The Swamp [Vol 1] Extended Trailer - NEWNESS!

This is a trailer for my first video in a new series. 

The videos explore the infamous Swamp; a secluded piece of wild land in Lewisham and are made from footage I filmed there over the last 20 years.

In this first chapter I look at the mysterious pond and the unnamed stream.

Run time of full film: 24 mins

Wild Cornerz Show this week in Peckham

 Im showing my new video 'The Swamp' this week as part of a group show named after this very blog. The video is the first of a new series made of footage filmed at the infamous swamp over the last 20 years. Accompanying the video I am showing my shrine to the Swamp [pictured below]. 

Im exhibiting alongside three other local artists; Andrew Finch, Tobias and Ed Carter who's work also explores wildness in someway. 

Heres a small feature about the show on Radical Art Review: https://www.radicalartreview.org/post/floods-riots-and-pirate-radio-exploring-lewisham-s-forgotten-corners

A Shrine to the Swamp 

Still from 'The Swamp' by Jack Thurgar

Wild Cornerz is showing at Satterlite Store, Holdrons Arcade, Peckham [Thurs 13th - Saturday 15th Oct].

Andrew is screening his film 'The Love Below' Featuring myself and Ed Carter in the river Quaggy, on the closing night at 6pm.

Far from home

 Rare spotting of Lewisham's illusive wild walker far from home. 

Seen from the DLR, I did a triple take and then jumped off at the next stop to investigate. 

                                   

 

New Lewisham Natureman Sighting 2017

Its been a few years since we at Wildcornerz have received any news of sightings of Lewisham's lone stag. He seemed to had vanished from the borough, along with the rapid decline of the wild places he inhabits. 

Until yesterday. As we drove back south from the Blackwall tunnel I spotted a fleeting dash of white against an old wall, in a small wildcorner

 just beyond the boroughs borders in Charlton.

It was him, the Wild Walker - deer spirit, aka the Lewisham Natureman, 

moving quickly and silent across the nettles and creeping buttercup's.

Catch him before he's gone again.

Spy-hole found, SE14

I spotted this spyhole last week into the wild corner on Besson St. in New Cross. This is the same Wildcorner where the Wild Walker himself appeared a few summers previous. Is he still visible inside?  There is something there,.. but it is hard to make it out through the fish-eye lens of spy hole.

Some press and net cuttings on Lewisham's white deer

{The Telegraph}

{Curriculum Enrichment magazine}

(Lib Dem's magazine 'In focus')

Here are a collection of some newspaper cuttings and web articles on The Lewisham Natureman from earlier in the year. The press coverage was sparked from liberal democrat councillor Cllr Chris Maines campaign to save the mural on Cressingham road. This has been already painted on and can be seen in the press pictures. [Notice the black paint over the mouth of the deer and over some of the background.]

In all these articles The Lewisham Natureman is spoken of as the name of the artist and not of the stag spirit itself.  Some have also reported the deer, as different members of a heard rather than the same solo spectre.

Not much is known about the stag or who created it but we do know [by looking at the writing underneath the mural piece on Cressingham road] is that it is some kind of tribute to the Lewisham Natureman and not made by 'him'. 

This is a name already know to us at Wildcornerz through our research and documentation of South East Londons' derelict gaps. The Lewisham Natureman was the name attached to a small carved symbol of a crown [in the same style as the boroughs logo] with a dandy-lion growing through it, though some report it as a Thistle or a Daisy. 

This tiny symbol was found in various wastelands and wild spots around the borough of Lewisham from the late 1970s to the end of the century. Sometimes they would be accompanied by a date and would normally be hidden away.

Due to their mystery, they became the subject of many urban legends amongst local children who would play in these wild corners. The basis of the myth / legend links the symbols directly to the wild places they were found and suggest their maker is some kind of shamon or wild man who lives in or uses them. Other versions describe him more as a 'spirit of wild nature', a 'familiar' to the weeds who helps them to grow and protects the wild corner.

The myth was also know to some in other communities that use these spaces, such as the local graffiti crews, travellers, urban fishers, the homeless and street drinkers. Fences are jumped and bars are bent to access these cracks and corners of the city. These fringe communities of London can still be found using these 'wastelands' spaces no matter how temporary the stay. Some of these would have used what was know as Common land centuries ago and the many bomb sites and edgelands around London in the last century. Now even these gaps; 'commercial wastelands' / 'brownfield sites' are becoming increasingly more transitory, due to the London Assembly's current building strategy for the capital. The core idea being to build on land within the city, rather than expanding further out.   

The deers are not signed and maybe their maker is not what is important.

We at Wildcornerz like to believe the stag is the Lewisham Natureman, in animal form; an embodiment of this same spirit of wild places in Lewisham.   

Queens Road Wildcorner visit and sighting

Here are the photos from the visit to the large wildcorner on Queens Road Peckham where the Wooddene Estate once stood. 

A few weeks ago, I was passing the corner on the top deck of the 171. As we were pulling away, I looked back over the site and my eye caught a small flash of white which in that same moment disappeared from view.

It was a whole week later before I could return on foot to take a closer look. After a while wandering the perimeters of the high steel fence, I saw through the tangled weeds and piles of rubble what had caught my eye the previous week.. 

He was there, right at the back of the corner, walking amongst bushes of Buddleia and Rosebay-Willow Herb, appearing across a large TEAR dub.

The Wild Walker aka The Lewisham Natureman, familiar of the weeds and spirit of South London's wild places. He has wandered beyond the boroughs borders into neighbouring Southwark the 'black borough'.

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.

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. 

Lewisham's Coat of Arms

When the Metropolitan Borough of Lewisham was created in 1900, a committee was appointed to design a coat of arms. This device [another word for arms], adopted in the following year, included a shield, crest, supporters and motto.

The shield had four quarters. The first quarter had the attributed arms of King Alfred first lord of the manor. The second quarter showed a white on red horse, taken from the former Borough of Deptford’s arms. This is originally taken from Kent's arms. The Lewisham area was part of the County of Kent until 1889. The third quarter showed a buck's head, from the arms of the Earl of Dartmouth lord of the manor of Lewisham in 1901. The fourth quarter featured a bear's head and fesse or horizontal band, from the arms of Lord Northbrook, lord of the manor of Lee in 1901.

The crest was a raven, representing the Ravensbourne River. The supporters were a silver buck sprinkled with red stars and a bear with a gold portcullis on his shoulder. These were also derived from the arms of the Earl of Dartmouth and Lord Northbrook respectively. 

The Latin motto was Salus Populi Suprema Lex, or "the welfare of the people is the highest law" - [a motto common to many English municipalities] is carried on a scroll at the bottom or the arms. 

In 1950, in celebration of the borough’s golden jubilee, a grant was obtained to make a new coat of arms.

The shield was greatly simplified and the supporters [as they are known] were altered to make them unique to the borough. The White stag was kept but the brown bear is replaced with a white horse, which is taken from the second corner of the original shield. Around their necks were placed mural crowns representative of local government, civic dignity and authority. 

The motto at the bottom of the arms was kept on the new coat and continued to be used by the London borough of Lewisham, when borough arms became obsolete. The background colours of green, purple and black allude to Lee Green, Hither (Heather) Green and Blackheath. The two lions' faces each donned with a Saxon crown, as in the old arms of Lewisham, symbolise the royal and Saxon connections both of Lewisham, where King Alfred was the first Lord of the Manor, and Deptford, where the same King fought the Danes. 

The golden ship in the base represents the famous Royal Shipbuilding Yard established in Deptford by King Henry VIII in 1513. 

The reversed pall consisting of wavy bars of blue and silver forms a heraldic map view, representing the meeting point of the rivers Ravensbourne and Quaggy. This was the original settlement point of what is now Lewisham [and Lewisham Rail and Bus Station, and where The Lewisham Natureman was once seen drinking.] The river then flows north toward the River Thames. 

The two green dolphins represent the close association of the Borough with things nautical and refer also to the dolphins, which were the supporters of the unofficial arms formally used by Deptford. The silver wings and golden mullet are from the arms of Lord Northbrook, Lord of the Manor of Lee. 

These arms became obsolete when the metropolitan boroughs were abolished in 1965. Deptford and Lewisham became The London Borough of Lewisham.

This is another version of the arms, featuring a brown stag and a crown with three tall points, later used as Lewisham's logo and developed into the crown we know and love now. The date this was produced  was somewhere between the two above.

The Wild Walker of Lewi'

A shot from the train window of the Ravensbourne sighting. 

White Stag of Lewi' Spotted from Train

Where two internal networkz [wild corridors] meet in Lewisham; The train line and the River Ravensbourne.

As the train passes alongside the river, for a few seconds he can be seen, The Weed Spirit, howling at its banks. 

It looks like his call disturbed a flock of three birds; perhaps stowaways from his world, who have somehow passed through dimensions with him, carried by the life-force of his presence. 

Their empty shapes, burnt into the wall.

Among the Ashes SE12

Three mornings after my last visit to this corner, my friend [who lives near nearby] awoke to see a thin line of smoke from his bedroom window. It was streaming up through the trees that surround the corner. He went to investigate and could see over the fence; smouldering embers of the great bonfire that had been burned the previous night.
 He contacted me and I came later on that day to explore. The centre of the wildcorner has been stripped bare and the ground scorched. The remains of two smaller firers can clearly be made out also.
The white stag, although still protected by the iron fencing and the trees, now lies more open to view. He can be seen through the leaves, walking amongst the faded tags and black ashes.