interesting facts about ED

[sillywoman]

Can anyone help? My daughter has to come up with a list of interesting facts about ED for her citizenship homework (The Charter). All I can remember is Enid Blyton and the Roman fort. There must be more . . . Any facts gratefully received. Thanks SW.

[Rolo Tomasi]

Wikipedia.

[Siduhe]

Everyone will use wikipedia though, non?

There's still a bit of the Great North Wood at the very top end of East Dulwich (actually, probably mostly in Sydenham, but starts in ED). Misleadingly named, the Great North Wood was actually a huge oak forest in what is now South London - also known as the Kings Wood. Oliver Cronwell seized ownership of it after the English Civil War, and there's a disused track/tunnel which runs through the wood where trains once ran from Peckham to Crystal Palace.

Most of this is courtesy of this forum (Sean in particular I think?) but I've read it elsewhere too.

[sillywoman]

Has anyone got any facts? Even one would be great. She's really desperate. Please reply. Thanks SW

[Siduhe]

Also, some of East Dulwich is on the Charles Booth poverty maps. You could maybe show that somewhere which is now very chi-chi used to be marked as a slum in Edwardian/Victorian times...

http://booth.lse.ac.uk/cgi-bin/do.pl?sub=view_booth_and_barth&m.l=0&m.d.l=0&m.p.x=10366&m.p.y=11676&m.p.w=500&m.p.h=309&m.p.l=0&m.p.p.l=0&m.t.w=128&m.t.h=80&b.p.x=17968&b.p.y=18012&b.p.w=500&b.p.h=309&b.p.l=1&m.v.x=353&m.v.y=17

[lozzyloz]

There's a Bronze Age Burial mound near the top (Library End) of Lordship Lane.

[macroban]

There is no Roman Fort.

The is no Bronze Age burial mound.

There are data here. [use the right-hand search box]

[Muttley]

John Beasley's book about East Dulwich has all the facts you could ever need. Should be a copy in the library or Chener Books. It was also serialised in SE22 magazine if you can find any back issues.

To get you started, how about the history of doodlebugs that landed on East Dulwich. Lots of references on the web - see the separate thread on this topic.

[flong]

Pissaro knocked around locally, and painted the now defunct Lordship Lane station (on canvas, that is - he didn't apply a coat of Sandtex to the ticket office). Walk about 200 yards up Cox's Walk from the Harvester and you can still stand on the bridge from which he painted it.

[Incitatus]

The birth rate in East Dulwich is almost twice the national average.

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

I've heard the rumour that Goose Green is on top of a plague pit, but I don't know how true this is.

[sillywoman]

No Roman Fort, no burial mound - Oh no, all my romantic illusions shattered! Macroban can you expand a little? I thought the fort was indisputable (hadn't heard of the burial mound TBH). Where d'you get your info?

SW

[macroban]

I get the impression that some of the usual suspects are trying to subvert a child's homework. Not nice.

Each year the London Archaeologist (magazine) does an annual supplement of London fieldwork reports. The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies publishes Britannia once a year which also contains fieldwork reports. Over the last 40 years there has been next to no evidence of any local Roman archaeology this side of the Old Kent Road. Earlier works of synthesis dating before 1970 also have no mention of a Roman fort in this area. The topography of the area and the known distribution of Claudian forts in South East England indicate that an undiscovered Roman fort is unlikely.

One couldn't prove there is no Roman fort without excavating the whole of East Dulwich, but if someone says there is one they should be able to adduce some evidence.

[lozzyloz]

Slashed Trees & Bodies

Most of those woods were cleared by settling tribes -evidence on the Hill led to the discovery of a Bronze-age burial mound (built around 4,000 years ago, and visible until the 1950s).

Click on the map

[macroban]

Quite amusing! Now is it an iron-age or a bronze-age burial mound? The map also shows the site of a Roman fort.

Who is responsible for propagating this stuff?

[SeanMacGabhann]

Bit of a scattergun approach that one macroban - name names

[Keef]

Maybe there is some confusion about the burial mound thing.

Urban Myth has always suggested (incorrectly) that Hornimans Triangle (the bit across the road from the gardens where the little playground is with the sadly empty paddling pool) was a plague burial pit. Interesting thread about it here.

Perhaps this other burial mound is a different thing.

I like the history of honor oak, SEE HERE.

Oak of Honor Hill also known as One Tree Hill is where Elizabeth 1 picnicked with Sir Richard Bulkeley of Beaumaris in the Lewisham area on May Day in 1602 and it is reliably believed that it was by an oak tree on the summit of this hill. The tree became known as the Oak of Honor. In 1896 the open space was enclosed to form an extension to a golf club, but a campaign involving demonstrations and rioting led to its acquisition by Camberwell Borough Council as public open space in 1905.

[*Bob*]

At the archaeologists press conference:

"From this tiny piece of flint, discovered after a fifteen week dig" (holds up for camera) "we have deduced that the peoples who lived here ten thousand years ago probably lived like this" (shows picture of village, clothed people, dogs running, fire burning, crops being sown, dancing round campfires, meat roasting, babies being swaddled..)

[macroban]

Oh *Bob* are you misled so easily?

It could be that the only archaeological fact of interest to the East Dulwich Forum is that man invented beer before he invented the wheel.

[LostThePlot]

Bon Scott, singer of AC/DC died in East Dulwich after a night on the Pop. (Overhill, or Underhill road, one of the two*) His death lead to the band releasing Back in Black, with Geordie boy Brian Johnson on vocal, and so producing one of their most widely acclaimed albums. Any male teacher in their 40's will be impressed by this, and likely make a pilgrimage.

Eric

* It's been mentioned on here before, but can't find it in the search...annoyingly

[*Bob*]

Not me, Macroban.

I've done my service in the field of archaeological research, and I can exclusively reveal that it mostly boils down to dreadocks, marijuana, listening to The Levellers - and 99.9% guesswork based on 0.1% evidence.

[Keef]

On February 19, 1980, Bon Scott passed out after a night of heavy drinking in a London club called MusicMachine (better known as Camden Palace and currently the KOKO), and was left to sleep in a car owned by an acquaintance named Alistair Kinnear, at 67 Overhill Road in East Dulwich, South London. The following afternoon, after Kinnear had found Scott lifeless and alerted authorities, Scott was rushed to King's College Hospital in Camberwell, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Although common folklore claims that pulmonary aspiration of vomit or drugs were the cause of Scott's death, the official cause was listed as "acute alcohol poisoning" and "death by misadventure.

[Incitatus]

Whats always saddened me about Bon Scott's death is that it was in the back of stationary Renault 5, just not right is it?

[jim_the_chin]

is it me or has this homework probably been set so kids can learn how to research things? Not getting your mum to ask people on a forum to do the leg work? Or does that count as research?

[Cassius]

jim_the_chin Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> is it me or has this homework probably been set so

> kids can learn how to research things? Not

> getting your mum to ask people on a forum to do

> the leg work? Or does that count as research?

You beat me to it...