Home thoughts from abroad nu 5 ................ wandering down to Avery Hill on a Sunday

An occasional series on what I miss about the place where I grew up.*

Now when you are 17 and out on that second date and still unsure of what comes next Avery Hill was always a good bet.

The Saturday night had been the pictures and without wanting to push it out too far and mindful that at 17 you didn’t have a lot of cash this was the place to come, check out whether the night before had been a good idea and whether either of you wanted it to go any further.

I remember plenty of such Sunday afternoons and two in particular with girl friends who lived in the lodge at Crown Woods which I fully admit was not pushing the boat out.

Later a full seven years after I first discovered the place I went back with Kay.

We had met in Manchester in 1971, started going out and in the following year spent part of the long summer at 294 Well Hall and later in the North East.

And when we weren’t exploring the centre of London or down at the Park in Greenwich, Avery Hill was somewhere to walk to on a Sunday.

It began with the Pleasaunce and then that long haul through the High Street and down the other side always with a curious look across at Crown Woods.

Not I suppose the most momentous memory but one that stays with me even now.

Location, Eltham London

Pictures; Avery Hill, 2013, from the collection of Jean Gammons

*Home thoughts from abroad, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Home%20thoughts%20from%20abroad

Avery Hill on a Sunday…… after the night before .......

Avery Hill will have a special place for many.

For some it will be fond memories of being a student there, while for many others it will be the pleasure of taking time out in the park and visiting the Winter Garden.

And here I confess that my own memories are less to do with the beauty of the place, and more simply that it offered a venue for a second date, the day after the night before.

The scenario will be that familiar one, which begins when you ask someone out for a first date, which usually ended up at the cinema.

If all went well, and after the long walk back from her house, there was the question of how to proceed.

The next Saturday was too far away to wait, and trying to have a meaniful conversation on the Monday at school in front of everyone was a nonstarter.

And so that just left somewhere like Avery Hill on a Sunday afternoon to meet up and judge the future.

The advantage was that it was free, with plenty of land to walk the romantic walk, and if it rained there was the hothouse.

Alternatively, if it all went pear shaped, there was plenty of space to fill the time before you could leave with dignity.

So, after the nervous phone call on Sunday morning, which if all went well was full of banter there was just the equally nervous suggestion of meeting up.

And here I have to say the call was always made at the telephone kiosk down by the Co-op opposite the Pleasausance ………. and never from home.

The golden rule was, never, never offer to call at the house, but instead to meet up somewhere in the park.  That way if either of you had second thoughts it was less embarrassing, and by Monday both of you were prepared for how to behave.

All of which came flooding back, when l came across these pictures by John King of Avery Hill, and having gained permission to use them, the rest as they say are memories from a lifetime ago.

At which point I could reflect on the history of the place, but its history is well known and has been written already, and that history has already  featured on the blog.*

So instead I shall just mention the Friends of Avery Hill**, thank John for his photographs and remember with fondness those happy Sundays which now stare back at me from the distance of a full half century and more.

Location; Avery Hill

Pictures; Avery Hill, 2020 from the collection of John King

*Avery Hill, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Avery%20Hill
** Friends of Avery Hill, https://www.averyhillpark.org.uk/

Annie Morris, Lady Kirby and a neat little history lesson

Annie Morris circa 1900

What connects a reward issued by the Lord Mayor of London at the height of the Whitechapel Murders with Avery Hill and Mrs Morris of Court Yard?

This was the question I posed last week and now it is time to reveal the story.

According to a leading newspaper
"The Lord mayor, acting upon the advice of the Commissioner of City Police, has, in the name of the Corporation of London, offered a reward of £500 for the detection of the Whitechapel murderer, the last crime having been committed within the jurisdiction of the city.”

But he was not the only person to come forward with a reward and the same newspaper reported that “Colonel Sir Alfred Kirby, J.P., the officer commanding the Tower Hamlets Battalion Royal Engineers has offered, on behalf of his officers, a reward of £100, to anyone who will give information that will lead to the discovery and conviction of the perpetrator of the recent murders committed in the district in which his regiment is situated.”

And it is Colonel Sir Alfred Kirby who is the link to Avery Hill or to be more precise his wife, Lady Kirby who regularly visited Avery Hill with her husband to dine with Colonel North who lived there.

Their food would have been prepared by Annie Morris who lived at Court Yard but worked as the family cook.

Avery Hill today

I doubt that Annie and Lady Kirby ever passed through the gateway at Avery Hill at the same time but even so they were bound together by that simple relationship of cook and guest.

The one was a resident of Eltham and the other a visitor.

But that is not all. Almost a century later the descendants of Annie Morris and Lady Kirby met by chance both shared an interest in painting and began attending art classes together.

They became friends and discovered the link with the past, a link which has a nice twist.  Annie Morris’s great granddaughter is my friend Jean who readily admits she “hates cooking” while Pam whose great grandmother was Lady Kirby loves entertaining and so Jean is regularly wined and dined by Pam and her husband.

Jean and Pam 2013

It is one of those quirky turn of events that the great granddaughter of the cook at Avery Hill should in turn be served by the great granddaughter of Lady Kirby.

Now I could go off and explore the neat reversal of roles and examine the social changes which in just a few generations transformed the relationship between the descendant of a cook and a Lady.

But I won’t, that is perhaps for another time.

Instead I shall just leave with that thought that history is messy and it always has a habit of surprising you.

Picture;s of Avery Hill, 2013, Annie Morris, circa 1900 and Pam and Jean today courtesy of Jean Gammons