Southwark Woods Day

[henryb]

THIS SUNDAY 21ST JUNE IS SOUTHWARK WOODS DAY!

All come!

11-12pm: Family Honey and Bug Hunt, Camberwell Old Cemetery

12-1pm: Community March and Picnic from Camberwell Old to New Cemetery, to celebrate these beautiful wild woods and the hundreds of thousands buried here, and protest their destruction by Southwark Council.

2-4pm: FREE Writing the Woods Workshop with author Claire Collison, Camberwell Old Cemetery. Book your free place: [email protected]

More info: http://savesouthwarkwoods.org.uk/southwark-woods-day/4589650280

[dbboy]

There are no woods in Camberwell Old Cemetery, you'll find it is an area of graves over grown with trees.

[henryb]

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/wood

wood - an area of land, smaller than a forest, that is covered with growing trees.

Looks like a wood to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b76wj7BO8yI

[DaveR]

I also think it is deceptive to use the phrase "Southwark Woods" in respect of land that is clearly a cemetery, and has a name. Plus, if you have a picnic while marching from one place to another you will probably make a terrible mess, and end up with indigestion.

Down with this sort of thing!

[Penguin68]

But then see also:-

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/scrubland

Where artifacts (graves and memorials) are overgrown this is far more scrub than wood.

[dbboy]

No it is not a wood, it is an area of graves that has been over green by trees, shrubs and weeds that you wish to describe as woods, when it clearly anything but.

Camberwell Old Cemetery is a place to bury our dead relatives, friends or acquaintances, pay ones respect to them, visit relatives graves to remember them in peace and solitude, it is NOT a place for picnics or jogging or lying about in or dog walking all of which I have witnessed (well apart from picnic's). It is not and never has been Southwark Woods, it is Camberwell Old Cemetery. Cemeteries have a purpose and that is to bury the dead.

If you want woods can I suggest you go to the Great North Woods behind Sydenham Hill, it can clearly be seen from the Underhill Road/Langton Rise junction, or if you want greenery can I also suggest that you go and walk through Brenchley Gardens, over One Tree Hill, through Peckham Rye Park and the Common and if that is not enough greenery to take in, you can also go to Horniman Gardens and across from the museum to Hornimans Park like generations of residents have over the years. Don't try to make something which it is not.

We are spoilt for green spaces around SE22 and SE23 so go out and enjoy the space that already exist, but please do not be disrespectful to all those buried in Camberwell Old Cemetery with this campaign to make the cemetery into something which it is not.

[nxjen]

dbboy - Well said

[Rolo Tomasi]

dbboy - Well said

[Penguin68]

When the cemeteries were built (in the mid nineteenth century) they were built on pastoral land bought from local farmers; this land has not been wooded (if it ever was)since the earliest middle ages. What has gown up over the (poorly looked after) memorials is the exact equivalent of growth in bomb sites - where left for many years before being developed. As has been said, above, there are a plethora of green and wooded spaces around us, which are planned and tended as such. Enjoy those. I am concerned where screening growth around the boundaries has been (and will be) cut back - but this is about aesthetics, not some 'green' agenda. There are better and more valid causes to expend effort on.

I love walking through the cemetery, always discovering new memorials which I can't believe I hadn't seen before, but it is a contemplative, not a recreational space, and always planned such.

[Otta]

Bravo dbboy. We have amazing woods around here, a cemetery is not a leisure spot. No problem with people walking around it, but it's not a bloody picnic destination.

[Sue]

Do you have permission to hold these events in the cemetery?

I know Nunhead Cemetery has occasional open days, run by the Friends of Nunhead Cemetery.

http://www.fonc.org.uk/2015-open-day.html

Are you a similar group? Because as pointed out above, these are cemeteries, not woods - ie places where people are buried.

[Mustard]

I think it's ok to have a picnic if you have come to visit a relative or friend's grave, but not to call for hundreds of people to go and hang out there.

[Jeremy]

I think walking/jogging/dogs are all fine, and in no way disrespectful. But yeah... not so sure about picnics and childrens activities.

[edborders]

I understand totally and it sounds like too much fun for a cemetery.

But what the group is trying to do is highlight that Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries have some of the same beautiful areas that are in Nunhead Cemetery. We have grown to love Nunhead cemetery for its ancient monuments and its wildness. Why can't we have more of the same? Nunhead has it open day and no one says "boo".

Here is a video of the 10 acres that are most threatened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b76wj7BO8yI

But that is not all.

The council plan (after they cut down most of the trees and most of the bushes and wildflowers)to dig up (and or cover over) hundreds of gravestones, and dig up the bones of potentially tens of thousands of poor people (maybe 100 of thousands of poor people. Yes, most of the area, as far as i know, are paupers graves. The council want to rebury the bones of poor people and sell plots to rich people from out of the borough without a monument to them, without a ceremony, without any respect at all for those people and their descendants.

It sounds like the Southwark Woods Day is all a lark but we are very very scared.

The best way to respect the dead, as I see it, is by calling time on creation of "new" burial space, as 9 of the 13 boroughs in inner London have done. The best way to respect the dead already there, the living who want to visit their loved ones, and the rest of us who want to see history and experience wildness in our borough is by leaving the cemeteries alone.

I am Lewis Schaffer, I have lived in East Dulwich and Nunhead for 15 years and now live in Nunhead. I love this place, as you do. You know me. I am your crazy New York neighbour.

Here is a petition, if you feel you would like to preserve the historic monuments, respect the dead already buried there and have a wild place preserved. https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/save-southwark-woods

[Loz]

edborders Wrote:

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> The council want to rebury the bones of poor people and sell plots to rich people from out of the borough

> without a monument to them, without a ceremony, without any respect at all for those people and

> their descendants.

Is there any evidence for this, or is this just Occupy-style hyperbole?

[nxjen]

And are you able to provide sources to back up your claim that most of the graves are paupers' graves?

[edborders]

The Forest Hill Society says that 300,000 people are interred in COC.

Wherever you look and there is not monument or headstone it doesn't mean there is no one buried there. It means there are probably thousands buried there. People without even a marker to show where they are buried. So poor they couldn't afford a marker.

Hundreds of thousands of people who died in poverty and were buried in mass graves are now about to be treated badly by the council.

We are really scared that people seem to be unaware of what the council is doing digging up the old graves.

You, and almost everyone we talk to, care about the old graves and the people buried there. We care about that too.

As for the council selling off the graves spaces to rich people, the council themselves say about 10% of sales are to out of borough people and the council is charging three times as much as residents.

There is more info here: http://www.savesouthwarkwoods.org.uk/home/4588391435

And come to the walk Sunday and tell us what you think.

Lewis Schaffer with two sons at Harris Boys, East Dulwich. They were previously at Fairlawn School.

[edhistory]

edborders Wrote:

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

> The Forest Hill Society says that 300,000 people

> are interred in COC.

Where is the evidence to support this assertion?

John K

[edborders]

Edhistory - It's not?

[Sue]

Not what??

[Otta]

Mustard Wrote:

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

> I think it's ok to have a picnic if you have come

> to visit a relative or friend's grave, but not to

> call for hundreds of people to go and hang out

> there.

Yeah fine to have a picnic whilst spending some time at a grave. But not just for an outing. IMO

[Penguin68]

I know that Wikipedia (via 'Save Honor Oak Recreation Park) is claiming 300k burials - and that just between 1856 and 1984) - but if we assume 140 burial years to date (and that only gives 20 years or so when burials stopped before re-starting, and I think that was actually a longer hiatus) then this is burying at a rate of over 2000 a year (in the first 30 years the run-rate was only 1000 a year, at a time of higher mortality, again according to Wiki) - or over 5 burials a day, seven days a week. An initial rate of 1000 a year for the first 30 years of operation, when mortality rates were higher, suggests a huge increase in annual burials after 1886 when death rates were falling to reach the claimed 300k. And of course many more than 2000 burials a year at some point. By 1927 the New Cemetery was operating - again suggesting that to get to 300k burials there must have been an awful lot of dying activity locally, particularly as the same source suggests that between 1939 and 1984 91k cremations had taken place in the New Cemetery.

These figures do not stack-up (and neither will the claimed bodies to make up the numbers). Paupers graves, out of interest, by the mid 19th century were not 'mass graves' - they were unmarked and there might be a number of coffins in each grave (stacked)- but their positions were recorded. The number of quite large monuments don't suggest huge amounts of room for unmarked paupers graves.

And 'out of area' burials are often a function of people returning to be buried in or close to family plots, or because they had a past connection with the area (or even because that's where their relatives now live, who wish to tend the grave.

This is a graveyard, not a recreation park. Treating monuments and past burials with respect is something which could be demanded - wanting to change its use to a picnic area isn't. It's shameful that it should be allowed to become so overgrown and dilapidated, which should be remedied, not exacerbated.

[Jeremy]

Big difference with Nunhead Cemetery. Nobody has been buried at Nunhead in a long long time, it is primarily of historical and natural interest. Camberwell New Cemetery (and maybe the Old Cemetery too?) still have burials.

[Penguin68]

Camberwell New Cemetery (and maybe the Old Cemetery too?) still have burials.

They started reburying in Camberwell Old Cemetery about 5-10 years ago after quite a long break (can't remember, but there was a long period when I first moved to the area, 27 years ago, when there were no burials), - there are now about 4 a week (at a guess) - they built up a waterlogged section along Langton Rise and Wood Vale two years ago to allow burials there.

[James Barber]

The problem is Southwark Council and it predecessor councils haven't set-up an endowment or sinking fund to maintain these places. New burials fund the very limited poor up keep.

I understand private burial places such as Kemnal Park have. The difference in landscaping and maintenance standards is marked. The proposals to Camberwell new and old cemeteries are hugely expensive. They wont address the low standards of maintenance. The price per plot is such that I believe it cheaper for Southwark, and cheaper in the end for our residents whose families wish to bury someone, to buy a large number of plots from a private provider such as Kemnal Park.

Southwark also needs to resolve how to fund these places maintenance to a good standard into perpetuity. The proposed capital spends to provide new plots at Camberwell old and new cemeteries could fund this.

NB. I should make it clear I have a number of deceased relatives in all the Camberwell old and new and Nunhead cemeteries.