FROM THE CAMBERWELL QUARTERLY
In the fourth instalment of its series on Camberwell geographically, Robert Wainwright discovers that a park named in honour of one of our most famous citizens is delivering what John Ruskin would have hoped to enrich the lives of surrounding residents
Stroll along Sunset Road above the south-east corner of Ruskin Park and you might spot a yellow sign with red lettering pointing down an otherwise hidden laneway:
TEMPLE BOWLING CLUB. NEW MEMBERS WELCOME
There is no outward indication of a sporting club here, no parking lot or fancy entrance, just a plain door leading to a well-trodden carpeted passageway. It is only when you are inside that you get a sense of the treasure most of us would have no idea even existed.
Large windows reveal six lush green rinks stretching back toward Ruskin Park, the cityscape visible beyond. The reason for its covert presence is also now clear, shielded from sight by rows of two and three-storey houses built around the club’s perimeter to enclose the rinks and expansive clubhouse after its construction almost 90 years ago.
In fact the Temple Bowling Club has been in Camberwell since 1881, first established with a single rink behind the Golden Lion pub, which stood opposite Coldharbour Lane, owned by businessman William Temple (hence the club name). It then moved to several other sites before its current home was founded in the leadup to the 1934 Empire Games, now known as the Commonwealth Games (Scotland won the competition).
When the Camberwell Quarterly pays a visit, club president Alan Kingsley-Perkins leads us not outside to the green grass but upstairs into the enormous roof cavity where there is yet another surprise: three artificial rinks on synthetical grass beneath the rafters. This is a year-round club, the summer months from May to September outside and the winter from October to April playing on one of the few indoor facilities in the country.
The final of the indoor triples championship is nearing its end, played before an appreciative knot of spectators. The club’s bar manager Janice Dodd is on the winning side. When she began working at the club 15 years ago she didn’t play: “Everyone would grab a drink and then go off and play so I thought I should join in,” she grinned. “There are some very good bowlers here but we’re an inclusive group and welcome any standard. We’re a family here.”
Alan says the club is in the midst of rebuilding membership numbers after Covid as well as modernising the club and its finances. The bar and dining area downstairs echo its history, the walls heavy with gold-lettered honour boards and photos of bygone triumphs.
Outside, the summer rinks need a good mow and are within a few weeks of opening. The broad verandah will soon be filled with members enjoying the summer warmth to the gentle clink of bowls nestling against the jack.
The club also welcomes what they call Barefoot bowlers; people who hire the bar and room for a party and whose guests can enjoy a few games of bowls with the help of club professionals. It’s all part of the club’s financial plans for the future, as Alan explains:
“Covid was tough and the increase in energy prices meant we had to close the kitchen for most of last winter but the club has survived and our membership levels are now at pre Covid levels. We offer great value but also a wonderful community atmosphere. We had a couple of new members in up last week. Both lived in the next street and had no idea we were here.”
A park the size Ruskin needs not only the budget capacity of a large local authority such as Lambeth but the care and attention of a dedicated group of volunteers. The Friends of Ruskin Park is exactly that, a 400-strong army of local residents who not only use the park in their own daily lives but ensure it has the facilities and events to make it special for their neighbours.
Chris Norris and Celine Gilbert (above) are both trustees, busy with their fellow committee members preparing for the annual summer fete to be held at the bandstand on June 17 between noon and 6pm, and followed through July, August and September with weekly bandstand programmes from folk to jazz, brass and chamber orchestra.
More generally there are regular get-togethers for park gardening and litter picking as well as an increasing number of fitness groups – bootcamp workouts and calisthenics training – organised through the Steel Warriors, an anti-knife charity that turns confiscated street weapons into gym equipment.
“We’re very active. For example, there are 70 people on our litter picking WhatsApp,” says Chris who’s been involved for seven years. “We fund raise through the fete but the main aim is to make it great community event, free arts and craft and children’s event. It’s so satisfying as a volunteer to see the park used and enjoyed because it’s so central to our lives here in Camberwell. We had really strong interest during Covid when people really wanted to get outside and be safe and be able to be sociable at the same time.”
A highlight of the group’s recent work has been the establishment of the Well-being Garden, the Willow Garden, which has raised beds filled with sensory and therapeutic plants – aromatic herbs, tactile and edible varieties – that is a colourful, accessible and relaxing space.
“It’s a new project with funding from the postcode lottery,” says Celine. “We have a group from the Maudsley Hospital who come here for an hour or so to do some gardening. We’re also hoping to start with another organisation, South London Cares, that works with older people and deals with loneliness and isolation. There is a growing acknowledgement of the value of being outdoors and doing a therapeutic activity. It’s become a preferred choice by GPs to get people out and active.”
At the other end of the area is a well-established community garden where everyone is welcome to participate in weekly, drop-in edible gardening sessions and occasional garden workshops. The garden’s first harvest was in 2010, although it only came under the Friends umbrella two years ago, and has grown steadily with more than a dozen beds, including wheelchair height, a polytunnel, greenhouse, wildlife area with picnic tables, a wormery and even an apiary which produces Ruskin Park honey:
“Everything is grown and shared,” says Celine. “Anyone can come in here and do a bit of gardening and go home with something like a bunch of spinach. Surprisingly, we have a lot of young people coming in and joining, which isn’t what I expected but shows that young people are becoming more interested in getting their hands dirty and enjoying nature. There is a great satisfaction for people to plant from seeds and then eat what they have produced. There are a lot of flats around here and many people don’t have gardens or access to green space, so we are their backyard.
Duncan McAfee (above) is busy packing for an exhibition. It’s evident from the clear-wrapped and neatly stacked canvases at the end of the room that he has done it many times before. This time it’s at Greenwich but Duncan’s website lists several dozen exhibitions over the last twenty years, as well as numerous awards, commissions and collaborative projects.
It’s hard to pigeonhole him other as the generic term artist such is the breadth of his work which he has described as “layered consequences”. Duncan works from Coldharbour Studios in Southwell Street below Ruskin Park where he is currently using cartoon imagery and collage to explore what he calls “the psychic mayhem of contemporary life”.
He cycles most mornings from his home on the other side of the park: “I’ve lived in Camberwell, off and on, since I was a student at Chelsea Art College the late 1990s. I love it here it’s really mixed – the posh bits and the student bits – and even though it’s changing there is still a great vibe here. The art scene here is fantastic and I love Ruskin Park, particularly in the summer when they have the season of music.”
There are as many as 80 artists here, next door to where the great impresario Fred Karno once trained actors like Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel. There are painters and jewellers, sculptors and fashion designers, photographers and milliners amongst other arts and crafts.
Tom Parker shares Studio No.10 with five other photographers who are “collaborative rather than competitors”. He specialises in travel, documentary and commercial photography – “we have to wear a few hats these days to make a living”.
Like Duncan, Tom calls Ruskin Park home: “There is a very good sense of community here, as in everyone knows each other. It’s chilled. Nice, not pretentious and we all look out for one another. I mean, walking down the street takes too long sometimes because of the number of people you bump into and stop to have a chat. I’ve never lived in London anywhere quite like Camberwell. I use Ruskin Park every day. I had a son born just after lockdown so I was in the park every day. I reckon I know every nook and cranny.”
Willa Hilditch has recently moved into a sunny studio at the front of the building where she switches between making jewellery – “they sell quite well” – and her first love of painting and drawing. Much of her work is inspired by discarded rubbish and even residual marks left on surfaces – “ephemeral by-products of our routines”. Her still life paintings have what she calls a warped sense of space, the only tell-tale sign of scale a painted staple or a nail: “I’m here because I live just down the road, so it’s convenient, but also it’s a great studio with a cross section of ages and mediums.”
In a panelled upstairs room at the Cambria Hotel on Kemerton Road, several dozen artists meet every Wednesday evening for life drawing classes. With the background vibe of 1940s jazz they spend the next two hours between 7 and 9pm sketching a model who’s happily bared all.
Artist Tatiana Moressoni has run these classes, and smaller classes in the ‘parlour’ at the Sun and Doves pub on Coldharbour Lane on Mondays, for the past nine years. Numbers are growing again after the impact of Covid – “we had 37 last week” – and the reopening of the Cambria which had shut for two years just before the pandemic hit.
“We get a good mix of professional artists and amateurs,” says Tatiana who sometimes poses herself. “It’s very a very relaxed and friendly atmosphere. The camaraderie is important to me and after the class we share our drawings, talk about techniques and have a pleasant drink together.”
“Some people find it meditative, a nice contrast to their day jobs, and others have always wanted to try life drawing but found classes too expensive. They like the idea that they can simply drop in here and participate.”
And the models? “We have lots, more than enough,” she laughs. “They are usually artists or dancers with the occasional actor. There are different body shapes, ages, and nationalities. If they all looked the same it would be boring, wouldn’t it?”
When the Cambria shut its doors in 2019 there was a feeling of foreboding among nearby residents that their local watering hole was about to be sacrificed for housing. For two years, through the worst of COVID, the building remained shuttered.
A group of residents formed a coalition to try and raise funds to reopen under an ownership scheme but it was eventually leased to a new company, Prospect Pubs and Bars which reopened in March with a message: ”Your local has come home”.
Cambria manager Hugo McFerran is pleased with the success of the art classes, which he sees as part of the pub’s attempt to recapture its previous popularity: “Our aim is simple. We are trying to build a local pub that serves good food, affordable beer and engages with the local community.”
