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mr.marcus


Posts: 1
Joined: Aug 2010
Post: #1
16-08-2010 11:06 AM

I'm sad to see that the Pools are closing. I used them a lot when I lived opposite them in Forest Lodge in the mid-eighties. Hope the new facility is a worthy one for all in SE23, nothing less thasn 25 metres! Has anyone seen those photos of the pool house all dressed up for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee? Or was it funeral?

I lived in Forest Lodge from September 1984 to September 1987 (when I moved to Brighton two weeks before The Great Storm) and am experiencing some exquisitely (right spelling?) poignant nostalgia for the place. I always have actually. I was 24 and the apartment was my first step on the property ladder. With a 100% mortgage and help from Ma and Pa I managed the £26,750 cost! I see they go for £230,000 now.

This will sound mad but I've been visiting the block in my dreams for years now, as though the flats (built 1934) were a submerged wreck, swimming through depths of ocean and in through the Stuttgart windows of my old apartment on the ground floor (no 10). So I'm doing the next best thing to excorcise these feelings enjoyably and joining this wonderful site!

My friends and I would walk for miles at weekends all over the area, to Dulwich Woods and College, Sydenham, Pissaro's church, Chrystal Palace ruins, Logie Baird's villa, the gorgeous art deco and Victorian Villas on that same avenue, Horniman's of course, and gardens.

Actually I'd love to share memories of Dartmouth Road and surrounds with current residents (pleased to see my old barbers are still there and Provender which did such nice bread, on Google Streetfinder!) I'd dearly like to hear from one lad I knew: one Tim Hookway, whom I befriended whilst swimming at the pools and whilst we were both temoprarily 'resting' during the early winter of 1986. Used to be great company. Any one know him? Tim are you reading this? He lived in one of those white neo-classical apartment blocks right on the London Road, up from Sainsbury's but before Horniman's, which incidentally he claimed were also to do with housing staff of the German Embassy! (see previous threads) He shared with his friend Graham I think in a lovely eccentric apartment, I think you call it pre-raphaelite - curved corners, the room construction clearly visible within the apartment's main space and little theatrical sets of steps up into the main reception rooms. Get in touch anyone whio can share or direct me. Tim had it all Zen-like with even a pool built for Koi Carp.

Thank you so much for reading. I'm having a nostalgic wander around there on saturday 18th September, my first in 23 years! Incidentally I also lived in Forest Hill as a baby with Mum, Dad and baby sister for my first two years in a big old Victorian House at the top of Devonshire Road, demolished to make way for the Infant School. I have very very dim memories of the tunnel under the railway, wet, in the rain, with a grand structure above.

Mr.Marcus

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