Cenotaph South - South London's poetic landscape

'Cenotaph South: mapping the lost poets of Nunhead Cemetery' (Penned in the Margins, 2016) by Chris McCabe is a remarkable book. Partly it is what it says on the cover – an exploration of some of the largely forgotten poets buried there including Marian Richardson and Albert Craig. But he also wanders over the wider South London poetic landscape, extending from Robert Browning's cottage on Telegraph Hill, through the cemetery and onto William Blake's Peckham Rye and then to Dulwich woods and village where the Crown and Greyhound pub ('the Dog') hosted poetry gatherings upstairs from 1940s to 1980s. He also mentions contemporary Peckham poets like Caleb Femi, performing at the Review Bookshop in Bellenden Road.

He goes in search of a hawthorn tree suitable for Blake's vision of angels on Peckham Rye and find the most appropriate candidate is to be a tree on the Rye Hill estate:

'Quaint English Bauhaus. There is a map of Peck Hill and Rye Hill Park Estate laid out in the colours of a Butlins map: south London joyland. I check the Rocque map, completed almost to the date that Blake was here: this would have been open fields, the edge of an enclosure separating the Rye from what was most likely private fields. I weave through the outskirts of the estate. The land around Frome House is lined with what look to be ancient trees, bark knotted in folds. The trees grow within yards of the windows of the flats, past the patched light that breaks through the skeleton of a scaffold. The trees are trying to grow inwards, towards the sun. There is what looks like a hawthorn here - gnarled and ancient-looking, awesome in scale, towering over the flats. This is a hawthorn to take on the oaks. A hawthorn worthy of any angel'.

We don't have to take literally that this is the tree - the details of Blake's childhood visions are sketchy to say the least - but I like the idea that it might be found not in the park itself but in nearby council estate. 

In 'mapping out the woods, pubs, colleges and houses of South East London's dead poets' he finds the area to be 'the richest landscape of poetic activity in London'. Is it something about the hills, home to the muses in classical times according to Robert Graves so why not here too? 

'The word muse, we are told, comes from the root mont, meaning mountain. I think of the high points around Nunhead cemetery, Telegraph Hill (where Robert Browning lived) and the higher neighbouring peaks of Sydenham Hill and Forest Hill. There is a pull to poets in these high points, an irresistible urge for the heights: light, perspective, space'.

Haberdashers, Hatcham and Slavery

[UPDATE - September 2021 - Haberdashers schools have now confirmed that they are removing the Aske part of their name, as well as dropping their archaic motto of 'serve and obey'. The New Cross school will 'seek to re-purpose the statue of Aske at Hatcham College... and aim to contextualise it in a way that ensures alignment with the Trust’s values and longer-term educational objectives' - see Haberdashers schools statement on outcome of consultation. As Reclaim EC1 notes, it is unclear whether masonic lodges historically associated with the schools will be making similar changes and it appears that the Aske charity administered by the Haberdashers Company will also be retaining its name. See also Sanjit Chudha's post on this - Sanjit did some of the early work on this, including researching and editing Aske's wikipedia entry and lobbying the school] 

The Haberdashers' Aske's school in New Cross is reported to be considering the implications of the links between Robert Aske (after whom the school is named) and slavery, with press coverage suggesting that a change of name is being considered. A statement issued by the school's sponsor, the Haberdashers Company, states:

'The Haberdashers’ Company and its Schools in Elstree and South London have become aware that Robert Aske was a shareholder in the Royal African Company (RAC).  All are clear that the role of the RAC in the slave trade was deplorable and sits in stark contrast with the values which underpin the activities and philosophy of the Company, its schools and beneficiaries today.  The schools are already engaged in comprehensive reviews of culture, values and their brands and this matter will be included.  The outcome of these fully consultative deliberations, including the future use of the Aske name, will be communicated when conclusions are reached and decisions made.  The Haberdashers’ Company is proud of its ethos of benevolence, fellowship and inclusion, and the diverse nature of its membership'.

I have been looking into slavery and the New Cross area for a while,  now seems a good time to summarise some of what we know - or ought to know.

Haberdashers and slavery

The Haberdashers' schools in South London and elsewhere have their origins in the Haberdashers' Aske's charity, established with funds bequeathed by Robert Aske (1619-1689) and managed by the Haberdashers company, one of the City of London livery companies.

The current Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College (as it is now known) was built on Pepys Road in New Cross in 1875 expanding on to a second site in Jerningham Road in 1889. The Haberdashers Company owned most of the land in the New Cross area at this point. A 19th century statue of Robert Aske stands in the forecourt of the school's Pepys Road site.

It is now well established that Robert Aske was one of the early investors in the Royal African Company, holding £500 of stock. According to historian William Pettigrew, the RAC 'shipped more enslaved African women, men and children to the Americas than any other single institution during the entire period of the transatlantic slave trade' (Freedom's Debt: The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672-1752, 2013) including more than 150,000 slaves forcibly transported to the British Caribbean.

Aske was neither the first nor last member of the Haberdashers' Company to invest in slaving. For instance William Garrard (1507-1571), sometime Lord Mayor of London, helped develop the slave trade by funding the early slaving voyages of John Hawkins.

A contemporary of Aske's, Jeremy Sambrooke (died 1704) was a director of the Royal African Company as well as a member of the Haberdashers Company. In the same period at least two masters of the Haberdashers Company were also directors of the RAC:  John Lawrence (died 1692) holding £1,600 of stock and Arthur Ingram (1617-1681) holding £1500 of stock.  Both were also directors of the East India Company which was likewise involved in slavery in this period as well as beginning its colonial expansion in India which the Company was eventually to rule (see more at Reclaim EC1 on slavery and the City of London).

The Haberdashers' Company was also involved with the early 17th century Ulster Plantation, whereby land confiscated by the Crown from its Irish owners was given to City Livery Companies. Their mission was to clear Irish catholic tenants and replace them with English and Scottish protestant settlers who it was hoped could be relied upon to be loyal to the Crown - paving the way for centuries of sectarian conflict.

In short an honest assessment of the links between the Haberdashers Company, slavery and colonialism would have to look a lot wider than the technical details of Robert Aske's share holding in the Royal African Company.

Jonathan Lucas

A more recent local slaver was Jonathan Lucas II, who owned slave plantations and hundreds of slaves in South Carolina, where his father (also Jonathan Lucas) had become wealthy through his rice mill business.  'Lucas and his family were at the centre of Charleston's cosmopolitan society'  but following the suppression of a planned slave uprising there in 1822, 'Jonathan II settled his family at Hatcham Grove House in New Cross, where the family lived from 1824 to 1834' (R. Williams III & A.L. Lofton, Rice to Ruin: The Jonathan Lucas Family in South Carolina, 1783-1929). This was a mansion in its own grounds situated between what is now Erlanger Road and Pepys Road at the bottom of Telegraph Hill.  

Hatcham Grove House, sometime home of the Charleston slave plantation owner Jonathan Lucas. In the 1850s it became a school for the children of Warehousemen and Clerks 

Anti-slavery 

It is sometimes argued that it is anachronistic to criticise those involved in slavery in the past, on the grounds that we are applying modern moral standards to different times. The implication is that nobody knew that slavery was wrong at the time.

In fact there were opponents of slavery from very early on - not least the slaves themselves of course! Deptford's John Evelyn, also connected to the slave trade, mentions a planned slave revolt in Barbados in his diary for 1692. He also discusses the ethical question of whether slaves should be baptised, something opposed by many slave masters as they feared even this recognition of their captives' humanity.

The long opposition to slavery is documented in a book largely written in New Cross more than 200 years ago. The History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade (1808) was written by the slavery abolitionist Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), much of it while staying as a guest of the Hardcastle family at  Hatcham House in New Cross (grounds bordered by what is now Hatcham Park Road). Clarkson was one of the founders of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787, and among other things had travelled to Paris after the French Revolution in an effort to persuade France to abolish slavery. Clarkson is unsparing in documenting the cruelties of slavery and denouncing 'the oppressors of the African race'. He also traces the history of opposition to slavery right back to the start of the slave trade in the 16th century. Among the arguments he quotes is an 18th century text by Humphry Primatt: 'It has pleased God to cover some men with white skins and others with black; but as there is neither merit nor demerit in complexion, the white man, notwithstanding the barbarity of custom and prejudice, can have no right by virtue of his colour to enslave and tyrannize over the black man'. Anti-racism was not invented in the 20th century!

There is a plaque on the Haberdashers' school site in Jerningham Road to the poet Robert Browning, whose family home was on the grounds of what later became the school. Browning's father, who lived there, had once been sent to St Kitts to manage a family owned plantation with slaves, though apparently he returned home unhappy with the cruelty of the plantation system (see Browning and Slavery).

The 'Black Lives Matter' movement has highlighted some of these historic connections and its supporters have been accused of wanting to rewrite history. But much of the history of slavery and its role in British society has never been written in the first place. 

Still at least in New Cross the statue of Olaudah Equiano - once forced back into slavery in Deptford - stares across Telegraph Hill Park on the other side of which stands the statue of Robert Aske. As to which of these two should be honoured by children in a 21st century multi-cultural South London school I leave that to you to judge.

Of course there's a whole lot more to be said about slavery and South London, here's a few previous pieces: 

Paul Hendrich on the statues on Deptford Town Hall in New Cross

Deptford's Runaway Slaves

'South London and Negro Emancipation' - 1863 anti-Slavery meeting at the Elephant & Castle

Edit September 2021 - an earlier version of this post suggested that the Jonathan Lucas named above was connected to the Lucas family who developed the Deptford New Town/St John's area of Lewisham and after whom Lucas Street SE8 and Lucas Vale Primary School are named. This claim is repeated in a number of publications and online sources, but further research has not substantiated this connection. Unless further evidence is found it would appear that there were two separate wealthy Lucas families living locally in the 19th century. However it does get very confusing trying to separate them in the historical record! 

Virginia Woolf - A Dog's view of London (& Robert Browning of New Cross)

One of Virginia Woolf's lesser known works is Flush (1933), a biography of Eizabeth Barrett's spaniel. It's partly a whimsical parody of Victorian biography, but it does include a dog's eye (or rather dog's nose) perspective of London:

'For the first time he heard his nails click upon the hard paving stones of London. For the first time the whole battery of a London street on a hot summers day assaulted his senses. He smelt the swooning smells that lie in the gutters; the bitter smells that corrode iron railings; the fuming, heady smells that rise from basements - smells more complex, corrupt, violently contrasted and compounded than any he had smelt in the fields near Reading; smells that lay far behind the range of the human nose'.

The dog is stolen and a ransom demanded, leading to a disagreement between Barrett and Robert Browning about how to respond: 'What would Mr Browning had done if the banditti had stolen her: had her in their power; threatened to cut off her ears  and send them by post to New Cross?'

The reference to New Cross comes from the fact that the poet Robert Browning was living in New Cross at the time he and Elizabeth Barrett exchanged romantic letters prior to their marriage and elopement to Italy in 1846. A plaque on Haberdashers' Aske's school at the bottom of Jerningham Road is near to the site of  Browning's 'Telegraph Cottage'.

photo from London Remembers

See previously: Virginia Woolf and the Elephant and Castle

History Corner: New Cross Gate Cutting

A fascinating tour of London Wildlife Trust's New Cross Gate Cutting/Brockley nature reserve last weekend in the company of New Cross Commoners, with volunteer warden Steve Cleall giving us an insight into the site's history and wildlife.

The reserve, situated alongside the railway line with its entrance on Vesta Road SE4, is a great slice of wild London just along the track from New Cross Gate station.  One thing that struck me was how much of what we regard as simply a natural environment is in fact the result of centuries of interaction between human beings, other species and the land.

top path through the woods

The very landscape of the railway cutting was largely dug out by hand by navvies building the route of the Croydon canal and then the railway in the nineteenth century (Karl Marx mentions the terrible working conditions of navvies on the Lewisham-Tunbridge Wells line in Capital). The woodland itself only started to grow after the Second World War, when the site stopped being used for allotments (another allotments site survives of course on the opposite bank of the railway cutting).

The Croydon railroad under construction in 1839, as seen from New Cross. In the distance on the right, workers can be seen on the site of what is now the nature reserve. Incidentally, the house on the right may be Telegraph Cottage, home of the poet Robert Browning in the 1840s.

Detail from above painting showing navvies at work, shaping the landscape. .

Prior to the allotments and indeed prior to the railway, most of the site would have been used for farming. A water trough still stands in the woods which is believed to date back to that period in the 19th century.

Water trough

The soil of the site is acidic as a result of numerous fragments of red brick left over from the manufacture of bricks locally and their use in the building of the area. This favours the growth of some plants and trees.

Red brick fragments on the pathway

While centuries past the area was covered by the Great North Wood which stretched down to Croydon, the oldest tree on the site is probably only about a hundred years old - this sycamore at the furthest point on the lower path. 

The oldest tree in the nature reserve

This human impact on woodland is not new. As the historian Peter Linebaugh notes, even in the days when much of England was covered in woodland, it was extensively shaped by our ancestors: 'Old trees are the result not of the wildwood (of the Ice Age thirteen millennia earlier) but of wooded pasture. The wooded pasture is a human creation, through centuries of accumulated woodsmanship', including the coppicing and pollarding of trees to encourage more growth. As well as grazing their animals amongst the trees, people relied on wood for fuel and building materials: 'Whole towns were timberframed: the strut and beam of cottages, the curved wooden rafters, the oak benches of worship. Then wheels, handles, bowls, tables, stools, spoons, toys, and other implements were all made of wood. Wood was the source of energy'. That is why the struggle to retain common rights of access to the woods was so bitterly fought during centuries of enclosure (Peter Linebaugh, The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All, 2008).

Today keeping the New Cross Gate Cutting site as a diverse wildlife habitat also requires ongoing human effort - without it a few species would tend to dominate, particularly some of those introduced by humans from other parts of the world in the past. Volunteers meet on the second Saturday of every month to work on the site (details here), and these are also the only days when the site is open to the public. If you've never been for a wander around, you definitely should.

At a time of general pessimism about humans and the natural world, the nature reserve shows not only that 'nature' is more robust than people imagine (taking only a few decades to re-establish woodland) but that as part of nature, human beings can play a constructive role in co-creating the natural landscape.