Local History Group - Thursday 21st May - Phoenix Community Centre at 8.00 pm
Brixton - Presentation by Alan Piper from the Brixton Society.

Quarterly Meeting - Tuesday 26th May - Parish Rooms Beulah Hill - 8.00 pm
Darwin at Down House - Captain of Evolution
Presentation by Aimee Jones

The Norwood Society

Annual Report 2009


1. Our proceedings will of course be overshadowed by the death of Leo Held, our President for many years and founder member of the Society. We will be printing an obituary in the next Review, and there will be a Memorial Service for him at 2 pm on 1st May in All Saints? Church which many of us will want to attend and make our feelings known. The incoming Committee will later on want to consider suggestions for appointment to the honorary post of President.

2. We lost our Norwood Review Editor earlier in the year. Bill Pitt, after many years of service in producing the Review, had to give up and so the Committee set up an Editorial Board. Unfortunately, due the to timing of Bill?s departure, the Board could not produce a Summer issue, but has put together the Autumn and Spring issues, which we hope the members found of interest. In addition Margaret Condon had to give up her post as Membership Secretary, but Anna Lines has filled the gap for the time being. Over the year the membership records have been revised and updated, and gradually more and more members have provided Email addresses so that we have been able to let them have information more quickly than using the postal service. There has also been an almost three-fold increase in members setting up Standing Order Mandates. Some of the Reviews have been delivered by hand by helpful members, but the number able to offer this service has gradually been reducing, and distribution by post has therefore been increased.

3. The Society?s Website has been further expanded by the use of the ?blogging? facility to keep members and others informed of events of interest. It has attracted interest from far-off places, including recent enquiries from Quebec University, and former Norwood residents in New Zealand and elsewhere. We have been able to help, and have received several compliments in return. One new and unlooked for source of information that we are now able to recommend is of course the Google Maps ?Street View? facility. With a few clicks on their mouse these enquirers are now able to ?walk? the streets of London from the comfort of their far-away home! We have decided to include on our Website a list of our records and archives prepared by Keith Holdaway, our archivist, and intend that, by arrangement with Upper Norwood Library, there should be controlled public access to the material stored there. The details are still to be worked out. To transfer the list to a computer record is proving to be a time-consuming process, and so the review of a further 10-year batch of old Norwood Reviews has had to be put on hold for the time being.

4. Last year we undertook to take a long look at our publications; copies of them are on display. So far we have arranged a reprint of ?Glimpses of Norwood? and have revised and republished ?The Trail of Norwood?. A major achievement has been the reprint in softback of the original ?Phoenix Suburb? by Alan Warwick. The Phoenix Suburb has been the subject of enquiries over many years since it went out of print, and the sales have so far been encouraging. The supply will of course last for several years. We continue to have a stock of ?The Story of Norwood? and the book about Zola and his photography.



The main exhibition events over the year have been disappointing. The Lambeth Country Show
in Brockwell Park, Herne Hill, was put into the hands of a different organisation which
changed the charges, but we took a small site in the main marquee to keep the flag flying. The
Victorian Weekend in Crystal Palace Park (no longer organised by the Crystal Palace
Foundation) took place, but the tent, pitched up with great difficulty on hard ground and in
strong wind, proved to be unequal to such conditions and we had to settle for a small site in the
main marquee. But there have been open-air stalls outside the Alma public house which have
been used, and the interest shown has resulted in sales of publications and new members. The
Society participated in the Annual Book Fair in the Clocktower (next to the Croydon Town
Hall), and Keith Holdaway has arranged successful exhibitions in various public libraries. It
has to be acknowledged that manned exhibitions need to attract volunteers, and few members
have been able to offer their services. So volunteers will be welcomed, and should leave their
names with the Secretary or with Keith Holdaway.

5. Planning has kept the Planning Committee very busy over the past year, but the recession may reduce the number of applications for the redevelopment of important sites. Gayfere in Grange Hill continues to create concern, and there is currently an outstanding appeal against the refusal of an application to demolish it in favour of a housing development. It is helpful that the Council has extended the Church Road Conservation Area to include Gayfere, which creates additional problems for developers and a higher degree of protection for Gayfere. The Homelands site has also been the subject of a planning application, but it was helpful that the developers were sensible enough to meet a group of interested residents (including someone from the Norwood Society) at an early stage. The application remains to be decided, but the development is now almost entirely housing rather than, as originally proposed, blocks of flats.

6. The Cumberlow Lodge site remains in the background with informal discussions going on about the inclusion of a community development of some kind. The developers do however seem to be, at last, looking at a development of mainly houses rather 4-storey blocks of flats. Other local schemes include the Esso Petrol Station site (now cleared) in South Norwood Hill, which received planning permission for blocks of flats after a successful appeal. The application to replace the BP petrol station site at the corner of Holmesdale Road and South Norwood Hill with a block of flats was refused, and it seems that it is to be restored as a petrol station and small shop. There is however currently an application for the shop to have a 24-hour licence to sell liquor, which for good reason is attracting local protest. The cleared site at 1-9 South Norwood Hill (opposite Stanley Halls) has run into trouble with a scheme to build flats with a shop/business frontage because it cannot provide parking. There is an appeal outstanding.

7. The Norwood Junction Railway Buildings site continues to be the subject of public protest, and there was an all-day appeal hearing and site visit on 15th April 2009. It took place in the ornate Croydon Council Chamber in order to accommodate a double-decker busload of objectors, many of whom spoke up at the hearing. The result is awaited.