Lewisham's White Deer - Seen by the Old Catford Dog Track

Here are the photos from the new sighting of the solitary spirit, on the edge of one of the borough's larger wildcornerz. He can be seen from Ladywell Park, stooping to look through a whole in the old fence that boards off the old Catford Stadium. 

The former dog track was opened in 1932 and became a famous landmark, being highly regarded in the sport. It was well known for its buzzing atmosphere and infamous Boxing Day races. In later years, its audience dwindled as betting shops opened and the sport became less popular. The managing operator Wembley closed it down in 2003. 

 In 2005 a huge fire gutted the stadium's buildings and tore around its seating platforms. Its is now fenced off from public access [as well as being cut off at either side by two train lines] and lays quietly for the wild to reclaim. 

Among many other weeds, tall bushes of Pampas Grass [a native of South America], grow from the ground where the track used to be.

  ... and over the fence...

The Blue Borough's 'Wild Walker' - New Brox Sighting!

Thank you to the eagle eyed Wallata for her tip off about the LNM stag's appearance in a wildcorner next to the rail line on St. Norbert Road, SE4.

'The Point' SE10

 Outpost #1
 Written Code in between the railings.

'London Subterranea' 2012 by Stephen Walter [psychogeographic map]

Strange Shack Appears in Wildcorner - SE12

 I recently went though a shoe box full of old camcorder tapes, which i thought were lost. To my absolute joy I found this grainy footage, which i thought I had taped over a while back [and berated myself many times for doing so.]
It features a mysterious looking shack, which appeared sometime in the early Summer of 2010.
It looks like it is made from a jumble of found materials and stands alone in a large sealed off piece of wasteland [a Wildcorner] on Barring Road, SE12, in the London borough of Lewisham.
What was it for? Who had made it?
 The materials possibly could have all been salvaged from within the corner.
You can see a longish narrow window facing across the wasteland and a small door at the back. A shelter made by a vagrant perhaps? Or maybe some kind of 'viewing hut' for observing the wild nature in the Corner?
 The reason the footage is so special to me is that I suspect this to be the work of the infamous city explorer Solomon Wild. The shack serving as a base to work in, while studying the corners wildlife and graff.
I used to travel past regularly on the 261 bus, who's top deck overlooks the site and I was sure I'd never seen it there before. I filmed it with my old camcorder on three separate passes of the bus.
 The shack stayed there for the rest of the Summer until one day in mid Autumn, I saw from the bus, that the shacks roof and two of its side panels were twisted and broken.
My guess is that it was caused by unusually high winds that swept through the city a few weeks previous. Over the next few months i watched it slowly deteriorate, becoming again part of the wildcorner it was possibly built from.
It looked like whoever lived in or used it, had long gone. This leads me to think the shack was only intended to be a temporary base, to use just for the Summer.
I wish now that I had got inside the corner somehow, to inspect the wreckage.

From the Ashes - LNM - Kidbrooke SE3

Last Friday, I was joined by my friend Sam on a walk along the quaggy's banks. As it passes through Kidbrooke's South Western corner, we saw something that intrigued us. 

 The old Willow Country Club, that now stands in ruin after a fire that savaged the building years ago.  I remembered I had been there once before, at my Schools 'end of A-levels' party back in the late 90's. I had pretty much forgot it was there.

 We stuck to the edge of Weigall Road sports ground, as we followed the river through the fence. We found a point where the fence disappears into the ground and the river is thin enough to jump over. This spot is known to some local people who use it as a cut-though from a nearby estate.

 On the other side we climbed up through the trees and came out at the far end of the clubs old playing field, now virtually marshland.  

The building looked quite foreboding standing facing us across its grounds. Its burnt out shell was covered in layers of graff and years of weathering.

 As we approached, I tried to read some of the lettering at the front and then something caught my eye through one of the gutted out windows on the ground floor. 

Something white. 

We stayed calm and carefully negotiated the bog infront of us with our heads down. When I next looked up i was near enough to see, and my heart leaped. I could see it was him.

Many types of urban weeds thrive in places where fires have destroyed man made habitats;

Rose Bay Willow Herb was carried on the breeze down the railway lines into London and settled in bomb sites and on derelict land, preferring scorched earth.
Another plant that grows well on this type of land is Fireweed, which grows best on soil that is still warm from the remains of burning fires. 

Both of these plants were rarely seen in the city until WW2. The sudden areas of wilderness and burnt land created by the bombings of the Blitz, gave both these plants the perfect conditions for their takeover of the capital.
The Rosebay’s purple bloom became a symbol of hope amongst the devastation, new life growing from the darkness. It is said that by the end of the war almost every bomb site in London was awash with these two bright flowering weeds.

               “Human tragedies of our paranoid cultures, raids

                 and terrorist outrages, are natures opportunity.”

                 (Sinclair (2010)

The Lewisham Naturman Spotted Again in SE14

It has been a little while now since any new appearances of the weed spirit have been seen in the blue borough.

 So it was to my excitement that i found him [or at least his echo] in one of his chosen forms; that of the white stag, also known as 'The Wild Walker'. He can be seen emerging from the scrub and graff in this fenced off wildcorner in New Cross.  

In Celtic legend, the white stag was seen as a messenger from the otherworld and always remained elusive.

 According to old legends, King Arthur was forever in pursuit of a white stag but the creature had the  perennial ability to evade capture. This pursuit of the animal represented mankind's spiritual quest.

 It also signalled that it was the right time for the knights of the kingdom to pursue a quest.