Local charity, Dulwich Helpline is inviting
people to come to Dulwich Picture Gallery and enjoy a fascinating
insight into life in Dulwich in the 19th Century!
Local historian and author, Brian Green, will be giving an
illustrated talk in the Gallery’s Linbury Room on Sunday November
22nd at 2.30 p.m. Tickets priced at £7 (£5 concessions)
are available from Dulwich Helpline, Dulwich Community Hospital,
East Dulwich Grove, SE22 8PT (cheques payable to “Dulwich
Helpline”) (Tel 020 8299 2623).
The event has been kindly “donated” by a
former councillor Michelle Pearce, who has now become a Dulwich
Helpline volunteer! She had attended an “Auction of Promises”
at St Barnabas Church and bid for the 1 hour illustrated talk with
the idea of passing it onto Dulwich Helpline for a fundraising
event!
Brian Green writes “East Dulwich
was transformed from a pleasant rural area of farmland and
hedgerows, studded here and there by Georgian mansions each with
attractive gardens and winding paths, into a maze of small streets
made up of similar but not identical Victorian terraced villas –
and it all happened within the space of 25 years.
In and around Dulwich Village, the pace of
change was slower. A handful of farms still supplied milk to
local houses into the 20th Century and the area retained
much of its open land, transformed from hay fields into playing
fields. A wealthy elite built grandly on its surrounding
hills looked after by an army of domestic servants.
Separating these two diverse communities was the commercial
thoroughfare of Lordship Lane, with its early chain stores and
providing the transport link which daily transported many of the
new population by tram, or train to their offices in
London”.
Brian Green, who has written and lectured
extensively on Dulwich’s history for many years, will explain the
causes and effects of these two transformations in a well
illustrated talk which will appeal to all those interested in the
place where they live.