Contents (Click on any item to view)
Friends launch self guided walks booklet December 2007
New signage for the Roman remains December 2007
Fungus foray adds more species to the list December 2007
Disagreement over facilities on Charlton Way December 2007
Anti-slavery plaque unveiled in Greenwich Park September 2007
More on the Moore statue September 2007
Third Green flag now flying September 2007
The Dwarf Orchard is to be transferred to Greenwich Park January 2007
The 
Friends have launched a 20-page self guided walks booklet which focuses on the history, buildings and monuments in Greenwich Park. Until Greenwich Park: walking through history was published on 14 December 2007, there had been no publication available for visitors that provided a good map and interesting, manageable walks.
The new publication based on information provided by local historian Neil Rhind and charmingly illustrated by Peter Kent, is available for £1 from the Greenwich Park office, the Greenwich Tourist office and from Friends of Greenwich Park, c/o 2 Lock Chase, London SE3 9HA Tel; 020 8852 6158 (cheques made out to Friends of Greenwich Park).
The Friends are already finding a demand for copies as presents as well as souvenirs.
December 2007New, informative signage at the Roman remains in Greenwich Park which show what the temple thought to have been on the site might have looked like was installed in mid-December. The signage has been created by The Royal Parks from information provided by Harvey Sheldon from the Department of Archaeology at Birkbeck University of London, Friends of Greenwich Park, The Greenwich Heritage Centre and Channel 4’s Time Team who came to Greenwich in 1999. Funding has come from The Royal Parks and the Friends.
The new signage
was unveiled at a small ceremony at the Roman remains with special guests local author and creator of the ‘Falco’ Roman mystery stories, Lindsey Davis, and archaeology Harvey Sheldon from Birkbeck.
Lindsey Davis also gave the Friends’ 2008 annual lecture on Thursday 31 January titled The Romans: Turning Fact into Fiction. See next item for details. A follow-up visit to The Greenwich Heritage Centre to see finds from the discovery of the Roman site in the Park in 1902 has been arranged for the afternoon of Saturday 18 April 2008.
December 2007Local mycologist Anne Andrews led a fungus foray organised by the Friends Wildlife Group in late October 2007. Over the five years since the forays started, a total of 132 different species of fungi have been recorded, an amazing number for an area that is so well used and carefully tended. The 2007 foray added a couple of new ones and enough fungi were found to sustain the interest and enthusiasm of the keen-eyed group of people who attended.
December 2007Greenwich Park manager Derrick Spurr and the Friends want the now closed toilet block beside the Heath Keeper’s Lodge at the west end of Charlton Way to be refurbished for use by coach drivers parking there. As there are no facilities coach drivers use drinks bottles and leave them on the kerb. Greenwich Council says it has no money to refurbish the block so it must be demolished, a short sighted view in the opinion of Park management and the Friends.
Charging for coach parking and restricting how long they can stay could remove the need for additional parking space as well as off-setting the running costs for the facilities.
The Friends too want the Charlton Way toilets to be refurbished but are told that The Friends have been working with the Greenwich Society, the Blackheath Society and the Westcombe Society in pressing for improvements to be made to the area of the Heath immediately outside Blackheath Gate. Recommendations were made in 2003 in the important report Blackheath: the Next Fifty Years by Kim Wilkie Associates.
The 18 October meeting of the Blackheath Joint Working Party, a consultative and advisory group consisting of Greenwich and Lewisham councillors and council officers and representatives of local residents’ organisations, including an observer from Friends of Greenwich Park, agreed to urge the Councils to give priority to implementing further Kim Wilkie recommendations for the area.
These include preventing illegal parking of coaches and lorries on the south side of Charlton Way and in the stretch of Duke Humphrey Road outside the Blackheath Gate. The Friends continue to press for the rump of Duke Humphrey Road to be turned into a pedestrian and cycle path on the axis between the Park gates and All Saint’s Church, Blackheath to emphasise and improve the attractiveness of that entrance to the Park.
December 2007Greenwich MP Rt Hon Nick Raynsford unveiled a plaque on June 15, 2007 on the remains of Montague House, Greenwich Park to commemorate the 18th century anti-slavery campaigner Ignatius Sancho The plaque was funded by Friends of Greenwich Park as a contribution to the commemoration of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807.
Ignatius Sancho is thought to have been born on a slave ship bound from Guinea on the west coast of Africa to the West Indies around 1729. He mother died and his father committed suicide rather than live life as a slave. Brought by his master to England at the age of two and given to three sisters in Greenwich as a child slave, he was not well treated. Fortunately the Duke of Montagu met the little boy by chance, was impressed and gave him books to read. When the Duke died Sancho persuaded the Duchess to take him into her household in Montague House, where he stayed as butler until her death.
Sancho lived an exciting life after he left the Montagus, trying his hand at acting, composing with considerable success, running a grocery shop in Westminster, corresponding on slavery with influential author Laurence Sterne, being painted by Gainsborough and, as a property owner, was probably the first African to vote in a British election. His letters, published in 1782, two years after his death, secured his place in history as an extraordinary man who demonstrated to 18th century England that, against the general belief at the time, people from Africa were intelligent and humane.
September 2007The Friends campaign to ensure that the Henry Moore statue Knife Edge that has been in Greenwich Park since 1979 comes back after its six months on exhibition at Kew Gardens now looks promising.
A statement from David Michinson, head of collections and exhibitions at the Henry Moore Foundation says that it ‘has absolutely no intention to move the work away from Greenwich in the long term and is currently negotiating with DCMS to renew the loan agreement’.
September 2007Greenwich Park was awarded its third Green Flag in August. This official accolade from the Civic Trust is awarded to the country’s best parks and has to be won afresh each year. ‘The challenge is to demonstrate that we are not only maintaining standards but reaching still higher,’ comments Park manager, Derrick Spurr. ‘This year, with the help of the Friends Wildlife Group, we were able to show off the nearly finished Nature Trail behind the Secret Garden Wildlife Centre and the site of the Frog Pond that volunteers from Goldman Sachs’ Community Teamworks Programme came to work on in mid June.’
September 2007Greenwich Council agreed to the transfer of management of the Dwarf Orchard to Greenwich Park at a cabinet committee meeting on 15 January 2007. This is the culmination of some 30 years of campaigning to have the area returned to the Park by individuals, local organisations, The Royal Parks, Greenlands-in-Trust and Friends of Greenwich Park.
The Dwarf Orchard is behind the walls between Park Vista and the Children’s Playground and is nearly an acre (0.4ha) in size. Tradition has it that it was included when James I gifted Greenwich Park to his wife, Anne of Denmark, in the early 17th century. (In 1616 he also commissioned Inigo Jones to design the Queen’s House for her.) In the years since then the Dwarf Orchard has been owned by the old Royal Naval Hospital, then Greenwich Council. A vigorous campaign in the 1970s stopped proposals to build on the site.
Since 1980, Greenlands-in-Trust has used the Dwarf Orchard as an ecological and educational site.
Plans for the Dwarf Orchard are yet to be finalised but the expectation is that it will continue partly as a wildlife area and that community involvement will play an important part. One of the first needs will be for a detailed ecological survey of the site. The Friends of Greenwich Park have set aside a significant sum of money that will go someway towards the initial opening up of the site.
January 2007