You inspire Terry to post, and the resulting competitiveness is so interesting for the rest of us lesser mortals.
Hang on a minute, I'm not interested in competing with anyone. I prefer to collaborate. I've been posting regularly in falkor's 18 month absence.
Rather than deluge this forum with Crystal Palace material, my area of interest - it is SYDENHAM Town Forum after all, I wait to respond to requests when I do have something to contribute.
The audience is welcome to be passive, but please appreciate the costs in time and money to do this research. I've just posted over £40 worth of postcards today alone.
I'm going to post here as for some reason your pictures of Sydenham Road down the years thread is killing my laptop Falkor ('tis only a netbook...woefully underpowered).
NatWest would be my guess and looks like I am right.
HOWEVER:
What fascinates me most about that thread Falkor is how the NatWest itself has been altered from the old bike shop (Honey's? I'm working from memory here as I daren't open up the thread again!).
I think lewneham's idea of a then&now is excellent. Especially if the regentrification of Sydders continues. I'd be embarrased to see a picture of, say, Criterion Ice's next to the current pastiche hovel of a Mexican place but hopefully in a few years that might be a Pizza Express and a bit of taste may replace the gaudy frontage of today. It would work well as a Pizza Express and has the right layout for a start.
As for that thread itself it's interesting how modest wooden buildings were torn down by the Victorians so whilst we lament and try to preserve buildings from that period (Victorian) they were born out of the destruction of history themselves.
You inspire Terry to post, and the resulting competitiveness is so interesting for the rest of us lesser mortals.
Hang on a minute, I'm not interested in competing with anyone. I prefer to collaborate. I've been posting regularly in falkor's 18 month absence.
Rather than deluge this forum with Crystal Palace material, my area of interest - it is SYDENHAM Town Forum after all, I wait to respond to requests when I do have something to contribute.
The audience is welcome to be passive, but please appreciate the costs in time and money to do this research. I've just posted over £40 worth of postcards today alone.
THT, your contribution to the STF museum is massive and much appreciated.
I think a lot of posters feel in awe of local historians and feel (as i do) that they perhaps have little , if anything, meaningful to contribute.
Certainly this part of the Forum is well-viewed and probably not as many people post their appreciation, as they should (I know i have been guilty in the past)
As for the Crystal Palace, this was known as the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. Obviously the boundaries have been changed/distorted over the years, but I think Sydenham can rightly claim as much historical ownership of the Palace as any of the other neighbouring Boroughs.
To my mind, a "local historian" isn't someone who has discovered the power of time travel, just an ordinary human being, who has taken the time to look for what evidence is left from the past. and perhaps try to make sense of it.
This is something anyone can do, though perhaps it is proof of sanity, that few want to make the sacrifices of time and money.
I personally think the past of the Crystal Palace site and Park is relevant, while it's future is yet to be decided.
Of course there is going to be overlap of areas of interest, I bow to Steve Grindlay's greater knowledge of Sydenham and Forest Hill, and tremble at Falkors desire to cover the whole of South East London, will one lifetime be enough?
Anyone interested in the exhaustive history of Tulse Hill?