Woolwich Common to Eltham Common: A South London Landscape History

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Woolwich Common to Eltham Common: A South London Landscape History quantity

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Starting at Bostall Heath in the south-east and finishing at Putney Heath in the south-west, a chain of commons runs in a wide arc across the whole of South London.This series of zines mixes history, ecology, psychogeography, architecture, poetry and memoir to unpack how, taken together, the commons provide the key to the South London landscape.

Written by landscape historian John Gray and featuring photographs by Woolwich-based photographer Sam Walton, this second zine in the series explores a pair of ancient commons. The cover is a cyanotype by artist Sally Gunnett, created using plants from Woolwich Common and evoking ancestral rights of common. The cyanotype was then Risograph printed by Lewisham’s Page Masters, along with the rest of the publication.

CONTENTS: “How does landscape manifest as a system of memory?”—the topography of South London—Shooter’s Hill—a love letter to Woolwich Common—walking its convoluted history—“part blasted heath, part great park”—Blue Danube—buried Blitz rubble—Nightingales in Woolwich—the house Bernadine Evaristo grew up in—echoes of imperialism inscribed in the landscape—colonial rabbits and colonial dogs—the South London Vernacular—the virtue of eclecticism out of the necessity of randomised destruction—Eltham Common and the old Dover Road—Kossowski’s mural on the Old Kent Road, one of the jewels of South London—the common and the gallows—in defence of Mock Tudor—Peter Barber’s Rochester Way: the best of contemporary architecture—the worst: Kidbrooke Village—not a place for walking free—Outer South London Vernacular, from Eltham to New Malden—an unremarkable scrap of grass.

South London Landscape History,

2026,

14 x 21 cm,

47 pages,

PB