One of the byproducts of thousands of hours of local history research is collecting interesting but seemingly inconsequential facts, many unverified. They are like misunderstood clues to a giant puzzle, and some will lie dormant until another piece comes along years later. I will then go back to a memory of my first encounter with a minor revelation.
But the time comes when much later these other facts come into view and the conditions are right for an insight or major revelation. What were tens of smaller clues lying dormant reawaken in an avalanche effect and the sense making process is activated because a threshold has been passed. I bring you this phenomenological account at the very start because this story has a few personal elements which added such depth to my experience and I would like to recount them in the sincere belief they will add to the effect. In this way I am making the affirmation that our experience of history can be personal and so itâs not all about facts.
This topic is a little bit epic, so I will be breaking it down into manageable chunks by adding posts over a series of days. If anything this is a chance to relax into the fractality of the narrative as we are about to enter part of the storyworld of Agatha Christieâs life and celebrate the story writerâs craft with its unexpected twists and turns.
On page 119 of Sydenham and Forest Hill Past by John Coulter he remarks that George Lansbury âspent part of his early childhood in Sydenhamâ. It actually pained me to read that page just now because there are so many interesting names on that page alone it is quite overwhelming. My first encounter with that book is shortly after its release around 1999, I saw it in WHSmith by the station. I treasure the fact that my second hand copy (acquired in Jasonâs bookshop inside Crofton Park Library) has a sticker from Smiths that indicates it is possible it was bought in (Forest Hill) Smiths by someone living locally. My reaction to the book at the time I saw it first was agitation that it was too dense. I wasnât ready for that book.
On the same page is the name Horace Annesley Vachell. Just like a detective novel everything will eventually unravel and sometime soon we will be meeting the Annesley clan (of whom that man descends) in Forest Place which has been haunting me since 2020.
To throw you a well deserved curveball (misdirection is crucial) I should say that as I write this I am listening to Patience, after Sebald by Grant Gee, a documentary 1hr26m you can find easily on YT. Itâs about WG Sebald and his book The Rings of Saturn which helped me come out to myself as a psychogeographer.
In the 1990âs after leaving school, I studied in a building a few blocks down from the Lansbury Estate in Poplar. I knew it was named for George Lansbury but I never followed it up at that time although I had a vague idea of who he was. In 2009 I had an invite from a couple living off Mile End Rd to go on a walk to celebrate the life of George Lansbury and so I leaped at the chance. It was part of an event over several days. Much to my astonishment it was so well attended that we were broken up into groups of about 15-20 so the walk could proceed in about 4 separate groups. Within half an hour it started to dawn on me that I was in one of two groups mainly made up of his descendants who were still in the process of determining who was related and how. In fact at the end we came to a stop inside Bow Church and the young man in front of me signed his name in the visitors book as (another) George Lansbury!
It was an unforgettable day and the joy of seeing these second, third and fourth cousins discovering each other face to face for the first time (some had travelled to the UK just for this event) was truly heart warming.
In the 2020 lockdown I became an amateur genealogist, very amateur, but it was a start. Sometime last year (I think) I got round to looking up George Lansbury and sure enough I found him living as a boy in (the Penge end) of the Sydenham greater area in two locations. His father had been overseeing the gangs of navvies working on the railway, and I believe from the dates must have been working on the Penge Tunnel.
What had fascinated me was that Daisy Lansbury, one Georgeâs many children had married Raymond Postgate, from a very interesting family. And soon we will have good reason to widen this discussion when the relevance of Raymond (and his younger brother Richmond) becomes clear on Perry Trail, a walk from Mayow Park to the Capitol.
The Penge Tunnel is something we donât think about until you look at a map and see that is goes under Sydenham Avenue. So it amused me for some years that the painting of St. Bartholomewâs Church by Pissarro (which I use as a âmaster keyâ on a 5km trail called All Beyond) is also interesting because of what is behind Pissarro. The tunnel crosses under just down the avenue, and from 1982 there were Orient Express services running through it and reading about this in James Sherwoodâs autobiography âOrient-Express A Personal Journeyâ (which I can recommend) brought to light some extraordinary clues. This has led me to further discoveries about the families in Bovril Castle (Kingswood House, Dulwich) and the late Sydenham College near Albion Millennium Green.
I had no reason to think about the Orient Express in connection to Agatha Christie at that time. I was instead looking into a totally esoteric subject, the mysterious legend of Saint Bartholomew himself whose story is very little for an apostle. Eventually I realised that Bart had an âarch enemyâ called Astaroth, but of course we are now dealing with a different type of information which still deserves respect and sensitivity even though is not an historical detail in the same way the tunnel and its construction are.
I was really fascinated that I had to try so hard the find out anything about Bartholomew that I ended up looking more into Astaroth and to my astonishment I found in the movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks that there is a star of Astaroth/Astoroth. And who should be in pursuit of it, but none other than a character portrayed by George Lansburyâs granddaughter Angela Lansbury.
I use analogies to help communicate âwhere I amâ in a thought process. In that sense we might say that although it is taking me weeks to explain the Agatha Christie connection, that in the analogy we are on the Orient Express, not because it is the fastest way, but because it is the nicest way.
I would like to take the care to research what I write because whoever might read this deserves that respect.
On a purely emotional level I am still processing the shock that there is any substantial connection between FH/Sydenham and Agatha Christie other than the literally hundreds of people in theatre, tv and publishing which live and have lived here and would have been connected to any number of authors.
The shock is that this delightful individual was loved and respected by Agatha as a son and clearly has played a very consequential role in creating the stable universe of her literary estate, and specifically (I believe) in her foresight to create a limited company which she assigned her copyright to. Something that came from her period of flourishing after she settled down with her second husband.
But I am learning all this as I go along, as the train wends around the mountains.
So Iâve introduced some preliminary thoughts on how the context of my research primarily stems from my work for Albion Millennium Green (AMG) in that I had been looking at Sydenham Common and the Crystal Palace. But I had perhaps neglected to look more into the Forest Hill side until I had rationalised what and why I was doing what I was doing.
A lovely observation happened yesterday when a dear colleague at AMG observed the way I shifted perspective during our practice of tracing a labyrinth. And I thank her now for bringing this to my attention. I would like to say that although my research is about local history, it is also about how we can use opportunities to shift perspective.
As your self-appointed psychogeographer-in-residence at Forest Hill, a humorist and a Situationist I have used AI to co-create this unique tarot card to help let us into this story completely and unreservedly.
You will notice it is an homage to the picture in the âForest Hill House Schoolâ thread.
I call this technique of blending serious with play âAHA HA HAâ because this palindromic sequence of letters perfectly captures the notion of a shift in perspective, a patterned sequence laid out in an asymmetric slant, a realisation prompted by the effects of asymmetry on our perception.
This is likely an imprint of the effect of being drawn into the ideas of Edward de Bono.
I foreground this here because it is a well sited context to situate how I will be developing the project called THINK OUTSIDE which is being detailed on another thread.
