A MEETING of the Friends of St Alfege Park has been called so that the group can decide its future.
Following the smashing of headstones in the deconsecrated church yard, Greenwich Council banned the group from working in the park and severed its relationship with it.
Friends are now being asked to vote on three courses of action when they meet for the Special General Meeting:
- “We continue to organize events in the park, even though we are not permitted at
present to do any work.” - “We go into hibernation for the present and hope that Greenwich Council will eventually
relent and restore us to full partnership.” - “We disband the group and dispose of its assets in accordance with the principles set
out in our constitution.”
Ballot papers have been sent to all members of the group, alongside an exchange of emails between group Chair, Tim Delap, and local ward councillors.
With the wider community remaining in the dark about how the headstones came to be broken, the emails do at last give a glimpse of the Chair’s version of events. He says:
I accept that my instructions to the Supervisor should have been tighter, and that I should have sought permission from the burial authority to move stones, in this case St Alfege church. However, the CPB [Community Pay Back] team initially followed my instructions and when clearing the first half of the site (up to the mulberry tree) where, if you inspect the site, you will see that the stones have been dug out carefully (i.e., no stubs remain). If you look at the second half of the site, you will see the stubs of approximately 17 stones remain in the ground, and that no attempt whatsoever has been made to dig the stones out whole. Moreover, whoever broke off the stones continued all the way to and around the corner and beyond the gate, instead of stopping midway along the wall, where the last three projected beds had been marked out.
I cannot know who broke up the stones without attempting to dig them out since I was not on site at the time. I surmise that it was not the Friends for two reasons. First, because we wanted the stones to be whole so that we could use them for paving in a future project. Second, because our Friends are mostly incapable of the heavy manual work of breaking the large number of stone AND transporting the debris to the collection point. Most of our designated working days are sparsely attended and carry out gentle pruning and gardening.
I surmise that it was the CPB team because they were tasked with clearing the site, were known to be on site, and were capable of the heavy manual work involved. I can think of no other organisation that would be likely to carry out the destruction, and therefore surmise that it was the CPB team.
The London Probationary Trust has claimed that apart from one day in July, they didn’t work on the headstones until September and that they were carrying on work already under way. Earlier this month, Greenwich.co.uk published a photo taken in August showing a pile of broken headstones.
The Friends’ Chair has signalled his intention to resign whatever the outcome of the ballot. The meeting, which will be open to members of the Friends only, will take place in the second week of December.
Well, at least we now have something from Mr Delap, but a lot of questions remain.
If the Payback team broke up the stones –
What exactly were their instructions from Mr Delap?
It would seem that the shattered stones were laying, clearly visible, in the Park for several weeks – why did Mr Delap not report this destruction to the Council straight away?
When did Mr Delap first see the broken stones?
If Mr Delap is innocent of anything worse than not supervising the Payback team properly, why has it taken him so long to make a statement? Surely an innocent man would be in a hurry to establish his story, whilst a guilty man would wish to keep things hidden?
Mr Delap’s account and the brief comments made so far by the London Probationary Trust appear to be mutually contradictory, but the timing is unclear.
Since Mr Delap has publically “surmised” that the Payback team broke the stones, we need a clear, detailed statement from the London Probationary Trust as to exactly what the Payback team did, when they did it, and what instructions they were given, by whom. Logs of what work they did must have been kept. The London Probationary Trust is a publically accountable body and must be made to provide this information. I have written to Sam Eastop, asking that such a statement be requested and made public as a matter of urgency.
“The Friends’ Chair has signalled his intention to resign whatever the outcome of the ballot” – one might think that this is too little, too late. If Mr Delap had more open from the very beginning, the Friends would most likely still be free to work in the Park.
As an aside, Mr Delap’s apologists have repeatedly tried to justify the Friends by saying that the hard work they had done had turned the Park from a virtually unusable space full of excrement, used syringes, Special Brew cans, frequented almost solely by drug dealers into a happy, family-friendly place. Now Mr Delap says –
“Most of our designated working days are sparsely attended and carry out gentle pruning and gardening”
I don’t know that you can have it both ways.
Option 4 for the agenda
The “Friends” should spend their time piecing back together all those headstones that still bear legible inscriptions.
[received by email, posted on Graeme’s behalf]
Over to LPT then… what work did you do on that day in July? Did you, in fact, allow the gravestones to be smashed on that day (or any day)?
Rod says, “I don’t know that you can have it both ways.”
I think we can, sort of.
The Friends set out to improve the atmosphere in the park by engaging its neighbours and the council. We wanted to be a catalyst. Many of us had long avoided the park, because it was indeed full of dog-mess and needles and tended to be either empty or occupied by a few people drinking and littering and often staring or making remarks to passersby — not especially nefarious, but thoroughly offputting. The idea was that if local people loved and used it, even just to walk through it on our daily round or to stop there for lunch, the balance could be tipped away from antisocial use. Drug users would feel more likely to be seen and would tend to go elsewhere. One of the park-keepers has told me that he finds far, far fewer needles in the bushes now than when he started 2+ years ago. Some improvement comes simply from changed behaviour: if a little group wants to sit drinking, they can talk to each other across a picnic table rather than staring at or accosting strangers; and they sometimes even bin their rubbish when they leave. Parents sense the change and are happier to let their children play and even hide in the bushes, as children like to do, while they themselves can sit comfortably nearby and get acquainted with other parents. Many more dog-walkers than before keep their dogs on leads and bin their mess. The summer festivals in the park in 2010 and 2011, funded by the council and made possible by hundreds of hours of work by volunteers, including many who were not Friends, brought the park to the attention of many local people, some of them surprised to learn that this valuable resource had been in their midst all along.
Of our most active core members, some are not able to do much heavy work and others have demands at work and at home that prevent them from giving as much time as they might like. For bigger projects (building the greenhouse, making and putting up a marquee for the Parksfest this summer), we had volunteer help from non-members living nearby, who did a great deal of the heavy work that we could not hope to do, and from other volunteers from farther afield. Just a day or two before the council shut us out, a regular park user said that we should be sure to call on him if we needed help for anything. He is one of the many people, not Friends, who have been eager to help their neighbourhood and who thereby both reflected a change and helped it happen.
The Friends also conveyed local concerns about the park to the council, which, in addition to basic maintenance, has provided park-keepers and community police patrols, more litter bins and better rubbish collection, bins for dog waste, and a notice board and has replaced the dangerous fencing around the ball-park. Of course it might have done all this anyway — who knows? My last communication with the council about the park was a farewell list of just a few more possible improvements that came to mind:
— restoration of a water supply to the drinking fountain and reinstallation of a drinking fountain in the children’s playground (a grant to do some of this has now been lost, at least for the time being);
— installation of an outdoor gym, popular in a neighbourhood survey (a £30,000 grant application for this had been in the works);
— removal of the dead cherry tree (promised last summer but not done), and attention to several other diseased trees;
— signage, so that people in the town centre can find the park (and toilets) and so that people in the park can find the toilets (the one for disabled people, in particular, is really hard to spot);
— the wall and door of the stall in the men’s toilets to stop well short of the floor, to discourage cottaging (park users complain often and bitterly about this);
— repair of broken hand dryer, broken tiles, and useless latches in ladies’ toilet;
— lessening of the grim atmosphere of the toilets by thorough cleaning from time to time, in addition to the present routine mopping;
— planting of more sustainable, drought-resistant shrubs, ground cover, and perennial nectar-providing plants, to keep costs down and encourage wildlife;
— repairs to the crumbling southern park wall;
— replacement of a litter bin at the main entrance / exit, to cope with an upsurge of littering in that area after it was moved;
— a little TLC for the decrepit-looking but basically sound old oak picnic table near the children’s playground, and some pruning and thinning of nearby bushes to make it more visible so that drinkers and cannabis users don’t huddle there (not an example most parents would want for their children);
— turning the bench at the main entrance to face the park, so that people on the bench and those entering the park aren’t staring at each other;
— repair or replacement of the children’s roundabout, which is too stiff for many children to use.
We had also started on a programme to replace the present bird-feeders with parakeet- and pigeon-proof ones, to favour small birds (and save a fortune in bird-seed). And a far-off dream was to provide a little café, along with rebuilt toilets.
So, major projects and tiny changes — all part of the mix, the latter if only to contribute to a subtle overall sense that the park is loved. I hope it still will be. The council is going to set up a friends group of their own, and I trust that the new group and the council won’t lose interest once the Olympics have come and gone and the indignation has died down.
By the way, Rod, the slate headstone with a Welsh inscription is indeed on the south wall, behind the bench to the left as you come into the park, and almost covered with ivy. It was for someone whose surname was Thomas.
On the basis of various snippets, I believe but cannot be sure that the gravestone-smashing happened in the week from 22 August, when Tim Delap left on vacation, to 30 August, when Sarah McIntyre took her picture.
Suzanne
I have never sought to say that the Friends never did any good – I was simply surprised that Mr Delap is now saying,“Most of our designated working days are sparsely attended and carry out gentle pruning and gardening.”
“By the way, Rod, the slate headstone with a Welsh inscription is indeed on the south wall, behind the bench to the left as you come into the park, and almost covered with ivy. It was for someone whose surname was Thomas.”
Thanks for this – I will have a better look. Thomas was my Grandmother’s name, although it’s a very common name in Wales, of course.
“On the basis of various snippets, I believe but cannot be sure that the gravestone-smashing happened in the week from 22 August, when Tim Delap left on vacation, to 30 August, when Sarah McIntyre took her picture.”
Perhaps we are at last starting to get somewhere with regards to the time line of events.
It is now vital that we get a detailed statement from the LPT, because they have denied doing any work in the Park during this period.