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Living in Forest Hill
If it had stayed rural the area would no doubt be termed as rolling, and many echoes linger from its pre-urban life in a pleasing array of differing open spaces which are the areas trump card. To the west is the most impressive of them all, Dulwich and Sydenham Hill Woods. The latter is based around the old Nunhead-Crystal Palace railway and is a deep and densely-wooded nature reserve. The latter is a private wood open to the public, and the boundary between the two is delightfully imprecise. Dulwich Park is also next door. Forest Hill possesses a well-defined urban heart in the great T-junction of London Road, Dartmouth Road and Devonshire Road (A205 and A2216) by the train station. The typically urban facilities are concentrated in the centre of Forest Hill. The old art deco cinema/bingo hall, long an eyesore on London Road, has been converted into a public house called The Capital which features annually in the London Open House Day. There is a Sainsburys across the road. Round the corner and opposite the station the Hobgoblin promotes itself with great aplomb, offering bands, theme nights, all manner of drinks and parties of all descriptions.
Eateries are few and far between, although the French restaurant on Perry Vale and the Indian on Brockley Rise have great reputations. Forest Hills unique claim to fame is its ownership of the Horniman Museum and Gardens. Its stunning Art Nouveau Doulting stone tower and exterior mosaic on the Allegory of Life is something no-one can miss and the exhibits within and without are every bit as exotic and ground-breaking. The park is no less adventurous, with an annual festival, formal gardens, animal enclosures and Frederick Horniman's personal conservatory, surely the most impressive greenhouse around. Its most intriguing exhibit must be CUE (the Centre for Understanding the Environment), a unique building experimenting with the likes of self-build, photo-voltaic cells, ventilation via hollow beams, collecting greywater and using the surrounding reed beds to cool the entire building. And all under a turf roof. In the centre of SE23 is Horniman Gardens and to the north is One Tree Hill. Now densely wooded, the Oak of Honour, the third on the site, is protected at its summit by iron fencing. Its eastern slope is home to a dazzling array of allotments whose workers have banded together to create ponds for wildlife, beehives, a composting network and a fierce reputation in root vegetables. The waiting list is about three years. To the east of the Hill are a number of sports grounds at Honor Oak and on Brockley Rise. Sports indulged here include cricket, football, rounders and tennis but the pride of place seems to go to rugby. To the east and south are two more conventional parks, Blythe Hill Fields and Mayow Park.
Although buses pop up all over SE23, it is London Road/Lordship Lane (A205), heading into the city, which handles the majority of the routes. The buses filter in from the T-junction at the heart of Forest Hill from Devonshire Road/Waldam Park Road to the east (these two forming part of the South Circular) and Dartmouth Road to the south. The South Circular runs east from here to Catford and west via Dulwich Common to Tulse Hill. Dartmouth Road (A2216) will take you south to Sydenham. A major north-south axis to the east of Honor Oak is Brockley Rise/Stondon Park (B218) running up to New Cross. It is the railway which is the workhorse here, despite the vaguely bucolic air at the two stations, Honor Oak and Forest Hill. The line they are on is useful, with either a direct connection north to London Bridge (15 minutes) or a loop south and west to Victoria (30 minutes) via Crystal Palace. Trains also head south to Croydon. The East London line for which phase 1 was completed in 2010 is proving to be a huge benefit to the area. The work, costing around £1billion, began in 2005 and is taking place in two phases, with the second phase due for completion in 2012. Completion of the first phase offers a full service from Dalston Junction via the historic Thames Tunnel under the River Thames and along part of the Brighton Main Line to West Croydon and Crystal Palace. Trains also go to New Cross for the South Eastern Main Line. In future phases of the project, the line is to be connected at its northern end to the North London Line and a branch connected to the South London Line. When completed, the East London Railway, as it is now known, will form part of a wider orbital railway around central London.
Styles, dates and sizes vary, often within the same street. There is nothing jarring in any of this, for no particular type is dominant, and everything co-exists happily in the laid back manner so prevalent in Forest Hill and Honor Oak. For those seeking a microcosm of southern English urban housing styles, SE23 is it. There are Edwardian Italianate villas; post and inter-war semis; all manner of low rise flats; and modern townhouse developments. In common with much of the city, the multi-occupancy boom has to some extent been turned back, and whole houses now make more of an appearance than was the case in the Eighties. This in turn only encourages the conversion of commercial properties into dwellings, and in the Hornimans a church hall and a public house have become flats. In the process the spate of huge Victorian houses to be found here have had themselves smartened up from tattier days. To set the seal on the area's exclusivity, various traffic-calming measures now protect these twisting roads.
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