This Other London

by John Rogers

  From the trees lining the riverbank hang large mobiles made from plastic bottles that appear like gifts to the great Trash God that rules our cities. They form part of a performance piece that will take place in the park that evening, with music, lights and film projections powered by the waters of the Ravensbourne.

  Across a patch of waste-ground I catch a view of the Catford Stadium sign. Greyhounds haven’t raced at Catford since 2003. The 1930s buildings were gutted by a ‘suspicious’ fire two years later. The idea of a dog track in Catford almost sounds like a joke – a quip, a one-liner come to life. Say Catford Dogs quickly enough and it sounds like Cats ’n’ Dogs. The large, rounded yellow letters of the sign keep alive memories of a track that was regarded as one of Britain’s great sporting venues. In its pre-1960s heyday Catford drew big crowds, celebrities presented trophies, the legendary greyhound Mick the Miller raced here, and overfeeding and doping scams took place. Ultimately, Catford suffered from its lack of ‘facilities to attract corporate clients, such as air conditioning and waitress services’, the BBC reported at the time of its closure. Now only three of London’s thirty-three greyhound tracks remain in operation.

  As I climb out of the Ravensbourne Valley a boy sitting on a skateboard shoots downhill past me at great speed. The steep incline heads into Montacute Road. This could be crudely read as meaning ‘Mont – acute’ or steep hill, but more likely derives its name from Sir William Montacute, a founder of the Chivalric Order of the Garter, who was granted the land in the early 1300s. An alleyway leads between houses into Blythe Hill Fields with its incredible views northwards to the City, book-ended by the twin clusters of towers around Canary Wharf and the Gherkin. The vista stretches south over the rooftops from Penge to Croydon. The benches seem to be struggling with gravity and all decline wildly at one end, the kind of feature that would have tickled the Goonish comic mind of Spike Milligan, who lived at the bottom of the hill as a teenager.

  Excavations in the back gardens of houses in Blythe Hill Lane revealed sections of the Roman road that led from London to Lewes in Sussex. The road branched off from Watling Street near Peckham and went straight across the top of the hill to the North Downs and the Weald of Kent. Sitting in the shade of a large ash tree I attempt to imagine the view the Roman engineers would have had when they stood atop this hill nearly 2,000 years ago.

  The view north from Blythe Hill Fields

  Scanning along the route of the Lewes Way is to look across a carpet of tree canopies dotted with patches of brown rooftops. It appears as a lush plain, irrigated from Catford through Sydenham to Beckenham by the River Pool, a tributary of the Ravensbourne. There are only a handful of other people in the fields to share the view, whereas over the river you’d be hard pushed to get across Primrose Hill without being garrotted by a stray kite or knocked over by a cavalcade of roller-bladers.

  Leading off Blythe Hill sits Gabriel Street, where I stop outside the house in which Spike Milligan lived when he first returned from India with his parents in 1933. Milligan’s manic comic genius still permeates through the strata of contemporary British comedy. Milligan and his Goon Show cohorts paved the way for a whole new comedic language – irreverent, surreal, quirky and mad. It was born here, in these unassuming streets.

  Spike’s early performances were at the Lewisham Hippodrome and Ladywell Baths. Various biographers have analysed how, having grown up in colonial India, the culture shock of 1930s Lewisham undoubtedly had a profound influence on his later work. The intense heat, colour, smells and vibrancy of the subcontinent were replaced by smog, tripe, Woolworths and races at Ladywell track.

  The names of London suburbs punctuate Milligan’s work as laughter points. In one monologue a prize in the most boring story of the year competition was a weekend in Neasden. A sketch takes place ‘Live from Ruislip Lido’, depicted as a muddy pond. The Goon Show character Major Bloodnok had a cottage on Clapham Common, and Croydon Aerodrome pops up in an episode called ‘Wings over Dagenham’. In 1969 Milligan scripted a feature film, The Bed-Sitting Room, set in an absurdist post-apocalyptic Britain where the only surviving heir to the British throne lives at number 393A High Street, Leytonstone. He had an A–Z of London gags.

  I try to imagine the impact it would have had on the listeners in 1951 Britain as the first Goon Show was broadcast on the BBC. Characters such as Harry Secombe’s Neddie Seagoon, Spike’s Minnie Bannister, Peter Sellers’s Hercules Grytpype-Thynne, and Professor Osric Pureheart given voice by Michael Bentine crackled to life through the nation’s wireless sets. Prince Charles was tuning in, as were John Lennon, the Pythons and Peter Cook. A small crack was driven across the staid, deferential world of post-war Britain through which the Beatles, Monty Python and the whole alternative comedy movement would emerge. Comedian Eddie Izzard claims that Spike ‘changed the face of world comedy’.

  There’s no blue plaque outside 22 Gabriel Street; there’s a blue van instead – Milligan could have made a joke out of that.

  Further along the street the borough council have erected a plaque to Leslie Paul, ‘Author and Founder of the Woodcraft Folk’. Paul started the Woodcraft Folk in 1925 after leaving another youth movement with a name that sounds straight out of an episode of The Goon Show. The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, which Wikipedia tells us is ‘archaic Kentish dialect for “proof of great strength”’, seems to have been a quasi-pagan, anti-war version of the more militaristic Boy Scouts. They dressed up in Saxon jerkins and hoods, adopted ‘Indian-style’ names and held Tribal Camps. This wasn’t just a bit of fun; its founder, John Hargrave, believed that teaching city-dwellers to embrace the great outdoors would usher in a new era of world peace.

  By coincidence, Kibbo Kift wound up the same year as the first Goon Show broadcast, which was also the year Leslie Paul published his autobiography Angry Young Man – a phrase that would catch on in the 1950s to describe a clutch of writers such as Kingsley Amis, John Osborne and Colin Wilson, who wouldn’t have been seen dead singing round a campfire in a jerkin.

  As I pass Honor Oak Station I realize that now the race is on if I want to catch the Autumn Omnium, which might not be just the last race of the season but the last at Herne Hill. I need to get my head down and pick up the pace.

  Where Honor Oak Park drops down to become Forest Hill Road, a great view opens up that stretches across the London Basin to the northern heights of Hampstead, Highgate and Muswell Hill. This point by One Tree Hill marks the tip of the Norwood Ridge. It appears on the Landscape of London map as a dark smudge running in a slightly diagonal line from South Norwood Hill, standing at 367 feet, rising to Beulah Hill’s 387 feet, Westow Hill, Sydenham Hill (390 feet) and Forest Hill.

  I now start to see the physical shape of this part of South London, where the built environment appears merely as an uncomfortable rash. Thinking back to the previous walk, I saw the ascent of Bostall Hill and the seven miles of heath and meadowland that stretch along the uplands from Greenwich Park to Lessness Heath. The geology of that escarpment was laid bare as it descends to the Thames at Erith. And here was the Norwood Ridge, with the valleys of the Ravensbourne and Wandle-Effra on either side. It appears as such a landscape of peaks and valleys that I should have been accompanied by a Sherpa and a St Bernard.

  Next I traverse into the territory of another series of hills that circles Dulwich. A 1920s essay by Alan Ivimey stated that Dulwich residents claimed it was ‘surrounded, like Rome, by seven hills’ – by my estimation Herne Hill, Tulse Hill, Brixton Hill, Knights Hill, Streatham Hill, Dawson’s Hill and Dog Kennel Hill, with the peaks of the Norwood Ridge. Absorbing this is a grounding experience, standing before the shapely contours of Mother London.

  One Tree Hill may form some kind of orifice in the landscape as a large posse of ramblers are disgorged from the Green Chain Walk on to the road, guided by a ruddy-cheeked walk leader. I want to implore them to break free – liberate themselves from the bondage of the led walk and go solo – but they are moving at such a rate
that it is difficult to keep up. At that pace I could well invoke the wrath of my pugnacious left knee, forcing it to cramp up and send me on a tailspin headfirst into a lamppost, the ramblers guffawing in hubristic glee at the fate of the lone wayfarer. We hit Camberwell Old Cemetery at the same time after they are held up at a crossing by a stalled Smart car – I slip through the gate before them, sure that they will stop to admire the elaborately carved Victorian headstones whilst I now have about half an hour to get to the velodrome.

  The path splits – I go to the right and they go to left, having heritage soundbites barked at them from the front of the party. My aim of reaching Herne Hill before the end of the race is substituted for getting to the cemetery exit before this Panzer division of gadabouts. In the zombie movie version of this scene they would get picked off one by one by the undead rising from the graves whilst I somehow emerge the sole survivor. However, they reach the gate before me, with the added humiliation that I have to stand to one side to allow the tired tail end to pass through.

  It was a good time to slope into the corner shop and grab the customary vegetable samosa.

  There were more hills and views to admire, river valleys carved out by unnamed tributaries. Dawson’s Heights Estate zigzags off the peak of Dawson’s Hill, sailing away into the clouds. Designed by architect Kate Macintosh when she was just twenty-six, English Heritage claims it ‘possesses evocative associations with ancient cities and Italian Hill Towns’ – an appropriate adornment for one of Dulwich’s Roman hills. A Roman fort did stand on Dawson’s Hill, which is also said to be the site of an Iron Age burial mound. The building of the estate revealed the remains of a temple dedicated to the worship of the Egyptian goddess Isis. I attempt to absorb energy from the ley line the Dawson’s Hill Trust says runs through the London Clay but all I can feel is the chafing from the bag of mugwort in my trainers.

  Dawson’s Heights Estate

  Dropping down into Lordship Lane I was tempted to take a detour to the Grove Tavern, which became famous in the 18th century for the waters that came from a spring in its grounds as Dulwich Wells took its turn to serve as a popular day trip for City weekenders. This time I could make a less exotic offering than my failed paganism in Ladywell and partake the medicinal waters served up in a frothy pint glass (Sunderland reports that it took five half-pints of the ‘sulphurous’-smelling waters to experience their full ‘purging properties’). But I owe it to Bradley Wiggins to make it to the velodrome on time. If he can win the Tour de France and four Olympic gold medals, surely I can get from Lewisham to Herne Hill before four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon.

  I scoot past Dulwich Park, where a wedding party were having their photos taken with the newly fallen leaves blowing around the billowing bridal gown. Then through Dulwich Village at speed, ignoring points of interest I’d noted from Gordon S. Maxwell’s 1927 account of the area, and turn into a long street where bank managers and dentists mow the lawns of their imposing double-fronted abodes.

  For such a seminal sporting venue the entrance to Herne Hill Velodrome is nondescript to say the least. It sits at the end of a long drive off the sedate Burbage Road. It’s 3.30 p.m. and the climax of the Autumn Omnium is about to begin. During the 2012 Olympics the new £93 million velodrome over in Leyton was the hottest ticket at the Games – it was the place to be as the stars of the British cycling team won seven gold medals. Riding on that wave of hype and hysteria I fully expected a big turnout today.

  Instead, there’s a scattering of people dotted along the two blocks of scooped plastic seats, no more than fifty in total. The cyclists wander along the edge of the track, a mixture of serious-looking competitors and youngsters. As soon as the starting gun for the last race goes off someone says, ‘Fire up the barbie, there’s plenty of sausages.’ There’s a family vibe, warm and convivial, what sport ought to be, and this isn’t village cricket in the shires, it’s one of the last major races of the season – a national event.

  I wander the edge as the cyclists zip round the curved banks of the track. Watching archive clips of races from the 1920s and 30s the crowds were ten deep where I now walk alone. The annual Good Friday event regularly drew attendances of over 10,000 spectators to watch international stars such as W. J. Bailey and Lucien Faucheux.

  The cyclists buzz round for another lap. The leading group are well-honed racers with legs like tree trunks, but the rest of the field includes teenagers, young women and an old white-haired fella bringing up the rear. ‘It’s amazing what speeds these cycling demons can reach as they pass and re-pass in a ding-dong struggle that’s fascinating to watch,’ goes the Pathé newsreel commentary from the 1938 ten-mile tandem race. It applies just the same seventy-four years later.

  The tea lady, Jan, draws up beside me, pushing her grand-daughter in a pram. Jan is a Herne Hill institution; she’s been doing the teas for years, now serving them from a pop-up gazebo. During the Olympics she was sought out by news crews for anecdotes of the young Bradley Wiggins’s exploits at Herne Hill. Her son-in-law is racing today; as a teenager he raced against Wiggins on this track and even beat him on occasion. She tells me it’s quiet today to what it normally is. The Olympic effect, she tells me, can best be seen at the packed Saturday-morning open sessions, with even pensioners rocking up to get in on the action.

  Herne Hill Velodrome’s ‘Save the Velodrome’ badge

  The future of the track now seems to be secure with a new lease, but the buildings from the 1948 Olympics stand crumbling and condemned, out of use. These were the only permanent structures that the IOC asked to be built for the ‘Austerity Games’. As I admire the brickwork on the original seating Jan tells me that until last year one of the judges from the 1948 Games used to still come and act as a judge at every race, right up to the age of ninety-five. That is part of the spirit that keeps this place alive.

  There is a crash on the track. One rider spins off the steep bank, taking out the cyclist directly behind. First-aiders dash across the grass centre yelling, ‘Stay on the ground, stay on the ground!’ Jan says she saw a twenty-bike pile-up once. With the race abandoned I tell Jan that I’m going to make a dash to catch the last admission at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. ‘Hang on,’ she says and grabs her husband, who hands me a ‘Save the Velodrome’ badge. I proudly pin it to my jumper and head back out on to Burbage Road.

  I arrive through the side entrance of Sir John Soane’s elaborate pile dead on the time of last admission. The staff are friendly and amused by my indifference to how little time I’ll have to explore the gallery’s impressive collection of Old Masters. Looking into the first series of rooms the image that comes to mind is the scene from Jean-Luc Godard’s 1964 film Bande à part, in which the young and feckless characters attempt to break the world record for racing through the Louvre from one end to the other. They narrowly fail with their time of 9 minutes and 43 seconds. Taking my first real rest of the day on one of the plush sofas at the end of the gallery I roughly calculate that you could rush through this mini Louvre in under a minute.

  Dulwich is Britain’s oldest dedicated gallery, twenty-four years older than the National. Gordon S. Maxwell wrote that Turner was a frequent visitor and that the lauded Victorian art critic John Ruskin used to walk to the gallery from his home at Herne Hill to scrutinize the Old Masters and then tear into them through his critiques. It was through these walks to Dulwich, mulling over his writing as he went, that Ruskin paved the way for the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Maxwell also reported how the poetry of Browning was inspired by the pictures here and quotes a letter by George Eliot describing a day out at the picture gallery.

  A cluster of paintings catch my eye and draw me away from the seat. I’m short-sighted so all I had really seen were blurred outlines and colours. First is Vernet’s Italian Landscape, then Jacob with Laban by Claude Lorrain – both depicting hilly landscapes and river valleys redolent of the terrain I’d walked through on the way. Tom Lubbock, writing in the Independent, described Lorrain’s paintin
g as ‘an idealised vision of the Roman Campagna’, the land centred on the seven hills, just like Dulwich (although I’m sure Dulwich has more than seven hills).

  Taking Banksy’s advice to ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’, I pick up a copy of An Illustrated Map of Remarkable Trees in Dulwich, ‘compiled by the Tree Committee of the Dulwich Society and illustrated by Rosemary Lindsay’. It says a lot about Dulwich that a) it has a society; b) that society has a Tree Committee; and also c) that the Tree Committee has produced this brilliantly hand-drawn scale map detailing the English and botanical names of Dulwich trees. The list runs alphabetically from alder to wingnut via honey locust, mimosa and privet (Chinese).

  Perusing the map laid on the gallery lawn, the music from Lambeth Country Show (an oxymoron if uttered any time in the last 160-odd years) drifts over the loquat and magnolia trees in Brockwell Park. It’s been a day of catching endings so I decide to mop up the end of the fair.

  My path ascending Herne Hill shadows the course of the submerged River Effra. Winterbrook Road that adjoins the arced strip of Victorian shops on Half Moon Lane possibly hints at one of the tributaries that would have run off the high ground into the river. In his definitive book The Lost Rivers of London, Nicholas Barton describes the course the Effra took at this point: ‘Crossing under the main road near Herne Hill station, it ran along the north-east side of the park of Brockwell House’ on its way to the Thames at Vauxhall. Barton lists fourteen ‘lost rivers’ and a further five ‘dubious lost rivers’, including the famous River Fleet, the Earl’s Sluice, the Neckinger, Counter’s Creek, the Walbrook, the Tyburn, Westbourne, Stamford Brook, Falcon Brook, streams at Wapping and Rotherhithe, Hackney Brook and the Black Ditch.