Woodlands farm are about to present the first of their 4 annual events, the peak of lambing season! The event is on saturday april the 3rd from 1100-1630. hope to see you there.
Woodlands Farm Lambing Day
Eaglesfield Park Open Air Gym/Green Flag Status
Today I received some campaign materials from Clive Efford MP, which included the news that Eaglesfield Park is going to have its own Open Air Gym (?!) and improved signs and paths in order to meet the criteria for the prestigious Green Flag Award.
The concept of an open air gym seems quite strange to me as I’ve become happily accustomed to the idea of people getting their endorphins behind closed doors on those bizarre W. Heath Robinson style contraptions that allow you to run nowhere, lift nothing and so on – walking the streets is certainly much more pleasant now than it was at the height of the jogging craze; these days I can happily amble around in a reverie without sweaty spandex clad neurotransmitter freaks huffing and puffing at me from all directions.
The money itself is going to come from an Olympics Legacy fund. I assume the idea is to use the events to enthuse local people about sport at the same time as giving them an outlet for all their newfound enthusiasm – this is the legacy, and surely a good thing if it gives people something to do other than moan about the bankers nicking all our money. I’m personally looking forward to the target sports at the artillery barracks, and will be watching as much Robin Hood as I can in the run up to the games. I’m not sure if local people will be able to get tickets though, quite possibly not, and even if they can I’ve heard that they change hands for thousands of pounds.
As for the Green Flag award, it sounds quite good considering the recognition that the Plumstead Common Environment Group have earned as a result of their award winning restoration of the Slade Ponds. It certainly bodes well for the Lily Pond plans as being able to write “Green Flag Status” on grant applications helps to make a good impression on the potential future funders by demonstrating that there is a precedent of time and money being invested in the park.
Red Lion Lane One Way Proposal
Highway safety seems to be fairly active theme in the area at the moment, there was the traffic monitoring in cleanthus road last year (not sure what came of that), and the extension of the 20 mph zone to eaglesfield road; now there’s a new speed/vehicle counter on the hill going down to kent, plus the occasional traffic police with lidars round the garden centre, and the new road safety improvements to shrewsbury lane where it meets the main road plus the pedestrian refuges at various stages, and the proposed double yellow lines on the main road round the farm (this will save people getting parking fines when they drive to the lambing day in april)…
Overall it just goes to show that gene selection for fear of spiders and snakes, useful though it may have been in the ancestral environment, is now being replaced by meme selection – i.e. we’re just not scared enough of vehicles yet, so culture has to intervene whilst we wait for the genome to catch up (i.e. all the people who are afraid of cars reproduce more effectively than those who aren’t).
In 2000 Red Lion Lane benefited from traffic calming as part of the 20mph traffic calming measures enjoyed by many roads in the area, and was also turned into a down-the-hill-only road at the top end. At the same time the idea of excusing pavement parking on the bottom end was briefly considered before being, erm, parked. Since then the council have received a number of complaints about drivers having difficulty passing each other on this lower section of the lane, and also complaints about damage to parked vehicles, which presumably happens when things get tight. Efforts have been made to revive the pavement parking idea, but now a more radical measure is being proposed which is to make still more of the lane down hill only.
A mini vote is currently on, mainly to sound out the feelings of those who live on roads that will get the up-hill traffic that currently use red lion lane as a rat run when the junction at the old shooters hill police station gets slow, and so I anticipate that herbert road→paget rise→ankerdine crescent→shrewsbury lane→foxcroft road→eaglesfield road will now become the cut through of choice for those in an, erm, hurry. The other way that through traffic might cut through would be herbert road⇒ripon road⇒eglinton hill⇒eaglesfield road – so it may be that residents in these roads are being polled.
Road Safety Improvements On Shooters Hill
You may have noticed some road works going on around the bull, this is something to do with safety improvements being made to various places along the hill. What I’m just about to reveal was first mentioned on the neighbourhood watch website which now boasts a shiny new design and has changed to cover the shooters hill police ward, presumably in line with its links to the met, which incidentally has a rather whizzy map based site about crime in the area; did you know that this ward has one of the lowest crime rates in the borough.
The changes due to take place are as follows:
- Provision of an ‘entry treatment’ at the junction of Shrewsbury Lane and Shooters Hill. This will hopefully reduce the number of recurrent collisions with drivers turning out of Shrewsbury Lane on to Shooters Hill.
- Installation of ‘SLOW’ carriageway markings and red-coloured surfacing on Shooters Hill at the junction with Eaglesfield Road. This in turn should alter driver perception and encourage reduced speed.
- Installation of a pedestrian refuge island east of Cleanthus Road, very near the water tower. This will provide a safe crossing for people using the bus stops near Eaglesfield Road.
- Installation of a pedestrian refuge island near Woodlands Farm. This will provide a safe crossing for people visiting Woodlands Farm and the bus stop located opposite on Shooters Hill.
- Installation of five traffic islands on Shooters Hill towards Welling, in addition to red-coloured surfacing within the central hatching from Shrewsbury Lane to the Greenwich-Bexley Borough Boundary.
- Installation of a ‘Speed Warning Sign’ on the traffic island near Woodlands Farm.
Let’s hope it works! I personally feel that these changes could have taken the side of the pedestrian a bit more than they did, but there might be a good reason for keeping the traffic moving.
People Against the River Crossing: Were You There?
July the 8th 1993, central government withdraws the Oxleas Woods section of its infamous Roads to Prosperity scheme. The hill is saved!
I’ve been asked whether I’d like to investigate this, and since this is quite possibly one of the most significant things to ever happen here, it seems like a good idea for this site to cover this part of the Shooters Hill story.
Since this is a relatively recent episode, and an example of people power, I’m hoping to include some thoughts from those who participated in and observed the saving of the woods. So, if you were there, and would like to reminisce, I would like to hear from you. If you are interested please get in touch via the email address at the foot of the page.
The map shows how the bypass would have run right through woodlands farm, oxleas wood, and sheperdleas wood to meet the a2
At some point this year a post on this will appear, but for the time being, here’s the oxleas section of an alarm uk publication from 1995 (taken from the limited online information I’ve found so far):
“Whenever I used to visit Oxleas Wood I would visualise the proposed road cutting through it. It’s hard to believe that the woods are now safe. But safe they almost certainly are!
My involvement in the campaign against the East London River Crossing began in earnest in the late eighties. By this time the road had been scheduled for construction for many years and had already been approved by the longest Public Inquiry ever held into a road scheme. That inquiry had lasted 194 days; the transcripts of the proceedings contained 9.5 million words!
Local people, in the form of People Against the River Crossing (PARC) and Greenwich & Lewisham FOE, were fighting a determined and exhausting battle against a scheme which would not only cut a swathe through 8,000 year old Oxleas Woods but would also take out several hundred houses in the quiet and pleasant suburb of Plumstead. But with approval in principle granted, and with the Government, developers and some socialist local authorities strongly supporting the scheme, the odds against stopping it were getting bigger all the time. To achieve victory, a concerted strategy was needed to make Oxleas Wood a big issue locally and give it wider significance – a strategy to make it a symbol of the environmental damage that the road programme was causing and a rallying point for the environment movement. If that could be done, then, given Oxleas Wood’s proximity to Westminster, it might force the Government to back down rather than risk confrontation with a united community and environment movement, in its own “back yard”.
Like all the best campaigns we fought on every level. There were letter-writing stalls at the popular Greenwich market, politicians were systematically lobbied and a well-presented public transport alternative was drawn-up. We organised an “Adopt-a- Tree” scheme; the aim here was to get every tree in Oxleas Wood adopted. As well as bringing in funds and publicity, it would give supporters a real stake in the campaign. And if the worst came to the worst we could invite tree adopters to turn up to defend their tree.
In order to make Oxleas a “line in the sand” for the environment movement, we got some of the large environmental non-government organisations (for example the Wildlife Trusts and World Wide Fund for Nature) to take part in an Oxleas Strategy Group. This helped lock them into a campaign that was ultimately run by local people, but which made the best use of the resources of the national campaigns.
A couple of legal lines of last resort helped propel the campaign into the national news. The Government had failed to carry out an Environmental Impact Assessment for the scheme, as required by European Community law. The heroic European Commissioner for the Environment, Carlo Ripa di Meana, took up this complaint causing Prime Minister Major to hit the roof and interrupt a Commonwealth conference to condemn the EC’s action. The complaint was never seen through by the EC, but the publicity was invaluable, as was that which resulted from a High Court case where the “Oxleas 9” (nine local people) put their assets on the line to take the Department of Transport to court over their failure to provide adequate land in exchange for the damage to Oxleas woods. The case was lost, but Oxleas had caught the public imagination and the pressure on the government was intensifying.
Meanwhile, campaigners were preparing for the worst. A “Beat the Bulldozer” pledge was launched, with the aim of getting 10,000 people to pledge to be there if the bulldozers went in. With the TV pictures of direct action at Twyford Down fresh in their minds, as well as the vivid pictures we had painted of what would happen if they violated Oxleas Wood, the Government backed down.
For me the Oxleas campaign had meant hours of hard work in meetings held in draughty halls on dark, rainy nights trying to get the best campaign that I could. For hundreds of local people it had been years of struggle. Was it worth it? Definitely. Oxleas was a turning point. We’d shown how people power could stop roads, a lesson that was quickly learnt right across the country. We’d shown that the environment movement, when it’s focused and working in harmony with local communities, could win. And of course the peace and beauty of OxleasWood has been preserved.
Jonathan Bray, founder and convenor of the Oxleas strategy group
East London River Crossing Trunk Road
From the oxleas woodland management plan:
The Hedgerow on the eastern side of the meadow is composed of mainly hawthorn (Crataegus spp) with some self-seeded oak. This hedgerow is rather special as it contains some examples of butchers broom (Ruscus aculeatus), which is used as an indicator of ancient woodland, as it rarely grows in regenerated woodland. It was the presence of this plant that aided the campaign to stop the East London River Crossing putting a road through Oxleas Wood. This hedgerow was re-laid in 2004 by the GLLAB New Deal project.
Eaglesfield Park: The changing landscape
The modern name for Eaglesfield is derived from the coat of arms of John Lidgbird, who was made High Sheriff of Kent in 1741 and owned the site. His coat of arms displayed two eagles. The current play park there has seen a number of changes over the years, but as features go, it possibly started out as a dew pond, formed to collect drinking water for the Oxen grazing on deforested areas (hence the name Oxleas)[1. From the Eaglesfield Park management plan (2008 draft).].
At some point it became the yacht pond, as seen in the postcard pictures below, and later still a paddling pool, before being transformed into a play park around 1994.
There’s also pictures of the (hopefully) soon to be reinstated Lily Pond.
Update – plumstead-stories.com sent me another nice one of the park, can’t quite figure out whereabouts it is though:
Party People
Shooters Hill is a marginal voting area (with the red-blue margin being less than 200 votes in the last council elections – see table below), and the so-called chicken run has been a feature of politics in this area for a while; Tory Bottomley fled to the relative safety of Worthing in 1997, and now Labour Hyland has been accused of performing a similar stunt by shifting to the labour stronghold of Abbey Wood for this year’s council elections on May the 7th. Just goes to show that being a party animal is a job just like any other.
Emigrations such as these free up a bit of elbow room in the local scene, and furthermore, Labour Kelly looks set to stand down, creating even more room for maneuver. Councillor Kelly’s departure is a shame as he’s on record as considering local (as opposed to bridge builder’s) interests during the latest river crossing fiasco. Judging by the figures, he was also the most popular candidate at the last election, a possible indicator that he was actually the local choice? That’s two situations vacant then, the third is currently held by councillor Danny Thorpe, who probably will stand again, but presumably with less support now as he spent around a year of his term in oz. Apparently he had offered to step down, however this did not happen…at least he’s sticking around to fight. Since his return I spotted him in his role as envoi to climate camp, although according to the council press release, it appears the most significant thing to come out of that was confirmation that the camp was actually being held in the borough of Lewisham, who’s kite field must have been good for all those wind turbines! That authority does have a few green councillors though, so they were probably quite pleased, certainly more than mayor bullock anyway, who was very grumpy about it. I’ve only seen Sir Steve once; after Millwall got to the FA cup final in 2004 they had a big party in Lewisham, and at one point he attempted to address the crowd, but was drowned out with calls of “who are ya! who are ya!”
So, with two current councillors leaving, the local tories have sensed their chance, and are raising their game; for instance local tory Maureen contributed to the push for a pedestrian “refuge island” beside woodlands farm – which shows that they are about more than just attacking labour all the time. Another game raising approach has been for tory hopeful Emmett to publish an eponymous website. Actually it’s quite a busy site and certainly contains more material than that of his superior, the parlimentary candidate Dave Gold, who previously tried to get elected in Brighton. An experienced blogger Emmett has a history of writing on national issues, and his preference for this topic led charlton average to express frustration as to why Emmett doesn’t narrow down the 2:1 ratio of national to local stories on his site. That was in May 2009, so I decided to take another look to see if there’s been any change.
Emmett’s Posts
The plot illustrates increments over time of posts tagged either gordon brown (a favourite subject of Emmett’s) or shooters hill since the beginning of his blog last February. Broadly speaking dynamics in brown related material seem to follow the twists and turns of media coverage in general; there’s a steady flow of brown copy through from feb to may, followed by a flurry of activity in june, incidentally on both brown and the hill – which shows some synchronisation between the two themes. Things then go rather quiet, roughly around the time of the summer recess in parliament, and the holidays in general, so that’s probably nothing to worry about, except that there was actually loads going on locally at the time. From the start of july to the end of november 3 posts about the hill are counted, which is a slightly surprising finding as we had the architectural digs and lily pond events at eaglesfield park, the open day at shrewsbury park, the neighbourhood watch party, the shelving of the river crossing, and a whole series of events at the farm: key moments in the life of the local community that went completely unreported. The start of the conference season sees a steep increase in posts about brown, with no concurrent increase in local affairs, unlike the june spike, this suggests, if anything, a step away from local coverage.
Local coverage on the blog does not seem have to have improved since charlton average scrutinised it. It’s fair to say that as well as running for council, local tories probably do help the parliamentary campaign, so attacks on the incumbent leader are presumably part of the grand plan, but hopefully there’s still time for the candidates to show more interest in the area they want to work for!
Difficulties with this analysis
This plot does not illustrate activity across all tags, it only contrasts on two things, my favourite topic (the hill) at the local level, and the blogger’s favourite topic at the national level (the pm). In recent times his coverage of greenwich council issues has started to shape up a bit better in comparison to rants about gordon brown, so i could look at that as well. For example, various local issues have been discussed such as greenwich time (which is in big trouble at the moment) and thames clipper, so perhaps it is now getting more into local affairs. The other thing to say is that although he misses out a lot of important happenings on the hill, he is at least the only candidate providing potential voters with a public showing of his position via regular posts and tweets.
Shooters Hill Ward (turnout 42%):
| 2006 Council Election | ||
| Name | Party | Results |
| Linda Susan Cunningham | Conservative | 1409 |
| Sylvia Gladys Derrick-Reeve | Liberal Democrat | 796 |
| Elizabeth Patricia Drury (commonly known as Liz) | Conservative | 1393 |
| Denise Hyland | Labour | 1527 – ELECTED |
| John Kelly | Labour | 1589 – ELECTED |
| Edward Ottery | Liberal Democrats | 736 |
| Simon Lester Tee | Conservative | 1326 |
| Danny Thorpe | Labour | 1540 – ELECTED |
| Michael Westcombe | Liberal Democrats | 660 |
The Art of Sledding
I myself had, after a search that began on the infamous snow day last february, obtained a plastic sled from ruxley manor garden centre, and spent a few minutes figuring out how to steer, or at least alert those in my path they were about the experience the ultimate sliding tackle.
Having seen one chap take a running jump and ride head first (on a pink sled of course), I began to appreciate the finer points of sledding technique, and as it turns out an alaskan has committed most of this to the web at instructables.com. This particular individual claims to have reached speeds of 45mph+
Shooters Hill the Painting
Shooters Hill Wood by Andrew Pepworth
Today I added a painting entitled Shooters Hill Wood, by Andrew Pepworth to the collection of header images on display, at first glance it appears to be a summertime scene. As for the location, I’d hazard a guess that the view is of somewhere in Castle Wood as the footpath seems to be quite narrow and steep…
plumstead-stories.com
A link to the excellent social history plumstead-stories website has recently been added, apparently the author is now preparing a further book to add to the existing two volumes currently in print, and welcomes stories and photos from residents of the hill. Unfortunately I didn’t get this in before christmas as it would have made an excellent present. Shooters Hill features quite a bit on this website, and I actually found the photo of the prefabs on oxleas meadow that adorns the header of this site whilst rummaging around the stories there. Amongst many other interesting things there’s also a nice photo of the ve day celebrations on donaldson road, which looks quite spacious without all those cars cluttering up the place, and a rather astonishing aerial photo of the destruction caused by four V.1 bombs around Wrottesley Road, Adamston Road, Barnfield Road and Eglinton Hill/Herbert Road.
