Save Southwark Woods - link to Objections to Planning Applications

[dbboy]

SOUTHWARK WOODS DOES NOT EXIST AND HAS NEVER EVER DONE SO. IF YOU WANT GREEN SPACE AND TREES JUST LOOK AROUND AND SEE THE GREAT NORTH WOOD, HORNIMANS GARDENS, HORNIMANS PARK, PRCKHAN RYE COMMON, PECKHAM RYE PARK, BRENCHLEY GARDENS AND OH, ONE TREE HILL AS WELL.

IT IS A CEMETERY TO BURY THOSE WHO HAVE PASSED AWAY AND THAT RELATIVES AND FRIENDS CAN GO AND PAY THEIR RESPECTS AND REMEMBER THEIR LOVED ONES. IT IS A CEMETERY, NOT A PLAYGROUND, IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE A PEACEFUL PLACE FOR REFLECTION AND REMEMBRANCE. THE GRAVE IS THE PLACE WHERE WE GO TO DO THIS, IT GIVES COMFORT AND IS A WAY OF REMEMBERING THOSE WHO HAVE DIED. WE DO THIS BY PLACING FLOWERS, TENDING THE GRAVE AND SPENDING SOME PRECIOUS TIME AT THE GRAVESIDE.

JOOLS - I AM REALLY TIRING OF THE UTTER C##P YOU ARE AND CONTINUE TO SPOUT. YOU MAY NOT BELIEVE IN DEATH, BURIAL, MOURNING OR REMEMBERING LOVED ONES WHO HAVE PASSED AWAY, BUT FOR SOME OF US IT IS AN IMPORTANT WAY OF REFLECTING AND MAINTAINING LINKS WITH THE PAST.

And James, at times like this I despair with what you say.

[HopOne]

dbboy, there is no need to shout.

Let's pretend that no one mentioned Southwark Woods. Local people still value the green and wooded areas local to them and we are lucky that we have more than other areas of London - they create green corridors which enhance our environment via biodiversity and replenishing the atmosphere. They also have heaps of amenity value which of course can include remembrance and bereavement in the case of cemeteries.

There are 2 local cemeteries which both have such amenity value and there is no need, in my view, for them to cease their function as cemeteries (for your info, CNC also includes a playground and playing fields). However, that does not mean to say that we should chop down trees by way of continuing the mistakes from the past. We only have a finite space in which to bury and I believe urban councils are watching how this develops with interest. There are other ways of dealing with this IMO but you are entitled to disagree.

I, for one, am glad that SSW have taken up the issue and it seems that many people agree. If I am honest, I don't particularly like the "Southwark Woods" name either but I see that as cosmetic almost. A tag was needed to connect the two cemeteries, that is all.

[edhistory]

HopOne

Did you read what you wrote before posting?

John K

[HopOne]

John K, yes. Is there a problem?

[Andrew1011]

James Barber Wrote:

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> I also believe burials on top of other previous

> burials is also not allowed by some faiths.

>

> The council plans are to spend multi million

> pounds - circa ?5m in phase 1 to remove trees etc.

> Effectively the council will be grossly

> subsidising every burial there. It could use a

> commercial cemetery a couple of miles away, reduce

> the costs to families dramatically, and avoid this

> huge capital outlay.

Cllr James Barber, as usual promulgating misinformation and, in true Lib Dem fashion, promoting the privatisation of the burial of the dead. James, have you tried encouraging the existing occupants of the cemetery to start a petition?

[mynamehere]

The issues undertaken by SSW are not the ones used to distort and manipulate public opinion. The issue(s) is global warming and over population and poor governance and all the attendant problems there of.

Global Warming Fact

Loss of open wild space Fact

Loss of trees Fact

Over population in how the bio diversity of the world is affected with attendant mass farming etc ad nausium Fact

Read the Guardian today: destruction of the Seas these are Facts

"Southwark Woods"? Cemeteries are land presents from the past to the future.

It is insane to put every separate person into a rectangle of cement in an oak coffin so that maybe someone can "mourn" for a few years and then forget and that is what always. Always happens and the cement and dead earth and dead oak tree in the ground remain.

Cemeteries as we have used them for a millisecond in human history are insane. Mourn in a wood a remembrance wood. Bury under a tree. Buy a bench for people to sit on.

[mynamehere]

And yes this bit of land that happens to be where the 63 turns around and another bit to the east where an old lady in perpetual mourning for a husband who died young might have have once had a picnic, these two bits together 98 acres hence a "hundred acre wood" in a part of a sprawling metropolitan polluted mega city where this forum rants and raves about minutia (and I love it! get loads of up-to-date information and good ideas here!) this "southwark woods" does have a seed bank which links the past and the present if it was allowed to germinate and it has heritage trees which all the new committees and wise academicians have come and measured and pontificated about.

This left over undeveloped land suddenly in the public eye as we watch a power game played out with us tricked and played as idiot pawns in a game that ultimately funded by us with profits and rewards in jobs to the politicians when they award unnecessary work to the contractors.

When you inhale you are inhaling bits of just about everyone and everything that ever lived. That is a fact not a metaphor. There is no reason at all you need cement and plastic flowers to mourn your dead.

Save this left over land from commercial exploitation and development because the traditional 1890 cemetery is just another built cement development.

Declare it a nature reserve and a green lung forever.

Horses with plumes can drag memory hearses with songs and celebration. Stone masons can carve plaques to make memory walls. No one will be out of a job if we make a woodland park out of this land. We are being conned by politicians who don't build safe streets, who drill unnecessary tunnels with public money for private profit water companies where they then get jobs, who sell public land for nothing and then, yes again, take jobs and pensions from those lucky development firms. Politicians who cannot get housing right..

It does all seem to trundle along day to day and year to year until I guess one year the wheels will just come off and the whole show will stop. Probably not in our lifetimes. Our children? theirs?

So save this bit of left over abused land and go and sit in a dense green canopy

[Andrew1011]

Mynamehere, that us utter rubbish.

The cemeteries suffered a period of mismanagement by the council and the grounds were not properly tended. Now they will be.

I agree with your point about global warming, the loss of open wild space (of which this is not one) and the loss of trees (Southwark plants hundreds of new ones) and the destruction of the seas (nothing to do with these cemeteries). However, this is not a global warming issue.

"Dead oak tree", like any natural material remains in the ground for as long as it takes for it to decompose in the ground. However, the most recent burials I have been to have involved environmentally friendly weaved willow coffins.

Cemeteries are not insane, they provide priceless records of history, are evolving to be greener and the ancient burial grounds being discovered and excavated now provide insights into our history, and are valuable for that in itself.

[henryb]

> I agree with your point about global warming, the

> loss of open wild space (of which this is not one)

Sorry I really can't see how people can say they are not wild woods. Just go take a look! Walk up Underhill Rd near the junction with Hillcourt Rd and look over the fence. Or go to CNC, walk up the hill on the path by the side of the allotments. At the top, across the small public burial area, there is path leading into the woods, follow that up and around until you get to a clearing that has a view down the hill, over the cemetery and the city. It is stunning. That is the area they are going to clear. The glade is going to be 4 times bigger than it is currently. 24 semi mature tree are coming down there (I measured one, a native sessile oak, with a girth of 30 inches) not to mention an uncounted number of smaller ones.

> they provide priceless

> records of history, are evolving to be greener and

> the ancient burial grounds being discovered and

> excavated now provide insights into our history,

> and are valuable for that in itself.

I agree completely. Stage 2 of the plans is to start re-using the old private plots. That quite often means removing and disposing of the old grave stones and in some cases exhuming and removing any remains ? where is your history then? Someone said that old cemeteries are our history and culture written into the landscape. I do not see how these plans respect that.

[Penguin68]

Sorry I really can't see how people can say they are not wild woods.

People can say it who have any knowledge of what a wild wood actually is. This is all very recent growth, mainly secondary, mainly scrubby, in an area which was previously pastureland.

Any untended area in the UK will, over really very short time frames, start to 'wood up' - that is the function of living in a temperate climate in an area which already has a very large number and range of trees which can readily seed in untended ground.

My own garden has 3 'wild' oaks, two cypresses, two clumps of mahonia, a sycamore and a rowan, all self (or squirrel) seeded. Some of the trees are now 25-30 ft. Many more have tried to grow, where I didn't want them, and have been uprooted. Mine is a tended garden, not a 'wild wood' - but the cause, and effects, are the same.

Anyone who has lived in London for a decent time will have seen precisely the same effects in bomb sites (including that near St Paul's, the former Chief Telegraph Office and now BT Headquarters, which remained a bombsite till the late 80s) which often remained uncleared for 20-30 years - these were also 'wooded'. But they weren't (and neither is the cemetery) wild woods.

[Sue]

It is pointless trying to give them facts, Penguin68.

Judging by their posts on here, they don't seem able to understand them :(

[henryb]

Well I generally use the dictionary definition for those words.

Wild: Occurring, growing, or living in a natural state; not domesticated, cultivated, or tamed: wild

Wood: An area of land, smaller than a forest, that is covered with growing trees:

You can use whatever definition if you like but that wont change what it is. So I say again go up to area in CNC and tell me it has no value as what it is. If you don't see the beauty in it, then sorry - I do not understand your value system at all - it is completely alien to me.

[Sue]

My allotment would be defined as a wild wood in a year or so by your definition, henryb, unless I constantly weeded out all the many tree seedlings in it.

There are many beautiful green areas around here - including actual historic woodland - without trying to pretend that something is what it isn't.

It has nothing to do with "not seeing the beauty in it".

[henryb]

So you do see the beauty in it? Have you been up there?

[Penguin68]

If you don't see the beauty in it, then sorry - I do not understand your value system at all - it is completely alien to me.

As, apparently, is logical thought. If you had ever been (clearly you haven't) in real woodland, which isn't growing through open Victorian graves, isn't full of weedy secondary growth - isn't an 'over grown' anything - you might consider what is growing wild (in the sense that, quite scandalously it was neglected by the council) in the cemetery to be really very disappointing. Yes, naturally growing stuff can be seen to be beautiful, as can sculptures, buildings, paintings, music - one 'beauty' doesn't trump all others, and, frankly, in the natural growth scheme of things the cemetery scrubland is pretty poor, as natural beauty goes. I find a well tended cemetery to be aesthetically pleasing - but I wouldn't want a cemetery in Peckham Rye or Dulwich Park to replace what is already there, just as I don't want a cemetery turned over to neglect. Enjoy the real parks and real, intended woods we have a great local abundance of (when you consider we are an inner city borough) - stop trying to impose additional 'woods' on those who see a better (and more traditional) use for a cemetery.

And don't pray in aid your own aesthetic sensibilities as some sort of justification to over-ride those of others.

[Sue]

henryb Wrote:

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> So you do see the beauty in it? Have you been up

> there?

There is beauty in many things.

Have you actually read my post?

[Penguin68]

If you want woods locally, real woods try here:- https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Dulwich+Woods&rls=com.microsoft:en-US:%7Breferrer:source%7D&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CCwQsARqFQoTCNOhu_LGgMgCFcVWGgod8eUAfg&biw=1496&bih=834

These are real (secondary) growth - actually through an old railway line (the tunnels you can see in some of the pictures) - but they are within easy walking distance and trump (by a long way) any aesthetic pleasures to be had from the cemetery growth, in my opinion. They may not be exactly on your door step, as an extended garden for you, but they are no more than 15 minutes slow amble from the old cemetery.

[henryb]

I'll ask again have either of you two actually been to area D1 in Camberwell New Cemetery?

[dbboy]

I want COC to be just that, a cemetery where we can go and mourn our dead relatives.

The land in question is currently over grown and is in the cemetery. The Council now wish to clear this area to revert it back into ground for burials which is what it was originally intended to be for. As others have said we have plenty of other green space very, very local to where we all live. If people want to call an overgrown area a wood and then give it a name that is unrecognised, perhaps they should target their interests elsewhere.

Is it not better to clear the overgrown area and use it for burials rather than using more of Honor Oak Rec. This is surely the best option, as maybe when land for burials is full in the borough, an area of Peckham Rye Common could be next to be used as a cemetery and no one would be happy to see that happen.

[henryb]

Or what they could do is use the money purchase land in Kemnal Park for use by Southwark residents. They could actually give the plots away for free and they would still be saving money.

[Sue]

henryb Wrote:

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> I'll ask again have either of you two actually

> been to area D1 in Camberwell New Cemetery?

Not recently, no. However, the points I am making do not depend on my having been there.

Now perhaps you could answer my question above? Have you actually read my post?

ETA: It is pointless trying to have a reasoned discussion when you do not appear to be taking in what others are saying. This has been a dominant feature of all the threads on this subject. Do you think that by starting another one people will conveniently have forgotten the previous discussions?

ETA: I did not mean to suggest that you started this one.

[taper]

So you haven't been Sue.

Have you been to Nunhead Cemetery recently? COC could look like that in a few decades time, but not if it's torn down in the next few years.

[Sue]

taper Wrote:

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> So you haven't been Sue.

>

> Have you been to Nunhead Cemetery recently? COC

> could look like that in a few decades time, but

> not if it's torn down in the next few years.

I have been a long time ago. I did horticultural training in the grounds next to the cemetery, which we visited to look at grounds maintenance etc.. Training stopped being done there many years ago.

I'm not sure what your point is.

And yes I have been to Nunhead Cemetery on many occasions.

[henryb]

Yes I read your post about your allotment - yes you should weed it. It is not a wood. What do you want me to say?

The area D1 in CNC is a 30/40 year old maybe older secondary self seeded native woodland. That does not make it ugly or have no social or environmental worth. In my view it is very beautiful thing in a very beautiful setting and I am not alone in that feeling. If you don't think so then - that's fine we disagree.

Yes there are other beautiful woods around here some older than others. We are very lucky. That is not a reason to lose this one.

However none of them are pristine ancient woodland and none haven't been influenced by man in some way in the past.

[Sue]

henryb Wrote:

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> Yes I read your post about your allotment - yes

> you should weed it. It is not a wood. What do you

> want me to say?

>

My point was that if I didn't weed it, by your definition it would shortly become a wood ....