wildcornerz

Started January 2010 [by Jack Thurgar]

This is a scrapbook dedicated to the study of London's weeds and the wild places where they grow. Wildcornerz also looks at the languages, cultures and mythologies that develop in these cracks.

What is a Wildcorner?

A Wildcorner is a term referring to a piece of land that has been left to grow wild in a man made landscape. To be a true Wildcorner, the land has to be restricted from public access. Many are hidden from public view altogether. A common type of wildcorner is referred to by govements and local authorities as a 'brownfield site'.

Wildcorners and corridors* are dotted all over the capital and vary in content, depending on their location and history. In this blog we focus particularly on the Wildcorners of south east London.

* Wildcorridors are networks of pathways that run through the city and facilitate the propagation and growth of weeds. Many are restricted from public access such as railway embankments and urban rivers. In the suburbs, footpaths such as the Green Chain connect public green areas by a network of alleyways and passages that skirt between houses and private land. It could be argued that these are also wild corridors.

Urban and Suburban Weeds

By the term 'weeds' we are of course referring to the cities wild plants and flowers. But their are also two other weeds that grow in the city.

'Graf' like its botanical relation, has many families and strains. Both of these weeds can often be found together, sharing many qualities including their adaptive nature and unregulated status. Both in many cases, originally entered and populated the city using the railway network.

Another 'weed' that historically flourishes in London is invisible and uses the tops of tower blocks to propagate. Pirate radio like its weed relatives, grows away from the public eye and is constantly adapting to exploit these same gaps across the cities FM radio spectrum, fighting and flourishing in-between the commercial stations.

Monday, 28 April 2025

Devils Steps Portal

Proper original Lewisham Wildcornerz stuff ...

A post on Facebook that caught my eye recently.

Devil's steps was an access point for local children to climb onto the railway which led to a huge disused gravel pit a little way along the tracks. This is obviously where the road name Granville Park came from.

'A paradise for adventurers'.

An old Lewisham Natureman white stag can sill be seen behind the creeping plants, calling into a portal at the bottom of Devils Steps.

[My mum remembers accessing the same pit through the rail bridge further along known as Lover Lane, where the stag beetles would fly in the summer.]

Oil painting of Devils steps which used to hang on my grandmother's wall.

Wednesday, 20 November 2024

Pirate Radio Pirate

More UK pirate interviews.

This time with Killer, former owner of Y2K Essex. He features in an episode of the now informous BBC mini series 'Tower Block Dreams' in 2003. Elements of this episode were directly parodied in early episodes of the comedy 'People Just do Nothing'.

After this period he became better known within pirate radio circles as a prolific rig thief and racketeer, preying on stations throughout the uk.

Tales from the darker side of pirate radio culture.

Friday, 25 October 2024

Brains of the top Pirate

Eastman, head honcho of London's top pirate Kool FM. Great documentation of 'the complicated life' of a great London character. He shares memories with his old friend Dj Ron of growing up in 1970's Hackney and Sound system culture. Its interesting hearing about some of the trials and struggles of running such a successful pirate station in London and how they overcame them and flourished.

He is a formidable character, especially as a younger man. Being the stations boss, his face was always pixelated out of group photo's backstage at raves. It feels like if it wasnt for finding pirate radio, he may have ended up as some kind of crime boss and been equally successful at that.

If London pirates are radio weeds, Kool has got to be the most successful strain of Willow herb. The empty hissing gaps in the fm radio spectrum are the restricted scraps of wild land in the capital, awaiting commercial development.

To flourish for 31 years is an amazing achievement and the legacy of the station in british music and club culture cannot be over looked.

Thursday, 8 August 2024

Skippering

Another element often found in the wildcorners of South London are traces of 'Skippers'. This slang term was used by homeless communities of old London, meaning a temporary site used for rough sleeping.

The word is derived from Skepper or Skypper; another name for a Barn. The term seems to appear often when referring to the barn as somewhere to sleep the night.

It gradually widened to include all general out-houses and shelters for over night stays.

Skippers are temporary, often improvised and hidden away from public view for safety reasons. This is why the high wooden hoardings and advertising boards of wildcorners make them an ideal location for 'skippering' in modern day cities and towns.

[2008, The Swamp]

John Healy mentions skippers in his classic The Grass Arena [1988] which documents his years of homeless and extreme alcoholism.

'Skippering is illegal; also rough. Some skippers are fair; most are bad. One feature common to both - they are all lousy.'

'Fights break out in the night; the police come in, nick you or throw you out. depending on their mood; any nutcase can walk in, burn the place down while you’re in a drunken stupor. You try to sleep in the attic with the birds but end up in the basement with the rats.'