A not for profit Santa's Grotto will open at 55a Dartmouth Road on Saturday 7th December.

Opening time's will be Thurs 4-8pm, Fri 12 noon till 6pm, Sat 10am till 6pm and Sun 10am till 4pm.

There will also be free workshops for kid's including storytelling, face painting, lantern making etc.

Anyone that want's to get involved and make christmas extra special for local kid's please let me know.

An interesting aspect to this is the uncanny, yet so apt, association bringing Santa's Grotto and *Christmas together.

*The Christmas bit isn't just about the season, it's about a famous founder builder of Forest Hill - Mr E. C. Christmas.
Please have a look at this link:-
http://sydenhamforesthillhistory.blogspo...stmas.html

Now how's this for a coincidence...
P1971 had managed to canvas the support of some incredibly generous artists and stylists who are providing the beautiful props to create this Christmas grotto but she hadn't yet found a suitable premises. Then, out of the blue, the shop at 55a Dartmouth Road (seen in the above links) came up to let. Upon enquiring with the landlord if he'd be interested in giving it up free of charge over the festive period, it transpired that he is the great, great grandson of Ted Christmas and, after listening to the proposal for barely more than a few seconds, he jumped at the chance of making the property available for the benefit of the community.

Apart form the coincidence, I think it really lovely how community spirit and the the Christmas spirit are coming together here for the benefit of a local charity.

Good luck with it!

Hi Anotherjohn
Thank you for posting the link about Ted Christmas, and as you say Santa's Grotto would not be possible without Mr Christmas and lot's of help from local resident's. BUT what you did forget to say was that if it wasn't for your help getting in touch with Mr Christmas and letting him know what I wanted to do none of this would be possible. So thank you Mr Clause!

Great response and help via private messages. Thank you so much.

I really need more Santa Clause and Mrs Clause if anyone can help out. I know I speak my mind on here and might make some enemy's but this is not about me It's for the local kids. So all help is much appreciated. Thank you all in advance.

Great New's for the local area!
South London Press will be doing a story on the Grotto with lots of emphasis on The Christmas Family especially Ted Christmas who designed a lot of amazing building's in FH from the 1800's onward's. See Anotherjohns link above.
So excited to be part of making xmas extra special for local kids this year.

Can all that have kindly agreed to help out with the grotto pm me email addresses so that I can start working on rota's.

Thank you all so much!

Hi All

I have 2 Santa's and 2 Mrs Clause for definite but I need lots more, so if anyone local can do a shift or 2 to make xmas extra special for our local kid's please let me know asap.

Thank you so much in advance.

Pauline

Due to the charitable nature of the subject of this thread I thought it right to show something of relevance that P1971 posted elsewhere on the forum today:-

'Local kids and parents had a great day at the grotto workshop space today making lanterns with Cyrus from Stag and Bow for free and tomorrow from 1.30 till 3pm Kizan will be making xmas decoration's with the kids for free.
Mrs Claus will be at the grotto 11 till 4pm tomorrow. Female version of Mrs Doubtfire springs to mind!
My shop xmas tree has now gone to the front of the grotto during opening times, but if anyone has any spare LED light's for the shop front I'd really appreciate it as the spray snow didn't quite do the trick today.'

Please support P1971's Christmas effort to raise as much cash as possible for Evelina Childrens Hospital. With the help of local shopkeepers and residents she pulled in £877 on Thursday night and it would be fantastic to see it fly past the £1000 mark.

Anotherjohn what you forgot to say was that if you didn't pay the rent for the grotto there would be no grotto. See you soon Mr xx Love you loads and see you soon xxx

Can I politely suggest that you put a sign up somewhere on the front of the shop? I walked up Dartmouth Road this afternoon to have a look but walked past it without realising. I assume it is the whited out shop window with the small Christmas tree outside?

Here's the cards on the table, just to let you all know. I'm shattered and so is probably Anotherjohn. Anotherjohn will make FH amazing sooner rather than later and I'm just helping out by telling him what people want. So what do you lot want shop wise in FH?

Hi Blushingnail I will try to get something together in the morning but I only got the go ahead last week and am trying my best to get together what I can, and I really need to try to get some sleep tonight as i've had lot's going on last week.

Mrs Claus was at the grotto today she was amazing!
The kids and parents again had a great time at the xmas decoration workshop.

Next Saturday Santa will be at the grotto and the free activities are Xmas card making 2pm - 3pm, and facepainting 4pm - 5pm.

Next Sunday Mrs Claus will be back. Free activities to be confirmed.

Blushingsnail I'll get some posters done for the shop front before the weekend to try and make it stand out more, and I meant I only got the keys last week in my previous post and the go ahead 2 weeks ago!

Here's the poster for this weekend's activities at Santa's Grotto. Hope this link works!

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&i...0z7t3a0&zw

This post was last modified: 10-12-2013 07:44 PM by P1971.

Er, nah mate - not on my computer!

(I'm sure it's great though - especially if Roberto had anything to do with it!)

This post was last modified: 10-12-2013 08:34 PM by Anotherjohn.

Anotherjohn let me know if any of these work please. I'm useless with computers.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&i...0z7t3a0&zw


Failing that here's the link to my FB page which I managed to get it up on
https://t.co/nIGHRlFKLo

This post was last modified: 10-12-2013 08:45 PM by P1971.

Maybe this one?

[attachment=2423]

Aha! That's the one, got there in the end. TY P x

Here it is even bigger!