Great North Wood
Coordinates: 51 ° 25 ′ 35.4 " N , 0 ° 4 ′ 37.8" W.
The Great North Wood was an oak forest that covered most of the plateau that began 6 km south of the City of London and the Sydenham ridge and the southern foothills of the River Effra and its tributaries. Overall, the forest stretched from Croydon to Camberwell .
Little remains of the original forest, but place names containing the word Norwood are reminiscent of it. These are South Norwood , Upper Norwood , West Norwood (known as Lower Norwood until 1885). The "north" in the name of Norwood indicates that the connection to Croydon, south of the forest, was apparently stronger than that to Lambeth or London.
history
The oldest surviving mention of the forest is in court records from 1272 from the reign of King Edward III . The area belonged to the Whitehorse family. When Oliver Cromwell the area from the Archbishop of Canterbury confiscated, was its area 3.4 km 2 , on the but only 9,200 geschneitelte were oaks. Much wood was used in the Royal Shipyard at Deptford, as well as in charcoal and construction.
The most famous tree was the Vicar's Oak, which marked the boundary of four parishes: Lambeth , Camberwell , Croydon and an independent part of Battersea parish including the hamlet of Penge . At the location of the tree at Crystal Palace Park, Westow Hill Street now turns into Anerley Hill Street . It is still the border of the present day boroughs of Lambeth , Southwark , Croydon and Bromley . According to John Aubrey, the "old notable tree" was removed before 1718; according to JB Wilson, the Vicar's Oak survived until 1825. Another oak that survived the deforestation by ship builders was the Question Oak in Westwood. Under her, Charles Spurgeon posed theological questions to the students at his Bible school .
In 1722 Daniel Defoe wrote of "land that is more open and wooded than any other part near London, especially Norwood, the parishes of Camberwell , Dullege and Luseme ". On the map of London and the environs of John Rocque from 1745, the wooded area is only 3 miles. It was jointly owned by Croydon , Penge , Streatham , Knight's Hill, Dulwich and Westwood.
After the legal abolition of the common land in 1797 and the sale of the late Lord Thurlow's lands in 1806, large areas of the forest were cleared and developed. Only small remnants remained, particularly the Dulwich Wood and Sydenham Hill Wood nature reserves .
Other recreational facilities, such as the amusement garden on Knight's Hill and the spa on Beulah Hill, fell victim to the Victorian building boom that sparked the Crystal Palace .
Individual evidence
- ^ 'Norwood: Introduction', Survey of London: volume 26: Lambeth: Southern area (1956), pp. 167-173.
- ^ John Aubrey Natural History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey , 1718, Volume 2, p. 33
- ^ JB Wilson, HA Wilson The Story of Norwood ISBN 0951538411