Lambeth Heritage Festival continues and on Saturday 19 September at 19:00 we can Zoom in for a new talk about Denmark Hill.
Denmark Hill c.1906
Many from London’s well-to-do merchant class began to leave town at the end of the 18th century and make their home in what were then the rural outskirts.
Denmark Hill was an especially favoured location. In this talk and virtual walk, Ian McInnes (Chair of the Dulwich Society) and Laurence Marsh (Fawnbrake neighbour and Vice-chair of the Herne Hill Society) look at the houses, now long gone, that were built on the Lambeth (i.e. north) side of the road – and the varied stories of some of their residents over 150 years.
This Herne Hill Society online-only event is hosted by Lambeth Archives.
to the relevant section of the Lambeth Heritage Festival website and scroll down to the Denmark Hill event. Then you can click on the book here link on the web page.
You will receive an email by return and, before the event, an email invitation with a web link to join the talk by Zoom. There is no charge.
The highly committed and creative team at Lambeth Archives have more lock-down talks to offer : their repertoire is not exhausted yet.
The July and August programme (above) includes a talk about life in Lambeth during the War, a virtual history walk from Vauxhall to Camberwell, an account of the bitterly contested campaign of the 1880s to create those free libraries in Lambeth that we now all take for granted, and a look at the growth of the borough’s southern suburbs.
Log in details for talks will be sent out two days ahead.
Although they have not run out of topics to talk about, they are slightly changing the way they deliver them. After next week’s talk, Home Front, Lambeth in World War II, the programme will become fortnightly and will always be on a Thursday evening at 6.45 pm.
But the programme will be put on hold from mid-August as they switch to preparing for the Lambeth Heritage Festival, which will also be an online programme.
Finally, Jon’s talk of last week, Before and After Windrush, a history of the Black community in Lambeth, is now available to be listened to as a recording at https://www.instagram.com/tv/CB3HgWnn-O-/?hl=en
The next Local History in Lock-down talk will be this Thursday 18th June at 6.45 p.m. and will be given by Jon Newman.
Before and After Windrush, a history of the Black community in Lambeth, looks at the very different experiences of Lambeth’s two Black communities: the well-documented story of the community that came to live in the borough after the voyage of the Windrush in 1948; and the much less understood history of Black people who were living in Lambeth in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The log-in details for the talk are here, or in full: https://zoom.us/j/91540334790
If required: Meeting ID: 915 4033 4790. Password: 176800
This week’s Local History in Lock-down talk is on Thursday evening (14th May) at 6.45.
In his talk, Lambeth in Literature, Jon Newman will take a look at the way that the place has been described across the centuries by writers, poets and novelists; everyone from William Blake to Alex Wheatle. So, one half social history, one half Lambeth ‘Goodreads’
We can join the talk using Zoom , with this link .
In remembering and commemorating the end of World War 2 in Europe, some of us may not want to dwell on the sentimental Vera Lynn-type nostalgia. But in May 1945, the UK’s feeling of reprieve and joy, tempered by grief, was profound and almost universal.
And the devastating event itself, the global war, is surely worth a thought and a pause for relief and gratitude for what we have today, by comparison with then.
VE Day newspaper, 8 May 1945, from our family archive
50 million dead
As historians of all shades of opinion have written, it was almost certainly the most catastrophic event in world history. The dead have been estimated at 15 million military personnel, of which up to 2 million were Soviet prisoners of war. An estimated 35 million civilians died, with between 4 and 5 million Jews perishing in concentration camps and an estimated 2 million more in mass murders across Eastern Europe. Afterwards, refugees from the German-occupied territories, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe numbered many millions. Then there’s the Far East …
Target: London
By comparison with Germany and Russia, Britain suffered less material and human damage on the home front.
All the same, many cities were attacked, some severely.
London, as the principal city, was of course the main target for German bombing. At the height of the Blitz, on 10 May 1941, more than 3,000 Londoners died or were seriously injured. During World War II as a whole, 100,000 London homes were destroyed and over one million houses suffered damage. Over 80,000 Londoners were killed or seriously injured. The landscape of the city was changed for ever.
Bomb hit in Balham. (c) IWM
See the collection of other images on the Imperial War Museum’s site.
By the end, Britain itself had accumulated debts of $20 billion. Germany and much else of Western and Central Europe was in ruins, industry wiped out or exhausted. Much of Eastern Europe fell under the cruel dominance of the Soviet Union and its organs of state security. The human, economic and political aftermath extended over decades.
Local bombs
The Bombsightsite shows where bombs dropped in and around Fawnbrake Avenue during the 1940/41 Blitz. Aerial attacks peaked again nearer the end of the war, especially with the deployment of V1 and V2 rockets, which struck several local sites in summer 1944. The Flying Bombs & Rocketswebsite has useful images and details of severe V1 damage in Carver Road, Guernsey Grove, Stradella Road and other streets.
Lambeth Archive’s programme of weekly talks continues. The next talk A Place of Public Execution, the story of the gallows on Kennington Common, will be given by Jon Newman on this Tuesday, 5th May, at 13.15
The Archive have sent apologies to anyone who ended up being blocked from last week’s talk because of the size of the audience. They have now changed their licence and will be able to accommodate audiences in excess of 100 people in future.
The Archive have also recorded some of the talks in the programme. The first of these, Why Parks Matter, given on the 16th April, can now be viewed at https://www.instagram.com/tv/B_o-vHQnj2U/
Programme for May
News about Fawnbrake Avenue & neighbouring streets in Herne Hill, London
