Petition to Save Southwark Woods

[marianik]

There is a petition now online to save the woodland from planned developments in the Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries. Please sign it here if you are concerned by the plans: https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/save-southwark-woods/

The text of the petition is below:

Save the beautiful wild woods of Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries for people, for nature and for the future!

Why is this important?

Southwark Council is planning to destroy the woods of Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries, including felling over 30 mature trees, to make way for more than 2,000 new burial plots. Woodlands are the lungs of London. We want the cemeteries turned into local Nature Reserves, as with Nunhead Cemetery. Both cemeteries are part of the London Green Chain Walk and Camberwell Old Cemetery is a Grade 1 Site of Borough Importance for Nature Conservation. These wonderful woodlands are home to protected species, a wild tangle of trees and undergrowth, a haven of habitats and they are valuable to nature, to people and to the future.

These woodlands provide many valuable benefits locally, cleaning the air, absorbing and filtering storm water, keeping the neighbourhood cool in summer, and providing beautiful, natural places for our mental and physical well-being.

Sign the petition and help Save Southwark Woods!

Want to do more?

Join the Facebook Page and tell your friends ? Save Southwark Woods!

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-Southwark-Woods/700671496717263

Follow the campaign on twitter @SouthwarkWoods

http://www.savesouthwarkwoods.org.uk

Come and protest these proposals at the public meeting with Southwark Council: 7.00pm - 8.30pm Wednesday 11th February 2015, at Honor Oak Baptist Church, 108 Forest Hill Road SE22 0SG, with an exhibition of the council?s plans and opportunity to comment from 2.00pm.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1536699583280095/

Email the London Borough of Southwark to protest the potential loss of this woodland which is a Grade 1 Site of Borough Importance:

[email protected]

[email protected]

Download Southwark?s own reports and surveys about their plans for the cemeteries:

http://www.southwark.gov.uk/downloads/download/4010/cemeteries_plans

How it will be delivered

We will be delivering the petition at the Public Meeting with the Council on 11th February

[nxjen]

I'm interested why these cemetery woodland areas are now being called Southwark Woods, or do you mean to say woods in Southwark?

[marianik]

I didn't draft the petition but am helping to circulate it. My understanding is that while the petition focuses on the immediate threat to the woods in the cemeteries, there is broader concern over the priority given to trees and green space in the borough by southwark council. I will post your question on the save southwark woods Facebook page for more information, to reach the organisers directly.

Marie-Annick

[marianik]

Hi nxjen,

An organiser got back to me--the name was chosen to be able to apply to any other situations where Southwark's residents want to defend woodland in southwark. So, yes, it means woods in southwark.

[hpsaucey]

Signed and shared on Facebook. Thank you for posting!

HP

[peckhamside]

Not wishing to sound insensitive but I do not think there is room for burials in this crowded area, housing, jobs space and green space need to be the priority, I believe when the big cemetries in Nunhead and Highgate were opened they were in relative edge of urban area?

[marianik]

Councillor Darren Merrill who is the Cabinet Member for Environment and Recyling and a Labour councillor has offered to meet with us at 10.30 this coming Sunday 8th February to discuss the planned developments in the Camberwell Old Cemetery.

He will meet us at the main gate to the cemetery, the one in Forest Hill Road, London SE22

We are hoping that we will be able to go into Area Z which is the fenced off area next to Underhill Road and Rye Dale so that we can be shown exactly what the Council plan to do in there and which trees they want to remove.

Therefore I suggest you wear stout footwear.

This meeting is open to anyone who wants to find out more about what is going on regarding this cemetery and its woodlands.

[henryb]

Update from Save Southwark Woods for those not following on Facebook/Twitter.

At the Public Meeting, the council gave residents until Friday 20th February, a typically short period to make comments on their brutal, destructive and short-term proposals. Here are the people to write to, it can be in one email/letter and you can be as specific or as general as you wish, but has to be with them by Friday 20th.

The people to write to are:

Officers:

[email protected] Simon Bevan, Head of Planning

[email protected] Rebecca Towers, Parks & Open Spaces Manager

[email protected] Des Waters, Head of Public Realm

Copy in Councillors:

[email protected] Cllr Darren Merrill

[email protected] Clly Victoria Mills

[email protected] Cllr Renata Hamvas

And please copy us in too!

[email protected]

The main points Save Southwark Woods is calling for are:

? For these woodlands, wooded areas and greenspaces to be protected and managed for nature and people - no new burials

? For both cemeteries to be declared the Local Nature Reserves they really are, and managed as Nunhead Cemetery is

? That years of illegal fly tipping under the council?s watch should not be the excuse used for a massive redevelopment not just of Area Z but across the whole of these magical woods, with sanitised landscaping and THOUSANDS of burial plots instead of woodland at the end of it

? A full Public Consultation 2015/2016 on these brutal and destructive proposals, denied to the public with a toothless public information exercise instead

If you wish to express support for the SSW campaign too, that would be great but the main thing is to make your comments known. The council has tried to get this through without anyone realising what was happening. Tell them they can't pull the wool over residents' eyes like this.

[Penguin68]

I have recently been walking around Camberwell Old Cemetery, and have noticed considerable water-logging of graves - and that at the top of the hill. I suspect that the recent tarmacing of the pathways will have exacerbated the problems of water run-off - many of the graves (including depressions of burials now unmarked) were ponds.

The problem of water-logging will be exacerbated down the hill particularly where trees (which are fine sinks for water) are removed - thus making the proposed new (or revived) areas for burial even more prone to flooding and water-logging, as I would imagine there will be a lot more tarmac put down for pathways to support vehicles (hearses etc.) in the new burials.

Do you know whether there have been proper hydrological surveys done of the site, and forecasts of impact once the existing scrub woodland is removed? I suspect this could be an additional argument that those wishing to preserve the woods may wish to put forward.

[sallyfran]

What about elderly local people who want their relative to be buried in a place accessible to them to visit? Or families who want a spouse/sibling/child buried with other family members? These are choices that should be open to people and it is not the Council's job to tell people how to treat the remains of family members. I am not sure what the alternative is. That is not to say that a cemetery should be a place of sterile landscaping. I would have thought that there was scope for compromise with many more burial plots (for which there is clearly a demand) but accompanied by sensitive and naturalistic (with native plants) landscaping. Lots of churchyards are beautiful places.

[henryb]

I don't think anyone is saying people don?t have the right to be buried or buried with their loved ones. The question is whether the council should guarantee that they can provide this service indefinitely inside an urban borough and whether it should be at the cost of valuable woodland green spaces and wildlife reserves.

Many other boroughs in London do not provide this service and there is no major public outcry about it. I don?t think it is unreasonable to expect people who live in over crowded cities to not be able to bury their dead near by, inside the city. Indeed when the cemeteries themselves were set up they where right on the edge of the city and that was a time when 100% of people had burials. That is no longer the case now and roughly only 25% want burials and these area are inside a polluted city. The importance of utility for other reasons has changed a great deal. There is a very strong case for re-evaluating how these important green spaces are used.

It seems to me very unfair that only the needs of 25% population are taken into consideration when planning what to do with these areas.

As it stands there is some scope for increased burials in both cemeteries with both new areas and reuse of old plots without destroying the woodlands in areas D1 and Z. I would like to the council to put the plans for those areas in particular on hold until there is a full public consultation on the matter. At the very least consider them for alternatives to the very destructive high concentration full grave stone burials plots proposed, for more environmentally friendly options such woodland burials or small memorial plaques or ash scattering areas. D1 especially is to me an area of outstanding natural beauty and part of the woodland on One Tree Hill. Surely an alternative to destroying it would be preferable.

Ultimately these are public places, it should be up to the public to decide how they are used.

[Siduhe]

Penguin68 Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I have recently been walking around Camberwell Old

> Cemetery, and have noticed considerable

> water-logging of graves - and that at the top of

> the hill.

I posted about this a while back and have reported on a number of occasions to Southwark Council. The only response I've ever received (a telephone call) suggested this was "expected" and would settle once the graves on the raised part were filled so that the earth wasn't being disturbed so regularly. Sounded like a weak explanation to me. I've also raised this in connection with the consultation on the new works - have they learned the lessons from the first phase? Again, no response.

[Penguin68]

This water-logging was on established graves, not new ones. One's 30 years and more old. I think the new asphalt is important as regards draining and run-off.

[tfwsoll]

I agree HenryB. In Switzerland, plots are 'rented' for 25 years and then reused. It may sound harsh but space is at a premium and it is done out of necessity. I know that the death of a loved one is a painful experience and that it can bring comfort to relatives/friends to be able to visit a grave but in a city the size and density of London this can't be something that can be seen as a local 'right'. Every piece of woodland that is chopped down destroys habitat for wildlife and a place that future generations can visit and enjoy. I hope the petition can make a difference.

[sallyfran]

I actually agree with much of what you say henryb. The Southwark proposals for regimented ranks of gravestones and wide tarmac paths are ugly, 'municipal' and anachronistic and will not be ameliorated by planting the odd native shrub. They show a woeful lack of imagination as well as a crass insensitivity to landscape. But equally, I do not agree at all with the no change/no new burials argument. I like the idea of opening up a wider area for quiet walks, through re-attaching zone Z to the cemetery and creating a wider network of paths. I think there is plenty of room for increasing the number of burial plots across a wider area and thinking more creatively about how they are arranged and what they might look like. I think that a half-decent landscape designer, working with expert advice re habitat/ecology/biodiversity could come up with something really quite beautiful and imaginative that increases public amenity, meets some of the demand for burials, and preserves (or even enhances biodiversity and a sense of a green oasis in the city. I think we should be lobbying Southwark massively to raise their game, not just resisting change.

[Jennys]

Think an item on this was on the lunchtime BBC television news today. I just caught some of it.

[boyband]

thanks op.. i share it

[henryb]

It has been covered by the BBC and the Evening Standard

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-31575244

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/scheme-to-create-thousands-of-new-graves-will-ruin-urban-woodland-10063964.html

[henryb]

London Live have done a piece on petition.

http://www.londonlive.co.uk/news/2015-02-26/petition-to-save-a-south-london-gets-3-000-signitures

[henryb]

Walk to Save Southwark Woods - 8th March

The 100 Acre Wood Walk

A Teddy Bears? Moveable Feast

Sunday 8th March

11AM - 1PM

Meet 10.30AM

Camberwell Old Cemetery Gates

Forest Hill Road SE22 0SQ

Walk to Save Southwark Woods!

The council want to put 6,000 burial plots in our magical Southwark Woods at Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries.

Residents have a better idea - a100 Acre Wood for the well-being of the local community and South London.

Bring balloons, cake, banners, flags, instruments, dogs on leashes, wellies...

and your teddy bears!

Route

Through Camberwell Old Cemetery woods

Up and over One Tree Hill

Through Camberwell New Cemetery

Over to Nunhead Cemetery

Finish at the Ivy House for 1PM

Walk to save the magical nature of our 100 Acre Wood!

http://www.savesouthwarkwoods.org.uk/walk

[pipsky2008]

Have a nice day on the march but the way to do it is on points of law

[edhistory]

"These wonderful woodlands are home to protected species"

Which species are these?

John K

[Rosymia]

Thanks. I have shared and signed the petition.

[kiera]

John K - you have already asked this question on another thread and I responded, but I'll reply again. There are bats in Camberwell Old Cemetery.

On a bat walk last year we saw bats. I The bat detector identified three different species.

[edhistory]

Kiera,

You have NOT named any species.

This may help:

http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/page-3408

John K