nathaniel Simmons “the engineer to the Grand Surrey Canal Company” owned the first house in the Square. Terroir has yet to find any other mention of Mr Simmons but a square of handsome Georgian houses was certainly built close to the canal at about this time.
Wikipedia again: “The 1851 census shows 32 houses with 179 residents and 33 servants, an occupancy rate of 6.2 persons per house.” And, we calculate, a ratio of 1 servant to 5.4 ‘residents’. We assume the servants were also resident, but not classified as such.
Some diversification followed, with smaller terraced houses and workshops (below) but the Georgian cohesion remained.
Today, the remnants of this classic Georgian square and its surrounding terraces seem rather surprised to be sitting between the park and a very assorted collection of later urban development, on and around the Camberwell Road.
The serenity of this handsome oasis is undeniable, however, despite the cars and the litter bins, and it is a popular stopping off place for rest, relaxation and a coffee from the nearby café.
Chumleigh Gardens
Chumleigh Gardens is equally elegant and unexpected. Contemporaneous with activity in Addington Square, the buildings associated with the Gardens were built in the first half of the 19th century but for the benefit of a very different section of society. In 1802 a Female Friendly Society had been founded ‘by and for women, operating “by love, kindness, and absence of humbug”. It gave small grants to “poor, aged women of good character”.’ (https://bridgetonowhere.friendsofburgesspark.org.uk/the-story-of-burgess-park-heritage-trail/heritage-trail-a-l/chumleigh-gardens/).
By 1821 the Society was building almshouses on the south side of Albany Road - an area which is now on the northern edge of Burgess Park. The operation expanded again in the 1840s, but the buildings were damaged during WWII bombing raids.
Thankfully, these structures were not demolished post-war but it took until the mid-1990s for this heritage to find a new purpose within the Park. The buildings have now been restored and the grounds re-created as a multi-cultural garden designed to celebrate Camberwell’s diversity. They include a memorial to local hero Keib Thomas (image left), a Welshman turned south Londoner, who campaigned for ethnic & inter-faith harmony, justice and equality.
A winter visit to Chumleigh Gardens is not a waste of time. The Gardens have been designed to represent diversity through spaces celebrating different local communities, using plants from around the world. Hope for a better future is epitomised, in February, by blossom and catkins …
... while the quirky café provides a haven for tired feet, succour for mind and body, and retail therapy.
Glengall Wharf Garden
This community garden just exudes fun, exhilaration and horticultural angst! Some might call it alternative mayhem, but for others, that is part of its attraction.
We’re back on the Surrey Canal. Glengall Wharf is technically in Peckham (London Borough of Lewisham), but from our perspective, it is at the very eastern end of the Burgess Park green space. The Wharf was built on the junction of the main Surrey Canal and the Peckham Branch which opened in 1826. The junction was wide enough for the timber barges to turn down the branch line to the many timber yards which lined the route (https://bridgetonowhere.friendsofburgesspark.org.uk/the-story-of-burgess-park-heritage-trail/heritage-trail-a-l/glengall-wharf/).
By the 1890s, the Edison Bell company opened a factory to the north of the junction but ‘Edisonia’ closed in 1933 and other commercial projects have obliterated all signs of the imposing building which one stood there. Lewisham opened a refuse depot in the south east angle of the junction, which was also unlikely to have improved the local streetscape. The canal was filled in, in about 1970, and the depot converted into the Glengall Wharf community garden. The time line seems a bit hazy and is further complicated by the Glengall family owning a large part of the Isle of Dogs. Many links take you to various fascinating, but unproductive, rabbit holes in Millwall!
The garden entrance can be mysteriously hard to find and, on finally entering the garden, one can be forgiven for thinking that yet another alternative rabbit hole has opened before you. Yes, there really are saunas here, housed in a wooden cabin and a converted horse box (or is it a shepherds hut?)!
Beyond that is the fascinating, organic, make-do-and-mend, mélange of a community garden devoted to growing food, increasing biodiversity and recycling, to reducing the speed of climate change and to changing community minds of what constitutes a garden.
So there you have it. Georgian terraces in the west, Georgian alms houses, with a modern diversity garden, in the north and a refuse depot recycled into a community garden in the east. That’s Burgess Park all over: a community’s geography buried below ground, with volcanic eruptions of history exploding through the green quilt in a most unregulated manner. We’ll be back.