Published in the Camberwell Quarterly

Elizabeth Borowiecka looks at the plans to develop the magistrates court

Proposals to develop the former Camberwell Magistrates Court by Zenith Land are out for consultation now, with a planning application expected by the end of the year.

The development proposed includes both commercial and residential uses: The basement and lower ground floors will have spaces for:

+ Gymnasium and group exercise rooms

+ Artist’s and music studios

+ Co-working spaces

+ Car parking for disabled users and car club

+ Bicycle parking

The ground floor is to be shared between co-working spaces, a public cafe and residential use. The upper floors will be solely residential.

It is proposed that the footprint of the building will remain the same, the extensions being upward only. The height of the central tower will increase from 31m to 47.2m above ground level, which represents between four and five additional stories, and the height of the peripheral blocks will increase by between two and three storeys

153 flats and maisonettes are proposed in total at a mixture of affordable and market prices. They will be built around a central light well, with rooftop terrace gardens for the use of the residents. Two and three-bedroom flats will be included to provide family accommodation, as well as studios and one bedroom flats.

The developer intends to use the existing building’s concrete frame as the main structural component, re-clad to suit the change of use. This will mean that 5,520 tonnes of embodied carbon dioxide will not be released into the atmosphere.

There are extensive plans for landscaping the areas around the building and on the roof terraces to create opportunities for play for children of all ages and for social gatherings.

The developer is inviting local interest in the proposals. Contact details: Telephone: 0203 174 2018

Email: camberwellmagistratescourt@whatyouthink.co.uk

A footnote: The 100m x 5m mural by the Polish artist Tadeusz Zielinski (1907 – 1993) has been removed from the court building for conservation. Part of it is available to view in London at the POKS Polish Cultural Centre.

THE TWO OF US

Illustration by Jane Moxham

Published in the Camberwell Quarterly

Mark Hampshire and Keith Stephenson, both 55, run Mini Moderns from their live-work unit in Empress Mews. The interior design brand is inspired by mid-century style and the products are stocked internationally. In their modernist living room (Robin Day sofa, Portmerion pottery, Marian Mahler fabric), they talk to Marie Staunton.

Mark

We grew up sixty miles apart in Yorkshire and met 30 years later working at Cato, one of the first branding agencies. Early on we realised that we had trodden the same paths as teenagers, which gave us a cultural shorthand. It only took two months before we officially became a couple.

As teenagers, a regular Saturday afternoon for both of us was jumble sales and charity shops. If you did not want to look like Simon Le Bon, you made your own style. Each generation looks back to the fashion of their parents’ youth. I used to raid my dad’s wardrobe. Re-runs of stylish mid-century shows such as The Prisoner and The Avengers on Channel 4 were a big influence.

We both went to university in Newcastle, had some of the same friends, but never met. We drank at the Strawberry with arty students, gays, lesbians and old men. I always used the left side of the central bar, Keith the right. I went to the club Rockshots on Thursdays; Keith went on Tuesdays.

After my English degree and a spell in TV, I became a designer / maker. I sold handmade mirrors and cushions to Heals and Galeries Lafayette, but could not make a living. But I learnt sales: how to approach retailers and fix a price. Keith has complementary skills in manufacturing and graphics.

Our creative process starts with a story. We add a mood (e.g. The Avengers). We both produce drafts. Keith does most of the final artwork and I work with him on pattern repeats and colourways.

I worked for another company while Keith was building our design business. But no creative director could get even my basic references. I said to Keith, “I cannot bear doing this job without your creative input.” So, we started Mini Moderns in 2006. Many of our design heroes are couples, such as Ray and Charles Eames, Lucienne and Robin Day

Friends with grown-up jobs, solicitors, psychiatrists are starting to retire. Not us. We have just outsourced our logistics to focus on creating Travelogue, a new collection based on our travels.

Keith

The day we met I was late for work. Ashamed, I sneaked up the back stairs. Mark spotted me. It was his first day and his desk was next to mine. Abigail’s Party had just been on the BBC, and I started quoting the lines. He laughed a lot. I thought this is going to be OK.

We worked well together on brands such as Johnny Walker, Pepsi and BA. Mark was a strategist but understood design. I was creative director, but understood what you had to do to sell.

The 90s were the age of beige, Kelly Hoppen and minimalism. We grew up with mid-century and pattern. Friends’ parents would give me old curtains in mid-century prints to cut up and make my own clothes, material that would be worth £500 a metre today.

When we studied at Newcastle it was seen as hard, angular, post-industrial and difficult. But people were obsessed with fashion and music. If you were up for a good time, you were in.

After my graphic design degree, I worked for major brands such as Red or Dead. But no professional relationship was as creative as the one with Mark. Soon after we met, Mark phoned me and recognised the Camberwell band Stereolab I was playing. We had both bought it for the cover design. The band were photographed on the Festival of Britain carpet at the Royal Festival Hall which later inspired our net and ball wallpaper.

I travelled a lot to Poland and Spain when I was developing the design business. Mark was away in Russia and Israel. This was not how we wanted to live our lives. Mini Moderns mean we can be together all the time.

Even on holiday we look for inspiration. We planned Mark’s birthday in Copenhagen around the Arne Jacobsen exhibition and our next US trip around the refurbishment of the old TWA terminal. Living and working together is stimulating and creative. We are not ones for grand romantic gestures. We live it every day.

Published in the Camberwell Quarterly

Myatt’s Fields, once all but derelict, is now the focus of an entire community, Robert Wainwright discovers

They’ve been waiting for Godot at Myatt’s Fields, or at least, waiting for someone to open the white wooden shutters of the three-storey Victorian townhouse at No. 14 Cormont Road. Boris Johnson and his then girlfriend Carrie Symonds bought the four-bedroom house, described as “a little unkempt but with plenty of charm and an abundance of character” back in July 2019, but it has been closed ever since, while the couple indulged and redecorated the more salubrious surrounds of No.10 Downing Street.

With his time in office due to end, the neighbours are eager (some not so eager) to see if Boris and his wife Carrie will actually put down roots in Camberwell, becoming the second British PM to live near Myatt’s Fields. John Major lived in Burton Road as a young man.

If Boris and Carrie arrive, Myatt’s Fields across the road will become an important part of their lives and of their two pre-school children, Wilfred and Romy. Even after London’s July heatwave, the park looks serene, filled with young parents and children splashing in the water, runners and dog walkers, sun-worshippers and teens playing football across the sun-dried expanse.

The Little Cat Café alongside the bandstand is doing a steady trade in morning coffee and pastries while a drum group provides background music to the customer chatter. In the evening the cafe switches to cocktails beneath the spreading trees, all against the sound of tennis balls being thwacked back and forth at the well-used courts.

It all paints a picture of community spirit alive and well. Hark back just over two decades and the story is vastly different. Tori Sherwin, who is now the development manager, was in the park with her baby daughter on a winter’s day in 1998, chatting with other local mums about its dire condition:

“The state of the playground in particular was terrible, so we, a group of women, thought we should do something about it. We started working together in a group that was representative of the area. My daughter is 24 now. That’s how long ago it was and how far we’ve come.”

Lottery funding helped rebuild and renew the park while group members reached out to engage older people, ethnic groups and families. Nowadays it is the volunteering and spirit of community that drives the project. There are 40 to 50 litter pickers, some working in structured groups and others simply finding space in their week to do their bit and keep the park pristine. Last year it was given a prestigious Green Flag Award.

Another 160 volunteers to do horticultural work alongside a small professional workforce, not only tending the garden beds but also the greenhouse which, remarkably, provided 45,000 seedlings last year free of charge to more than forty local schools and charities. “There’s a lot of intelligence about the way the park is managed,” said Tori. “We’ve made a switch to biodiversity and climate change resilience and are careful with water management.”

The list of activities seems endless: a gardening club, Friday Family Fun, Stay and Play, park markets, cooking classes, food hero workshops, early action partnerships, even poetry sessions. The park is home to the Lambeth Tigers junior football club and there are outdoor theatre events hosted by the nearby Longfield Hall.

Redevelopment plans are well advanced for the depot to provide a winter café and meeting rooms, not to mention the thousands who use it every day for recreation. The park is kept afloat financially by a mixture grant money, income and private fund-raising: “We try to keep the mix of park usage to 60 per cent community and 40 per cent private,” says operations manager Eliza Merchan, currently wrestling with finalising the park management plan for the next three years.

Wedding hire and football have formed the mainstay of park income in recent years: “The aim is to be self-sufficient because it’s getting harder and harder to attract grant money,” she says. “The challenge is to find that balance of a healthy income and maintain that balance of community use.”

Longfield Hall is at the southern end of the park. Opened in 1889, the same year as the park, it was described as “a most strangely beautiful place” by the Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman, a passionate defender of Victoria architecture. Will Ollard has been involved with the hall since the mid 1990s and has overseen an upsurge in community use in recent years: “We were very sleepy until around 2010 but now we have 1,200 people coming in here every week,” he says, noting that things are quieter during the summer holidays.

A quick scan of their online timetable shows it is filled with health and lifestyle classes such as boxing, pilates, yoga and meditation as well as wide selection of dance, from ballet and tap to Latin, Brazilian Capoeira and Japanese Butoh. There are circus and physical theatre workshops, LGBTQ+ cabaret performance – Drag Queens and Kings - and comedy.

“It’s not just elderly white people who use it,” said Will. “There is such a variety across ages and cultures and interests. We’ve recently had a brilliant day with the children from Michael Tippett School for children with complex needs down in Milkwood Road.”

As we sit discussing the months of activities ahead, a group of teens arrive to participate in “Play in a Week” which, as its names suggests, involves writing and performing a play from scratch in a week. “There could be three or 30 teenagers turn up on the day,” said Jess Alade, the centre’s youth programme manager, having a quick sandwich between the morning and afternoon sessions. Today it would be somewhere in between the two figures, among them a young disabled woman who arrives with her carer: “She loved it last time and wanted to come back,” the carer said as she left. “That’s the sort of buzz you get,” remarked Will.

Encouraging healthy living

It is late morning on a Tuesday. A diverse group of people – young mothers, a grandfather and a young guy with a backpack among them – gather outside the Myatt’s Fields North Community Centre. When the doors open, they are ushered in, one by one, to a temporary grocery store set up with crates of fresh fruit and vegetable and shelves of items such as tinned food, tea, soup and pasta.

This is a food pantry run by the charity Healthy Living Platform. It was set up in 2018 to encourage healthy and sustainable lifestyles. There are four pantries run with the help of 40 volunteers who live in Lambeth, attracting around 200 people each week who each pay £5 for a basket of fresh food and long-life products. On Thursdays it is at Moorlands Community Centre, Wednesdays at St Stephens Children’s Centre and Fridays at Liz Atkinson Children’s Centre.

The food offered is a combination of bought fresh fruit and veg from a wholesaler to cater for the more specific items. The rest is made up of donations from supermarkets, farms other food suppliers, : “We once had bottled coconut water from Harrods,” Pantry co-ordinator Carla Thomas laughs. “It just depends on what is available. No-one is turned away, even if they don’t have £5. Some people turn up, embarrassed because they have jobs but are still struggling. We want to catch people before they are on their knees.

The emphasis is on fresh rather than tinned food. The pantry doubles up as a hub to access other services and support such as help with digital technology skills or a simple, low cost meal. The charity also offers cooking workshops through their Food Ambassador training.

“We want people to have choice. It’s no good offering celeriac to older people from the Windrush generation when they want and know how to use is plantain.”

Councillor Paul Gadsby represents Vassall Ward for Lambeth Council. He is not surprised by the need for charities such as Healthy Living Platform. Behind the well-heeled façade of elegant Victorian townhouses that surround Myatt’s Field there is the harsh reality of inner city living with several estates such as Lothian, Minet and Paulet Road, where the rise in cost of living has bitten especially hard, prompting the council to introduce a variety of financial help, including child and pensioner support packages and funding free school meals during the summer holidays.

“The Myatt’s Field area of Camberwell is no different to other communities across the UK,” he said. “We felt compelled to introduce some measures to try and lessen the consequences for the most struggling households. It’s a terrific community and we will do what we can, given the current circumstances.”

Bursting with enterprise and nurturing talent

Michelle Killington is a community dynamo. When the Quarterly sat down with her one Saturday afternoon, she was preparing for a boxercise self-defence class she hosts for women near the Myatt’s Fields bandstand.

But it hardly scratches the surface of her community projects in and around the Camberwell-Brixton area, beginning with an Artists’ Development Project for budding young music talent as well as Vinyl Sound Memories for Windrush elders who recently flocked to a three-hour session:

“Our elders don’t really have anywhere to go to hear and play the music that they remember and love,” she said. “They needed a safe place to go, not only to listen to reggae, jazz and soul but also to meet and talk about the past. It’s beautiful to see the elders get up and dance to music that means so much.”

In June, young and old came together in a musical celebration when she organised the Intergenerational Windrush Celebration Day at Pop Brixton, a showcase of 33 music and dance artists of all ages aged, ranging from 12 to 65. She also chairs the residents’ group at Angell Town, the troubled 600-home estate that borders Camberwell and Brixton where she has long championed the construction of a much-need community centre to counter the problem of traumatised and demotivated young people.

“Activism is really important to me,” she said. “I want to help develop young people to become the next generation of community leaders so they have ownership over where they live and how things are done in their community.”

Tamani “JC” Clayton and his younger brother Cavalli are among a couple of dozen young men and women who meet at Lambeth Council every Thursday evening for two hours to discuss youth affairs in the area, often breaking into groups to debate issues: “It is great to have a space and a community where you feel as if your opinion counts and people listen to you.” JC, who lives on the nearby Thorlands Estate, beams with pride when he talks about the success that he and his fellow councillors have had in a campaign with Lewisham Council youth to convince transport authorities not to scrap Zip cards for under 18s: “It was an important campaign because people, and particularly under-privileged families, need that help for their kids to get to and from school.”

The council will launch a youth summit in September, focussing on a survey of young people asking what they wanted to change about schools and where they live. The “live” survey shows that 40 per cent feel they do not have equal opportunities and half feel unsafe at times in their communities. For JC, the most burning issue is youth centres and programs: “It feels as if there have been a number of closures recently. Young people need structure. We need to open more facilities rather than less.”

Back at No.14 Cormont Road it seems that Godot won’t be arriving in Myatt’s Field after all. The shutters are open and the house is back on the market for £1.6 million. That would represent a £400,000 profit thanks largely to the appeal of a thriving community that family will never experience.

Sandi Tosvig supports keeping the 12. She tweeted “The Number 12 bus is a double decker delight which has been serving London for about 170 years .It goes right past Number 10. Just wondering-if they cut back on parties -can we keep it ?”

From the Camberwell Quarterly magazine

TfL is losing money and wants to trim Camberwell’s buses. Again. Tony Coleman reports

TfL propose fully withdrawing both the number 45 and the number 12 services. If they succeed Camberwell will have lost 5 cross river bus services since 2016.

There is some mitigation as the southern part of the number 12 route, from Camberwell to Dulwich Library, will be added to the route of the 148. But at the northern end, the 148 will continue to run up Park Lane and not up Regents Street. So we will lose our direct access to Oxford Circus.

Since 1904 Camberwellians have relied on the number 12 to commute or go for an exciting trip to the shops.

We will also be losing the 45 which has run between Elephant & Castle and Clapham and linked us with Brixton, for 70 years. The number 35 and 345 will continue their service between Camberwell and Brixton.

Services will overall be less frequent meaning longer waits and more crowded buses, especially at peak times. There will be more need to change buses leading to wasted time, greater stress, and inconvenience. This will hit the elderly, people with disabilities and those with children in pushchairs hardest.

Many Camberwell residents are not well off and rely on the bus network. Trains and the tube are expensive and unaffordable for many.

Jane Bevis has written an in-depth response to the proposed cuts with some expert analysis and telling statistics for the SE5 Forum. It is on the Society’s website. You can find it at: http://www.camberwellsociety.org.uk/transport/

Let’s fight these closures. The consultation link that was previously emailed to members was closed on August 7th but you can still make your feelings known, it’s worth a go. Jane Bevis’s response may give you some extra arguments. You can write to the Mayor, Sadiq Khan at City Hall, Kamal Chunchie Way, London, E16 1ZE, or write to the Transport Commissioner, Andy Byford at the same address. Or, better still, write to both.

There is also a petition to save the number 12 that you could sign at https://www.change.org/p/we-have-less-than-6-weeks-to-save-the-bus-route-12