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Ravensbourne Walk – 2012

Ravensbourne Walk: On Sunday 13th May 2012 I decided to take a walk alongside one of London’s rivers, the Ravensbourne. It isn’t one of London’s best-known rivers and perhaps lacks the glamour of the so-called ‘lost rivers’.

The Ravensbourne still flows largely above ground, and its final tidal section before it enters into the Thames is the rather better-known Deptford Creek, once an important industrial area. It also once powered a number of mills along its length.

I’d decided not to begin at its source at Caesar’s Well in Keston but to join it around 4 miles to the north at Bromley where I could join it by a short downhill walk from Bromley South station. The area around Bromley has several culverted sections of the river and it emerges from one of these into a lake at the west of Church House Gardens, disappearing again for a short section before coming into the open in parkland in Martins Hill Open Space north of Glassmill Lane.

It then goes underground for around a quarter of a mile before appearing again along the edge of a golf course, but non-members have to walk along Ravensbourne Avenue before seeing it again at the bridge under Farnaby Road.

From there on the river flows in the open through Beckenham Place Park and I could walk beside it or close to it, having to weave my way through various roads in an estate here. Just to the east of the river on Brangbourne Road is a large council estate with blocks named after various rivers, mostly I think London Rivers, and a block on the corner with Old Bromley Road is Ravensbourne.

After a small green area on the corner of Bromley Rd and Beckenham Hill Rd which it then goes under to feed a large pond at Homebase. The map I was using for the walk shows this as a stream with a weir in the middle. Part was once the mill pond for Lower Mill, a corn mill (which was at different times a mustard mill and a cutlery mill) on the corner of Southend Lane. Upper Mill stood roughly here on the corner of Beckenham Hill Rd.

Overlooking the pond at Hoomebase I photographed the sculpture The Whisper, Andre Wallace 1984 and the church hall opposite. The river leaves the pound overground, emerging into the open again a couple of hundred yards on as it goes under Watermead Lane where it runs between houses and flats. You can follow this on a back-street but I took the more interesting route along the Bromley Road.

At Randlesdown Road it flows into the Catford Trading Estate, then goes under Fordmill Rd just north of the railway bridge. Shortly after here it joins what is usually called its largest tributary, the River Pool, though I think this is usually a larger river than the Ravensbourne, though shorter before continuing under Catford Road next to Catford Bridge Station.

It was a hot day, and I had done rather more walking around than the relatively short route taken by the river, and I was tired. I had intended to walk on to Lewisham or perhaps even Deptford, but abandoned my plans and caught a train here.

More pictures on My London Diary at Ravensbourne.

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May Queens in April – 2007

May Queens in April: Most years on April 28th I’ve photographed events around one the the more important but largely overlooked by media occasions of the year – International Workers Memorial Day – which remembers those who have died in the workplace, with the slogan ‘Remember the dead – fight for the living‘. You can read a number of accounts of some of these events on My London Diary – such as this one from 2013.

But some years – and this year, 2025 is another – I have other commitments on April 28th and have not been able to cover International Workers Memorial Day. In 2007 I was working hard on a project on London’s May Queens for a museum exhibition (unfortunately cancelled at the final stage due to financial constraints) and needed to be in south-east London to work on that. My day on Saturday 28 April began in Chislehurst and then moved on to Bromley where a number of local May Queens were crowned.

After the exhibition was cancelled I put together some of the pictures from these events in a book, London’s May Queens, still available. It’s perhaps important to say that these events are not beauty competitions but activities to raise the confidence and abilities of the girls who take part, including in public speaking and performance and that the various roles in the local groups and the London May Queen group to which they can move on are assigned solely on their length of membership. It still follows the structures and texts from its founding years.

All of the rather detailed text from the second edition of the book both about the history of May Queens, this and other May Queen events around London and around half of its pictures can be viewed in the book preview on-line. Here is the text about the book on Blurb:

2012 saw the crowning of the London’s 100th May Queen. The first Merrie England and London May Queen festival was held in 1913 and it has continued every year since, still on the same lines. In the 1920s and 30s it was a major event, covered by cinema newsreels and competitions in daily newspapers, but now it is known to few outside the over 20 local realms that take part in the annual event. The 72 pictures in this work give a unique insight into this community event.

Here with the usual corrections are the two posts I wrote in 2007 on My London Diary. The pictures here are all from that day and you can see more at the links below each post.

Chislehurst May Queen Society – Fund-Raising Pub Crawl

Chislehurst isn’t far from the central London but is surrounded by woods and commons and feels very different to Hither Green a couple of stations closer to the centre. Even as a suburb it feels very rural, with what looks like a large village pond and village green.

Chislehurst is one of the ‘realms’ in the London May Queen Festival, but is finding it hard to keep going and attract new young girls to carry on the tradition (see London May Queen 2005 and Chislehurst May Queen 2006) for more pictures of them.

So getting publicity in the local area is very important. They need people to notice them and the May Queen Festival, and to bring their daughters and grand-daughters along to take part in the fun. Obviously the girls who do take part are enjoying it, but it is also a commitment and takes hard work to practice the maypole dances and so on.

To get some publicity the week before the May Queen Festival they organised a sponsored fancy-dress pub crawl. I met up with them at The Lounge, a fairly newly refurbished bar at the top of the hill to the north of the town centre, with an interesting decor.

From there we went down into the centre of Chislehurst, letting people know about the May Queen and collecting money both on the street and in the pubs we visited.

I was sorry to have to leave after the third pub, when perhaps things were beginning to warm up a little, but it was fun, and I hope will help to raise the profile of the May Queen group in the area.
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London May Queen: Bromley May Queens

I’d promised this year’s London May Queen, Erin, that I would try to photograph her, and unfortunately I had to be elsewhere for her actual crowning at Hayes in May. So Bromley seemed a good place to catch up with her and take some pictures, as there she would be appearing with five local may queens from groups around the area – Bromley Common, Shortlands, Hayes, Hayes Common and Hayes Village.

Erin, the 2007 London May Queen, is easy to recognise in my pictures as she is carrying a frame with pink roses and white flowers that says ‘I am the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley‘, as well as a sash saying ‘London May Queen‘.

Unfortunately we got on the wrong bus to get to Bromley and enjoyed a long tour of most of the outer reaches of south-east London before finally arriving there. It didn’t help that the address I had for the start was rather vague, but finally we met up with the procession almost exactly where we had got off the bus 15 minutes of wandering earlier, and walked with the procession through the centre of the town to the gardens.

It was a shame that the police had apparently insisted that the procession rush through the town centre. It was led by the band of T S Endeavour, playing ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’ (and other popular tunes) and I’m sure they could have marched at half the pace without causing great traffic chaos – much of the centre is in any case pedestrianised.

Some of the younger girls taking part really had to run to keep up through the town centre. Events such as this enliven towns (and Bromley could do with an awful lot of enlivening, being total shopping hell) adding colour and individuality, and it seems far more important to celebrate them to the maximum than worry excessively about traffic flow.

At the gardens things were more relaxed, and the London May Queen was able to crown those of the other queens who had not already been crowned at their own local ceremonies, and there were many pictures taken by me and the mothers and fathers.

Again it’s a shame that Bromley doesn’t have a maypole and there wasn’t any singing or dancing or acting. But it was a nice summery afternoon and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

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Coronation Time – 2013

I’ve attended and photographed quite a few coronations, but will be having absolutely nothing to do with events this coming weekend. It appears to me an obscene waste of money, totally unnecessary spending which could be directed towards something far more worthwhile on a medieval relic that the country should have abandoned or hugely reformed years ago.

I do remember the 1953 event, when we spent rather boring hours crammed into our neighbours front room facing a 9 inch screen on the black and white television their elder son had built from a kit. And a few days later our school’s classes were trooped along to the local cinema – appropriately The Regal – to watch it in colour. It had rained for the event and I think we also got wet queueing to be let in. I think few found the film of much interest.

Of course there was a lot of ballyhoo back in 1953, but nothing like the prolonged media assault we are now seeing – our media have changed, and largely for the worst. And while some people held street parties I don’t think there were any in our London suburb.

There was certainly a lot of talk then about a new “Elizabethan Era” but little came of it, though we were still slowly emerging from wartime austerity. For most children in the UK the more significant event of the Coronation year had been the end of sweet rationing several months earlier, though sugar, meat and some other foods remained on ration.

Back in 2004 or 2005 four pictures in the posthumous Tony Ray Jones book ‘A Day Off’ of May Queen festivals had come to my attention and I decided it might be an interesting area for a photographic project if these events were still taking place. A little research, mainly on-line told me that there were still some in various parts of London and that the picture showing young girls dancing around the maypole was, despite an incorrect caption, actually from the London May Queen event taking place annually on Hayes Common.

So in May 2005 I went to Hayes Common, very uncertain about what I would find, and also about how I would be received. Old men photographing young girls was by then a rather suspect activity, but I talked with some of the organisers and if not immediately gained their confidence. It was the start of a project over several years that attracted interest from the Museum of London, though in the end they pulled out from the show at late stage, though I think they did buy a few pictures.

It took several years of attending various crownings and other May Queen events, including a few unconnected with the London May Queen for me to build up a body of work and I extended the project a little longer than was necessary to include the crowning of the 100th London May Queen in 2012, publishing my book London’s May Queens later that year. Being publishing on demand this is now ridiculously expensive but the PDF version is reasonably priced. The preview there contains my short article about May Queens and quite a few pictures.

By 2013 I had finished the project, but was still receiving invitations to return to take pictures, and was pleased I had time to do so, not just for the Beckenham May Queens on Sataturday 4th May 2013, from which the pictures here come, but for the crowning of London’s 101st May Queen at Hayes the following Saturday. I think this was the last coronation I attended.

Many more pictures at Beckenham May Queens.

London Crowns 100th May Queen

London Crowns 100th May Queen – Hayes, Kent.

On Saturday 12 May 2012 I went by invitation from the family of the 100th May Queen to photograph her crowning on Hayes Common. Earlier I had photographed and written about the festival and other May Queen Festivals. Below is the text from my report on the event in My London Diary, with just a few minor corrections along with a few of the pictures. You can find more pictures on the web site.

The Merrie England and London May Queen Festival was started by Joseph Deedy, usually described as a ‘Dulwich schoolmaster’ in 1913, and moved to its current location on Hayes Common soon after. Surprisingly it continued throughout both world wars, although in a somewhat truncated version, with no procession around the village. It was also felt that holding the ceremony in the open air would present too tempting a target for the enemy, and so it was moved from the common to the parish church. But continue it did, and every year since 1913, one girl has been crowned as the London May Queen, making this year’s Festival and Queen the 100th.

Whitelands College in London started its May Queen festival rather earlier in 1881 at the prompting of John Ruskin, and this still continues at the college (now part of the University of Roehampton) although since the college now admits men, some years they have a May King in place of a queen. Talking to one of the organisers of the event yesterday I learnt that Deedy had worked at Whitelands – contrary to the published information on him, including that I retold in my own book and PDF on the festival. [You can read a little more about this book on >Re:PHOTO which also has has an e-pub link.) Copies of this and my other Blurb books are usually available to UK addresses more cheaply direct from me.

*The London May Queen sits in her carriage*

The ceremonies take place in a large roped off arena on Hayes Common, with the May Queens and their groups from various places on the fringes of south east London taking their places around it in alphabetical order. Each group has its own colour for the dresses and its own flower, and girls who may join as young as three make their way up through the various roles in the group until, if they remain long enough, they become the May Queen of their local realm. After this they can move on to join the London May Queen group, and again take the various roles by seniority until finally – usually when they are around 16 – they become London May Queen. As well as taking part in May Queen activities, May Queens and their groups also appear at various charity events in their local areas.

I arrived just as the procession around Hayes was starting, with the uncrowned queen in a lightweight carriage pulled by Sea Cadets with the Prince of Merrie England walking beside her and preceded by a bagpiper. Behind her were the members of London May Queen, including the Joy Bells celebrating Music, Company, Life, Beauty, Flowers as well as the Fairy Queen, Bo-Peep, Robin Hood and several others.

Behind them came the May Queen realms in alphabetical order – Beckenham, Beddington, Bletchingly, Bromley Common, Caterham, Chislehurst, Coney Hall, Downe, Eden Park, Elmers End, Green St Green, Hayes, Hayes Common, Hayes Village, Orpington, Petts Wood, Shortlands, Wallington, Warlingham and West Wickham. In the heyday of the event in the 1920s and 30s there were as many as 100 groups, and the event made the national newspapers and the cinema newsreels.

Little Sanctum - London Crowns 100th May Queen — *At Hayes Parish Church for Little Sanctum*

At the parish church, the London May Queen group made their way into the churchyard for a short service written by Deedy which he called ‘Little Sanctum’, before joining back on the end of the procession around the village and back to the common.

There the 100th May Queen was crowned and the further pageant witten by Deedy performed, ending with the May Queen being led around the arena by BoPeep and scattering flowers towards the seated May Queen realms.

Many of the younger girls were quite tired by the walk around the village and were busy eating ice cream and sandwiches, which revived them considerably, and after the Chislehurst May Queen group had given a demonstration of ribbon dancing, all of the Merrie England children – including a few young boys who mainly take part as pages – came and took part in a lively circle dance around the large maypole.

All that was left was for the May Queen to draw the tickets for the raffle which helps to cover the expenses.

London Crowns 100th May Queen

You can read more about this and other May Queen ceremonies in London both in reports of the various events on My London Diary and from my book mentioned above. I had hoped that this would be followed by a major exhibition and a more scholarly work illustrated by my pictures but as yet this has not been possible.