The Herne Hill Society blog

An interview with Colin Wight, outgoing Chair

Colin joined the Society at the Lambeth Country Show in 2004. He was recruited to the Committee a year later and became Chair in 2012. After nearly eight years in the role, he stood down on 6 January 2021 to hand over to Rebecca Tee.

What skills did you bring?

I came in with a modern perspective. My long career at the British Library had given me a thorough knowledge of publishing, marketing and communications, running events and creating websites. All very relevant. And working for a large public-facing organisation had taught me how to be diplomatic! 

What have you enjoyed most from your time as Chair?

Without doubt the most satisfying experience was planning and completing the Remembering Herne Hill First World War project, to budget and on time. I confess I knew little about the war at first. I threw myself into it, quite obsessively to be honest.

So I was elated by the success of the first Remembrance Sunday commemoration, which we held at the Station on 11 November 2018. We also produced an online database of Herne Hill’s casualties and a book (Grace’s Story). That same evening Laurence Marsh and went to the Armistice Centenary service at Westminster Abbey. It was a memorable culmination to the project.

It was by sheer luck that I'd met, while on holiday in Italy some years before, David Statham, who  became Chief Executive of Southeastern Railway. Without his support we would not have been able to get the memorial slate installed and unveiled by Helen Hayes MP in November 2019. I could not have dreamed that we would go on to achieve so much. 

What have you enjoyed least?

There have been occasional disagreements which I have had to try and resolve. I have possibly given too much time to the Society to the detriment of other important things in my life – but if you want to achieve something you have to put the hours in.

What do you consider to be your achievements?

When I joined the Committee I made it my mission to modernise every area of the Society’s work. There was never much opposition, but there was something of a skills gap amongst the members at that time. Fifteen years on I think I have taken it as far as my knowledge and abilities – and energy – allow.

I remember that when I went to my first monthly talk there was no PA and the presentation was delivered on a 35mm slide projector. The audience struggled to hear what was being said. One of my first tasks was to specify and purchase the equipment. Again. there was a website that worked, but you couldn’t do much on it, like become a member or buy books. I had to start again from scratch. We had no social media and no e-newsletter. I sat at home one wintry Saturday, creating a template and a mailing list while it snowed all day. The quarterly newsletter had excellent content, but it deserved better presentation. It felt like a major achievement when the Magazine was redesigned and – a couple of years later – printed in colour. Of course I can't take credit for that! 

I set up annual planning meetings where we agreed what we would aim to do in the forthcoming year. We started to collect data about, for example, how many people attended our events and bought each of our books, month by month, so we could measure our achievement.

What were your challenges as Chair?

I soon became aware of the regard in which the Society was held and how much work had gone into building it up and keeping it running. I knew I had to take my new role seriously, as well as dedicating time to building a team. This meant establishing a relationship with each individual. Perhaps I was a bit arrogant at first but I have learned that I need to admit when I have got it wrong. Not everything I wanted to do has worked. 

I was always conscious that I needed to set a high standard. We are a group of unpaid volunteers but I believe that we should act “professionally”. For example, a few years ago we decided to post our minutes on the website, although initially not all the Committee were in favour. But the majority agreed that we had to be seen as open and democratic. Sometimes you have to lead, to say “this is a bad idea” or “we must do that”. The Chair has to try to help the Committee reach a consensus and I don’t think I’ve ever used my casting vote. 

Why have you decided to stand down?

Principally because I need to dedicate more time to my elderly parents who live over 200 miles away. And there are a lot of other things I want to do. I also believe there comes a time when you should move over and let other people have a go, which is easier said than done!

Who do you want to thank?

I would like to thank Sheila Northover, long-serving Chair before me, who encouraged me to join the Committee. Sheila is a remarkable person. She said that she was available for advice, but did not intend to interfere. She stuck to that and it helped me get on with the job in my own way.

My fellow Committee members have been great. It’s impossible to run a Society like ours without such a team. Many of them have become friends. I don’t want to single anyone out… but I really must thank Laurence who has been a brilliant colleague and so hard-working.

What single piece of advice would you want to offer the new Chair?

Try to create your vision for the Society and then work out how you are going to achieve it. But always accept that you need to be flexible and it's OK to change your mind. Make yourself known in the community.

If the Herne Hill Society were to be created today, what do you think it would look like?

I have thought about that. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be a subscription-based membership organisation but an internet-based group. But having a steady income has been helpful in enabling us to plan ahead. Actually, membership is on the up and we have more members than we had two years ago. It’s a good time to hand over to a new Chair.

Colin was speaking to Val Suebsaeng. He is a Life Member and intends to support and help the Society in the future.

War Memorial Stone for the Station

The Herne Hill Society, in association with Southeastern Railway, who run Herne Hill station, has commissioned a hand-engraved Welsh slate plaque in memory of “all the people of Herne Hill” who suffered as a result of the 1914-18 war.

Calligrapher and stone-carver Mark Brooks is designing a hand-carved Welsh slate plaque, financed by Southeastern Railway and to be unveiled by Helen Hayes MP at the station ticket hall on Remembrance Sunday.

Everyone is welcome at the unveiling: 10:45am on Sunday 10 November.

Currently based in Canterbury, Mark's formative years were spent in Kennington, Walworth Road, Stockwell, Crofton Park, Honor Oak, Forest Hill, East Dulwich and Crystal Palace!

Mark says: “It is a wonderful opportunity for me. I am delighted to be making something beautiful, interesting and appropriate for this important memorial”.

Southeastern, whose Managing Director David Statham is a former Herne Hill resident, have been strong supporters of the Society’s “Remembering Herne Hill 1914-18” research project.

There are several individual memorials in churches to men who lost their lives, but nothing to commemorate all the people of Herne Hill. The station, at the heart of our community and a place through which countless men must have passed on their way to the Channel ports and thence to France and Flanders, seems the most appropriate place for a permanent memorial.

David Statham says: “During the First World War the railways played an important role in the transport of troops and resources to and from the front. It's a fitting privilege that, come November this year, Herne Hill station will serve as the site for a permanent memorial in commemoration of all those residents who died, were wounded or otherwise suffered in that terrible conflict.”

Colin Wight, Chair of the Herne Hill Society says: "When we began our National Lottery-funded research project together with the Charter School North Dulwich two years ago I never imagined that it would lead to the creation of a new First World War memorial. I would like to thank Southeastern, who have generously funded this superb artwork."

The text of the memorial follows. You may recognise a short quotation from Philip Larkin’s poem “MCMXIV”.

Herne Hill 1914-1918
In memory of all the people of Herne Hill who suffered in consequence of the war, including more than 500 who lost their lives
Never such innocence again
This stone was placed here in 2019 on behalf of
The Herne Hill Society * The Charter School North Dulwich * London & South Eastern Railway Limited

 

***

The new memorial links to another important centenary with a local connection.

The Treaty of Versailles was signed 100 years ago on 28 June 1919. It is a little known fact (not mentioned in his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography or in our own book Herne Hill Personalities) that local resident George Nicoll Barnes was one of the primary signatories of the Treaty.

His signature is there alongside those of Lloyd George, Bonar Law and Balfour.

Barnes was a Scottish Labour politician. He joined Lloyd George’s war cabinet in 1916 and it was for that reason he was present at Versailles. He is included (seated second from the right) in a famous painting by William Orpen, who was commissioned to capture the occasion in the Hall of Mirrors.

George and Jessie Barnes lost their youngest son Henry in the war, killed in France in 1917. His life and death are described on our Remembering Herne Hill 1914-18 website.

The following year they moved to 76 Herne Hill. It was George Barnes’s home until his death in 1940. The late-Victorian house at the junction with Kestrel Avenue, which would have matched the Herne Hill surgery next door, was demolished in the 1960s and replaced by a block of maisonettes.

Tracing Ruskin

Friday 8 February 2019 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great Victorian, John Ruskin (photographed here in c.1860).

On 8 February 1919 The Graphic published an article remembering the birth of John Ruskin on that day 100 years before.

It talks of the house at 54 Hunter Street just north of Brunswick Square where Ruskin was born and lived with his parents until he was four years old, with its “chocolate cake identification disc”; the forerunner of blue plaques, they were put up by the Society of Arts. The article moves on to 28 Herne Hill, Ruskin’s home through the formative years of his childhood and early youth. The author has some difficulty locating it, which seems surprising because in 1909 the LCC had placed a commemorative plaque in honour of Ruskin on the house. Perhaps the plaque had been removed by a Ruskin enthusiast. The house was unoccupied and probably had been for the previous 12 years, after the lease ran out in 1907. It must have made a sorry sight.

Finally, the article turned to the much grander Ruskin house, bought by Ruskin’s father in 1842, standing in its seven-acre grounds on Denmark Hill, and by this date a private residential hotel.

The Ruskin house on Denmark Hill, seen from the garden side

This house was Ruskin’s home for 29 years until he left London and in 1871, moved to Brantwood on Coniston Water in the Lake District.

Among the many books written by Henry C. Shelley, author of the Graphic article, was The Homes and Haunts of Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle’s Chelsea house was acquired by admirers in 1895. If one puts aside Shakespeare and Milton, whose homes were preserved centuries after their deaths, Carlyle’s house is, I believe, the first example of the home of a celebrated person preserved by contemporary admirers in trust for future generations. Perhaps with this in mind Shelley said of Ruskin’s birthplace: “Is it not possible so to utilise that building as to keep alight therein those lamps of Truth, Beauty, Power, Sacrifice, Obedience, Labour and Memory of which he was the high priest?” He refers of course to the Seven Lamps of Architecture, that heady Ruskinian mix of scholarship, highly personal aesthetics and morality first published in 1849 and which, through many editions, came to have an influence on so much that was built in England in the second half of the 19th century. It was one that Ruskin came to regret bitterly. The rural South London outskirts that Ruskin knew and loved in his youth disappeared beneath the work of the speculative builder, rows of brick villas and terraces with their garnish of porches and pediments often loosely derived from the Venetian Gothic. In 1872 Ruskin wrote: “One of my principal notions for leaving my present house [on Denmark Hill] is that it is surrounded everywhere by accursed Frankenstein monsters of, indirectly, my own making”. It is right that South London had begun to change by this date, but it would be another 20 or so years before the immediate surroundings of Herne Hill and Denmark Hill truly changed out of all recognition.

Preservation of the house at Hunter Street was not to be, though it took as long as 1969 before it was demolished, part of the later stages of the widespread destruction of Georgian Bloomsbury. One might have expected its demise to be remarked upon in the pages of The Times, but it passed unmourned. When the Denmark Hill house disappeared in 1947 a writer to that newspaper had lamented: “In June it was still a guest house: now it has gone, vanished! Of the estate with the wonderful view to Shooter’s Hill, nothing remains but broken ground, littered with tree-boughs and rubbish. New roads are being laid across the descent to Green Lane, also along the adjoining property to the modern Sunray Avenue. Notice boards announce ‘Borough of Camberwell Housing Site’”. It is hard today to imagine the land as the pasture for three cows that Ruskin and his parents kept, “skimming our own cream and churning our own butter”, or the “porter’s lodge, where undesirable visitors could be stopped before startling us with a knock”. And Ruskin added: “But though we had many happy days in the Denmark Hill house, none of our new ways ever were the same to us as the old: the basketfuls of peaches had not the flavour of the numbered dozen or score, nor were all the apples of the great orchard worth a single dishful of the Siberian crabs of Herne Hill”.

No. 28 Herne Hill was one of a pair of semi-detached houses built about 1810.

The two houses occupied a plot that today accommodates four houses, Nos. 26– 32, between Dorchester Court and the Quadrangle. Where the latter now stands was a matching pair of houses. One must imagine the Ruskin house set back more than twice the distance of the houses on the site today. Ruskin’s mother enjoyed tending lilacs and laburnums in the spacious front garden. But it was the gently sloping garden at the back, some 200 feet long, that her son remembered with most emotion. He recalled “the strong old mulberry tree, a tall white-heart cherry tree, a black Kentish one, and an almost unbroken hedge, all round, of alternate gooseberry and currant bush; decked, in due season, with magical splendour of abundant fruit; fresh green, soft amber, and rough-bristled crimson bending the spinous branches; clustered pearl and pendant ruby joyfully discoverable under the large leaves that looked like a vine”.

The garden at 28 Herne Hill, watercolour by Emily Warren in Homes and Haunts of John Ruskin by E.T. Cook (1912)

The Herne Hill garden exercised a profound influence on Ruskin. One notices not only his intense sensitivity to colour and form — he was a fine artist himself — but also his deep love of nature, a recurring theme in his writing. It is justly claimed that Ruskin was an important forerunner of the environmental movement of our own times.

John Ruskin: Study of Rocks in the Alps

The house at 28 Herne Hill was the first of the three Ruskin homes in London to go, in the early 1920s. A few weeks before war broke out in 1914 there were press reports of the house in the hands of the housebreakers with the attic story removed. The Globe wrote: “No one has thought it worthwhile to save it. It is to be pulled down to provide building material for the building of a block of flats for bachelor girls. A road is to be driven through the garden at the back, and all trace of the house and grounds which Ruskin described so lovingly in Praeterita and Fors Clavigera will soon have disappeared”. 

The attic room had the best views. Ruskin recalled “the Norwood hills on one side, and the winter sunrise over them; and the valley of the Thames on the other, with Windsor telescopically clear in the distance, and Harrow, conspicuous always in fine weather to open vision against the summer sunset”. This room was Ruskin’s nursery as a child, then his bedroom and later the room he often used when visiting London, after he had settled at Brantwood and given the Herne Hill house to his cousin Joan Severn. Those views from Herne Hill were the basis of the strong affinity that Ruskin found with Turner, surely the greatest painter of skies and atmospheric effects in English art. 

The First World War delayed the demolition, but by 1925 the house was gone. In the front garden of what is today No. 26 is a plaque on a post placed by the LCC in 1925 recording the fact that John Ruskin lived in a house on the site. That is the only reminder, unless a length of old brick wall in the lane that runs down to the derelict garages at the side of Dorchester Court could be attributed as part of the garden wall of the Ruskin house.

Sadly, this seems unlikely, because careful overlay of an old map on the current topography shows the line of the old wall as the boundary of the large house that stood where Dorchester Court now stands and abutting a lane that divided that house from the Ruskin house.

After Ruskin’s death his reputation suffered a period of decline. The Victorian era was over. The concept of the great man, the “hero” promulgated by Thomas Carlyle, was out of favour. And it was difficult to place Ruskin — was he an art critic, a social radical, a maverick reactionary, a writer too ready to sound off at length about almost any subject? It is therefore not surprising that, apart from local place names, all physical trace of Ruskin has been erased from Herne Hill. But one would like to think the animus loci remains; it did so much to shape the thinking of the man, and that thinking is preserved in what is, at its best, some of the finest writing in English literature. 

Portrait by Thomas Blake Wirgman (National Portrait Gallery). Ruskin sat for the portrait in February 1884 at Herne Hill, with a second sitting at the studio of Edward Burne-Jones. It shows the interior of the attic room at 28 Herne Hill that he used on visits to London. An engraving of the portrait was published in The Graphic on 3 April 1886. 

Laurence Marsh

 

Thomas Lynn Bristowe Memorial Lecture 2018 by Helen Hayes MP

“The Honourable Member for Norwood”

Thank you very much to the Herne Hill Society and Brockwell Park Community Partners for inviting me to give this lecture, and my particular thanks to Ann Kingsbury for help with research.

There have been nine MPs for the Norwood constituency alone; and subsequently two MPs for the successor seat of Dulwich and West Norwood, of which I am proud to be the second. It has been really enjoyable and fascinating to have had the opportunity to explore the life of one of my predecessors, and to reflect on the contrasts between Thomas Lynn Bristowe’s experience and mine. I cannot, however, begin this lecture without paying tribute to my immediate predecessor Tessa Jowell, who was so well known to many of you and who passed away very recently. Much has been said about Tessa by many people, but in this context, I think it is true to say that she broke the mould of her predecessors, building on the work of both John Fraser, who we also lost only just over a year ago, and Sam Silkin. John and Sam both pioneered a much more engaging and accessible approach to politics and to engaging with their constituents. Tessa, I think, took that to a different level altogether — her approach could not have been more different from her Victorian predecessors, including Thomas Lynn Bristowe.

The boundaries of the Norwood constituency have changed over time. Constituencies have generally tended to get smaller over time (until the current round of boundary changes which seeks to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600). The constituency boundary in 1885 was described as “The Norwood ward and the parts of Brixton and Stockwell lying south of Acre Lane and Coldharbour Lane”. It seems clear that the Norwood ward stretched further west than the current Herne Hill ward, so into the areas that we now know as Tulse Hill and Brixton Hill. Thomas Lynn Bristowe, a stockbroker who lived on Denmark Hill, represented Norwood from 1885 to 1892, when he tragically died from a heart attack on the steps of Brockwell Hall.

I’m far from being an expert on the history of Victorian London — there are many in audience I know whose historical knowledge is far greater than mine, and who make me quake in my shoes as I think of speaking on history in front of you, so I beg your forgiveness for any errors in the detail of what I am going to say this evening. I thought I would start by trying in very broad terms to take us back to what life in this area might have been like in our area of London in the 1880s.

London had just seen the most intensive period of development and expansion related to the industrial revolution. Population of London expanded at an unprecedented rate in the 19^th century, from one million in 1800 to 6.9m a century later: growth of around 10% a year on average.

City beginning to face up to the challenges that industrialisation had brought with it — including health — there had been a cholera epidemic in mid-1880s, connection being made between slum housing and poor health; housing itself starting to become an issue in its own right, we know that housing reformer Octavia Hill was active in south London at this time, and also interestingly worked with John Ruskin at Dulwich Picture Gallery; reformer Charles Booth was surveying London and found in 1885 that 35% of people living in the East End were living in abject poverty.

London was also getting to grips with the administrative and democratic challenges of an expanding population — Bristowe’s tenure saw the creation of the first ever London-tier of government, the London County Council, which he marshalled to great effect to secure Brockwell Park for our community. Despite the Representation of the People Act 1884, the year before Bristowe was elected, establishing the modern one Member per constituency system, and expanding the suffrage, still the case that all women and 40% of men did not have the vote. Also infrastructure challenges — this was the period when Bazalgette was building the sewer network, which also resulted in great change in our area: the culverting of the River Effra.

The 1880s were an age of philanthropy, of seeking benefactors and raising funds by private subscription for a wide range of projects from hospitals to schools to libraries — but philanthropy was increasingly not fit for purpose as means of addressing the many social challenges that industrialisation had brought — the middle of the 19th century, for example, saw dramatic drop in life expectancy.

The 1880s were also a period of global change with particular issues of note including the colonial carve-up of Africa, and London was seeing very significant numbers of refugees, particularly Russian Jews arriving in East London, as a consequence of pogroms taking place in Russia. Now, we have residents from every part of Africa and far beyond living in this constituency, and the issue of support for refugees remains the second biggest issue in terms of the volume of correspondence I have received since I was elected — second of course only to Brexit.

Within that backdrop, what would we have recognised of our area of London if we were able to visit during Bristowe’s tenure from 1885 to 1892?

The Dulwich Estate was already 277 years old — and may in fact prove to be the institution which outlasts all of us! We would recognise Edward Alleyn House and the Old College and Christ’s Chapel; the “new” Dulwich College was opened in 1870.  Obviously, we would recognise the form and beauty of Brockwell Park and Brockwell Hall built between 1811 and 1813; Belair House was in 1885 already 100 years old; Dulwich Picture Gallery had opened in 1817; West Norwood cemetery first consecrated for burials in 1837; Herne Hill velodrome was built the year before Bristowe died, in 1891 — now restored in large part due to Tessa’s support through her work on the 2012 Olympics; work started on the building of the old St Barnabas Church in Dulwich Village, destroyed by fire in 1992, began in 1892.  Maps from the 1850s indicate the presence of St Jude’s Church on Dulwich Road and St Paul’s on Herne Hill. The essential structure of Herne Hill — two railway lines and the station, Brockwell Park, Dulwich Road, Norwood Road, Half Moon Lane, Herne Hill, and Denmark Hill where Thomas Bristowe lived — are already in place by the mid-1850s.

Many of the institutions we most rely on today were not yet developed – though some were emerging: Tate Library in Brixton opened the year after Bristowe died; King’s College Hospital was still up near Lincoln’s Inn Fields and did not move to Camberwell until 1909, though Dulwich Hospital was built in 1887 by the St Saviour’s Poor Law Union, and in 1880 a committee was formed to establish a new cottage hospital in Norwood, eventually built on Hermitage Road off Central Hill.

The development of the Metropolitan Line, the first tube line, was underway in central London, there was huge expansion in railway development, in particular in south London in the rush to be able to get passengers to Crystal Palace; but many Londoners reliant on bicycles and horse buses and trams to get around.  Victorian public transport required 50,000 horses to keep it moving.  But some things don’t change — despite being an inner London constituency we still only have one tube station and one tube line serving the constituency; the rail infrastructure we have now, is largely the rail infrastructure that was built by the Victorians — and possibly horses would be a more reliable form of transport than that currently provided by GTR and Southeastern!

What would it have been like for Thomas Lynn Bristowe as the MP for this area?

Bristowe had an electorate less than 10% the size of the current Dulwich and Norwood constituency: 7,501 registered voters in 1885, compared to close to 80,000 today.

Bristowe’s Parliamentary contributions were modest. There are very few records of him speaking in the House of Commons, but he appears to have been concerned about some of the conditions he saw in his constituency, asking about the “processions of the unemployed” in South London, which may have been connected to unemployment riots which took place in the West End in the same year. He also asked about the level of stamp duty collected by the Treasury on the indentures of apprentices, probably with a view to getting it reduced.  

The aspiration for the Blades Estate  to be purchased to secure Brockwell Park as a public amenity in south London was clearly a major issue in the area at the time, and Bristowe appears to have taken on this battle on behalf of his constituents and made a very strong commitment to it, campaigning to divert Metropolitan Board of Works proposal to acquire land for a public park on the east side of Brixton Hill and divert it to acquire the Blades Estate for Brockwell Park, and at one stage committing to underwrite the purchase with his personal fortune. The move to create the London County Council appears to have provided the additional opportunity to progress this issue in part because wrapping the very popular proposal to purchase the Blades Estate into legislation to establish a new tier of government which was inherently controversial, appeared to guarantee the support of several south London MPs.

I want to reflect now, in the context of Bristowe’s experience, on the role that I am privileged to have: being the Member of Parliament for Dulwich and West Norwood in the second decade of the 21st century.  

The first and most obvious observation is that someone of my gender could not have been an MP at all in the 19th century. As we celebrate this year, the centenary of some women achieving the right to vote, there is more to do to achieve a truly representative 50:50 Parliament, but there are more women in the House of Commons now than there are women who have previously been MPs but are not anymore. On gender, race and disability it is fair to say that the Victorians hadn’t even got off the starting blocks.

Bristowe’s constituents would have been able to contact him by attending Central Lobby in the Palace of Westminster in person, or by writing him a letter. He would not have held surgeries; he certainly wasn’t contactable by email, Twitter or Facebook, and his Parliamentary activities and voting record were not monitored and published by They Work for You. Although these things are sometimes a mixed blessing, they have undoubtedly increased the accessibility and accountability of politicians and that is a good thing.

I have both a much larger electorate and a much more diverse electorate than Bristowe’s. We are about to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks on 22 June 1948 which heralded the beginning of mass immigration from the Commonwealth to the UK. The very special connection that my constituency has — through Coldharbour Lane, Somerleyton Road, Electric Avenue and the wider Brixton area — with the Windrush, means that this constituency was at the vanguard of the diversification of London’s population, inspiring my predecessor but one, the amazing John Fraser, to learn a few words in many different languages so that pretty much wherever his constituents were from he was able to greet them in their mother tongue. And our area continues to welcome new arrivals, most recently through the work of Herne Hill Welcomes Refugees who are working to bring a Syrian family here under the community sponsorship programme. It is an enormous privilege both to represent such a diverse group of communities, and also to be held to account by them through the universal suffrage.

There are many more political parties today than in Bristowe’s day. Bristowe, a Conservative candidate, was only ever opposed by one Liberal candidate. There was not a Labour candidate in Norwood until 1922 and in 1900 one of Bristowe’s successors was elected unopposed — a situation only ever encountered now by the Speaker of the House of Commons. In the general election in Dulwich and West Norwood last year there were a total of six candidates. 

The House of Commons itself plays a more prominent role in the life of a backbencher now compared with Bristowe’s time. In part as a consequence of reforms in recent years it has become a place where constituency issues large and small can be raised in departmental questions, back bench business debates, opposition day debates and Westminster Hall debates. Being a Member of Parliament now is for the vast majority of MPs more than a full-time role, in contrast to the 19th century when it was a part time occupation, only accessible to men of substantial private means. Bristowe is unlikely to have undertaken significant levels of casework on behalf of individual constituents: a system in which the residents in the greatest need did not have the right to vote would have created no incentive to do so in any systematic way. In contrast, I open more than 500 new cases each month on average.

Bristowe would not recognise the welfare state established in response to many of the ills his constituents would have experienced — our NHS, state education system, local authorities responsible for social services, street cleaning, planning, libraries and parks; his constituents could not have dreamed of such things, nor appreciate the intense pressures that these services are now under in the current funding climate. And he would find the numbers of older people living in his former constituency absolutely astonishing; average life expectancy in the 1880s was 43 for men and 47 for women, compared with 78 for men and 83 for women now. It is worth reflecting on the relationship between those two things: our welfare state and the effective doubling of life expectancy. Bristowe himself may have survived the heart attack which struck him down on the steps of Brockwell Hall had he had access to the London Air Ambulance service, King’s Helipad and the trauma centre.

But there are some aspects of our current politics that Bristowe might have recognised. The challenges of poverty and inequality, while they may not have the same manifestations as they had in the Victorian era, are still prevalent in our area. Far too many of my constituents are reliant on Foodbanks, for example, to provide their most essential needs; the need for genuinely affordable, secure social housing is absolutely pressing, and the worst of the private rental market is run by unscrupulous rogue landlords seeking to make a profit of the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable.

 

Finally, I would make two observations.

First, Bristowe’s prescience in going into bat for Brockwell Park is remarkable.  More than 120 years later, the need for our park in a city with polluted air, high density housing, rising incidence of mental ill health and facing climate change is as pressing now as it was then. He secured a park which has been enjoyed and cherished by countless south London residents; whose value was later enriched by the arrival of Brockwell Lido, Lambeth Country Show, parkrun, football, tennis, bowling, birthday parties and many other activities, and which is still today the jewel in the crown of Herne Hill.

Secondly, I think Bristowe would recognise Herne Hill if he were able to visit today.  He would recognise it because of the stewardship and concern of local people, informing and holding to account local and national government; and he would recognise it because the passion and concern for the park he established remains as intense as it was during the campaign to purchase the Blades Estate. And I think he would be very proud of that.

Helen Hayes, MP for Dulwich and West Norwood

 This lecture was given at Herne Hill Baptist Church on Sat 9 June 2018 

Looking back on elections in Herne Hill

With a General Election either just behind us, it is a good time to cast a brief look at some perhaps lesser-known facts about Herne Hill’s electoral history. Today Herne Hill, however you define its precise boundaries, is all included in Dulwich and West Norwood, a constituency with an electorate of some 75,000 created in 1997. At the 2015 General Election 67% turned out to vote, in line with overall turnout for the whole of the UK. 

This is in fact only a little below the turnout in 1832. In that year, following the reforms of the Great Reform Act, the electorate in SE London was divided between the constituencies of Lambeth and Southwark, each entitled to send two members of parliament to Westminster. But even with the reforms only one in five of the adult male population was entitled to vote – and women not at all.  

Charles Tennyson was one of Lambeth’s first two MPs. He is perhaps best remembered for his boundless social aspiration – he added  D’Eyncourt to his name to distinguish his side of the Tennyson family from the more impecunious side to which his nephew, the poetic voice of Victorian England, belonged – and for Bayons Manor, the magnificent mock-medieval moated mansion he built for himself in Lincolnshire. In the same spirit that saw the destruction of the Euston Arch in 1961, Bayons Manor – admittedly in very poor condition – was dynamited in 1964. The local yellow stone was used for local road building. Elton John’s writing partner, Bernie Taupin, was living nearby at this time. It is said that, contrary to the popular association with the Wizard of Oz, this is the true origin of the “Yellow Brick Road” of their famous song. 

Increases in London’s population in the 19th century and widening of the franchise saw the creation of two new constituencies, Norwood and Dulwich, in 1885. Lambeth and Southwark had been very much Whig/Liberal strongholds. For the next 60 years, until the Labour landslide of 1945, both constituencies were firmly Conservative. In Dulwich Sir Blundell Maple, who built up the once globally dominant furniture company – supplier of furniture to the Imperial palaces in Vienna and St Petersburg – was the Dulwich MP from 1887 until his death in 1903. Andrew Bonar Law, briefly Prime Minister in 1922-23 (the shortest term of any PM in the 20th century), was the member for Dulwich for 1906–1910. Over in Norwood Thomas Lynn Bristowe was the MP until his untimely demise at the opening of Brockwell Park in 1892, the saving of which from the hands of developers was very much his doing. Elections were often a less bruising business in those days and Bristowe’s successor, Sir Charles Ernest Tritton, was returned unopposed in two of the  three of the elections in which he stood. From 1935 until his defeat in 1945, Norwood’s MP was Duncan Sandys, son-in-law of Winston Churchill. Sandys, who returned to Westminster as MP for Streatham in 1950, is now remembered for the strong pro-European views that he shared with his father-in-law and the long-running dissension within the Conservative party about Britain’s place in Europe. More notoriously, Sandys is also remembered from the scandal about the Duchess of Argyll and the “headless man” photographs.

More recent times have seen Eric Morley, the successful impressario who brought us the Miss World competition and TV’s Come Dancing, standing for the Conservatives in Dulwich in 1974 and 1979, on the latter occasion being defeated by a mere 122 votes by the Labour Attorney General Sam Silkin. Another unsuccessful contender in Dulwich was Labour’s Kate Hoey, before her election in Vauxhall, a constituency that lies wholly within the borough of Lambeth. In the 2016 Referendum Lambeth had the highest Remain vote in the country (at 78%), but Hoey is a strong Brexiteer – a conundrum for her electorate to consider. An unsuccessful contender in Norwood in 1987 was Dominic Grieve for the Conservatives, who later found a safe seat at Beaconsfield and was until 2014 Attorney General in the Coalition Government. A first attempt to be elected by Kemi Adegoke for the Conservatives in Dulwich and West Norwood in 2010 also ended in failure, but – since her marriage, Kemi Badenoch – she is standing this year in the rock-solid Conservative seat of Saffron Walden. She will not be the first Black British Conservative MP, that position being held by Helen Grant, member for Maidstone and the Weald.

Boundary changes have been recommended that would see Dulwich and West Norwood lose parts of Brixton and, curiously, West Norwood station, but areas in East Dulwich would be gained. The calling of the 2017 General Election put these proposals on hold.

Laurence Marsh

The Ten (Food) Commandments by Jay Rayner - book review

Jay Rayner is a novelist, journalist, musician and familiar figure on television (Masterchef, The One Show), as well as in and around Herne Hill. It would be difficult to mistake him for anyone else. A big man with big hair, he looks like someone who eats (and writes about it) for a living. You may see him in Dugards, where this little paperback is on sale, or in Mimosa, or even in Sainsbury’s. He is not shy, and his forthright views have no doubt made him more than a few enemies. It cannot be otherwise for a restaurant critic. Personally, I have found him to be approachable and courteous.

This book is as much about the author as about the business of eating food. He is frank about his less attractive traits. A fat child who was no good at sports, he found his macho side in swallowing, and enjoying, almost anything his parents put in front of him: snails, oysters... anything but baked beans - not through juvenile snobbery but because he did not like the taste or texture. He is greedy, messy, and a self-confessed “terrible Jew”, who adores chorizo, andouillette, scratchings, a bacon butty: pig-meat in any guise. 

I enjoyed the witty and trenchant myth-debunking: ‘Thou shalt not cut off the fat’ (fat is where the flavour is, and eating fat is not in itself unhealthy), ‘Thou shalt not mistake food for pharmaceuticals’ (superfoods do not exist, and nothing you eat will prevent you from getting cancer let alone cure it), ‘Thou shalt always worship leftovers’ (“there’s only one problem with leftovers. It’s the word ’leftovers’”). There are straightforward recipes throughout that attest to his tastes.

Rayner writes thoughtfully about the moral and economic issues surrounding meat-eating. While - for most of us - meat tastes good, and is a key element of our diet, it is undeniably resource-heavy to produce. And not many of us would enjoy the prospect of slaughtering a lamb or a squealing pig. In any case we are going to have to get used to eating less meat as demand grows in Asia and inevitably forces prices up. So, eat more offal, and be more imaginative in the use of vegetables. In ‘Thou shalt not sneer at meat-free cookery’ he takes aim at the Quorn sausage and other so-called meat substitutes that constitute “a lack of imagination on a plate”. Surely better to enjoy a roasted cauliflower with cheese and almonds? Or a porcini risotto? And better still to admit that you don’t really like steak than ask for it well done and be served with a piece of shoe-leather that is an insult to the chef - and the cow.

Rayner urges us to shun the food Taliban, get stuck in with our fingers, eat a balanced diet, and enjoy our lives. It is, as the saying goes, “not rocket science” [pun intended]. Although he could pass for an Old Testament prophet in the right get-up, it turns out he’s not Moses after all. We are encouraged to make up our own commandments.

The Ten (Food) Commandments is published by Penguin at £6.00

First published in Herne Hill (the magazine of the Herne Hill Society) number 138, Summer 2017.

Colin Wight