Brockley Society Blog

Shopfronts and Signage

Brockley Society Open Meeting: Tuesday 14 April 2015, 7.30pm, Brockley Social Club, 240 Brockley Road, SE4 2SU. We are campaigning to improve the look of Brockley’s shopfronts and signs. We would like Lewisham Way, Brockley Cross and Brockley Road to look inviting, encouraging all who pass through to shop there. Click here to download a copy of the  Brockley Society’s Shop Front Design Guide exploring how better design and a few subtle changes can improve the appearance and ambience of Brockley.

Brockley Society Tree Committee Event

Sunday 22 March 2015, 11.30am-12.30pm, The Talbot pub 2 Tyrwhitt Road, SE4 1QG, just in from Lewisham Way. Following the success of our first event in November 2014, the Tree Committee is once again hoping to meet anyone who wants to see new street trees in Brockley.  At the same time we are launching our commemorative tree scheme. Tea/coffee and cakes provided. http://brockleystreettrees.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/calling-all-tree-wardens.html

Breakspears Mews Community Garden Open Day

Spring Open Day, Saturday 21 March 2015, 1-4pm including AGM 2-2.30pm Come and enjoy the garden and find out how to become involved Access: Breakspears Mews, Ashby Road, SE4 1UW or r/0 St Peter’s Court, 29-31 Wickham Road, SE4 1NE All welcome!

BMCG leeks ready to be planted

Front Garden Sale September 2014

Coordinated Brockley Front Garden Sale Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 September, 11am – 4pm Nearly 100 addresses taking part. Wander from one to the other seeking bargains – from bric à brac to luxury goods!  

Brockley’s typhoon collections

Brockley response to a resident’s appeal for the Philippines typhoon. If you contributed you may recognise some toys. A further report on how the cash raised by Barbara Wiggins generous sale is being used for construction.

BMCG Harvest time!

Breakspears Mews Community Garden AGM, Saturday 10 May 2014, 2-2.30pm

  Breakspears Mews Community Garden AGM, Saturday 10 May 2014, 2-2.30pm Breakspears Mews Community Garden Access: Ashby Road, SE4 1PY or r/o St Peter’s Court, 29-31 Wickham Rd, SE4 1NE ALL WELCOME! Come and enjoy the garden and find out how to become involved. Open from 1pm and after the AGM. More information:

Cartoons and visual satire – the last 32,000 years – Martin Rowson – Monday 2 June, 8pm

Cartoons and visual satire – the last 32,000 years – Martin Rowson – Monday 2 June, 8pm Martin Rowson, cartoonist for the Guardian and other publications, Lewisham resident since 1985, will give an illustrated talk on the long history of satire. Brockley Social Club, 240 Brockley Road, SE4 2SU This event is part of the Brockley Max Festival http://brockleymax.co.uk

Build the Lenox – Julian Kingston – Thursday 5 June, 8pm

Build the Lenox – Julian Kingston – Thursday 5 June, 8pm Hear about this exciting project to build a 17th-century warship at Convoys Wharf, the site of King Henry VIII’s Royal Dockyard at Deptford. www.buildthelenox.org St John’s Church, Lewisham Way, cnr St John’s Vale, London SE8 4EA This event is part of the Brockley Max Festival http://brockleymax.co.uk

Trees in the City – a spring conference

Trees in the City – a Spring conference to be hosted by the Brockley Society Date:  Saturday 26th April 2014, 10am-3pm Venue:  LeSoCo (formerly Lewisham College), Lewisham Way, SE4 1UT   This FREE conference aims to promote awareness of the many threats to urban trees, and to encourage the maintenance of old ones and the planting of appropriate new ones, whether in streets, parks or gardens. We are lining up exciting speakers to inspire and inform! More details here.                                                                       Photo: Johnathan Hall     Brockley Society’s tree wardens ran a Christmas Hamper Prize Draw at Brockley Market on Lewisham Way to raise funds for Brockley street trees and to talk to people about the importance of trees. A splendid 205.07 was raised and Ian, with pink ticket No.51, walked away with the magnificent hamper. Our street trees are an incredibly valuable feature of our local environment. Brockley would not be […]

BMCG leeks ready to be planted

Breakspears Mews Community Garden

Breakspears Mews Community Garden   Annual General Meeting Saturday 10 May 2014, 2-2.30pm at Breakspears Mews Community Garden Access: Ashby Road, SE4 1PY or r/o St Peter’s Court, 29-31 Wickham Rd, SE4 1NE ALL WELCOME! Come and enjoy the garden and find out how to become involved. Open from 1pm and after the AGM.  More information:    

Significant changes ahead at 180 Brockley Road

  The narrow site at 180 Brockley Road has been home to Brockley Motors since 1960. Prior to that it was the site of the Ritz, a cinema open between 1913 and 1954 under various names including the Brockley Picture House, the Giralda and the Palladium. The site is currently the subject of a major planning application to redevelop. New proposals will create 25 new apartments, with units for shops or cafes on the ground floor facing Brockley Road. We think that the developer, McDonald Egan, and his architect have consulted well with local people including groups such as the Brockley Society and Brockley Cross Action Group. They have listened well, and come up with a scheme that could work for this site. The new retail units should offer Brockleys shopping centre a chance to expand. The design is contemporary but sympathetic, and uses high quality materials and brickwork. In […]

Midwinter Warmer for Brockley’s seniors, Saturday 8 February 2014

Every year we organise a free event at Brockley Social Club, 240 Brockley Road, SE4 1QB. All Brockley’s seniors are welcome! Come and help on the day or bring cake and raffle prize donations.   At the 2013 event: Juliet and little dog Pippa from Pets as Therapy warmed many hearts. Everyone went home with a free raffle prize. Christina from Balloon Blossoms decorated the room. Thanks also to: Brockley Social Club, Brockley Luncheon Club, Almancil Rotary Club, Taylor’s Food Wine and Lottery, Lewisham Pensioners Forum, thelpers on the day and those who donated cakes and raffle prizes.                                  

Hilly Fields Midsummer Fayre, Saturday 21 June 2014, 12 noon-5pm

This is the largest community event in Brockley, which has run every year since Brockley Society started in 1974. It is enjoyed by thousands, of all ages, from far and wide.   Stall information sheet available here Stall application form in Word here or as a pdf here Promote your business in the Fayre programme here   We will have over 150 stalls at the fayre selling a wide variety of goods including art, plants, clothes, bric-a-brac, crafts, vegetables, sweets.   We hope you will help us run the Fayre! It will be organised by Teams for specific aspects, each with a Team Captain, so you can volunteer for what you can manage. Some teams operate beforehand, others only on the day. The teams are listed here, with dates and numbers required: captain + team. Tell us if you want to be a captain or a team member: email   Fayre […]

Unfriendly Development at the Crown & Sceptre

  We think that Friendly Street is lovely. There is an incredibly well preserved set of early Victorian terraces on the west side of the road, which are wonderful and we also happen to think that our local public houses are treasures worth preserving. We were therefore very sad to see that a ‘not-so-friendly’ developer, who has been busy converting the Crown and Sceptre pub into flats, had started to remove the beautiful original tiles from the front of the building. Knowing that part of the planning consent for this development required the exterior of the building to remain as its existing appearance, we approached the foreman who informed us that the tiles had to be removed “otherwise it would still look like a pub!” The next day all of the tiles had gone completely.   To cut a long story short, and after a good deal of communication with […]

The Life and Times of a Brockley Dolls House

In autumn of last year, the Brockley Society received an interesting email from Anita Barry. She had been given a doll’s house by a friend which was made by her friend’s grandfather, Edward S. Hough a mechanical engineer from Brockley over a century ago. The model house is a depiction of 2 Adelaide Avenue where the family lived, which was destroyed during a V1 attack in 1944. The following is an extract of Anita’s journal of her project to restore the doll’s house and find out more about its history:   “When Brenda asked me if I would like to have the dolls house built by her Grandfather, it did not take me long to give her a positive answer. Feeling really honoured that she would trust me with this treasured possession, but also aware of the responsibility of acting as curator to the ageing model, I felt excited and […]

Brockley Is Getting Greener!

Good news on the local tree planting front. Transition Brockley teamed up with Brockley Cross Action Group and Brockley Society to put in a successful bid to the Local Assembly Fund for 6 trees to be planted, 4 in the new extended pavement along the Brockley Road opposite the Brockley Barge, one outside the Toad’s Mouth, and one at the corner outside the Sorting Office. Thanks to the funding, plans are underway for a winter planting of some mature trees with wide tree pits for extra underplanting. This effort should brighten up the surroundings, and of course, absorb CO2 along that stretch of Brockley Road. The Brockley Harvest group, a Transition Brockley initiative, has been picking apples and damsons at the request of fruit tree owners, but more pickers are needed to help harvest and process the huge abundance of fruit in Brockley which currently goes to waste. The Edible […]

Sybil Phoenix Honoured at Brockley Max

The Brockley Society contribution to the Brockley Max arts Festival this year was a screening of Loving Hands, a film about the life and times of local community leader Sybil Phoenix made by Brockley film makers Lucia Tambini and Kate Iles.   The film charts Sybil’s role as a pioneering member of the black community from her arrival in Brockley in the 1960s; setting up the Moonshot Youth Centre in New Cross, dealing with the violence of the National Front, acting as a conduit between the community and Lewisham Council and the police, and coping with the aftermath of the New Cross Fire in 1981. In parallel, the film explores Sybil’s extraordinary work as a foster mother to hundreds of Lewisham children throughout the 1960s and 70s. This culminated in the establishment of Marsha Phoenix House (in Tressillian Road), which continues to offer housing and educational support to young homeless […]

A Small Boy in Brockley: memories of living in Sprules Road

By David Lefever I lived in 67 Sprules Road from when I was born in 1943 until 1954 when my parents moved to Biggin Hill. My Mother and Father bought the house before the war; unusual for a working class couple from Peckham. I have been looking through my Fathers old letters and I believe it would have cost them around £500. My Aunt Daisy and Uncle Fred Wilson lived in the upper part of the house. When my parents moved, they bought it and continued to live there until the late 1960’s. They then followed my Father to Norfolk.   You entered 67 through a wooden gate. Next to the pavement was a low golden-private hedge to your left and three small, pleached lime trees. At sometime during the war, the iron fence between 67 and 69 had been taken away to be melted down for the “war effort”. […]