I’ve just come across this detailed documentary about our rather important neighbour … which I understand has some interesting details about its history, architecture and culture.
I’ve not watched it all yet, but sharing here for anyone who has an interest - or if you’ve seen it, you can give us your thoughts and review
@KittyKat I believe you were doing some research on Catford recently. Have you seen this?
I watched the whole thing last night, and overall I think it was very interesting and showed me another side of Catford. It is so sad to think how these areas, both Forest Hill and Catford, were such stylish, clean and open spaces to live just 100 years ago (and farms not long before that) - so different to today.
I am not at all convinced about the Catford name source - I think there are better theories out there but I think @KittyKat and @Andrew know more about that than me.
What is interesting is how he supports the Brutalist architecture that dominates the centre of the town. I can totally see that there is, or was, some merit in these buildings, but I have to admit - despite my general support for retaining our historic buildings, that these are really no longer living up to the dreams of the architects and planners. The Catford Centre in particular is not a pleasant place to visit - sadly.
In fact, the real message here is probably the danger of the underinvestment in maintenance and liveability as it is not the intrinsic nature of the buildings at fault, but the Council’s failure over many years to deal with these problems which means that even today’s good intentions to ‘refurbish’ them will cost extraordinary amounts of money. Sadly the damage to the reputation, and to the experience of residents, is already done by then.
I do look forward to a regenerated Catford next door as I’d love to be able to do more visiting and shopping in Lewisham, and the variety of community in Catford has so much potential to make it an exciting destination.
Yes, it is a great piece of documentary film making. It did cover many topics and served as an excellent overview.
Regarding the name Catford and its origin, the toponyms of London are a brilliant example of the limitations of evidence stemming from the time before written records or records that have since been lost.
Personally I think it is (more) feasible that Catford is a contraction of cattle ford. The pre-Roman road that crosses the river Pool somewhere and also the continuation of Elm Lane toward Bromley Road must both have had ‘main’ crossing points. At least one might have been forded, if not both.
In which case the cattle ford or Cattlesford was likely just a little south of today’s Catford, but long before suburbanisation place names were effectively local knowledge only infrequently gathered by clerks or mapmakers from outside the area. Even between maps the area names had really moved, if only within a mile, this seems hard for us to grasp today but with low population density local knowledge was fragile and ephemeral.
The documentary is a chronicle of destruction, and environmental degradation.
The opening sentence sets the tone: ‘There’s one thing you can definitely say about Catford; it’s definitely got s lot of traffic’. That’s also true of Forest Hill: commuter traffic coming in from M2/M20, threading through our narrow residential streets that were never meant to have the heavy volume of motorised traffic.
Lewisham Council protects a few chosen enclaves (using unexplained criteria for selection) of the Borough with Low Traffic schemes, but otherwise largely ignores the issue.
It’s interesting that the architects who designed some of the award-winning ‘brutalist’ buildings featured in the documentary, asked for their name plaques to be removed from the buildings because the Council had ruined them with ill-conceived modifications, and lack of maintenance.
Personally I don’t believe that Lewisham Council is capable of addressing the problems that exist in the Borough. Radical reform of Borough Councils and of London-wide governance is necessary.