The Herne Hill Society blog

Sunset over Herne Hill

This piece is reproduced, by kind permission, from Pat Roberts's Fawnbrake Blog

A new and deeply interesting book about John Ruskin and Herne Hill has just been published by the Herne Hill Society.

John Ruskin spent his childhood and most of his working life here in Herne Hill. When he died in 1900 just a year before Queen Victoria – about the same time as many of the houses in Herne Hill were built – he had become one of the most original,  controversial and globally influential thinkers and writers of the 19th century.

Despite the cascade of studies and biographies of Ruskin over the last hundred years, this is the first book to look with authority and in depth at the importance of South London in shaping Ruskin’s thinking.

Despite all his foreign travels, public lecturing, the academic posts at Oxford, his work for London’s museums, and those messianic forays into the new industrial regions of England, Herne Hill was the place where Ruskin spent his childhood and most productive years. Here he wrote the increasingly passionate books, articles and speeches that made him nationally and indeed globally celebrated.

It was also from here, and well into his old age, that he studied and pronounced upon his shifting world.

A witness to a degrading environment

Even from his early age a precocious and acute observer of nature, Ruskin loved the then unspoilt hills, skies, rivers and fields of Herne Hill, Dulwich, and Norwood.

But his affectionate memories of this unblemished (but as he discovered, all too fragile) environment also turned out to be a painful benchmark for what developed in later decades. So it was also in Herne Hill, as the years passed, that Ruskin witnessed and described, with increasing horror, the destruction of the natural environment through railway building and uncontrolled suburban growth.

A prophet of climate change?

As early as 1860, he had written “Whenever I look or travel in England or abroad, I see that men, wherever they can reach, destroy all beauty.” (Modern Painters V). His vivid 1876 watercolour “Sunset at Herne Hill through the Smoke of London”, featuring on the front cover of the new book, is a melancholy and prophetic attempt to illustrate this change.

This important new book by local historians Jon Newman and Laurence Marsh, based on meticulous research, brings sensitive and original insights into the development of Ruskin’s distress about the world and the environment, as he prophesied how manufacturing and hasty urbanisation was damaging society and the climate across England, and especially, from his own bedroom window, in the world metropolis that his native city had become.

Sunset over Herne Hill concludes with a rewarding examination of the social and historical context of Herne Hill and Denmark Hill during Ruskin’s lifetime and his family’s place within South London as the 19th century progressed, when London was becoming the most prosperous and populous city in the world, as well as probably the most polluted.

“This illuminating and touching book restores John Ruskin to South London… the authors of ‘Sunset over Herne Hill’ take us back to the neglected roots of the great Victorian romantic’s creativity” – Andrew Saint, Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, general editor of the Survey of London, and author of the newly-published London 1870-1914: a City at its Zenith

The book has 160 pages with 80 colour & b/w illustrations, with a map by David Western.

£17.00 (including delivery) by mail order from the Herne Hill Society, or from Herne Hill Books.

Patrick Roberts

Remembering Herne Hill 1914-18

Who lived in your Herne Hill street 100 years ago?

"Remembering Herne Hill 1914-18" is a volunteer-run project that has mapped the addresses and researched the stories of hundreds of local men killed in the First World War. You can find out more at memorial.hernehillsociety.org.uk

The Herne Hill Society and The Charter School North Dulwich are also investigating the lives of other residents who were affected by the war, including many of German origin. Come and hear more about the project on Wed 12 December 2018 at Herne Hill Baptist Church, Half Moon Lane (corner of Winterbrook Road). Start time is 7:45pm.

We'll also be introducing Grace’s Story. Just published by the Society, this is the memoir of a young girl growing up in Herne Hill during and shortly after the First World War. You can get it at Herne Hill Books and Village Books in Dulwich, or direct from us online for £8.00 a copy, plus £1.50 P&P.

­­­­­­­Everyone is welcome at our Wed 12 December event –  Herne Hill Baptist Church - doors open 7:30pm - admission and refreshments free

The Pubs of Dulwich and Herne Hill

What a wonderful addition to the great range of books on our local history of Dulwich and Herne Hill! This book is a fascinating read with a rich mix of primary research, gorgeous photos by John East, great images, engravings and maps from Lambeth Archives and Southwark Local Studies library and compelling accounts of the histories of the 40 hostelries featured by authors John Brunton, Laurence Marsh, Ian McInnes and John Walters.

Not just an architectural history, this book explores the intriguing social history and the human dimension of the publicans and their customers, recounting often engrossing individual events that occurred in centuries gone by. The account of the not uncommon hazard in the Victorian era of exploding soda-water bottles is recounted in the entry for the Cambria pub as is a burglary at the former Green Man at Loughborough Junction in 1833 that resulted in a constable with a cutlass giving chase and apprehending the robbers, one of whom was sentenced to transportation to Tasmania.

The book is a both a celebration of the survivors and a nostalgic commemoration of those pubs no longer with us which sadly constitute the majority of the 40 featured establishments. Some closed many moons ago such as those destroyed during the Blitz (e.g. The Sun on Effra Parade and the Royal Oak on Dulwich Road) or those on the Brixton border such as the fine old Windsor Castle on Mayall Road and The George on Railton Road, both burnt out following acts of arson and larceny during the unrest in 1981. However most licensed premises have been lost during the orgy of closures in the last 20 years. Thankfully we are spared photographs of some of the dismal developments that have replaced wonderfully characterful old pubs in recent times.

The grandes dames justly listed by Historic England are showcased – namely the Crown & Greyhound in Dulwich Village, whose reopening (with a boutique hotel added) later this year is keenly anticipated; as is the recently consented refurbishment of the Half Moon in Herne Hill (current buildings both completed in 1896). Others probably deserve heritage protection such as the newly-restored Tulse Hill Hotel, the stately Rosendale and the Italianate-style Paxton at the foot of Gipsy Hill (all erected in the early Victorian era); the 1890s Prince Regent on Dulwich Road with its wonderful ‘streaky bacon' façade of bands of brick and stone; and the quirky George Canning on Effra Road (now the Hootananny), both built in the last decade of Victoria’s reign.

Inter-war and post-war pubs are also described in detail - the charming 1930s art deco style former Hamilton Arms (now a supermarket) on Railton Road and the 1950s Fox on the Hill - an intriguing fusion of the Neo-Georgian and Jacobean/Dutch styles) - both surely good candidates for Local Listing, though in the case of the latter, regrettably Southwark has yet to adopt a Local List. Finally, the entry on the Phoenix is a tribute to all those in the local community who campaigned to save the 1860s Denmark Hill station from demolition after an arson attack in 1980 which was then restored by British Rail and converted into a pub - a highly imaginative and successful conversion of what was a redundant heritage asset.

So all in all, this beautifully presented book is a must-buy for anyone who loves living in Herne Hill and Dulwich, a fabulous record of the Now and the Then, and a reminder to us all when it comes to our local community’s pub assets: Use Them or Lose Them!

Available at Herne Hill Books, The Barber Shop or the Society's website for £9.50.

Edmund Bird

Remember Hunter and Belcher

This month we comemmorate the death centenary of two local notables. Sir Robert Hunter, born at 3 Addington Square, Camberwell in 1844, was a lawyer whose actions recovered 3000 acres of Epping Forest from enclosure and protected many other threatened open spaces. He subsequently founded the National Trust. Sir Robert lived at 10 de Crespigny Terrace, behind Denmark Hill, in the 1860s; he died 6 November 1813.

John Belcher, born in Southwark in 1841, was an architect whose distinctive designs ranged from the Mappin & Webb building to Whiteleys department store, plus academic, church and civic structures.  He designed Redholm at 2 Champion Hill, his home from 1885 until his death on 8 November 1813.

For life stories of these former residents, and many others turn to Herne Hill Personalities, available via the our website or at meetings and events, for £5.00.

Sam Mussabini, Herne Hill and Private Eye

This cartoon strip by Knife & Packer in Private Eye #1335 leaped out at me. In 'It's Grim Up North London', the guys head off to Herne Hill on their scooter to find the blue plaque of Olympic Coach Sam Mussabini.

Reproduced by kind permission of PRIVATE EYE magazine / Duncan McCoshan and Jem Packer
www.private-eye.co.uk

The Herne Hill Society campaigned for several years to get Mussabini recognised, and the plaque was finally unveiled at his former home enext to the Velodrome in July 2012. 

Athletics coach Scipio Africanus “Sam” Mussabini (1867-1927) was a pioneer in both professional and amateur sport in Britain.  He is best remembered for coaching Harold Abrahams, who won gold in the 100m sprint at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Mussabini’s vital role in Abrahams’s success was later immortalised in Chariots of Fire (1981), in which he was played by Ian Holm.

You can read about the unveiling, and see some photographs, in an earlier blog post.

It's nice to see Herne Hill, and Mussabini of course, recognised in this way. Duncan McCoshan is a Sarf Lunnuner, and it would be interesting to find out if he has a Herne Hill connection. Anyone know?

Sir Henry Bessemer

Saturday 19 January 2013 marks 200 years since the birth of Henry Bessemer, the engineer and inventor, who lived in a large house on Denmark Hill between 1863 and his death in 1898. Bessemer is most famous today for patenting a process for the mass-production of steel in the 1850s.

His house, 165 Denmark Hill, with his daughter's house ('Bessemer Grange') next door, were part of a large estate which ran down the hill as far as the site of Bessemer Grange Primary School. It included a lake - site of the school today - a model farm, a cavern and an observatory with a powerful telescope.

With support from Dulwich Community Council Communities Fund, the Society is contributing to a Bessemer Day at Bessemer Grange Primary School on Thursday 17 January. Children will be working on Bessemer-related activities, and in the afternoon members of the Society will present a talk to the older children on the local history aspects of Sir Henry Bessemer's life. The children will be given a quiz to take home and hand in on the following Saturday (see below). 

We will end with a tea party and an exhibition in the school to which Herne Hill Society members are invited. We look forward to meeting new people at our publications stall.

On the Saturday there will be another tea party at 3pm - this time in the Carnegie Library - hosted by the Society and The Friends of the Carnegie Library. There will be free birthday cake and refreshments, and presentation of certificates to the children who took part in the Bessemer quiz. 

Further details of Sir Henry Bessemer's story can be found in Herne Hill Personalities, available at the Carnegie Library and from us.