London Calling. London Walks connecting. This is London. This is London Walks. Streets ahead. Story time. History time.
And announcement time. Been a busy week here. Readying the latest edition of the London Walks newsletter. But we’re there. It’s primed and in the on deck circle. Should go out this evening, probably 7 pm. For anybody who’s not au fait with the newsletter, well, it lives up to its genre. It’s London Walks news. This issue features a new guide and a couple of new walks. And it runs up the banner of a favorite walk that always takes the summer off but is now back in the line-up and raring to go. And the October 1 issue runs a nifty Christmas idea past the London Walks community – some 25,000 of them – who subscribe to the newsletter. Truth be told, that little publication – it comes out twice a month – has been successful beyond our wildest imaginings. I mean 25,000 subscribers, if you’d floated that figure by me when we started the newsletter I would have been nonplussed. “Not a snowball’s chance in you know where.” But in the event, that’s where it’s got to. And come next spring we’ll be bringing out the 100th issue. Today’s is the 88th. Ok, end of announcement. Let’s crack on with some proper London Calling fare.
Here’s a shot across the bows for you.
I’ve walked forty-two miles to discover how little I know.
That takes some doing.
A week ago, about a dozen of us completed the London Camino. The Ultimate London Walk. Fourteen linked walks, all the way across London. Hertfordshire at the top. The Surrey Downs at the bottom.
And down there, towards the finish, was Croydon.
Now I’ve lived in London for more than half a century. I make my living showing people London. And what did I know about Croydon?
Embarrassingly little.
I knew the name. Had a few bits and pieces rattling around in the drawer. But the drawer was mostly empty.
Walking across it did something to me. Quickened my interest. Sent me looking.
And that’s useful because a few months back I started a series on London’s boroughs. Was going to do the lot. Then something else caught my eye and off I went.
You know how it is. Go upstairs to get something. Come down with something else. Original errand still sitting upstairs, wondering what happened to you.
Well, today we’re going back upstairs.
Croydon.
First thing to get straight: the town and the borough aren’t interchangeable. The borough takes in places such as Purley, Coulsdon, Kenley, Thornton Heath, New Addington and South Norwood. A whole collection of Londons under one administrative roof.
And at its southern end, London begins to loosen its collar.
There’s room. There’s green. There are woods and slopes and stretches of countryside that make you look again at the address.
Coulsdon Common, for example. Ancient woodland and rare chalk grassland. In the London Borough of Croydon. Farthing Downs has that great sweep of open country with London’s skyline visible in the distance. You can look back towards the city you’ve been walking through.
Forty-two miles gives that view a certain extra interest.
You’ve earned the distance.
And it left me wanting to know what else I’d been missing.
Well, let’s start with the name.
Our word of the day is Croydon itself.
The usual explanation takes it back to Old English. Crocus valley.
Yes. Crocuses.
You weren’t expecting that, were you?
I certainly wasn’t.
There’s a flower tucked into Croydon’s name. The council cautiously describes the origin as being thought to come from the Anglo-Saxon words for crocus valley, with historical associations with saffron cultivation.
So already I’ve had to revise the picture.
And then come the palaces.
Plural.
Croydon has two.
There’s the old palace near the centre of town, once a residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury. And there’s Addington Palace, further out. In the nineteenth century the archbishops moved from their medieval Croydon palace to more rural surroundings at Addington.
Which I rather like.
Even an Archbishop of Canterbury occasionally wants to get out of town.
Though his version of getting out of town involves another palace.
Mine generally involves a railway ticket.
And one of those archbishops left a particularly deep footprint in Croydon.
John Whitgift.
If you know Croydon at all, you’ll probably have encountered the name. But behind the name is something much older and more interesting than a shopping trip.
In 1596 Whitgift laid the first two foundation stones of the Hospital of the Holy Trinity. The almshouses. Elizabeth I was still on the throne.
The Tudor buildings survive, still providing homes for older people.
That’s a detail I want to hang on to.
A building can survive by becoming a museum. That’s valuable. Of course it is.
But a building surviving and carrying on with the work it was built to do? There’s something particularly satisfying about that.
Four centuries later, somebody still has a home because of a decision made in Tudor Croydon.
Then the story takes off.
Literally.
Croydon Airport.
Try saying that to someone who doesn’t know the history. You can almost hear the hesitation.
Croydon had an airport?
Oh yes.
Between the wars, if you were flying into London, Croydon was a very important name indeed. Historic Croydon Airport describes it as Britain’s first major airport and the birthplace of air traffic control.
And on May 5th, 1930, Amy Johnson took off from there.
Destination: Australia.
Aircraft: a second-hand de Havilland Gipsy Moth called Jason.
She was virtually unknown when she left. She became the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia.
Now just stop there a moment.
A second-hand little aeroplane.
Australia.
And you’re doing it on your own.
We get mildly put out when the seat-back screen won’t work.
I’ve just been congratulating myself on walking forty-two miles. Amy Johnson rather puts that achievement in its place.
And Croydon Airport gave us something else. Something you very much hope you’ll never need.
Mayday.
The distress call.
In 1923, Croydon’s senior radio officer, Frederick Mockford, devised the spoken emergency signal. It’s generally explained as having been inspired by French words meaning ‘help me’.
A little piece of Croydon carried out over the airwaves. Across oceans. Around the world.
That’s quite a contribution for a place I’d scarcely bothered to investigate.
And there are other kinds of flight.
A voice getting airborne.
A career taking off.
Which brings us to the BRIT School in Selhurst.
Adele. Amy Winehouse. RAYE. Tom Holland.
All former students. The school opened in 1991, and its alumni list has become quite extraordinary.
There’s an easy mistake to make with that sort of list. You see the famous names and forget the classrooms.
The practice. The awkward first attempt. Somebody trying something, getting it wrong, trying again. A teacher hearing or seeing a possibility.
Before the big stage, there’s a room in Croydon.
And the list of people born in the borough gives you another handful of reasons to pay attention.
Peggy Ashcroft. David Lean. Kirsty MacColl. Stormzy.
David Lean particularly caught my eye.
The man who directed Lawrence of Arabia. Those immense landscapes. That horizon. That extraordinary sense of space.
And here am I, coming back from Croydon, surprised by how much space there is.
I’m going to resist the temptation to turn that into an explanation of David Lean. It would be rather a lot to hang on one walk.
But I enjoyed the coincidence.
Now, none of this amounts to knowing Croydon.
Let’s be clear about that.
One walk and some reading – that for sure doesn’t make me a local. Nor does a succession of attractive discoveries tell the whole story of a borough.
People have their daily lives there. Their difficulties. Their loyalties. Their particular street. The place they remember before it changed. The place they wish would change.
I’ve barely opened the door.
But I have opened it.
And that’s what the Camino did for me.
It got me interested in a London I’d allowed to remain vague.
That’s an uncomfortable admission for a London guide. But there it is.
You can spend fifty years in a city and still have great blank patches in your knowledge of it. Familiar names can conceal those blanks very efficiently.
Croydon. Yes, yes. Know where that is.
Do you?
Have you walked it?
Have you given it any time?
Last Wednesday, I finally did.
And now there are crocuses in the name. Archbishops in the palaces. Amy Johnson heading for Australia. A radio officer finding a word that might save somebody’s life. Young people in Selhurst discovering what they can do.
I want to go back.
Forty-two miles across London, and at the finish I’ve been handed another beginning.
Croydon.
I owe you an apology.
And a return visit.
C’est tout for now.
That’s said to Croydon.
To everybody who’s listening, the usual Good Londoning and fare thee well and see you tomorrow.