INSIDE THE LATEST CAMBERWELL QUARTERLY
Discover the fascinating variety of public art in Burgess Park in this seventy-minute walk guided by Richard Barton
Burgess Park was conceived in 1943 as part of a radical plan by Sir Patrick Abercrombie to rebuild London after the blitz. It was part of an attempt to provide recreational open space for the people living in Southeast London.
The area had considerable bomb damage and the industrial area around the Grand Surrey Canal (now infilled) was very run down. Many houses and industrial buildings were demolished in subsequent decades to create the park. The remnants of some of these streets and buildings can still be seen. And the street plan is reflected in the design of the gates to the park, see stop twelve below.
Major remodelling and landscaping were carried out around 2012, including the creation of new entrances and the formation of the hills covered in wildflowers. For more information about the history of the park visit www.friendsofburgesspark.org.uk
The walk
Start at the entrance to the park on Camberwell Road. Do not go into the park but walk south down the road next to the terrace of fine Georgian houses turn left into Addington Square and continue to the square at the end. On your route, notice on your right, the old sign of Fowlds and Sons upholsters (now a café) and on your left on the last house, a small mosaic advertising ATD Fourth World on the side of 48 Addington Square. (ATD Fourth World is a human rights based anti-poverty organisation). Ahead of you, in the garden at the centre of the square, is a sculpture.
1 Addington Square: Stone sculpture ‘Constellation’. Artist: Hamish Horsley 2005
Hamish Horsley had an interest in Zen and often worked directly in the landscape moulding earth, placing boulders etc. to form patterns on the ground. He wrote that his ‘objective in the public commissions was to create a visual harmony – a natural empathy between the sculpture and its environment.’
Horsley was born in Whanganui New Zealand, moved to London in 1976 and graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1986. He worked as an artist and teacher in London for over 35 years but now lives in New Zealand His work is found throughout UK, northern Europe and Middle East, India, Vietnam and Thailand. You can find another of his sculptures in the Tibetan Peace Garden at the Imperial War Museum.
Addington Square is named after Henry Addington who was Prime Minister from 1801 – 04. The square has buildings on three sides, the fourth was originally occupied by Camberwell Wharf, built at the end of the Grand Surrey Canal. Later, that area was occupied by an early public baths and swimming pool before being demolished in the 1930s to make a garden. The fine collection of Georgian style houses was built between 1810 and 1844 and as a result form an interesting collection ranging in size from two to five stories. In the 1960s number 33 was the base of the notorious Richardson Gang, who apart from their very unsavoury activities, kept two dancing bears in residence.
Exit the garden, turn away from the park and walk around the garden to exit the square at the south-east corner. Turn right and follow the path. As the park opens out around you, you will see a new children’s playground to the left containing a series of interesting twelve-sided wooden structures of varying size. At the entrances to the playground, you will find the next sculptures.
2 Entrance to children’s playground on New Church Road: Two black metal circular sculptures. Artist: Unknown
These sculptures were originally the top decoration to gateposts which used to form the entrance to the park straight ahead from the former Rust Square They were originally erected by the Greater London Council around 1980 but were moved to their current position in 2017. You can see the letters GLC forming part of the base.
From the entrance to the playground, retrace your steps from the sculptures back to the path from the square but this time turn right on the path past a former pub, now flats on your left to New Church Road at the end. Stop at the corner. On the other side of this road, you will see the Evelina Mansions with the plaque of the Four Per Cent Industrial Dwellings Company Ltd. The company was founded by Sir Nathaniel Rothschild and Evelina Mansions is named after his sister. Built in 1900, this striking red brick mansion block is an early example of philanthropic housing for the poor in the area built by Jewish philanthropists. The ‘four percent’ probably referred to the interest rate that an investor might expect to make.
Turn left, staying on the north side of New Church Road, enter Burgess Park as the road bends, and follow the tarmac path. In about 50 metres turn slightly right to join a large straight path. Continue for a few hundred metres until there is a junction where you take the path forking off to your right (not the underpass). This will lead to a gate onto the road, Wells Way, where you should cross over to the church on the other side.
This elegant building is the former St Georges Church which was built in the Greek style (similar to the temples of ancient Greece) in 1824 by the architect, Francis Bedford. He also designed three other churches in London known as Commissioner’s churches or Waterloo churches, following the defeat of Napoleon. It is difficult to imagine that at that time the church stood alongside the thriving Grand Surrey Canal, where it was constructed to provide for the rapidly expanding population attracted by the industry around the canal. By the 1970s however, the church was almost in ruins. Fortunately, after a public campaign to save the building, it was repaired, and the interior converted to form flats. For more information refer to www.wikipedia/commissionerschurches and www.exploringsouthwark.co.uk
In front of the church is a beautiful sculpture.
3 St Georges Church Wells Way: War memorial bronze statue of Jesus, ‘The Omnipresent’. Artist: Arild Rosenkrantz 1919
Baron Arild Rosenkrantz (1870 – 1964) was born in Denmark with a Danish aristocrat father and a Scottish mother. Initially, he studied in the USA and moved to London in 1898. He became involved with Rudolph Steiner and his extraordinary anthroposophic centre, Goetheanum in Dornach Switzerland where Rosenkrantz carried out some of the decoration. This is one of the artist’s few sculptures. In UK he was known mainly as a decorative artist, a painter (several of his paintings are in the entrance to the Royal Academy of Music) and as a stained-glass artist of church windows. As a painter he felt he had a mission to carry out Steiner’s ideas of using “spectral colours to reach the invisible spiritual reality which lies behind the material”. For more information about the artist visit www.artnet.com/artists/arild-rosenkrantz
Walk north for about a hundred metres passing the church on your right until you see the next building with its large, tiled mural taking up most of the end wall facing you.
4 Wells Way former library and wash house: Tiled mural depicting the Camberwell beauty, nymphalis antiopa also known as mourning cloak or grand surprise butterfly. Artist: unknown c.1920s
The Camberwell Beauty butterfly was first identified in Camberwell in 1748 when the area was still mainly farms and market gardens. It is now quite rare in the UK.
Samuel Jones opened his paper factory in Southampton Way in 1868 and used the butterfly as his trademark from 1912. His new factory, built in the 1920s, incorporated a large mural of the butterfly made of Doulton tiles. In 1982 the factory was demolished but the mural was carefully taken down and reinstalled on the North Camberwell public library and public wash houses at Wells Way designed by Maurice Adams. This architectural example of Edwardian Free Style is a delightful eclectic mixture containing elements of Baroque, Tudor, Gothic and Queen Anne styles, somehow all blended. The building is now home of the Lynn Boxing Club which is UK’s oldest continuing amateur boxing club originally formed in Borough High Street in 1892. In the basement of the former library there are still some murals for children depicting fairy tales which were made by Guy Miller in 1927. These can only be viewed by prior appointment.
Continue walking to the end of the building and turn right into the park. Walk around the circular flowerbed and take the path nearer to the road in a northerly direction. Walk about a hundred metres until the path joins another on the diagonal. To your right you will see an old wall partially covered with creeping plants and with bushes growing in front. If you are lucky and the bushes have been pruned sufficiently you will see the next artwork.
5 Wall forming the west side to the First Place Nursery: Three mosaics. Artist: Unknown
These three mosaics depict the changing street layout of the area around the park in 1800, 1900 and 2000. No more information seems to be available.
Facing the mosaics, take the diagonal path to your right until you come to a six-way junction. Take the first path on your left and then in a few metres, turn left again at the next junction of paths to bring you to the front of the former Chumleigh Gardens alms-houses. These buildings were built in 1823 and extended in 1847 by the Friendly Female Society for poor single women of good character. The buildings are simple two storey brick houses with delicate neo gothic style windows and doors. Following extensive repair, the buildings now operate as a café and accommodation for Southwark Council. Arranged in a U shape, they form a delightful contrast to the wide-open spaces of the park and create the backdrop to a beautiful formal garden.
Enter the garden and see if you can find the lovely examples of lettering art, plaques about the alms-houses, the zeppelin raid memorial and in memory of Councillor Harvey Hinds. Exit through a gate between the buildings on your left (the south side) and then turn left. At the far end of this delightful garden (The World Garden), you will find a pair of ornamental gates.
6 World Garden behind Chumleigh Gardens: ornamental gates. Artist: Heather Burrell 2000-3
The gates were designed in consultation with local community groups. They depict a map of the world surrounded by plants from different countries and the Camberwell Beauty butterfly.
Heather Burrell is an artist based in southeast London who specialises in making accessible sculptures for public places. She usually works in steel, combining precision laser cut elements with hand forged blacksmithing techniques. She wrote that her artwork “is intended to inspire an emotional response in all those who see it. Art doesn’t belong solely in galleries and private collections – the joy and beauty of art is something to be shared by the whole community.” The work was commissioned by PPACTS (Police Partners and Community Together in Southwark), TPI the anti-hate crime targeted policing initiative and the Metropolitan Police Service.
Retrace your steps through the garden go beyond the previous entrance gate, turn right and look on the left for a metal bust on a plinth.
7 World Garden behind Chumleigh Gardens: bust of Keib Thomas. Artist: unknown (signature on the back looks like Ashim Paul) about 2010
This bust commemorates the life of Keib Thomas who died in 2007. Keib was a community worker and activist, a volunteer and teacher, devoted to ethnic and inter faith harmony, justice and equality. He taught at Morley College whilst working for St Mungo’s, the homeless charity, and for Southwark Action for Voluntary Organisations where he led on community- police liaison projects. Every year he found time to visit India and work on international development projects. The bust was paid for by public subscription and produced in Kolkata, India.
Walk ahead through the garden, on your right is a beautiful circular grey slate sundial inscribed in white and gold. Exit the World Garden, turn right out of the gates and continue towards the entrance to the café. On your way, notice next to the building, a circular drinking fountain, again in a column of grey slate with spiralling white lettering. Walk past the café to the corner where you will see on your right, the statue of a cute little elephant with a drinking fountain coming from its trunk. Walk straight ahead keeping the fencing to the children’s playground on your left. When you reach a junction of paths, take the path on the left. Walk on to near the start of the lake, you will see the next sculpture to the left of the path on top of the mound.
8 Silent Raid, a series of little cast resin house sculptures in various locations. Artist: Sally Hogarth 2018
These artworks were installed in 2018 to commemorate the people and places impacted by a WW1 Zeppelin bomb that fell in 1917 on Calmington Road and which is now part of Burgess Park. There are ten houses in total in different locations in the park representing the people killed in the raid. Each house, large, medium or small, represents a man, woman or child. The houses are in differing shades of red which reflect the varying shades found in traditional red bricks, with the shade darkening with increased proximity of the bomb site. The sculptures were commissioned by Southwark Council.
The Sally Hogarth Studio is a multi-disciplinary design studio working on three-dimensional art and interior design. For more information visit www.sallyhogarth.com
Look out for more of the little house sculptures in different places in the park. Follow the path, keeping close to the lake on your right as the path curves around the top. To your left is a circular concrete plinth, on the other side of which is the next sculpture.
9 East end of the lake: circular bronze relief. Artists: Pupils and staff of Cobourg Primary School working with Art in the Park, 1997
Overlooking the lake, this metal relief includes representations of nearly thirty different species of birds found in the park plus a few fish. Art in the Park is based in the centre of Burgess Park. Run by professional artists it aims to involve people of all ages and abilities in designing and making art works in the studio and outdoors. They work with schools, community groups and professional teams on educational art and heritage projects and with the public to create permanent public artworks. For more information visit www.artinthepark.co.uk
Complete your journey around the lake continuing on the straight path until a junction with the main wide straight path to the left which you should then follow, heading southwest. Away to your left you may just be able to see the ‘bridge to nowhere’ which used to cross the canal. At the end of this path there is a cobbled area as the path joins with another next to the side the of the ‘butterfly building’ referred to above and descends into an underpass underneath Wells Way. This is the site of the next work.
10 Underpass under Wells Way: The Bridge to Nowhere Project, a series of reliefs in wood and plaster. Artists: Twenty young artists, Pauline Smith, Carol Dalton, Michael Faraday School and Southwark Play Service assisted by Art in the Park 2014.
The series of artworks is located on the side of the underpass, which is on the route of the former Grand Surrey Canal, filled in during the 1970s. The works represent a reinterpretation of the canal barges and the materials that they once carried, such as lemonade bottles, shells, timber and printed books. The work was commissioned by Friends of Burgess Park and Heritage Lottery Fund.
Continue to walk on the broad straight path, past the old lime kiln on your right, then past the first tennis court on your left and on towards the new café beyond. Here you can stop off for a well-deserved refreshment. Just past the café is the next piece.
11 Tennis courts cafe: Tree trunk carved to create a fantastic wooden creature. Artist: Unknown. No information available. Probably created within the last five years.
Children love to climb all over this fantastic creature and sit in one of its carved seats. Continue to walk on the straight path to the exit on Camberwell Road where you will pass the final piece.
12 Park entrance on Camberwell Road: Entrance marker. Artist: unknown. Part of the 2012 park remodelling.
This large metal sculpture (it can’t be called a gate because it doesn’t move!) depicts the former street layout of the area now occupied by the park and its surroundings. This was part of the recent park remodelling and there is a similar piece at the entrance to the park on Old Kent Road.
