Skip to main content

Soundwalk



 This year we repeated the Soundwalk that we undertook last year and highlighted the changes. Well for a start there was no Lucy, although we were able to play recordings of her reading her poetry, secondly we were limited to six participants. Here is an account of last years walk.


Soundwalk on the Cambridge Road Estate by Alison Whybrow 2019

I love the walks that Alison organises, I discover so much about the place I live. This one didn’t disappoint. About 20 of us assembled outside the cemetery gates wrapped up and ready to go, some from across London, mostly local. It was going to be a chilly evening. We took time to listen to the birds, Jackdaws, making a racket in a tree next to us, and notice the connections and avenues that the trees created both on and off the estate. The older the tree, the richer the biodiversity that it houses.

Walking with Alison is a different way to experience place. A deeper more personal way, seeing things I wouldn’t see and sharing knowledge that google wouldn’t know how to provide. With recorded snippets of sounds and stories of her own life there, Alison introduced us to the people, the place, and the wildlife. The community hall where Save the world Club rescues perfectly good food destined for landfill and stocks the fridges for a community of refugees. A robin singing determinedly over the sounds of the summer strimmers, short clips of people who lived and worked on the estate. Walks with Alison often include Lucy Furlong, who read her own and others poetry as we reached particular trees. 

The depth of community, the history, the love for the place and its ecology was gently and humorously shared. Is it a ginnel, a jitty, a snicket, no – an entirely different name applies down here. The relationships between the estate, it’s surrounding area and the way it is used by travelling and resident species of birds and small mammals mirrors the relationships of the human populations who similarly are both resident and travelling through. The trees are magnificent. I learned a lot. Finishing off with a bat detector, listening to the social calls of the common pipistrelle and the soprano pipistrelle up by the cemetery gates offered another new landscape. It was time to go home before we froze.

Another reason for wanting to join the walk was that this place may not be here in the near future. A proposed total footprint development that would raze the entire estate to the ground to provide a new housing development, it would remove the habitats for protected species and destroy the biodiversity. It would raze at least 197 mature trees to the ground. Trees that are as familiar to those on the estate as are their neighbours. Trees that provide corridors, shelter and food for wildlife. In the face of a global climate and ecological emergency and a social housing crisis, there are a four practical points:

· This development will not address the housing crisis. Of the mass selloff of public lands that the government has undertaken since 2011, only 6% are available for social rent with up to 1 in 4 deemed affordable, reports Hanna Wheatley of the NEF. The plans for the CRE development are similarly aligned with the provision of social and affordable rents a key aim. It’s not immediately clear what the targets are for social and affordable housing.

· This development will not deliver the Net Gain goals of government to leave biodiversity in a better state than before. There will be cumulative impacts of the development on insects, birds, bats and ultimately, biodiversity extinction.

· Demolition, according to Struan Dudman, releases ten time the embodied carbon from the building compared to the amount released on refurbishment.

· Giving a social perspective, eco-anxiety is now a ‘thing’ and the importance of contact nature to our growth, health and well-being recognised. Loneliness is on the rise. A total footprint development means not only the wildlife and nature is removed, it means the connectivity between people, between neighbours across the estate goes too.

If we took a regenerative design approach to the CRE development, where nature was put at the heart of every decision and our current crisis was fully recognised, what would happen? Interestingly, there are policies and strategies and goals in the councils framework that would take us a little way towards that, but they are simply not being regarded. It’s at this point that Margaret Heffernan’s concept of wilful blindness rushes sadly into view.

If you’ve made it this far well done the reward is the sound of Sparrows of Willingham Way


House Sparrows
There are at least ten breeding bird species on the Cambridge Road Estate.This includes a colony of house sparrows- a bird that appears on the JNCC red list of conservation concern or can be deemed endangered. There are more than 25 pairs of house sparrow breeding in features associated with the semi-detached houses (dropped hanging tiles, broken soffits and gaps behind rainwater goods, and a permeable roofline) with this years brood numbers have reached 140-150 individual birds.

​

Developers ecologists sometimes think they can assist, by replacing the features that the birds are dependent on with sparrow terrace boxes. This doesn't understand the communal nature of the bird, the requirement for safe places to breed, squabble and dust bathe. There if further requirement for ease of communication with other house sparrow colonies (to prevent breeding with brothers and sisters) and a healthy functioning environment full of insects and seeds (even seed eating birds require insects to feed their young).


There are 100's of bushes and plants important for nature  on the Cambridge Road estate and the wider environment. Berries are important for birds especially members of  the thrush family in winter. Fungi are the recyclers and important for channelling nutrients to where they are needed. The fruiting bodies are used by fungus gnats in the autumn and produce a late rise of flies for the bats, which have been found around the estate. These pictures were painted by Sim during October and November 2018


 

Hi, I'm Damon Hart-Davis.

I was asked to describe 'Something about your sustainable home' (for the SOUNDWALK) Something about the nature visiting the garden and how you feel about your neighbourhood'. Anything at all in fact.

Our house is in its 50s like me. It's timber-framed with a concrete-tile roof, end-terrace with hanging tiles on the side walls, and has a small garden front and back. It is on the Cambridge Road Estate in Kingston-upon-Thames, very close to a cemetery and the Hogsmill river. And not so far away from us, though usually downwind, is the local sewage works!

I have for one reason or another in the past run quite a few computers. I ran an early Internet Service Provider from home. It was pointed out to me that I was probably wasting a lot of energy with them — I was having to run air-con in summer to keep them cool! I took that as an energy-efficiency challenge to do more with less. My Earth Notes Web site at Earth.Org.UK is one outcome. A house that uses less than half of the electricity and gas of those around it is another. Indeed, the house is about net-zero-carbon for those two, given the solar panels on the roof.

We have small gardens, front and back. Both have lawns, but somehow in the back garden we also manage to squeeze [in] herbs, pumpkins, blueberries, beans, tomatoes, and some of radish, rhubarb, peppers, carrots, cucumbers, and courgettes. Never mind lots of flowers and some trees! Our apple tree struggled with the heat and lack of rain last year and dropped all its fruit early, but this year I'm hopeful that we may end up with something to taste. The pumpkins try to take over the garden, and they finish up in autumn and the nasturtium then tries to out-do them!

The variety of birds we get is astonishing. From pigeons (wood and feral) and magpies, to more exotic green and spotted woodpeckers and jays. Parakeets swarm up to seven or eight at a time on our feeders, hanging from our washing lines, coming from nearby Richmond Park and the cemetery I think. We also get hordes of smaller birds: robins, blue tits, coal tits, great tits, goldfinches, and more rarely chaffinches, greenfinches, dunnocks and wrens. Noisily, sparrows are swarming and squawking again recently in a way I don't remember since I was a child. Occasionally, starlings murmurate overhead!

There also seems to be a thriving bat population, and at dusk you can see them whooshing past just above head height it seems.

In the cemetery I think that crows are still probably top of the pile, though the parakeets may be muscling in. And some of the loudest sounds are from the squirrels by day! At night the foxes bark and squeal and whine, and make other noises that I don't have words for.

We also have had excitements, such as boys apparently lighting a fire behind our back wall and setting fire to our ornamental tree, and things that maybe I shouldn't air publicly!

Our house stands out a bit with the solar panels on top, and at least one nearby house has followed suit. Our walls are lined with the same stuff that the Space Shuttle used to survive the heat of re-entry, called aerogel, to keep us warmer in winter and cooler in summer. The triple glazing helps too, and helps keep out noise. We have a warm and efficient home, with rather more nature on our doorstep than I'd realised. I hope that our energy saving is also nature saving, taking a little heat out of climate change.

Listen to the rest of Damon's experience on his website here http://www.earth.org.uk/about-16WW.html

​

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Black Path (AKA Porter's or Templars' Path).

The  Black path is a trail from Walthamstow to Shoreditch done justice in  these two links  Spittlefields Life . The route of this medieval footpath is  visible through street markets, shop and road names. There is no formal map of the Black path, yet a keen walker with a sense of direction,  willing to make a few twists and turns,  through several welcome green spaces, will find their way.  Tracing a trajectory running northeast and southwest between Shoreditch Church and the crossing of the River Lea at Clapton, the Black Path links with Old Street in one direction and extends beyond Walthamstow in the other.  Sometimes called the Porter’s Way, this was the route cattle were driven to Smithfield and the path used by smallholders taking produce to Spitalfields Market. Sometimes also called the Templars’ Way, it links the thirteenth century St Augustine’s Tower on land once owned by Knights Templar in Hackney with the Priory of St John in Clerkenwell where they had their headquarters.
Post a Comment
Read more

Trespass in Battersea

  Trespass in Battersea ‘London Reclaim’, the name on the tug proclaimed, (pulling yellow containers on barges). In this sentiment, I felt the same; so many pathways curtailed that  I couldn’t even walk down Pumphouse lane.   No passage through, to the development of “Phase 2”, Unless driving a lorry to the waste transfer station. No route to the Thames Path and riverside, Without hard hat and constructive intent. Otherwise ‘No Pasaran, down the Pumphouse lane.   "You can better your photos on the other side where stand 250 shops, some of them open". Outdoor tables covered in an Astroturf fuzz. Why not let me stand in a lane named Pumphouse It would give me such a buzz.   Notices and signs that change the chemicals in my blood Evict the endorphins and scatter the serotonins. Hoardings proclaim venues, culture and art from wood. Yet no history from the Covid-closed Heritage Centre, and no chance of walking down Pumphouse (withou
Post a Comment
Read more

Walk with John Clare

John Clare Cottage 6.9.20   This year is the 200th anniversary of poet John Clare's first publication. On the 20th July 1841, he left the asylum in Epping and walked 80 miles to Northborough. I intended to follow in his footsteps and undertake this walk; now140 miles as it traverses motorways and circumvents private land. This is the story of my walk in prose and poetry including one published in 'The Meeting'. Out of Epping Epping Forest as ‘common land’ is highly accessible and can be approached from any compass direction. An exemplar of ‘being unenclosed,’ without walls or fences; No convoluted journey to search for pedestrian gate or stile.   Enter from the Twittens of Loughton, Ivy Chimneys of Theydon Or the footpaths converging on the Copt Hall cerviduct. Chime over Bell Common, or jump over Chingford Find your own route and walk in your own gait or style.   Make time to visit every feature, greet every tree, Relax up Pole Hill - or fro
Post a Comment
Read more

On the importance of paths

                                               www.ebay.co.uk/itm/A-little-book-about-Paths-alleys-twittens-and-droves-of-SW-London-in-prose Walking would be impossible without paths. Paths are a form of separation between us and modern life. They separate us from traffic. They flow like water to provide us with natural shortcuts and desire lines. They can allow for a continuity of gardens and be good wildlife corridors. They can provide a link to the past and the people who used old routes, providing a touchstone for emotional memory. When we follow in footsteps we are in harmony with our ancestors. Walking routes became a way of ‘un-enclosing’ paths or re-appropriating them for common use. In the modern emphasis on swift travel and new cycle routes, the pedestrian has been forgotten. Some of our hard-won paths are once again in danger from enclosure, appropriation and disappearance.  Loss of Paths Within the plans for regeneration of the Cambridge road estate are the removal of o
Post a Comment
Read more

Anatomy of Norbiton: a Circumambulatory by Toby Ferris

  Here are some segments from a  walk around the bounds of Norbiton reproduced from Anatomy of Norbiton with Toby's permission. For the full text and his beautiful pictures see http://anatomyofnorbiton.org/circumambulatory.html   'The logic of Norbiton’s streets has nothing to do with its circumference. Their grain is governed by the line of the railway, the routes into Kingston and Wimbledon. If you try to walk its perimeter you are forcing that grain, committing a minor spatial infraction.  The same can be said of the streets of its interior: they do not lead to other places within Norbiton, but originate and terminate outside it. Their business is not with Norbiton, but across it. When we walk the circumference of Norbiton, then, we do so as engineers of ideal space armed only with the string and sticks, the ambulatory measure, of our minds; we are engaged in the survey of the anfractuous, perhaps not properly existent fringe of an object which is only no
Post a Comment
Read more

Walk With Jane

  Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was an urbanist and activist whose writings championed a community-based approach to city building. She had no formal training as a planner, and yet her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961 introduced ground-breaking ideas about how cities function, evolve and fail, that should be common sense to architects, planners, and politicians but is it? "Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody."      Jane Jacobs  and us listen to House sparrows     Kingston town centre- my home town of more than 40 years; who does it belong to?   Who decides if it should be a 'concretopia'?   Certain species reach a tipping point where they can no longer subsist; How can we ensure that valuable natural assets will be retained in major new developments?   The last 27 years; this district has been my home but now it is fast becoming a dormitory Towards the end of
Post a Comment
Read more

The Criminal Trespass Bill

    Dear all, BREAKING NEWS: thanks to you, MPs will hold a debate in Parliament on 25th January into Government plans to criminalise trespass! Parliament's Petitions Committee has just scheduled the debate, after our petition - ' Don't criminalise trespass ' - got over 134,000 signatures, back in early September. Massive thanks to all of you who signed and promoted the petition! But now we really need your help to contact MPs and get them to say the right things at the debate. We've written a template email, below, which you can adapt and send to your MP. When MPs hear about issues from their constituents, they're so much more likely to take action - and even if they disagree with you, they have to take your views into consideration. You can look up your MP and their email address on the Parliament website here . Remember to include your postcode when you send your email, to show you're a constituent, otherwise they won't have to respond. If you get
Post a Comment
Read more

The Journey

On Wimbledon Common or pounding streets We spent time in Nature enjoying this land. We would CAVAT trees at Cambridge Road or Waterloo Coin Street I held the DBH tape while you tested its accuracy with your hand span.   Armed with suitable detection equipment  We would listen to bats at Kensington Gardens or the Canons. Embarking on a survey of a large poplar, you swore, A LOT, As it had already been felled ANON.   On looking for brackets : - "Resinaceum has increased in Richmond Park," you say We debate a Podocypher rosette , or was it old cabbage fungus Let's put in on the checklist for next year's Foray.    Taking home made wreaths to Jubilee Gardens on the first of the Summer's Saturdays In memory of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War and to Highgate, red roses for Marx on his Anniversaries. You said, "This will be a good RESISTOR", On handing an Indica chestnut to me. The resulting tree has reached your 'lofty' height as, fo
Post a Comment
Read more

Walk with Richard Jefferies

On May 18th 2018, Richard Jefferies exited his blue-plaqued villa at Woodside, 296 Ewell Road, opposite the former St. Marks school (built on Tolworth Common during his 5-year residence). Here he wrote, 'The copse adjoining the back gardens of Woodside was visited by pheasants which sometimes strayed into the neighbours’ gardens. Early in the March mornings he woke to the ‘three clear, trumpet-like notes’ of a missel thrush ringing out from the copse. From his window in the evenings he could hear partridges calling. Stone-chats perched on the furze bushes of Tolworth Common. He strolled towards Tolworth Broadway and Greenway, followed by 30+ participants keen to locate RJ's observations from 'Nature Near London'; first published as a series of articles in the Pall Mall Gazette for the commuting public. In 1920 the very same paper celebrated his work by reprinting excerpts from his regular column - along with joining instructions for his walks - by tram and motorbus-bu
Post a Comment
Read more