On Saturday 1 June, as Part of the Wandsworth Heritage Festival, David Kirk led some 35 people down and around East Hill to the High Street, discussing a variety of sites nearby of ‘entertainment’, the theme of this year’s festival, ‘recreation’ of all sorts, some listed buildings, the Huguenot past and the changing character of the area. The peace of the Huguenot Burial Ground was noted as a contrast to the incessant traffic!
Category: Society Events
Meeting Report: Growing up in Wartime Battersea
Sue Denton, one of the research team has written an interesting 50 page book as a report of the project. Cost £5
On Thursday 8 November Carol Rahn gave a fascinating presentation at the November meeting on an oral history project assembling the memories of local people who were living in Battersea during World War II. Their recollections of their childhood, their experiences of air raid shelters, brushes with death and evacuation made fascinating listening. The talk was accompanied by footage of the interviews which brought home the realities of a life far distant from that of children today.
Walk & Visit: Harmondsworth Great Barn and site of the third runway
On Sunday 14 October a group of members went to see for themselves the site planned for the third Heathrow runway. While visiting Harmondsworth’s Grade 1 Listed, cathedral sized, barn (dated1427), we met a resident of the village whose last twenty-five years have been ones of constant friction seeing off three attempts to have the runway built. Attempt three remains in limbo. We learnt, to our astonishment, that the new runway would be built within 250 metres of the barn, the mediaeval church and the few houses to remain in the planned, truncated village.
Meeting Report: Capability Brown’s Wimbledon Park
The evening of 6 June saw our contribution to the 2018 Wandsworth Heritage Festival – for which this year’s theme was parks and open spaces. Dave
Dawson presented a fascinating talk on the historic landscape around Wimbledon Park. Very little of Capability Brown’s landscape remains, notably the lake, but it used to extend right up to Wimbledon Common. Remnants remain today. For a full report of the talk see the June/July newsletter.
Walk the Line – a walk along the Meridian Sculpture trail
On 17 May about a dozen members walked from Bromley by Bow to North Greenwich (aka as The Dome) – via a short hop on the DLR and a flight on the Emirates Airline. The sculpture trail takes you roughly along the Greenwich Meridian line to view contemporary sculptures including an Anthony Gormley and Damien Hirst.
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