amak

Hello Taper If you read my post you will see that way back in the 1980s the Council proposed "reusing part of Nunhead, but leaving part as wilderness". So there would have been wilderness at Nunhead, just not the entire cemetery. Your response doesn't reply in any way to the points I made, it is just aggressive. Although I usually have full support for wildlife and wild spaces campaigners, and have been part of such campaigns myself since, actually, childhood, I sadly have to say that the behaviour of the "Wilderness cemetery" campaigners hereabouts, has always been so extreme that it gives wildlife causes a bad name. The Council's originally balanced plans were only dropped in 1991 due to behind the scenes lobbying. There was nil public consultation (one notice was stuck on the back of a telegraph pole four days before Christmas), nil debate, and locals knew nothing about what was happening until after the Council decision had been taken to close Nunhead and destroy a huge chunk of Honor Oak Rec. It offers some hope for Southwark I think that there seem to be some sensible and independent minded people now on the Council, who take a broader and more appropriate view of "green" issues than just giving in to bullying from the "only man is vile" camp.

Just to remind ourselves that the entire huge area of Nunhead Cemetery - 55 acres if I recall rightly - has already been taken out of use as a cemetery and left as a largely wild space to which there is only public access at the edges. 55 acres is a lot of space. And it went that way as a result of exactly the same sort of fervid lobbying from the wilderness advocates as we are now hearing re the other cemeteries. Southwark Council's original plan considered the use of all three cemeteries together, and was balanced and sustainable. It catered for continuting burials in all three cemeteries. It involved reusing part of Nunhead, but leaving part as wilderness, and part as publicly available park space - which would have been brilliant for space-deprived families living south of the cemetery. That plan was derailed by the fervid wilderness lobbiers, who managed to get the Council to abandon its sensible future-proofed plan. Instead, the Council dropped its plans to reuse part of Nunhead, and took away a huge chunk of Honor Oak, a massively well used public parkland serving a council estate, and turned it into a terrible swampy grave yard. (This also meant huge unneccesary expense of public money in creating new cemetery infrastructure instead of reusing the existing cemetery space). At the time, your wilderness lobbiers swore that they were only after Nunhead and that if they got Nunhead, and a great chunk taken out of Honor Oak Rec, they understood that the other two cemeteries would continue in use. Enough, people, you won the first time, and did enough damage then. Le vrai tombeau des morts, c'est le coeur des vivants. Jean Cocteau

Le vrai tombeau des morts, c'est le coeur des vivants.