CROYDON CHRONICLES: Much has changed around the town centre over the last 50 years, not least in the area of accessibility to public buildings and spaces. Some of the pioneering work was catalogued by a woman with cerebral palsy, whose scrapbook is now part of the Minster archives, as DAVID MORGAN explains
Do you keep a scrapbook? Have you a collection of newspaper cuttings or football programmes or theatre tickets kept somewhere as a record of what you’ve been doing?
Keeping souvenirs or grainy photographs in a book is not something which happens any longer in our digital age.
But thanks to the recent donation of two scrapbooks to the Croydon Minster archive, we are able to discover all about “Operation Crocus”, which took place in Croydon in the 1970s.
Treasure trove: Mary Care’s scrapbook is full of valuable archive material from 50 years ago
The scrapbooks were diligently kept by Mary Care, a regular worshipper at Croydon Parish Church, what we know today as the Minster, until she became housebound. She was an active member of the Townswomen’s Guild. In November 1965, the guild held an exhibition of arts and crafts in the Arnhem Gallery at the Fairfield Halls.
Mary included a telling instruction in her scrapbook:
“In Barclay Road, take the entrance to Fairfield Car Park. About 30 yards down the slope, go through a pair of iron gates on the left which are marked ‘KITCHEN ONLY’. On the right-hand side of the road there is a ramp up which invalid chairs can be wheeled into the Halls. Arnhem Gallery is on the left of the corridor, just past the kitchen. There are no steps to contend with, this way in.” Continue reading
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