Upper Norwood - The Fresh Air Suburb

Alastair · February-5th-2004, 04:21 PM

Over in the JC Birthdays thread, SinginSumo suggested I start an Upper Norwood thread, citing Ron’s “Only In Alaska!” thread as an educational and humorous example. I can’t offer such lovely pictures as Mr Thorne, and my focus will be rather narrower than his, but hopefully some of you will enjoy learning more about my place of residence. If you’ve read the entries on the “JC Birthdays” thread there’s nothing new in this here post, but just so we have it all in one place…

Upper Norwood is in South East London. It is the area better known as Crystal Palace, after the magnificent edifice moved from Hyde Park to the park that separated Upper Norwood from Sydenham, after the Great Exhibition of 1851. That burnt down in 1936, but the ruins are still in the park. There's a good brief history and some nice photos here . Emile Zola spent part of his post "J'Accuse" exile in Upper Norwood (and took lots of photographs) and Pissarro painted some pictures here too. I’ll dig some of that stuff out later.

If you want to find out more about what it looks like now, this site is pretty comprehensive - but it doesn't have a picture of my street...Virtual Norwood

Although you may think that where there’s an Upper Norwood there must also be a Lower Norwood there hasn't actually been a Lower Norwood since the late nineteenth century - when Upper Norwood benefited from the influx of people visiting the Crystal Palace, the burghers of Lower Norwood reasoned that their name was putting people off visiting - that people must be considering Lower Norwood as Lower Class. So they changed it to South Norwood, which is what is remains today. And do you know what? It's still a dump. Upper Norwood/Crystal Palace is much nicer and quite up-and-coming. Or so my estate agent said.

Been here two years now. I love living somewhere with a history.

jesus marion joseph · February-5th-2004, 05:31 PM

Nice post. I live on Cape Cod, which is steeped in history. My wife grew up in Provincetown, which is where the Pilgrims first landed, before moving across Cape Cod Bay to settle in Plymouth. If I'm not mistaken, the Mayflower Compact was written in Provincetown Harbor. (Just checked-it was indeed signed in the harbor in 1620).

Uli · February-5th-2004, 06:00 PM

Oak Park, Illinois, birhtplace of Ernest Hemingway and location of Frank Lloyd Wright Atelier

Unity temple: Itself a place full of history with records from there (e.g. Noah Howard, Evan Parker tec)

Jon Abbey · February-5th-2004, 06:25 PM

wow, awesome pic, Uli, thanks for that. I think I have to go google Unity Temple now...

Ron Thorne · February-5th-2004, 06:52 PM

Alasatair, thanks so much for starting this thread. The links offer a fascinating glimpse into a region I've always wanted to visit, and hope to some day. My grandfather Thorne was born and educated in England, graduating from Oxford before coming to America and opening a School of Business and meeting my grandmother.

The Crystal Palace is an amazing feat of engineering, though I was sad to learn of the demise of the fountains. I can only imagine what it must have looked like before alterations.

I look forward to more installments from you.

jesus marion joseph · February-5th-2004, 07:49 PM

Wow, Unity Temple is one cool-looking design. This Wright fella has a good eye, huh?

jesus marion joseph · February-5th-2004, 07:58 PM

Are you suggesting that Uli has posted a "sexed-up" Frank Lloyd Wright design??

SinginSumo · February-6th-2004, 12:07 AM

Pics, jmj. Dig out the digital.

Ron Thorne · February-6th-2004, 01:14 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by jesus marion joseph
Are you suggesting that Uli has posted a "sexed-up" Frank Lloyd Wright design??

I'm not going to speak for anyone else, and I certainly wouldn't cast any aspersions on Uli, either. I also don't know squat about CAD, but I do have a bit of an eye for design. Focus on the black line accents alone and see if you feel that it looks "natural". It almost looks like tape. I'm not at all convinced that's an unaltered photographic image in Uli's post. Again, that's no reflection on Uli.

This looks "natural" to my eyes.

Ron Thorne · February-6th-2004, 01:17 AM

Sorry, Alastair. Please carry on with your original thread concept.

I'm intrigued by "The Fresh Air Suburb" known as Upper Norwood. It has a certain distinctive quality within its name, doesn't it?

Alastair · February-6th-2004, 08:15 PM

It does have a ring to it, yes.

Here are a couple of photographs I took last winter in Crystal Palace Park, showing what remains of the Crystal Palace Gardens. This first shows a staircase down from where the Palace itself stood.

Alastair · February-6th-2004, 08:16 PM

...and this is part of the terrace. You can see more of it in the distance.

moneyp · February-6th-2004, 08:29 PM

Uli's picture isn't "sexed-up" at all. It's a high-resolution photograph, which means it just doesn't look as crappy as your standard photographs.

Jon Abbey · February-6th-2004, 09:15 PM

it's also not too hard to click and hold on any photo posted here, to get it to open in a separate window where you can see the URL.

http://www.wam.umd.edu/~stwright/fra...e_high_res.jpg

Alastair · February-15th-2004, 05:53 PM

The Norwoods – Upper and, possibly anachronistically, Lower – are mentioned in at least two Sherlock Holmes stories, the novel “The Sign of Four” and the short story “The Norwood Builder” from “The Return of Sherlock Holmes”.

In “The Sign of Four”, Homes, Watson and Miss Mary Morstan go to visit Mr Thaddeus Sholto, in an attempt to find out why Miss Morstan has been receiving gifts and a letter saying that she is “a wronged woman”. As the three race through South London we see that, from this atmospheric description, Sholto’s house appears to be somewhere in Brixton:

“’Wandsworth Road,’ said my companion. “Priory Road. Larkhall Lane. Stockwell Place. Robert Street. Coldharbour Lane. Our quest does not appear to take us to very fashionable regions.’

We had indeed reached a questionable and forbidding neighbourhood. Long lines of dull brick houses were only relieved by the coarse glare and tawdry brilliancy of public houses at the corner. Then came rows of two-storied villas, each with a fronting of a miniature garden, and then again interminable lines of new, staring brick buildings – the monster tentacles which the giant city was throwing out into the country…

…’Your servant, Miss Morstan,’ [Thaddeus Sholto] kept repeating, in a thin high voice. ‘Your servant, gentlemen. Pray step into my little sanctum. A small place, Miss, but furnished in my own liking. An oasis of art in the howling desert of South London.’”

It’s instructive to consider that 1890’s “interminable lines of new, staring brick buildings” are 2004’s desirable Victorian terraces. If a house survives long enough it becomes sought-after.

In due course Thaddeus suggests they visit his brother Bartholomew, who lives at Pondicherry Lodge, Upper Norwood. The house is described thus:

“Pondicherry Lodge stood in its own grounds, and was girt round with a very high stone wall toped with broken glass. A single narrow iron-clamped door formed the only means of entrance.”

I haven’t noticed a Pondicherry Lode on my perambulations but it fits in with the larger houses to be found in and around Upper Norwood, many of them now converted into flats. Alas, they find brother Bartholomew dead, a long dark thorn stuck in his neck…this murder is later referred to in the papers as “the Upper Norwood tragedy”.

As usual, Holmes solves the case. Less usually, Watson gets the girl – he and Miss Morstan are married somewhere between the end of this book and his next appearance.

“The Norwood Builder” starts with a John Hector McFarlane of Blackheath (another place I’ve lived) bursting into 221b Baker Street, desperate to engage Holmes’ services before the police arrest him on the charge of murdering Mr Jonas Oldacre of Lower Norwood.

As I said in a previous post, Lower Norwood has been called South Norwood since the late nineteenth century. I’m not sure whether Conan Doyle, writing this story in 1903, knew of the change, but if he did he preferred not to go along with it.

The story in the paper says that Mr Oldacre lived…”in Deep Dene House, at the Sydenham end of the road of that name.” Not surprisingly, there is no Deep Dene Road in any of the Norwoods today, but, given the size of the house described (“a big modern villa of staring brick, standing back in it’s own grounds…”), the road being long enough to have a Sydenham end, and McFarlane (and later Homes and Watson) using “Norwood” station (probably today's Norwood Junction) in preference to Crystal Palace, I’d suggest that Deep Dene Road is actually today’s Penge Road. More weight is given to this by McFarlane telling of, it being too late to return to Blackheath on the night in question, his staying at the “Anerley Arms” – Anerley being between South Norwood and Penge, towards Sydenham. It strikes me that a cab could have taken him from South Norwood to Blackheath for less than the cost of a night in a hotel, but what do I know? It helps the story at any rate.

The Norwood/Conan Doyle interface was bought to the front of my mind by a recent rerun of “The Norwood Builder”, which is part of the excellent Jeremy Brett series of Sherlock Holmes cases made by Granada in the 1980s. Of course, the locations they used weren’t Norwood of any description, but it reminded me of the “Sign of Four” references to Norwood, which had been about the only thing I knew about the place when I came to live here. There are many parts of London mentioned in the Holmes canon, but the Norwoods acting as the backdrop for a substantial part of one of the novels and the majority of a short story show that, despite it’s distance from Baker Street, it was a well-known part of the London landscape at the time.

Alastair · February-15th-2004, 05:58 PM

Erm...just found out that Conan Doyle lived in South Norwood from 1891 to 1897, so he had no excuse for getting the name wrong. Might also explain setting the short story there...

I"m going to get to the bottom of this South/Lower thing. If only for my own peace of mind.

Alastair · April-3rd-2004, 07:06 PM

I recently picked up "Norwood Past" by John Coulter, and found out that South Norwood has always been South Norwood. It seems that West Norwood used to be Lower Norwood. Sheesh. Looks like Sir Arthur was enjoying some literary obfuscation.

Conan Doyle used to live in South Norwood though - at 12, Tennison Road. The house he once lived in no longer exists, but there's a great picture of him and his wife on a strange three-wheeled cycle in front of it that I'll scan in shortly.

I've been working on a pub crawl of the 10 (yes, ten) pubs that line the Upper Norwood Traingle recently. The Easter weekend may well form the excuse to finally do all ten - with pictures from my new L'Espion mini digital camera (don't get too excited). Watch this space.