Loving Lambeth's libraries, part 4: rising above it all at the Upper Norwood Joint Library

On the edge of the abyss:  Upper Norwood Joint Library enjoys a suitably lofty view of the vanity-towers and money-pots of the City of London

Let's pull the plug on another non-series of blog entries by visiting a library that is definitely in Lambeth  - and very much part of the Save Lambeth Libraries campaign - but which is not entirely of Lambeth.

The destination is Upper Norwood Joint Library, 'joint' because it is, uniquely in the UK, funded by two local authorities, Lambeth and Croydon Boroughs, but independent of both.

It has been this way for all 115 years of its existence, and the proud spirit of independence and difference is palpable as soon as you enter the Victorian red-brick building, with that great panoramic view of London as a backdrop.

It's at the far southern boundary of  the borough, the point where Lambeth meets the similarly extended fingers of Southwark, Lewisham, Bromley and Croydon.


To get here we have to trek across the foothills of  Brixton, Streatham, Tulse and Herne Hills, then rise again above West Norwood and onward again to the greater slope of Gipsy Hill, and still ascending, up Westow Hill  to the edge of plateau, with its dizzying views across south London and the towers of the City. Apparently we are only 380 feet above sea level but it feels a great deal more.

From across the street, the library seems to be perched on the edge of an abyss, and it's true we're not far from the edge of the known world here. You find  the last stop for London bus routes 322 and 137, and then this drop away into the blue hills of Surrey and Kent….a different world.

An old poster by the entrance explains it all:

"Upper Norwood and Crystal Palace
Exceptionally healthy because of the prevailing wind from the coast
380 feet above Thames therefore out of the valley of fogs..."

You get the feeling people up here are a bit hardier, hill-folk with bigger lungs and sturdier legs…but they are very friendly….

This area has a romantic name, in memory of the palace of glass which once stood here, until one evening in 1936 it caught fire and burned so bright it lit up London, pre-empting the Blitz by four years. The great Paxton building continued burning so fiercely that it singed the sky. The footprint of that building is still there to this day, a massive patch of windswept grass with a few damaged statues, low walls and wide flights of steps remaining as the only solid evidence of what was once there.

If you want to know more about the Crystal Palace, there's no better place to do so than this library, which holds a unique collection of books, documents and cuttings on the subject.

But it also has specialist collections on various other aspects of local history, including the Victorian-era   poet, Chartist and spiritualist Gerald Massey (born in Tring, Herts, died South Norwood Hill, 1907).

It's a truly delightful building, with the bustling lending library downstairs and light, airy, quiet reading room and reference library on the first floor. The basement used to house a reserve collection of classic literature: it's not entirely clear if that's still there, as the library now rents out part of that space as a meeting room and event space.

It almost goes without saying that this library runs an incredibly full programme of activities for the whole range of community groups. It's also - perhaps sadly - true that it has been fighting plans for its abolition much longer than most. Because of its unusual constitution, the library has been at the receiving end of cuts programmes from both Croydon and Lambeth councils for much of the past decade. And as a result of this a strong and active campaign group has developed to protect what is clearly an invaluable and irreplaceable community resource.

In 2012 this group of supporters decided to create a charity with the aim of taking the library into the control of its community. As you can read on its website, the resulting Upper Norwood Library Trust is still working energetically towards this aim, as well as playing a big role in the wider campaign to fight library cuts nationally and locally.

At this point on the long haul up Gipsy Hill, you turn and look back and there's the beating heart of global capitalism.

As with so many threatened public libraries, one of the biggest problems is to secure long-term funding to pay the salaries of professional library staff. Isn't it odd. can you imagine the uproar if someone tried to run a gym without properly qualified trainers, physios and so on?

Meanwhile, the harsh reality is that Lambeth's plans to close or re-purpose half of the borough's 10 libraries are still on track. The massive protests of the past year, reaching some sort of climax in November, have not deflected the clique of councillors who seem to be staking their professional reputations on the plans to convert libraries into gyms run by GLL (Greenwich Leisure Limited).

On Christmas Eve,  a tweet from Zezi Ifore reminded us that there were just 100 days left to change their minds…

And now, with only 91 days left, anyone who likes using their local libraries in Lambeth needs to go to the Defend the 10 website for advice on how to resist this bad idea.

Formula E car racing for Battersea Park - but why not send it to SE19?

Attempting to cycle through Battersea Park a week or two back, was puzzled to find way impeded by huge teams of men and machines resurfacing the wide road that rings the park.

They were going at it with such vigour, and with such precision, that it made one wonder: why here, on this park road, which is banned to normal traffic and is perfectly adequate for the runners and cyclists and skaters who normally use it. Surely there were plenty of potholed roads in the borough of Wandsworth  that were  much more in need of re-surfacing?

This wide, verdant road circling Battersea
 Park is soon to host some much speedier
 action. Come June, the runners, skaters and
 cyclists who flock here will be ousted by
 140mph Formula E electric racing cars

A letter in the Evening Standard brought sudden enlightenment: Wandsworth council has given permission for the PArk to be used for the finals of the Formula E Motor racing season, at the end of June 2015.

The letter-writer was complaining about the impact on  local residents and park users, as well as London's pollution levels.

I immediately prepared myself to go into full righteous indignation and anger mode: how dare this Tory council yet again put the interests of its corporate buddies above those of its own  residents, and the environment of a large area of south west London?

Psyching myself up to unleash a verbal onslaught on the petrol heads of Wandsworth,  I looked up Formula E and felt a bit stupid. This (as you will probably know or  have guessed) is a sort of Formula 1 but for cars powered by electricity.

So there you go - Wandsworth is backing an initiative which should raise the profile of "green" electric vehicles, and pocketing a fair wad of cash at the same time.

But again, it's not so simple. As the letter writer pointed out, the big race will involve hundreds of (non-electric-powered) trucks, vans and cars making thousands of journeys into and out of the park to prepare the circuit and the viewing areas.

The park itself will be closed to the public for at least two full days.

On race day, there will be 30,000 spectators making their way to the park along roads already badly overused and compromised by all the roadworks contingent on the Nine Elms  re-development.

Locals who love this park are already used to finding it wholly or partly closed down for various events. Several big city financial organisations book the whole park for their summer sports days and running events; large tracts of the park are often closed off for film companies. Each year the whole park is sealed off to all except ticket holders for the big firework display.

So, nothing new, but just another, even more annoying thing for those of us who simply want to stroll through this lovely peoples' park without the risk of being flattened by a 140mph electric racing car.  And what about the Buddhist monks and devotees trying to make their way to the Peace Pagoda on the north side of the park? Presumably they don't make the wailing noise of their petrol-fuelled brothers. The race is scheduled for 27 or 28 June, potentially one of the best weekends of the summer.

Back in the 60s, world-famous GP drivers used
 to thunder past the remains of Crystal Palace
 and the BBC TV transmitter. Why not
restore this track for Formula E?

Also - I wonder if the Formula E People considered holding the race at  another south London location, more given to sports of all types and in dire need of revival? I mean Crystal Palace, which still has a twisty little racing track that up until the mid-1960s was a regular location for all types of car and motor cycle racing events. It must be about the same size as the Battersea PArk track, but it has the advantage of going around a large and distinctly under-used National Sports Centre, which would not be disrupted by such an event as it has full access via bridges. It's actually a better, more scenic track, specifically designed for this sort of sport, and it is not (as is the case at Battersea) almost entirely lined by avenues of mature plane trees.

As a kid I was often taken there by my sister and her successive boyfriends; I remember clearly seeking all the stars of the era (Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Bruce McLaren, amongst others) throwing what looked like family saloons around this cute little track at unbelievable speeds. Then they did the same thing even faster in their formula 2 Lotuses and Coopers.

That track certainly would need re-surfacing and probably widening as well - but given the collapse of the latest Crystal Palace regeneration proposals, surely this could have been an opportunity to revive the fast-disintegrating facilities of this famous site?