Ye who have a spark in your veins of cockney spirit, smile or mourn acccording as you take things well or ill;— Bold Britons, we are now on Shooter's Hill!
This is another slightly tenously linked Shooters Hill story, but I’ve been collecting local poems for a while, and so am hoping that this will aid me in my search. An selondon poetry magazine called South Bank Poetry is staging a new open competition, and are reaching to all who might be interested in joining in, so please read on if you are feeling poetic.
In the meantime I’d also like to share a nice photo/poem combination about the Walled garden at Jackwood entitled Into the Secret Garden by Stu Mayhew
Into the Secret Garden
She’ll lead you down a path
There’ll be tenderness in the air
She’ll let you come just far enough
So you know she’s really there
She’ll look at you and smile
And her eyes will say
She’s got a secret garden
Where everything you want
Where everything you need
Will always stay
A million miles away
South Bank Poetry Magazine – Open Competition
Closing Date: 9th May, 2011
South Bank Poetry Magazine
Judge:
Niall O’Sullivan (who will read every entry). Poems up to 50 lines with a London focus or context. The full rules are published in South Bank Poetry Magazine. The judge’s decision is final. Prize-winning and commended poets will be listed on the Poetry Book Society website by mid-June 2011.
Prizes:
First Prize: One year’s Charter Membership of The Poetry Book Society. Winner receives 20 new poetry books which are PBS Choices and Recommendations, plus other benefits. Second Prize: £200. Third Prize: £150. Fourth Prize: A pair of tickets for the 2012 T.S. Eliot Award readings and a two-year subscription to South Bank Poetry magazine. Fifth Prize: A pair of tickets for the 2012 T.S. Eliot Award readings and a one-year subscription to South Bank Poetry. Five commended poets will receive a one-year subscription to SBP magazine.
Entry Fee:
1st poem £3.50, 2nd poem £2.50, 3rd poem £2.00, 4th poem £1.50; or 5 for £10 and £1 for each additional poem.
Current subscribers to South Bank Poetry magazine are entitled to the following discounts: 1st poem £3.00, 2nd poem free, 3rd £1.50, 4th £1.00; or five poems for £6 and £1 for each additional poem.
Contact: UK cheques or postal orders crossed, payable to Peter Ebsworth. No entry form required, send two copies of each poem, one anonymous, the other with contact details, to: Peter Ebsworth, South Bank Poetry, 74 Sylvan Road, London SE19 2RZ.
New subscribers may enter poems at the reduced rate if they add £9 (for a three issue subscription inc. P&P) to their total payment. All entries will be simultaneously considered for publication in South Bank Poetry magazine if a contact e-mail address is included.
Launch of South Bank Poetry issue 9
Friday 8 April, 8pm at the Poetry Café, 22 Betterton Street, WC2H 9BX.
Entry is free to subscribers, or £4/£3 concessions, which includes a copy of the magazine
As someone said recently, why go to the dome to watch a band on a screen when you can see the real thing at the Bull. I went to a great little gig there last Saturday, it was one of those so bad it’s good kind of gigs, with much hilarity ensuing over their demolition of the music of David Bowie (well, Suffragette City was ok, but Starman has got some pretty ouchy high notes in it)… anyway, this was made up for with some great glam stompers and iggy pop, the nation’s favourite insurance salesman. I think there’s a Rockabilly night there starting tomorrow from 7, with the Smokin Aces on at 9pm.
Another band that sometimes plays there (and at the woods café) is OCD, and here’s a little video of them to give an idea of the live music offering at the Bull; it’s worth listening through to around 3:30 minutes at which point the drummer turns into animal from the muppets!
For those who prefer to observe and perform, I believe there’s also karaoke at the Red Lion this weekend, courtesy of @pitstopmark although i’m still trying to confirm this, i think it’s tonight. –update Yes, it’s confirmed that karaoke is on Fridays from 8:30 at the Red Lion, and this has been (perhaps) neatly timetabled so as not to clash with the Live music up the Hill.
The fact that this event has been going since 1978 only to be stopped now just goes to show how severe the cuts are; and as one of the important elements of ‘social glue’ that binds the fabric of Plumstead society together, the make merry’s loss is also our loss.
Despite this, the rallying of local people to bring back the festival in 2012 has already begun, and a benefit gig on the evening of the 16th of April at Plumstead Pavilion has been arranged as the first step on the way to the future. According to the newsshopper report, the council have offered to try and help with applying for lottery funding, as they begin to concentrate investments in potentially lucrative projects such as the forthcoming greenwich summer sessions.
It is with great disappointment and regret that the organising committee for the Plumstead Make Merry have to announce that there will not be a Make Merry on Plumstead Common this year. Due to central government cuts in local authority funding, Greenwich Council have been forced to cut the funding on which the Make Merry has depended on for its infrastructure. The committee is made up of local people who all volunteer their time and efforts for free, we do not make a profit, and proceeds from our tea tent and stalls are spent on staging, marquees, sound equipment and on providing free activities for children.
The Plumstead Make Merry has been held on Plumstead Common every year for the last 32 years. It is the most eagerly awaited local event, and the longest running event in the borough. Last year, over 6,000 people visited the festival. We, the Plumstead Make Merry Committee are devastated that there will not be a festival this year, and we know that we are not alone in this feeling.
The Plumstead Make Merry is an important event in the community calendar. We provide a unique opportunity for local charities, voluntary organisations and small businesses to raise awareness of the services, products, information, advice and guidance that they have to offer. As well as this, the Plumstead Make Merry strives to ensure that everyone in our diverse community has the opportunity to be involved. Our funding cut will have an impact on everyone that lives in Plumstead, and beyond.
The Plumstead Make Merry is a celebration of our vibrant, talented and diverse community and will be a great loss to thousands of people. Generations of families have attended the event but due to our lack of funding will not be able to do so this year. The summer of 2011 in Plumstead won’t be the same this year without the Plumstead Make Merry.
However, we will rise above the cuts. We could spend our time and energy complaining about the cuts and campaigning against them – but we won’t, there are many other cuts happening within the borough and nationally, instead, we are dedicated to ensuring that a Make Merry will take place next year. We are appealing to you, the community, to help us.
Throughout the year we will be fundraising and making sure that the Plumstead Make Merry stays in the hearts and minds of local people. Don’t forget the Make Merry, it’s an event put on by local people for local people, it is your celebration of our community.
We are determined to show that the community is bigger than the cuts, and that we can survive. We appeal to everyone to support our fundraising events so that the 2012 Plumstead Make Merry will go ahead, whatever happens with the budget cuts.
We have a great night of entertainment planned for Saturday 16th April 2011 when the ‘Benefit Bash for the Plumstead Make Merry’ will take place in the Greenwich Rugby Club Pavilion on Plumstead Common, (Old Mill Road, London, SE18). Entry will cost just £5 at the door and all proceeds will go towards supporting the festival. There will be live music, karaoke, disco and fun and games. The fun starts at 7:30pm, and we hope to see you all there!
The next event is on Saturday 11th June 2011 – the day the Plumstead Make Merry was due to take place. It will also take place at the Greenwich Rugby Club Pavilion on Plumstead Common, and for a small donation of £5 you can expect a day and evening of non-stop entertainment.
This dub is named in reference to Shooter’s Hill in Jamaica, which is where Keith Hudson, this track’s producer, was from. It’s a quirky one, with guitar strumming on the downbeat, an uncharacteristic fuzzbox and the use of a tremelo – quite experimental in fact. In some ways it works quite well as an anthem to the selondon version of Shooters Hill, especially at the moment, as its slow moving tension perfectly captures the rather frustrated tone of current shooters hill tweets, written by a lot of people letting off steam whilst they sit in 40-minute traffic jams caused by the emergency gas works. Anyway, even if this story is rather tenously linked to the hill, at least it isn’t yet another post about the farm. The track is taken from an album entitled `entering the dragon’, and on this strength I rather hastily assumed that the cover photo was a picture of the artist performing a flying kung-fu kick; on closer inspection however it became clear that he was instead kicking back on a sofa – oh well, at least it’s got a star of david to liven things up in the righteous warrior department.
Whilst looking this up, I also noticed that the famous pickapeppa sauce, which can be found in all good sauce shops, is also from the very same Shooter’s Hill, so not only have our twin-hill over the Atlantic got their own dub, but also their own famous sweet and spicy sauce too. What have we given to the world given to the world in return… Boy George and Fanny Craddock I suppose.
Last year's lambs
Now that the signs of spring are showing, the farm is moving into the lambing period, and have announced the details of the first of their big seasonal events for 2011: Lambing Day. This and further activities have been added to the calendar, and will appear on the front page as they draw closer.
The Woodlands Farm Trust Lambing Day
Saturday 23 April 2011
11.00am-4.00pm
All are welcome at the Woodlands Farm Trust Lambing Day. Come and see our new-born lambs, and enjoy the chance to buy quality local produce at reasonable prices, including home-made preserves, cakes and honey. Relax in our café, enjoy the treasure hunt or get involved in craft activities. A great family day out!
Entry is £1 for adults and 50p for children, and all proceeds go towards caring for our animals. No booking required.
Things that go BUMP in the Night!
Friday 1 April 7.30pm-9.30pm
Tuesday 26 April 8.00pm-10.00pm
Come and see what the farm is like after dark! Try your hand at moth trapping, listen to bats with our bat detectors, and keep a look-out for other nocturnal animals like owls and hedgehogs.
£1 per person, or FREE for farm volunteers and Members of the Woodlands Farm Trust.
Booking required; please email or call the farm office during office hours. Please note that all children must be accompanied by an adult.
Easter Holiday Activities
Come and visit us during the Easter Holidays, and meet some of the wildlife on the farm. All activities are drop-in; no booking required. Please note that all children must be accompanied by an adult.
Last year I wrote a very positive review of the Plumstead Make Merry (Est. 1978), which I wrote after having had a great time feeling very optimistic about the local area. I saw various local faces down there, got chatting with some of them, found out about the environment group’s excellent newsletter, saw various community workers, historians, and old friends, and bought a nice handmade basket and a mr whippy.
Apparently the organisers are going to be guests of the in the meantime radio show this sunday, which is recorded and broadcast at the Queen Elizabeth hospital, and is usually available as a download by the following day. The radio show is well worth a listen in it’s own right: it has the homemade charm of resonance fm (although they haven’t misplaced the jingle yet); is doing a useful job of filling the news void left by Greenwich Time, Newsshopper, and Mercury; and has brilliant roving reports and interviews too, which none of the other hyperlocals have really attempted as yet.
Anyway, podcasts aside, the Plumstead Make Merry organisers are also planning a benefit bash on Saturday 16th April, and have a popular and informative facebook page.
I’m not really posting at the moment… not that there isn’t much to talk about: the lilypond restoration, the shifty bit of the woods, shooters hill against the mast (that’s going well), the aperture woolwich photographic society exhibition at the QE hospital, the speed guns, the price increase at the cafe (about 10p), minister gove approved the shooters hill free school, (although it looks like they won’t be able to open when they wanted to), the planned mixed-mode playground behind christchurch school, all the new activities at the farm… anyway, i’ve been tweeting a bit, but i hope to return to writing more from april. i might also decide to move the whole site to eshootershill.wordpress.com too, which is a bit of a loss, but it would be possible to have comments again (with automagical spam removal).
Anyway, since good news can be hard to find these days, I just had to say something about crossrail – it was revealedtoday that the woolwich crossrail project is alive again, which is brilliant news for woolwich itself, and also for oxleas woods: the better the public transport infrastructure round here is, the less likely it is that a motorway will be built over the farm/woods. So, well done woolwich! The hold-ups have been going on for a while, at one point it was because berkeley homes, who agreed to pay for the ‘station box’ on the agreement their social housing commitments at the royal arsenal could be scaled down, and also on the condition that greenwich council paid for the inside. Since then berkeley seem to have kept their promises, but then there were various quibbles over land buying (?) that threatened the entire scheme (?!) Anyway, I believe that around 2019 (?) woolwich may be able to seriously say that it’s back on the way to enjoying some of its former glories. (Sorry no time for fact checking)…
Wow, things are really hotting up down the farm, check these new saturday activities out (i will update the details as they come in, and add them to the calendar):
29th January 10am. Big Bird Watch. Based on the RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch, and results will be sent to them. FREE.
1pm-3pm Afternoon workshop making bird feeders. £1.50 per feeder.
12th February 10am-12pm and 1pm-3pm. Making chocolate truffles for Valentine’s Day. Charge £3 per person; ages 7+.
19th February 10am-12pm and 1pm-3pm. Making Bird Boxes – based on BTO bird box week. Charge £2 per box; ages 8+
26th February 10am-12pm and 1pm-3pm. Dissect an Owl Pellet. FREE; Ages 6+.
5th March 10am-12pm and 1pm-3pm. Pond Dipping. FREE; ages 4+.
19th March 10am-12pm and 1pm-3pm. Woodland Adventures. Bush-craft activities for over-8s.
Booking required – please contact the farm office during office hours; 020 8319 8900/woodlandsft@aol.com. Charge £1 per person; ages 8+.
16th April 10am-12pm and 1pm-3pm. Make chocolate animals for Easter. Charge £3 per person; ages 7+.
30th April 5am-7am Dawn Chorus Walk. FREE; all ages.
Today i was lucky enough to come across a copy of senine, a glossy and entertaining magazine that also has some excellent features relevant to the wider area. One story in this month’s edition particularly caught my eye. In a piece entitled Horse Play they detail proposals that could markedly change the Shooters Hill area by a) placing lots of horses in what is currently the donkey field between woodlands farm and thompsons garden centre, b) by exercising those horses in Oxleas Wood, and c) by increasing the to- and fro-ing of their handlers and vehicles, which may include a new horseback regiment due to move into the garrison. The SSSI designation awarded to the eastern slopes of Oxleas Wood, the attempts to build ringway2 and elrc over it, and the fairly recent development on woodland of the extended café car park and the recently permitted mixed-mode play area for christchurch school and public use (post to follow) mean that the integrity of one of London and nwkent’s last surviving, and in some ways unique (number of wild service trees for instance), areas of ancient woodland continues to require continual and vigilant protection in order to sustain it’s distinct ecology and survival.
Proposals for a new ‘Olympic legacy’ horse riding centre are on course for opening in 2012, SEnine has learned.
The centre will provide stabling for more than 40 horses on the slopes of Shooters Hill.
Maney for the £1m plus centre will come from a variety of sources, including £250,000 from the British Equestrian Federation and match-funding from Greenwich Council Olympic Legacy project.
The location is expected to be between Thompson’s Garden Centre and Woodlands Farm on a council-owned site currently grazed by donkeys from Blackheath.
Detailed plans are expected to be ready for consultation in the New Year but will run into strong opposition from members of the Woodlands Farm Trust concerned at the over-development of open land.
The new centre is intended to increase access to horse riding across the borough and will also include provision for riding for the disabled.
There will also be a link-up with the relocation to Woolwich of the country’s foremost equestrian Army brigade, the King’s Troop, Officers from the Troop, who will move into the former Royal Artillery barracks, will give their time to training at Shooters Hill as part of their commitment to community engagement
As well as stabling, there will also be new indoor and outdoor exercise rings. However, plans to allow the horses to gallop on surrounding land are expected to be opposed by Woodlands Farm and conservationists. Oxleas Woods, are designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest and horse exercise would churn up paths and leave droppings which could change the area’s delicate ecology.
Chair of the Trust Dr Barry Gray said: “It would be a massive over-development of Metropolitan Open Land and lead to increased traffic in the area. The council seems to take no notice of its own policies for nature conservation and open space.”
I also found a relevant story from 17 December 2009 on the british equestrian federation site, so this is not a new idea at all. I’m not sure why it’s surfaced on the pages of senine now, and can’t find any planning applications on the council website, the land is apparently theirs, so I’m not sure what the consultation process would be, but presumably if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen some time this year.
Andrew Finding, Chief Executive of the British Equestrian Federation says: ” … The centre, which is proposed at Shooters Hill, just a stone’s throw from the Olympic equestrian venue [I’d like to see someone throw a stone to Greenwich Park, ed.], will provide a lasting sporting, community and educational legacy for the equestrian community in the city. This project will also be supported by significant local authority funding. ”
Councillor Chris Roberts, Leader of Greenwich Council said; “We see the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games as a tremendous opportunity to inspire people to take up sports and are doing all we can to develop a new equestrian centre in Greenwich, as well as a host of other new sports facilities.
“A new equestrian centre will not only introduce thousands of London children to the thrill of horse riding, it will also provide educational and training opportunities for many people for years to come. Our plans are to provide a top quality training centre so that people can gain skills and qualifications in an area that will open up opportunities across the world.
“The Games aren’t just a 17-day sports event for London – they are a chance to create new opportunities and inspire people and we have to start now so that the benefits can last for generations to come.”
