A Christmas eve visit to one of the far reaches of the borough I live in – although you wouldn’t think it was the same one. Several posts ago I visited Margaret Thatcher’s former constituency – this time I visit her [former?] home.
Dulwich is a suburb that pretends it is a village. I set out from East Dulwich Station early in the morning and started walking down Lordship Lane, Dulwich’s main drag. It being Christmas eve, people were out doing their last minute shopping and in particular there was a very long queue, 3 shops long in fact, outside the organic free range butcher and poulterer. This I thought typical of Dulwich. Lordship lane winds its way up the hill to come to the part of Dulwich where there is a library and the Dulwich Park. The fledgling LCC laid out Dulwich Park in 1889 after a public campaign against the governors of Dulwich College who owned it. Considering the increase in values of their property that the park has guaranteed at no cost to the Governors this seemed to be a remarkably short sighted resistance. Never mind the park is now preserved for ever with a lake, sculpture by Barbara Hepworth, bicycle hire to imperil life and limb, and rivulets, a cascade and old oak trees. The Lordship Lane end of the park has a nice, but ordinary development of houses: the Dulwich Village end arrives in a different world.
The Dulwich College Estate totals three square miles and is the largest single estate in London, its profits dedicated to the education of the wealthy children of wealthy parents and charitable causes. The estate is the gift of Edward Alleyn,
(not G*d – although it bears the motto G*ds gift) a friend of Shakespeare, an actor, theatre proprietor and keeper of the Kings Bears. He died without issue and left a college for 12 poor scholars and an almshouse for 16 old people, the master of both Alleyn insisted should bear his name. There is also a girls school in Bermondsey named until recently, when it was sold to the Harris family, Alleyn’s school.
The village is pretty and has curious finger posts to point the way. The little grammar school survives as an estate office,
and the almshouse block still houses old people as intended, with their chapel open to all to worship with them on Sundays. In the village is St Barnabas’s Church a very modern edifice with a slender and transparent spire. This church is beautiful.
Dulwich College also owns a small art gallery (admission charged), which is the nucleus of an art collection ordered by King Stanislaus of Poland for a polish national gallery. When the Kingdom of Poland was broken up there was nowhere to send the collection so it came to Dulwich via a quite circuitous route and is housed, together with the bodies of its founders, in the first purpose built picture gallery which was designed by Sir John Soane. The gallery was closed today.
The buildings of Dulwich College, which can now hold 800 boys (hopefully 12 of them are poor, but I suspect that's not the case), are a little way out of the village on a toll road, which costs £1 for cars but is free if you’re walking.
Walking away from the college towards west Dulwich I noticed a large church set up on a hill for all to see. This was All Saints Church that has recently been rebuilt after a fire. I didn’t go into the church because a baptism was taking place but the fire had destroyed much of the Victoriana and left the church much more dignified and open. The acoustics from the new choir gallery must be fantastic. The new communion table and lectern are simple wooden forms and there is a charred black cross in the apse. They still are paying for the work so you may wish to donate. Their website is http://www.all-saints.org.uk/
After that it was time to come back home again, the queue had diminished in the organic free range butcher and poulterer so it was now only one person out of the door.
