If you remember the fuss about the plan to put a playground on the Heath, you might want to go to this. There’s a “Blackheath Playspace Working Group” meeting tomorrow (Tuesday 17th September) at 7.30pm at the St Matthew Academy.
Recent Comments
- BT on How SouthEastern plan to stop your trains to Charing Cross and Victoria
- VoteLabour on How SouthEastern plan to stop your trains to Charing Cross and Victoria
- Caroline Owens on Memories of Blackheath 1944-1958
- blackheathbugle on My god, what an ugly statue.
- Anonymous on My god, what an ugly statue.
Recent tweets
My TweetsRead This
-
Recent Posts
- How SouthEastern plan to stop your trains to Charing Cross and Victoria
- How to stop Southeastern cutting trains to Charing Cross and Victoria
- Manor House Gardens under threat
- £150 for a polar bear
- Christmas spirit
- Missing sausage dog
- Blackheath Village Day
- Pigs in (green) space
- Bakerlooisham
- Breadwinner in Blackheath
- Santa’s Christmas Ferret
- What we need is a massive ASDA
- Is this thing on?
- Want to be water cannoned?
- Dentists?
Useful stuff
- 853blog
- Blackheath Cooks
- Blackheath Village Residents Group
- Charlton Champion
- Crossfields
- Fix My Street
- Friends of Greenwich Park
- Kidbrooke Kite
- Next train from Blackheath to Charing X
- Some Day I Will Treat You Good
- Subterranean Greeenwich and Kent
- The Blackheath Society
- The Greenwich Phantom – Wonderful reviews and thoughts on nearby Greenwich
- The Smallest Kitchen
Archives
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
-
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://blackheathbugle.wordpress.com/about/. -
-
-
Join 4,645 other subscribers
Meta
The Blackheath Bugle · A blog about Blackheath, London, SE3, UK
The Blackheath Bugle 
The Heath is a play space. Plenty to do there. There is the playground in Greenwich PArk. Manor House Gardens. Forgive me but does it have to be an official playground ? I really don’t mean to be facetious.
Plenty of space. Why not?
I would love a playground closer to the Lewisham end of the heath. Lewisham has one of the fewest numbers of dedicated play areas for children in the whole of London. There are lots of adult-centric things that I would prefer not to have on the heath like; people driving golf-balls, dogs off-leash, kite-surfing but live and let live – the heath is not just for adults. let’s make a small spot more interesting for children rathe rthan just a flat expanse of grass!
When we were young children, we used that flat expanse of grass, to play football on, and in the summer , cricket, bat and ball and one stump .Or just sit around “chinwagging”. Sometimes trek off to the playground in Greenwich Park. In those days there was practically nothing else, but we enjoyed every minute of it .
How about that derelict council building on the Heath ? The one with the car park near Talbot Place and sort of near All Saints Church. I was walking past the other day and spoke to a Council guy who was going in , he said the roof has gone so its just a dumping area inside . They use cabins for office space (you can see them through the fence) . The guy also said it was meant to be used for changing rooms for football on the Heath many years ago . Seems a perfect spot but would wound need the cost of knocking down (is the council waiting for it to fall down ? ). There’s always the car park next to it to develop? Or is the council plan to sell it to developers ….
As a parent with 2 small children living on the heath (more or less) I agree with Helen. There’s plenty of stuff to do already, a play area in the park, and it’s nice to have the heath as a heath.
Lots of people do not have gardens so that’s why a park is required .
Jane – isn’t the Heath itself one big garden? It always was when I was a child! We used to spend all day in our ‘Heath garden’! We certainly didn’t need a park.
How about something nearer or in the Lewisham built-up area? I can’t see how a new play area on or beside the Heath will really benefit many families, and let’s be honest, most around Blackheath Village can either use the Heath itself, or afford to travel a bit further to the Park playground, for example. A space in the built-up area of Lewisham would be immediately and conveniently accessible for most including for those people who aren’t lucky enough to have a nice big and under-appreciated green space nearby. Those around Blackheath are lucky to have the Heath, and a play area isn’t really needed. No offence intended to anyone, just a thought.
It’s a bit rich for Lewisham council to give the ok to build hundreds of new flats around lewisham station and leave the adjoining spaces as rubble mounds covered over with a thin layer of turf. If memory serves these areas where cleared around 2-3 years ago and have been tolerated by passing locals during that time. My point is, if the surrounding areas where full to capacity there might be a case for a corner of blackheath set aside for a dedicated childrens play area. People enjoy the heath for what it is and once part of the heath has been built upon, we will lose what is so unique about it forever – for future generations. These things are important, we shouldn’t bow down to hastily laid out plans.
What I find strange about this is the amount of attention being given to this single issue of a playground- a lot of time has been devoted to it in Blackheath assembly meetings, it has its own public meeting, its own Working Group etc – when there are numerous other important issues for the Ward. This issue seems to have been pushed to the top of the agenda time and again ahead of concerns as to crime, traffic, the health of businesses in Blackheath, lack of school places etc. All of these issues are in the Action Plan for the Ward but they don’t get the same level of attention from the Councillors as this one issue of a playground.
Re Anonymous (above) all of this importance about a playground begs the question of how representative the Blackheath Assembly is of the entire population of Blackheath; all this came about because people at the assembly voted for it – how many of them? I don’t know.
Anyone keen to see how a proper Blackheath adventure playground is made should dig out those wellies and head for Eliot Pits.
Hurricane whatsit which Bugaleesters might recall tore through SE3 recently, ended her flying visit to the Pits by making one hell of a climbing frame out of a very beautiful, 80-100 year old tree! A huge lime tree if I’m not mistaken.
Still full of leaf, it was twisted and tore and must have made an excruciating crack as the wind set to work on its trunk.
Now, the once mighty body of the lime has toppled over and its lovely branches are just begging to be swung on, crawled over and turned into Dens.
So please, Glendales, and Lewisham council let’s honour the long life of this tree and leave it as nature intended as a home for insects and birds as well as an apparatus to top any old, costly, dull, plastic bit of playspace catalogue kit that salesmen might have offered you recently.
This is just what real children (and their parents) like to explore and play in and on.
By all means, let a sympathetic tree-surgeon rescue and free up some of the fledgling oaks and other saplings bent over by outer branches as the mighty lime came crashing down.
But please… don’t spoil what we’ve been given.
Give the council wood chipping lorries a rest and instead, make the most of this extraordinary gift.
Hear hear! Three cheers for Nature, the Great Provider! Let’s hope that the Council resist the urge to tidy the tree away and let it rest in peace where it fell and give the children of Lewisham the best climbing frame ever.
And as Diana says, a natural home for all sorts of creepie-crawlies and their predators.