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?

Isn’t this a fascinating photo? For all of us who can’t see behind the various hoardings, an aerial shot of – what I calculate to be five separate building jobs – though I may have miscalculated – it could be more, could be fewer.

It’s a shot taken for the forthcoming book Greenwich Then and Now by Barbara Ludlow and Julian Watson, taken by Julian from the window of a kindly upstairs resident of Coltman House and I love it because it’s not a static shot, it’s work in progress.

In the foreground we have the ‘gardens’ themselves – and, from what I have seen of the plans, they are much greener than the area’s been for years, much to the chagrin of English Heritage for whom I usually have a lot of respect but whose desire for an urban dockfront feel at this bleak spot would be as specious as greenery and a hell of a lot less enjoyable when the icy Thames winds blow for the three-quarters of the year that don’t have the sunshine you always get in architects’ plans.

Next to the gardens, on the left, is the interminable Foot Tunnel project which has, frankly, been a bit of a disgrace. I have lost count of the number of cyclists I’ve seen going up to the door, realising the whole bloomin’ thing is shut and, knowing that there’s nothing down at Woolwich either, turning round wearily to peddle their way up to Rotherhithe. This is a public highway – which is why, up to this particular works, it was left open 24 hours a day and if it did close, for filming, for example, (i.e. when someone else had to foot the bill)  it had to have proper provision made. The excuse of the DLR is fine for pedestrians happy to shell out for the ticket but cyclists can whistle. It is, apparently, due to be opened ‘in the new year,’ whatever that means – my bet is ‘in time for the Olympics’ which seems to be the mantra for everything these days.

Behind that, we can just see the entrance to the new pier and, separately but together, the strange skellingtons that will make up the ticket office and the cafe. I’ve heard all sorts of rumours about what’s going to be there – a Zizzi’s, Nandos, Byron (no indies, natch) but in case you can’t read Steve’s photo

it looks as though it’s actually going to be that retail-park blandity Frankie and Benny’s. Sigh.

Steve’s been trying to get the signage sorted out around that area for some time – after ORNC hours it’s quite hard to get through from West to East Greenwich in that part as random paths have been shut off and the ORNC security guys are not to be argued with. He’s discovered that this mess will stay until the whole area opens properly but has been at least promised some signage. Go, Steve.  Let’s hope it’s not like this splendid example of Greenwich Council signage, wrong on so many levels and spotted by Dan:

Which leaves us with the Cuty Sark herself. I don’t want to know what’s gone on with the engineering, what kind of stress those timbers are under or what corners were cut. We were left out of the loop when it mattered and all we’re likely to get now is platitudes if, indeed, they ever decide to actually talk to locals at all. But I have to say she’s looking good. Every time I walk past she seems to have a bit more fluffy frou, a little extra gold, a shininess more of paint. At last she looks like a ship again. Who knows – she might actually be ready for that all-important date.

And all this encapsulated in one photo. I can’t wait for Barbara and Julian’s book (one of several very exciting volumes to be published soon, and not Julian’s only outing.) It’s due at the publishers at the end of the month so we should see it – actually I don’t know how long books take to come out once they’re written so let’s just say ‘soon.’

Warning:

If you’re ScaredofChives, or of a similarly delicate constitution, look away now. We are about to enter Herb County…

Tucked away in the North-west corner of Greenwich Park lies a little garden. Behind low, dainty railings, and separated by parterres of box, a modern Tudor-knot contains herbs for every sense, billowing out their frond-y, frothy abundance in a heady green-and-yellow haze, a gentle breeze rustling the ferny leaves in a soft murmur.

Well. Ok. maybe not just at the moment. It’s more like a bunch of dark green boxes full of dead brown-and-black stalks and grizzled old earth, scoured by a howling gale. But in these dark January days a Phantom needs a few memories of long, hot summers and long, fragrance-filled evenings to light the way through to Spring.

Memories, for example, of that little fountain in the middle – I think it’s supposed to be a thistle – but it could be a tulip or even a pineapple. No matter. The tinkle from that tiny pond twinkles in my mind and I can feel the warmth of the sun on my back, even if it’s actually just my cardi, an extra blanket and a fan heater.

It’s not that old (the herb garden, of course, not the fan heater, which is antediluvian.) There’s precious little written about it anywhere – naturally – I’m beginning to get used to a total blank-er-oo whenever I try to find anything out about stuff in Greenwich. It’s as though just putting something lovely somewhere is enough – when surely part of charm of a thing, whether a statue, sculpture, street furniture – or a garden – is in its history?

The new Greenwich Park walks leaflet (which I will be reviewing as soon as I’ve had the chance to try out one or two of the suggested route-marches) comes to the rescue – a bit. The garden was first planted in 1969 but tarted up in 1993, with 30 herbs. That fountain, designed by (and yea! – we have a sculptor) Kate Malone, was added in 2000.

The Phantom is in reflective mood today, swaddled in blankets and thick socks, leaving you with a lovely photo to remind you that Spring’s not that far away now. Honest.

A few months ago I was convinced that Glenister Green – the dull bit of land in between the old folks homes and Mister Fast Fry on Woolwich Road – was actually a cheap holographic image created to cover the tracks of an alien space ship, and that any unsuspecting fool who set foot within those sinister gates would be swallowed up and experimented on (see “Open Spaces”)in horrifc fashion.

There is still something very sinister about this scrap of land, especially at night, when although completely visible from the road, the lonely pools of light and the paths that lead round and round lend it an otherworldly atmosphere. I won’t go on about all that again – but I have, in the past couple of weeks, noticed that it’s not quite as horrid as it has been.

Leaves on the trees have made a big difference, of course, but some man-made improvements have helped too. The mural that used to be outside the hospital has been spruced up (though the tiles are still too far apart, making it look like it used to be somewhere else…) and it now has a plaque (not that I’ve actually looked at it of course – I’m still not actually setting foot in there. The aliens still loom large in my imagination.) The grass (well, weeds, but it’s all green, isn’t it) gets the occasional cut and some of the low shrubs that were planted when the place got its ‘redesign’ have bushed out a bit. It’s not enhanced by the giant monstrosity that is the extension of Mister Fast Fry – easily the same size again as the original building and the most uninspired design imaginable, but that’s a Planning thing, not Parks.

The biggest difference is that I have actually seen people in there. Granted it’s nearly always slack-jawed teenagers loitering round the bins, who have kindly added some enhancements of their own in the form of art-free grafitti but it is Life. And that encourages me. Unless, of course, the aliens have invented a cunning patch for their hologram program that populates their creepy dimensional timeshift gate thingy…

Fin writes:

I was walking in Greenwich Park today and came across a circular fenced-off area in the south-west corner, just north of the tennis courts. It had a rusty iron fence around it and a locked gate with signs that said ‘Hazard – Keep Out’. Naturally curiosity got the better of me and i climbed in, to find a large raised area of grass like an inverted bowl. Steps ran up one side and joined an overgrown row of paving slabs running along the centre of the bowl, with some sort of metal grill right in the centre. This ‘path’ was also lined with what looked like those hook-shaped ventilation pipes you get on ships. I didn’t venture far in case the ground gave way or something, but I am most intrigued. Can you or your readers enlighten me as to what this area is, or was? Unfortunately i didn’t have a camera on me otherwise I’d send you a picture.

The Phantom replies:

What is this – Greenwich Enigma Day or something? This seems almost as much of a mystery as Miss Mott.

There is so much to be discovered in that seemingly tiny patch we call Greenwich Park that it doesn’t surprise me that there’s something new and hitherto undiscovered somewhere off the beaten track. I vaguely know where you’re talking about, I think. I wonder – is it in line with the red brick building that’s part of the underground water system? It could be part of the notorious tunnels in Greenwich Park which date back several hundred years (see The Greenwich Phantom: Tunnels in Greenwich Park ) but it sounds too recent to really be connected with it. Given the way that the land seems to cave in at a moment’s notice round here you were probably wise not to tread any further. It does sound like a reservoir. Something banging at the back of my brain tells me that Greenwich University did some low-level experiments in the park way back, but I thought it was all cleared away. Actually, I may be completely wrong; thinking about it, it could have been the Peninsula. Or somewhere else entirely.

Basically what I’m saying is that I don’t know. I’m hoping that someone from the Friends of Greenwich Park will read this and be able to tell you. In the meanwhile, I’ll do a spot of digging (not literal.) Watch this space.

When is someone going to write a really in-depth topographical study of Greenwich Park? Or is there already one that I don’t know about?

Incidentally, folks, I’m sure Fin wouldn’t mind my telling you about his own website that he ‘accidentally’ left the address of on the bottom of his mail. He’s a local playwright and poet and you can find him here http://www.finkennedy.co.uk/

No – not the “official” one – which I’ll come to another day. This tiny little eco park is about a tenth of the size of the ‘proper’ one and I confess I’ve walked past it on several occasions without realising what it was or even, if I’m honest, that it was there at all.

It’s round the back of the Teletubby Sainsburys – presumably some kind of Section 106 set-aside, and it takes approximately 1 minute to walk round, but it’s nevertheless a delight to stumble upon, and once the sundry consortia who have carved up the Peninsula have covered what is green and lovely now with coloured concrete boxes, it will be an even more welcome haven for animals, insects, birds and even the odd walker.

It’s basically a couple of wetland-pond-ish-marshy dips, filled with reeds, rushes and, at the moment, some beautiful yellow irises. There are saplings of what look like some sort of willow (?) dotted around and a little fenced area with some young apple trees – I have no idea of the variety, but I’m hoping they’re either native or at least heritage breeds.

A little (pretty-accessible) path winds its way around the site – it takes a couple of minutes to march around it, slightly longer to wander. There are no signs, plaques or even gates – but it’s such a welcome corner, tucked behind a shopping centre and surrounded by a hedge of mixed British plants – even the back of Sainsburys itself doesn’t ‘loom’ over the area (and presumably provides a nice place for employees to enjoy a quiet fag) that it’s worth seeking out as a five minute excursion of peace from the madness that is that sodding Peninsula car park.

Avery Hill Park, Eltham

Ok – so it’s not actually Greenwich – so shoot me – it’s in the borough and everyone needs to get out occasionally…

The Winter Gardens at Eltham are one of those surprising little places which make being a tourist in your own borough worthwhile. Clearly with a name like that, I waited until deepest January to visit, picking a bright, clear and bloomin’ freezing afternoon to pack up a flask and buns and head off towards the Eltham Campus of Greenwich University.

It’s not a generally exciting building complex, Greenwich University’s Eltham Campus now occupying what’s left of self-made millionaire ‘Colonel’ John Thomas North’s mansion – which is why when you do discover the hothouse it’s all the more delightful.

It was built during the 1830s but not an awful lot happened to it until the colourful ‘Colonel’ bought it in 1888.

North had started out, it is said, as a gun runner in South America where he’d gone to build railways (it’s amazing how one can get sidetracked, isn’t it…) but eventually found his fortune in seagull guano, wich any fule no makes great fertiliser.

But being a shit importer has never guaranteed success on the social ladder, and though North had made a pile Oop North on the where-there’s-muck-there’s-brass ticket, and though he had heaped largesse on the good folk of Leeds he still just didn’t seem to get invited to the right parties.

He decided to buy Avery Hill and do it up so that he could have a swanky London pad. He had the main road moved to Bexley so that he wouldn’t actually have to come in contact with the South London riffraff and spent over £ 200,000 on the interior design alone. He commissioned TW Cutler to remodel it in the popular Italianate style, but Cutler went overbudget even for the likes of North and was sacked; his assitant promoted in his place.

North was responsible for the fabulous hothouse, which he presumably fertilised with his own imports, but at the time it wasn’t the hothouse which was the star of the show. Instead an outrageous three-roomed Turkish bath took pride of place – with tiled walls, marble floors and silver fittings, it outshone the other big Turkish baths at the time and the architectural critics were agog.

His home complete, North was made an honourary Colonel in Tower Hamlets but what he really wanted was a knighthood.

He invited the Prince of Wales to tea, but it would seem that Bertie wasn’t overawed by the experience. North never did get his knighthood. He lived only another five years in his creation before his death in 1896.

His family, unimpressed with the extravagance, immediately put Avery Hill on the market. It took two years to sell, and even then it went for considerably less than North paid for it. The new owner never moved in.

It’s been in the hands of the council since 1902 – they bought it and the park for £ 25,000 – a bit of a bargain even then. What’s left of the house is now part of the uni but the hothouses and park are open to the public – and a splendid job they have done too, maintaining it – it can’t be a cheap thing to do.

If you’re driving, you enter through the grounds of the uni, you can park in what must have once been a walled kitchen garden (well, I did, anyway…) and walk around to the astonishingly large palm house, heated even in the darkest, dankest of winter months to house the exotic plants so fashionable amongst wealthy Victorians and Edwardians.

In the centre, a giant Norfolk Pine dominates the view, and to either side of the red-brick glasshouses are smaller, delicate little rooms. The one to the left provides a great place to sit and contemplate on a late winter afternoon as it makes the most of what watery sun there is, the only interruption the odd university group using it as a film location or for a botany lesson. The one to the right has a replica of a beautiful marble fountain (the original was half-inched) playing over cyclamen and fernery.

The greenery of the park tumbles away down the hill towards football pitches and dull suburban housing, but here is a little corner which will be forever Victorian splendour. Enjoy…

BTW. Sadly, the Turkish baths were bombed to buggery in WWII, but there is a fantastic account of them by Victorian Turkish Bath specialist Malcolm Shifrin at

http://www.victorianturkishbath.org/6DIRECTORY/AtoZEstab/Houses/Avery/AverySF.htm

Woolwich Road

This has to be one of the wierdest open spaces in the area. Surrounded on three sides by housing, edged by the “iconic” (ahem) Mr Fast Fry and every inch of it clearly visible from the road, it is, inexplicably, one of the creepiest parks I know of.

I have definitely never ventured in, for a very good reason, which I will explain in a moment, but I walk past it on a regular basis and I can now confirm that I have NEVER SEEN ANYONE ELSE IN THERE EITHER. I have a theory about that too.

Could it be because it’s poorly lit? Certainly not. It was part of the grand “improvements” of East Greenwich which I suspect somebody’s Section 106 paid for, and which gave it random paths (I went to the “consultation – ha-bloody-ha – and listened to the “consultant” who designed it talking about what the paths all meant – the usual arty bullshit which makes you nod in puzzled agreement at the time and think “what the bloody hell was that all about” later.) As far as I can make out, the paths make people walk in specific directions which deliberately avoid the quickest route so they can enjoy the open space, which frankly gives more of a labyrinthine feel than any kind of pleasure of the countryside.

The consultant also gave it copious lighting – halogen, which are very low and directional – presumably to prevent light pollution, which I am actually very much in favour of. The “transformation is completed with suspicious-looking litter bins and the re-erected mural that used to be on the wall of Greenwich District Hospital. I’m all for saving it – and am glad to see it back, but they’ve put it together again with such gaps between the panels that it has an odd, disjointed feel about it. They’ve saved the trees, the place’s best (read “only”) feature but there is no grass – merely large patches of ankle-height weeds, which are at least green.

It’s taken me a long while to work out exactly why I find this place so eerie – especially when it is SO visible and SO well-lit. Then it struck me – it’s the transformation itself that’s done it. There’s something deeply unhealthy about those low pools of street light – where anything can happen – where you could find yourself, not being able to see beyond the light into the darkness, swallowed up into some nightmarish vision – a parallel Universe of Doom.

If I were to walk in there might I reach some kind of mythical centre and disappear for ever into a dimensional timeshift bigger than the one in Cardiff? Could I one day actually witness an unsuspecting stranger walking through the park and suddenly disappear off the face of the earth or even spontaneously combust? I calm myself with the thought that no one would voluntarily walk into this trap.

I guess it’s possible that Glenister Green doesn’t exist at all – that it’s a hologram – hiding a portal to another world. Perhaps that mural is merely a cover for a control panel – press the sailor’s duffle bag and you’ll find yourself on the operating table of a visiting alien ship.

I find it hard to believe that anywhere as small, weedy and, well – visible – could be so sinister but somehow that place makes my blood run cold. And I can’t be alone in this – no one goes there. You might think it would be a meeting ground for the local youth – but even they steer clear. One of these days I will, saveloy in hand, lie in wait in Mr Fast Fry watching for unsuspecting mothers with pushchairs, men with dogs or teenagers with spraycans to walk into the Venus Flytrap that is Glenister Green. If I see them come out again, whole and un-gibbering, I will feel it is safe to venture in myself. If they disappear before my very eyes I will become a full-time conspiracy theorist and start staking out the Superloo next to the Cutty Sark. Only if I hear grating sounds and see a police box materialise under those halogen lamps I will relax.

Until then there is something deeply wrong down Woolwich Road. I intend to keep walking on the other side of the main road, well away from those innocent park railings and creepy pools of harsh neon light.

The post office opposite has just been refurbished – I am told there is to be a basement “internet café.” A likely story. It’s clearly the public front of the Greenwich branch of Torchwood monitoring the activity at Glenister Green.