Tottie is a much missed family pet who has gone missing. If you have a garage or shed please check if a cat has got shut in, and let Nick know if you have any information.
Going Batty in Shrewsbury Park
The Friends of Shrewsbury Park have gone a bit batty recently. They have constructed and installed some bat boxes in the park and, weather permitting, they will be holding a bat walk in the park next Friday, 11th May. The e-mail from the Friends announcing the event said:
Come and experience an FSP Bat Walk on Friday 11 May, find out where the new bat boxes have been sited and get to know these shy guys in Shrewsbury Park.
We are meeting at 7.45 in the car park off Plum Lane for an introduction from Bat-wise FSP members who will lead this adventure through the Park at sunset using our eyes, ears and bat detectors!
· Wear sturdy shoes and appropriate clothing, a torch is useful.
· Children must be accompanied by an adult.
· Dogs must be kept on a leash if you need to bring yours.
· The walk will last about 1 ½ hours. If you have mobility issues or enquiries please contact Kris or Kathy on fspdog@hotmail.com . The trail is a mixture of paved path, gravel and grass.
The event is free but your spare change towards buying our own bat detector will be much appreciated.
If it rains neither the bats nor us will be coming out! (but we will reschedule a walk in September)
There are 18 species of bat in the UK and the latest Bat Conservation Trust survey shows that since the year 2000 numbers have been stable or increasing. However that must be offset against steep declines in numbers at the end of the last century – a 70% decline between 1978 and 1992. Bat numbers are one of the UK’s biodiversity indicators – they are seen as a good indicator of the quality of the wildlife habitats in the UK because they are sensitive to a range of environmental pressures. Scientists are currently concerned about the spread of the fatal bat disease known as white-nose syndrome from the USA into the UK population – early indications are that it has not affected British bats yet.
The most likely bats to be spotted on Friday are the Pipistrelle and the Noctule. The Pipistrelle is the most common, and the smallest British bat, weighing around 5g (less than a £1 coin), with a body around 3 or 4cm long and wing span between 18 and 25cm. Pipistrelles can eat up to 3000 insects in a single night! In contrast the Noctule is one of Britain’s largest bats with a wingspan of up to 45cm.
The bat boxes were constructed using the Kent bat box design, and attached, with help from the Royal Borough of Greenwich Council, to a number of trees last Wednesday. The bat walk on Friday will pass right by all the boxes. It is a bit soon for them to be inhabited, sometimes it can take a year or two, though this is the time of year when female bats are looking for suitable nursery sites with the young usually being born around the end of June or early July.
There is some evidence of bat roosts already in trees in the park. Many British bats roost in holes in trees, and there is frequently a tell-tale brown stain of bat urine on the tree below the roost hole. They do frequently move between different roost sites however, so a brown stain doesn’t necessarily mean the hole is inhabited.
The Friends have borrowed a number of bat detectors from the local parks’ forum and the Bat Conservation Trust for the bat walk. These mainly detect the bats’ use of echolocation to find their insect prey at night. As the London Bat Group‘s web site explains:
Bats can see very well, probably better than we do at dusk, but even their eyesight needs some light and they would be unable to find their insect prey in the dark. Bats have solved this problem and can find their way about at night and locate their food by using a sophisticated high frequency echolocation system. Our hearing ranges from approximately 20Hz (cycles per second) to 15,000 to 20,000Hz (15-20Khz) depending on our age, but bat calls are generally well above this. By emitting a series of often quite loud ultrasounds that generally sweep from a high to low frequency or vary around a frequency, bats can distinguish objects and their prey and therefore avoid the object or catch the insect. The frequencies used, and the type of sweep or characteristics of the call can help us to distinguish the species of the bat when we use a bat detector that turns the ultrasound into sound we can hear.
Let’s hope the weather is better for bats and people on Friday, but meanwhile here is an example of what a pipistrelle sounds like using a heterodyne bat detector like the ones which will be used for the bat walk.
Oxleas Meadows Missiles
A battery of Rapier surface-to-air missiles together with other components of a Ground Based Air Defence (GBAD) System was set up on Oxleas Meadows, just below the Oxlea Wood Cafe this morning as part of the MoD’s exercise Olympic Guardian. The exercise to test security preparations for the Olympic and Paralympic Games also includes deployment of a similar GBAD System on Blackheath, the berthing of the Royal Navy’s largest ship, HMS Ocean, at Greenwich and activity by helicopters, jets and other military hardware in and over the royal borough.
The Blackheath Bugle blog has a good set of links to news items explaining how the GBAD systems on Blackheath would be used. The campaign against the missiles – No Missiles in Oxleas Wood – have a Facebook page with details of their campaign. Their letter from the MoD about the deployment says that the MoD have taken advice from Natural England over any measures they would need to take to protect the Oxleas Wood Site of Special Scientific Interest. It doesn’t specifically mention the Corky Fruited Water Dropwort, but I hope that will be covered as I’m looking forward to some dropwort spotting later in the year.
The recently launched Oxleas Wood web site says that the deployment is part of an MoD Community Engagement Day and that local residents can express their concerns between 4.00 and 6.00pm today.
The Olympic Guardian exercise runs from 2nd to 10th May, so it’s possible the GBAD system will still be on Oxleas Meadows when the Bluebell Walk convenes on Sunday. In the meantime here’s some more photographs.
Update: I’ve just wandered over to Oxleas Wood again and the missile battery will be open for members of the public to have a look round and ask any questions until 7.00pm this evening. The armed forces personnel were very friendly and open to answering questions, describing the different parts of the battery, explaining their manning routine if the missiles are deployed and even letting me manouver the missiles using their fall-back manual aiming system. They mentioned that the decision on whether the GBAD system would be deployed during the Olympics was still open. The battery will be in place until Monday, so there will be an additional attraction for people on the Bluebell Walk, as well as the bluebells and Woodlands Farm.
Bluebell Walk in Oxleas Wood on Sunday
There’s a great opportunity to see the bluebells in Oxleas Wood this Sunday, 6th May when the London Wildlife Trust have arranged a Bluebell Walk. The walk will be led by Mary O’Sullivan of the LWT and Dr Barry Gray, who is Chair of the Trustees of Woodlands Farm. It is expected that the walk will last 1 to 2 hours, but people can join or leave at any time. It starts at 2.15pm (meet at 2.00pm) at the Oxleas café and finishes opposite Woodlands farm on Shooters Hill Road, so there’s a chance to visit the farm and see their new lambs as well.
Shooters Hill, Gladstone and the Right to Vote
I wasn’t aware that the nineteenth century Liberal Prime Minister W.E. Gladstone was once the MP for Greenwich until I noticed the plaque on the side of Eglinton Road School. But he was, between the years 1868 and 1878, which included the time of the first of his four premierships. His valedictory speech to about 3000 of his constituents at the Herbert Park Roller Skating Rink, now the site of Eglinton Road School, lasted two hours. They must have been releived that this was much shorter than his record budget speech as Chancellor of the Exchequer which took nearly 5 hours. The speech marked the end of Gladstone’s time as Greenwich MP; he immediately went on to campaign for and win a seat in Midlothian.
With an election coming up in a couple of days, I was particularly interested in Gladstone’s part in extending the right to vote, but his farewell speech also resonated with other current events in that it was about his passionate opposition to a war in Afghanistan, the second Anglo-Afghan War, and included the passage:
“Yes, gentlemen, the disease of an evil conscience is beyond the practice of all the physicians of all the countries in the world. The penalty may linger; but, if it lingers, it only lingers to drive you on further into guilt and to make retribution, when it comes, more severe and more disastrous. It is written in the eternal laws of the universe of God that sin shall be followed by suffering. An unjust war is a tremendous sin. The question which you have to consider is whether this war is just or unjust. So far as I am able to collect the evidence it is unjust. It fills me with the greatest alarm lest it should be proved to be grossly and totally unjust. If so, we should come under the stroke of the everlasting law that suffering shall follow sin; and the day will arrive—come it soon or come it late— when the people of England will discover that national injustice is the surest road to national downfall.”
Gladstone was also a supporter of electoral reform and the extension of the right to vote, becoming known as “the people’s William”. The changes started before Gladstone’s time with the 1832 Reform Act which is seen as the start of the move towards universal suffrage, one of the few things I remember from school history lessons. It could be argued that Gladstone’s support for electoral reform pushed the Conservatives into passing the Second Reform Act in 1867 which enfranchised 1,500,000 men, almost doubling the electorate. All male urban householders and male lodgers paying £10 rent a year for unfurnished accommodation got the right to vote. Gladstone himself was responsible for the Ballot Act in 1872, bringing in the secret ballot for elections, and the Third Reform Act in 1884 which gave rural men the same voting rights as those in the boroughs. Even after this some 40% of men and all women didn’t have the right to vote.
It wasn’t until 20 years after Gladstone died, in the 1918 Representation of the People Act sometimes known as the Fourth Reform Act, that the right to vote was given to all men over the age of 21, and women over the age of 30 who met minimum property qualifications. Women finally achieved electoral equality with men in 1928 in what was known as the Fifth Reform Act or the Equal Suffrage Act. Then in 1969 the age at which someone could vote was lowered from 21 to 18.
So it took a long time to get the right to vote, and many people battled and were punished with jail or worse on the way – from the Levellers and Chartists through to the Suffragettes, which is one reason why I will definitely be voting on Thursday.
The map below shows the location of all the polling stations in Shooters Hill, including the recently installed portacabin in Donaldson Road, though remember that you can’t go to any Polling Station in the ward – check your polling card for your station. There’s a good summary of the instructions for how to vote here, but don’t forget that we only get two preferences on the pink ballot paper for Mayor.
Finally, the Guardian have a 10 question mayor maker, which may help anyone who’s wondered what the policies in the campaign actually are.
Shooters Hill Ward Polling Stations:
- Shrewsbury House Community Centre, Bushmoor Crescent, Shooters Hill, London, SE18 3EG
- Portacabin Next To 1A Donaldson Road, Shooters Hill, London, SE18 3JX
- St. Joseph’s R.C. Church Hall, Paget Rise, London, SE18 3QQ
- Plumcroft Primary School, Nithdale Road, London, SE18 3PE
- Slade Hall, Pendrell Street, London, SE18 2PJ
- Timbercroft Primary School, Timbercroft Lane, London, SE18 2SG
- Willow Dene School, Swingate Lane, London, SE18 2JD
Plumstead Make Merry Call for Volunteers and Stallholders
Plumstead make Merry are looking for volunteer event stewards and stall holders for this year’s event which will be held on Saturday 2nd June on Plumstead Common. They already have a brilliant set of acts lined up for their main stage and tea tent, with more to be announced. They are also looking for teams of no more than 10 adults to compete in their ‘Alternative Games‘ – an it’s-a-knockout style series of inflatable obstacle courses, funny and giant costumes, old-school style sports day races, and much more.
The organisers wrote:
The committee for the Plumstead Make Merry are pleased to announce that we are still taking stallholder bookings for the forthcoming Plumstead Make Merry on Saturday 2nd June from 12-6pm. We are continuing the ‘Best Dressed Stall’ award at this year’s event. Stalls will be judged on general display and promotion of yourself or organisation. We would like to encourage all stallholders to bring their own creative and artistic flair to the event. Previous events have shown a diverse representation of stalls, from community groups, local individuals and businesses, who all take part in the success of the event. You may wish to consider fundraising or promotion for your group through this medium. The lucky winner will be offered a free stall space for the 2013 event, a trophy, and the chance to be photographed for inclusion in press and publicity material. The deadline for applications is the 15th May 2012. More information and application forms can be found on our website, www.plumsteadmakemerry.co.uk or call Holly on 07889 598343.
Additionally, we are currently looking for volunteers to help with the event. Being an Event Steward can be a great addition to you CV. If you would like to get involved we would love to hear from you. Please email Wendy at plumsteadmakemerry@yahoo.co.uk or call her on 07818 236871.
About the Plumstead Make Merry
The Plumstead Make Merry is the longest running festival in the London Borough of Greenwich. From the very first recorded festival in 1978 on Plumstead Common, the festival has grown in size, amenities and diversity. This festival has continued annually, with one exception, in 2011. Due to a lack of funding from the London Borough of Greenwich as a result of government cuts, the festival was replaced with a scaled down event called ‘Not the Plumstead Make Merry’.The Plumstead Make Merry Association are a voluntary community initiative that provides an annual festival of music, arts and activities for all of the local community. The festival provides a celebration of the history of Plumstead and a celebration of our diverse community. We are committed to celebrating our community.
Edge of the City Gala on Saturday
Plumstead Integration Project‘s (PiP) second Edge of the City Short Film Festival culminates on Saturday (28th April) at 12.30pm with their Gala and Awards Ceremony at the Tramshed Theatre in Woolwich. As their e-mail says:
On this special day we will celebrate the achievements of filmmakers, musicians, photographers, and other artists who have been participating in our project since November 2011.Our project was then enabled by a small funding from Team London, Mayor of London and Reuben Foundation, which sponsored filmmaking workshops and regular film screenings, offered to the local community free of charge.After five months of hard work we are going to celebrate all shortlisted films and announce the winners of the Second Edge of the City Film Festival 2012, alongside other shows from the local artists.
There is a packed programme for the event which includes a photographic exhibition, a jazz act and a fashion show as well as a chance to see all the shortlisted films. The judges, film lecturer Prof. John Smith and independent film maker Jill Daniels will reveal the winning films at the awards ceremony at 9.20pm.
Tickets cost £6 or £3 for PiP members and are available from http://www.wegottickets.com/event/155818.
Academy Art and Cricket
The former Royal Military Academy, like the former Royal Herbert Hospital, is a gated community which is very frustrating if you’re interested in the local history illustrated by historic architecture, or even if you’re just nosy and like looking at old buildings. So I felt really lucky to find the electronic gates open while on a walk with my camera; a chance to have a closer look at what is happening with “The Academy Your Piece of History” as the signs say.
Lots of history happened in the Royal Military Academy in its 134 years – between 1805 and 1939 – as the education centre for artillery officers. Its distinguished teaching staff included Michael Faraday, and graduates included Earl Kitchener, Woolwich-born General Gordon and King Farouk I of Egypt. And some believe it was the place where Snooker was invented. The original architect was Sir James Wyatt, a proponent of the neo-Gothic style who was also the architect for the near-by Royal Artillery Barracks. The central library building, shown above, with its leaded ogee domed octagonal towers was modelled on the White Tower at the Tower of London, where Wyatt was based in his role as Surveyor-General of the Ordnance. It has been described as “An outstanding example of Wyatt’s Gothick style, and one of the most important pieces of military architecture in the country.”
The developers, Durkan Estates, are creating 328 new homes on the site, converting the old Academy and erecting 3 new blocks of flats. They include Extra Care sheltered housing in Colebrook House and L&Q housing association affordable housing. So far the main work seems to have been on the new blocks, with little obvious change to the existing buildings.
There have however been changes in the area around the grade II listed former church of St Michael and All Angels, which is a key component of the developer’s vision to create an urban village with the church and great hall at its centre – the village square. Their plan is that:
St Michaels and the All Angels will become an arts and culture centre, providing studio space for local artists and an open space for the use of residents for exercise classes, art lessons and cultural events.
Essentially a pod will be built inside the church structure containing the 12 artists’ studios, and leaving a space for the cultural activities. The church was built much later than the main part of the academy; its history is summarised in Chapter 10 of the brilliant English Heritage draft Survey of London Volume 48:
Since the 1850s there had been a desire to provide the site with a chapel. Money had been set aside and plans prepared on two occasions, a contract even put out to tender in 1871. But other provision took priority and the cadets used the garrison church. Sufficient subscription funds were at last secured and the Academy’s chapel was built in 1902–4 on the site of the old drill shed, and dedicated as the Church of St Michael and All Angels. Maj.-Gen. N. H. Hemming, RE, deployed red-brick Perpendicular Gothic to fit in with the surroundings. A cruciform plan was intended, but want of money meant that the southern transept was not built until 1926. Inside there is an oak pseudo-hammer-beam roof. Furniture, decoration and an organ were all funded by charitable subscription and fitting out was gradual through to the end of the 1920s. The most impressive fitting was the First World War memorial west window of 1920, designed by Christopher Whall and his daughter Veronica to depict soldiers in historical uniforms paying homage to the Virgin and Child. An earlier west window, moved to the east, commemorated the fallen of the Boer War. The Academy’s chapel became the main garrison church after the Second World War. It closed in 2003. Thereafter memorials, furnishings and the decorative windows were taken to the Royal Artillery’s headquarters at Larkhill, Wiltshire, and Sandhurst.
It’s a shame the stained glass windows have been removed; when I was there the windows were mainly plain leaded glass, and the inside was crammed with partitions and offices, making it impossible to see any remaining decorative features.
The Great Hall, which was once the RMA dining hall, will also be converted for community use – in a similar way to the church by inserting a pod within the existing building. As shown in the plan above it is just across the square from the church. It is proposed that it will provide:
A space for all residents to use whether to watch a movie in the screening room, meet friends in the coffee area, dine in the private dining room, quietly read in the library, relax on the mezzanine or work in the office area. Spaces for everybody: designed for maximum flexibility.
The plan also includes development of changing rooms for cricketers using the cricket pitch which is being re-created in the metropolitan open land in front of the academy; a cricket pitch was originally created in 1878. This is intended as a facility for the wider community, and the planning documents mention that it will be available free of charge to schools in the area. There are records of the Royal Military Academy cricket team between 1865 and 1938, playing games against teams such as the MCC and the Royal Military College Sandhurst. However their home games all appear to be played on the pitch at the Royal Artillery Barracks, rather than at the Academy.
There’s a lot more that could be seen at the Academy, for example the Officers’ Mess shown below and interior fittings pictured by Urban Explorers. And a lot more history to be discovered. It’s a great shame that the Academy and Our Piece of History is not more accessible to the whole community.
Help Clear Rubbish in Shrewsbury Park Tomorrow
The Friends of Shrewsbury Park are looking for volunteers to help clear the rubbish at the edge of the woods near Rowton Road tomorrow, Sunday 22nd April, at 1.30pm. Their e-mail which was forwarded to me said:
Dear Friend of Shrewsbury Park,
We hope you will be able to come along on Sunday (22nd April) to help us clear the rubbish in the Park.
We will be meeting outside the allotment entrance in Rowton Road at 1.30pm and work for up to an hour clearing the rubbish at the edge of the wood opposite Rowton Road.
If you can come, please bring stout gloves, we will supply plastic rubbish bags.
If it is raining, the cleaning event is cancelled.
We look forward to meeting you on Sunday.
Best wishes
Kathy and Libby
In Search of the Perfect Naan
My ideal for the perfect naan is one that I tasted on a business trip to Bangalore a few years ago, at the then Taj Residency hotel. The subtleties of air-fare pricing meant that it was cheaper for me to stay for an extra couple of days and come home on Sunday, even allowing for the cost of the – for India – extremely expensive business hotel. So I had a Saturday buzzing round the sites of Bangalore on a tuk-tuk – including the famous Nandi temple, Botanical Gardens and a crowded market. Exhausted at the end of the day, and faced with a 4 am alarm call the next day, I collapsed in the hotel buffet and feasted on hot, cooked-to-order naans and a selection of curries. Their naan, in my memory, had the right balance between lightness and doughiness, absorbency and firmness: a perfect vehicle for a spicy curry.
Before then I had always preferred chapatis, probably based on my introduction to Indian food at the Chakwal restaurant in Leeds, where a bowl of curry and three chapatis cost less than a pound, with a second bowl half price if you still had room – perfect for a hungry student.
The local, Shooters Hill, curry restaurants frequently come close to my ideal naan, but never quite meet it. The Star of Spice in Herbert Road is our usual destination, and I always enjoy their curries: not over-cooked or over-spiced, but with distinguishable spicy flavours and al-dente vegetables. And of course a cold beer or two, usually Kingfisher in memory of holidays in the Indian sub-continent where the bottles informed us that it was “Most Thrilling Chilled”.
For the sake of fairness, and variety, it was necessary to visit the Ruchita on Shooters Hill as well, and that was equally enjoyable. It has recently changed hands, and name: it is now called the Jasmine. The new chef seems to be as good as the previous one, based on our first visit. Their Cauliflower Bhaji was just about perfect and their Chilli Masala Chicken made my lips go numb, in a nice way. The naan was good as well, but still not meeting the perfection of the platonic ideal naan.
The other Ruchita, the take-away on Herbert Road, is handicapped in the naan stakes by the foil bags that keep the bread warm during delivery: however quickly you open the bag it seems impossible to avoid that little bit of condensation that prevents the naan achieving perfection. Their portions however are very generous, and there’s always some left over for the freezer.
My favourite Indian restaurant isn’t in Shooters Hill, unfortunately. It’s a South Indian vegetarian restaurant over in Stoke Newington called the Rasa. The starter selection, of different and unexpected types of poppadom and vibrantly flavoured pickles, alone is enough to justify the journey through the Blackwall Tunnel from time to time. However, since I find their Dosas irresistible – especially the Chilli Onion Rava Dosa – they are exempted from the search for the perfect naan.
So the quest continues. If nothing else it’s a good excuse to eat more curries.
