Okay folks, I have a request to make.

Not for me (for once) but for Matt, who works for (Royal) Greenwich Council and who has been tasked with installing a new water feature at Hornfair Park, at the rose garden above.

He’d really like to re-create the original feature. Normal budget restrictions do apply so he confesses this could be a tall order but what makes it an even taller order is that he has no idea what it actually looked like. Despite searching Heritage archives and park management files he says he’s had no joy in finding a picture that includes the old fountain.

So now he’s asking us if anyone has any photos, or even memories, of what this feature looked like. It was still around in the 80s or 90s, so maybe, just maybe someone has a picture of themselves as a kid playing there with the fountain in the background or can remember being dunked in it or something. I get the feeling Matt would be grateful for any pointers at all as to what he should be putting there and short of looking at other parks of Hornfair’s age, he’s a bit stuck…

Boo! Hiss!

But which Secretary of State is the killjoy? Defence? Health? Environment? From that headmasterly tone of voice it could even have come from the Sec of State for Education. I think we should be told whether it’s Phillip Hammond, Andrew Lansley, Caroline Spelman or Michael Gove who has too much time on their hands…

On the other hand, it does just say the Secretary of State. They couldn’t mean…no – surely not. This couldn’t be the Americans interfering in British matters of war again, could it?

We must be firm. Hilary, you have no jurisdiction here in Greenwich.

Graham, our resident expert on everything Meridian, is getting fed up with gloomy stories about mouse-droppings and muggings (though I have to say I’ve been enjoying the comments on the crackling joint effort between Mr Dring and the Old Bill chasing the wurst tea-leaf in the world whose poultry decision to rob a mobile dog & bone in front of Royal Hill shoppers couldn’t have been rasher. What a carrion, eh…) and decided to cheer me up with this beautiful photo he took back in 2009 of – you guessed it – another angle of the Meridian Line, from the Eliza benches at One Tree Hill, then ruined it all by telling me that the fabulous, contorted branches of this particular specimen are no more.

No – it’s not the Olympics – it’s just plain old age – and a very blowy night sometime in the past few weeks. It would seem that no one was around when it fell – maybe it didn’t even make a sound.

Graham tells me it was still standing just before Christmas, but when he went past the other day, it had all been cleared away; all that remains ”is a rather rotten looking trunk and a temporary barrier on the hillside below it while the fence that it smashed into is repaired.”

So a beautiful picture, but a less lovely story. Think I’ll go back to the greasy cookers,  mouse-droppings and bad meat puns…

One of the first-ever posts I ever did on this blog was about the extraordinary, mysterious Foot & Mouth Memorial at what we know as Ballast Quay, but has not always, even in the last few years, been known as such.

It’s in a fabulous little garden, right at the edge of the Thames, about which I also knew nothing, housing the best shed in Greenwich, which I also didn’t know the story of. What puzzled me most was what a memorial to what was, for the most part, a rural tragedy, was doing in an urban setting like Greenwich.

Well, I have been enlightened and I’m looking forward to revealing all in the new occasional series of memories from Hilary Peters, who is responsible for the lot. Her story is incredible, but to tell it in chronological order seems so  - well, prosaic, so I’m going to start with one of the later incidents in the garden she built from scratch in the 1960s – the Foot & Mouth Memorial itself.

Hilary’s gardening experiences in Greenwich, she tells me, led her to help pioneer the city farming movement (I’ll come to that in another post – it’s a brilliant story…) This in its turn, saw her travelling round Britain visiting all the other city farms that had sprung from her own. “I stayed on farms too, and sometimes looked after them while their owners were away.”

“I learned that farmers lived embattled lives. Paperwork, red tape, regulations, pressures to intensify, computerise, and diversify were destroying traditional farming. Seen by a complete outsider, this did not look accidental. Farmers could only see the next form to fill in, the next hoop to jump through, but it looked very much like part of a plan to replace mixed farms with monoculture, replacing incidentally, kindness with profit. Britain is a small island and on the world map it was coloured in as ‘leisure’. The serious business of producing food happened far away where no one could hear the screams.”

When in February 2001 Foot & Mouth disease struck Britian, Hilary was looking after a farm in Suffolk.  Its owners came rushing back and Hilary drove across England as the country was closing down. I remember driving through the countryside myself in those dark days, passing piles of burning carcasses, the acrid, black smoke carrying an almost apocalyptic feel, and I felt pretty distressed at the sight. But being a City Phantom, my horror was nothing to that of people like Hilary. It’s clear that the anger she felt then is as strong today as ever. I leave the rest of today’s post to her:

“Suddenly, in what we had believed was a reasonably free country, you couldn’t walk in the country, you couldn’t move your animals to graze, you couldn’t intervene, or even talk to the press. If some official in Whitehall thought your animals should be killed, they were killed.

The epidemiological policy was based on computer modelling and computers can’t model without facts. There were no facts. In fact it was martial law. There were road blocks and behind them, the army were sent in to kill as many animals as they could. I was one of very few protesters.

We were protesting against the whole policy of stamping out infection rather than treating the cause.

We didn’t win.

We had a few minor victories, notably in the Forest of Dean. But Wales was a death camp. Yorkshire was a war zone. The Borders (Cumbria and the Scottish lowlands) were the worst of all. No one cared about animal suffering.

It was this feeling of horror and powerlessness that led to the Foot & Mouth memorial.

The sculpture is by Kevin Herlihy, who has an extraordinary talent for picking up bits of grot on the beach and making them into something so alive it hits you in the eye (there are some more pictures of his work here – TGP). He had made sculpture with the kids at Surrey Docks Farm. It is a goat because goats were my way into farming and a symbol of the wild. The goats at Surrey Docks have been giving local children a connection with the natural world for 40 years now.

The words are by me. I wish they were redundant. I’m all for forgetting as rule, but nothing has changed. If Foot & Mouth broke out again, the policy would be the same. The only difference is they’ve changed the law so we could not protest. That is why the memorial is still there.

IN MEMORY OF

THE UNCOUNTED MILLIONS OF ANIMALS

WHO DIED NOT OF FOOT AND MOUTH

BUT OF THE CURE FOR IT

From the discussion the other day about the Dwarf Orchard Our Phantom In Park Vista, Siobhan, true to her word, has sent some ‘aerial’ shots of the still-under-wraps Dwarf Orchard.

All sparkling in the the low, frosty, winter sun, the green has gone (mainly because it was, actually, just weeds that have now been removed) but the basic layout is much clearer now.

It’s hard to tell when you’re on the ground, just how long and thin it is but now the sycamores are gone, it’s clear from above:

And at last the ancient mulberry (I think I’m going to start a rumour that it’s yet another candidate for ‘oldest mulberry in Britain’ – after all, this was part of James I’s wife’s garden and we all know what he thought of mulberry trees. Yeah, why not…) isn’t choking under giant weed trees and is beginning to take its place as the grand old lady of Greenwich Park.

The fruit trees are planted (I seem to remember they’ve gone for heritage varieties), but I guess it’s going to take a while for them to look anything special. Still – it’s a step in the right direction. I hope they get the volunteers they need to open the gates so they can regularly allow the public inside. Might be a nice place for locals to hide in plain sight from the Olympic tourists come the summer…

No, not a particularly unappetising new cocktail recipe, but two (very) loosely related things today; some potentially interesting news, and a continuing bit of minor ho-hum.

So – good stuff first. Fellow local blogger, Lara sent me an update on the Dwarf Orchard. Apparently some people have been a little worried about a potential ‘sale’ of the orchard, and though it’s been on the cards for some time, it’s not been very clear what’s going on.

It’s nothing sinister – merely the council putting control of the orchard back into the hands of Royal Parks, so that it’s all under the same body. It was leased to them anyway, so selling it just means it becomes ‘official.’ Seems pretty sensible to me – after all it wasn’t doing much under council control, and Royal Parks has the clout – and probably the cash – to make it work for its keep.

As you can see from Scared of Chives’s pic (which were taken last year and therefore out of date – more will have been done by now but of course, sadly, I haven’t seen it) all the weed-tree sycamores have gone, allowing the ancient mulberry to breathe, it’s been re-lain out and there have been a couple of dozen fruit trees planted. It’s early days but as the trees mature, it will regain something of what it might have been like in the 17th/18th centuries when it was a baby orchard.

According to a letter from local councillor Dick Quibell,

In the spring, the orchard will start being opened to school parties one day each week (and probably allow public access at the same time), and they are looking into ways to open it to the public at large for one day a week as well.  This will require setting up a list of volunteers who agree to open the gate, and supervise visits to ensure the orchard is not damaged.  The RPA will shortly start trying to identify a list of volunteers through local amenity societies etc.

Sounds like another way to get involved. And I’m finding it hard to fault such a plan.

Slightly less fun is the continuing lack of seats around the lime trees at the St Mary’s Lodge Gate. Now this may not seem like a big, deal and, in the big scheme of things, it’s not.

But for a couple of weeks a year, those seats are some of the heavenliest places in Greenwich to be. I’m talking of the fleeting moments of scents in late June/ early July when the lime trees are in flower and smell like a little piece of paradise. Here they are when the trees are at their best. Note the seats, under which a Phantom can sit and dream…

The seats disappeared last year some time. And, as you’ll see from Stephen’s picture, they’re still gone.

Short of the Cow and Coffee Bean cafe complaining about lack of custom due to people bringing their own, I’m suspecting that they were taken down for the Olympic test events and hoping that they will be reinstated after the Olympic real-thing, but for this year I’ll need to find another place to sit and smell the limes – or improvise. Come to think of it, that’s not a bad idea. Come June I’ll be the loony sitting underneath a small green tree in a stripy deck chair with a nice flask of tea.

Michael asks:

Not sure whether you’ve seen but a number of Silver Birch trees/saplings have recently been planted on the Vanbrugh Park/St John’s Park part of the Heath.

I was under the impression (possibly wrong) that the Heath should essentially remain treeless and what trees there are were either self seeded of planted at a time when it was less regulated.

I spoke to the Greenwich Council gardeners at the time and they said that the council had been asked by “the friends” to plant the saplings as a result of fire damage of the summer although no trees were damaged in the summer.

Personally I would rather see the natural bracken be given a chance to thrive. Any thoughts?

The Phantom replies:

Sadly I haven’t got up to the heath for weeks so no, I haven’t seen them. But I’m not personally too worried. I’m not sure which ‘friends’ asked for the trees (Westcombe Society? Blackheath Preservation Trust? No idea…) but if you’re going to have trees up there, silver birch are, I believe, quite appropriate for heathland.

Of course  the heath looks very different to how it was even 60 or so years ago. It’s only been the smooth green billiard table it is now since it was pretty much ‘filled in’ with rubble from bombed buildings after World War II – before that it was the classic romantic wilderness you generally associate with the word ‘heath,’ complete with dips and hollows, like the dips that still remain at the top of Maze Hill, gorse, bracken, mines, caverns, the odd windmill and, of course, the traditional dandy highwaymen. It was a dangerous place to travel through, let alone walk, but really rather wonderful.

If you want to read more, Neil Rhind’s book The Heath is definitive – and has many pictures, several of which include trees that look suspiciously like silver birches. Obviously the heath would never have been a forest of them, but small clumps would not be topographically ‘wrong,’ I believe. Perhaps a proper plant historian can put me right? Mr Bowes?

We’ll never get back what the heath used to be – and so many people use it as it is now, smooth (and, IMHO slightly boring in the middle) that it’s not even something most would desire, but introducing a few examples of native species around the edges seems like quite a good idea to me, and wouldn’t preclude allowing the bracken to grow.  And it will help to screen the houses up there from the incessant A2 traffic.

But what does everyone else think?

This weekend’s mailbag has mainly been on two topics. Firstly, and happily, the Cutty Sark re-mast-ered (below.) Secondly, rather less happily, this:

From Victoria:

Do you, or anyone who reads your (marvellous – aw, gee, blush – TGP) blog, know why the council have murdered all the trees along Creek Road between the junction with Norman Road and the Magic Bookshop?

From Martin:

Do you know what has happened to the big trees at the end of Bardsley Lane next to the bookstore?  I went over there yesterday and all that’s left is a humongous pile of chippings and several stumps.  Is some deranged giant chipmunk on the prowl in Phantomland or is something even worse afoot?

The Phantom replies:

Martin – how dare you refer to our illustrious leader as a deranged giant chipmunk?

Actually I don’t even know why I’m joking about this. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about the photo above was taken by David Herbert, the owner of ‘the Magic Bookshop’, whose long-running (though ultimately victorious – huzzah) battle with the council to keep his home and business (if you missed the saga, just google his name in the site search engine…), who lived next door to said trees. When he went to bed on Friday night, it looked like that.

On Saturday morning it looked like this:

I’m actually amazed he managed to sleep through anything that could do that overnight, but hey.

Here’s the view looking towards the bridge:

He is, naturally, pretty upset about this. Apparently it’s for a new road scheme, which also raises the ugly head of his place being in the firing line again.

Anyone else feeling just a little bit less World Heritage Sitey? Gain three masts, lose five trees. As David himself says, so much for Boris Johnson’s ‘Plant a Tree’ scheme…

When I took the picture above last year, it never in a million years occurred to me that just a few months later it would look like this.

Or that this already-emasculated mandrake/ivy root

Would look like this…

You know it occurs to me that it’s been over a month since the 368-character statement from Tim Delap, the continuing chairman of St Alfege’s park’s Friends which is still pretty much all we’ve had by way of an apology/explanation for the appalling desecration of ancient headstones in the old burial ground.

In case you’ve been away (or ill, ahem) the story of how a group of Community Payback workers smashed a whole bunch of ancient head stones on the watch of the Friends of St Alfege Park was first covered by Rob at Greenwich.co.uk. Rob did manage to secure a statement from the equally-appalled rank & file Friends and an angry response from the council but from Mr Delap himself? 368 characters. 400, if you count empty space.

There’s been a bit of media coverage – some rather lurid tabloid stuff as well as locals and onlines – and Private Eye devoted a Nooks & Corners to Greenwich a couple of weeks ago but everything else seems to have gone a bit quiet. Certainly I’m sure that’s how at least some people would like it to be.

But we still have a pile of broken stones to ‘do something with’ and a mystery as to who actually gave the order to desecrate a heritage site. The council’s Director Of Culture and Community, Sam Eastop, is conducting the investigation personally, and seems keen to get to the bottom of it. And it’s beginning to look a bit on the worrying side. It certainly doesn’t look like the desecration went on while the chairman was on holiday but a good couple of months before Rob picked up on the story (and I didn’t – yes, I’m still wearing the sackcloth and ashes on that one).

I understand the investigation is ongoing and I believe that Sam Eastop would be very interested to hear anything that sheds light on the situation. I know there’s related stuff that hasn’t come out yet – and I urge anyone who knows something to contact him.

On a positive note, the council are planning to try to create something out of the mess, and I’m sure they’d be interested in suggestions for that too. But so far we have not been given any real explanation of what really went on here, and as the weeks go by it’s getting easier for information to be lost.

Isn’t this a fine sight? This is the sign of one healthy river – and a river that flows right through a capital city. And this photo was taken in Greenwich – right by the King’s Steps on Greenwich beach.

Emma lives in East Greenwich and has the enviable job (well on a gorgeous day like today, anyway) of working for the Environment Agency as a Fisheries Officer, looking after the Tidal Thames, Ravensbourne, Quaggy and Pool.

Twice a year she and her pals at the EA get to carry out fish surveys at eight sites on the river – from Richmond in the west to Stanford-le-Hope (Essex) in the east.

She says “The data collected in these fish surveys helps us to understand the health of the river, which we need to report back to the EU. We survey the populations of fish using several different methods over the period that the tide turns at low water (known as slack water). Using several different methods means that we can survey as much of the river at that site as possible – a beam trawl is used to look at the deaper water, a seine net is used to survey the shallower margins and a kick net is used to look for tiny fish at the water’s edge.”

The fish are from their last year’s survery and are remarkable for the sheer variety of species. The one on the top of this post shows bream – which is a freshwater fish, and smelt, an esturine species.

And this:

…is a sea bass  (don’t tell the local restaurateurs, eh…) which is very definitely a marine species. The Thames has them all. Emma tells me that all these fish were caught in the same half hour period, “showing how valuable the intertidal foreshore area is in Greenwich for all kinds of fish”.

The last pic isn’t quite Greenwich but I couldn’t resist it. It’s a sight that Emma spotted, presumably whilst up to her thighs in water, in Brookmill Park near Deptford Bridge station. It’s on the wall of the DLR line where it comes up to the banks of the river Ravensbourne. “The river here was restored when the DLR wanted to use the concrete river channel as a place to lay the new line, so they built a new natural channel for the river to run in next to it, creating valuable new habitat for fish, birds such as kingishers and other wildlife” – and rarer mammals too, such as this RiverBanksy, which I adore as it really looks like it’s wading through undergrowth by the emasculated river. Truly an urban species…

Emma and her fishermans friends will be back in Greenwich on the 5th October to carry out their autumn survey. They’ll be by the naval college, at low tide which is around 1430. Emma says “We should be there from around 1400. Keep an eye out for us and our little silver Environment Agency boat, anyone is welcome to come and watch!”