Marie Staunton meets Connie Gray, who for two decades has been voluntarily helping manage daily lives of residents in 350 homes
Connie Gray has been the mainstay of the d’Eynsfor Estate, just off Camberwell Church Street, for the past two decades.
Now the National Federation of Tenants Management Organisations has recognised his work with a lifetime achievement award.
A Camberwell resident for more than 60 years, Connie became chair when d’Eynsford was still a tenants’ association and remained in the role when it began managing its own
affairs in 2011. Since then, the estate has won two national awards for excellence as well as creating the Secret Garden, a former wasteland now full of flowers and fruit.
Connie has packed a lot into one lifetime. He has been a cabinet maker, a painter and decorator and fitness instructor. He even spent six months working in Nunhead Cemetery.
“That frightened me,” he laughs. “I couldn’t do it anymore.”
He became chair by accident rather than design. A friend had dragged him along to a tenants’ meeting, where he volunteered to be vice-chair before taking over as chair. He has never looked back.
The estate was rougher then. Two brothers seemed to run the place. “They were no angels,” Connie says with a grin. “Mind you, neither were some of my family.”
So the brothers got sorted. Connie took over management of the estate, using his knack for finding others to help with things like organising coach trips and Christmas parties. He persuaded a Millwall coach to help local youngsters play football and a police sergeant to teach children how to play cricket.
But his favourite Camberwell memory has nothing to do with estate affairs but his own wedding to his late wife, Christine, at Sacred Heart Church. Christine’s family were totters – rag and bone men – who knew everybody, including actor Michael Caine’s aunt who kept a florist’s shop in Southampton Way.
So as Connie and Christine left the church on their wedding day, a Rolls-Royce driven by Caine’s chauffeur pulled up to drive them to the reception at the home of a relative – the first of three days of celebrations.
“In those days, you didn’t hire a hall,” Connie says. “You went from one house to another.”
His advice for keeping a tenants’ group strong is simple: “Talk to everyone. Get to know everyone on the estate. Share the work out and give everyone on the committee a chance to lead.”
That mix of humour, persistence and neighbourliness has made Connie what Barbara Pattinson, a local community leader herself for decades, calls “one of Camberwell’s great local characters, always up for helping his neighbours”.
