Croydon painter Sant, a portrait artist by Royal Appointment

Posted on April 23, 2023 by insidecroydon

SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: One hundred and fifty years ago, Queen Victoria chose a Croydon-born artist to be her ‘Principal Painter in Ordinary to Her Majesty’, but as  DAVID MORGAN discovered, she never liked his work

James Sant: a self-portrait from 1884, when the artist was 64

As Croydon celebrates being the London Borough of Culture, it is good to remember the lives of previous generations of Croydon locals who have contributed significantly to the arts over the ages.

Croydon’s James Sant made a huge impact on the 19th Century art scene, including being appointed portrait painter to Queen Victoria with the grandiose title of Principal Painter in Ordinary to Her Majesty – a kind of painting equivalent of the Poet Laureate. The only problem was, Queen Victoria never seemed to like the portraits Sant painted of her.

Born on this day, April 23, in 1820, Sant is said to have developed an early love of drawing. His brother, George, also grew up to become a painter.

While James Sant concentrated on the lucrative Victorian market for portraiture, his brother produced landscapes.

Living with his parents on Duppas Hill, as an eight-year-old, young James was obsessed with copying a sketch by the artist Landseer. This convinced his family that he had real talent. Continue reading →

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Love Cronx Makers Market, OurSpace, High Street, May 27

Posted on April 23, 2023 by insidecroydon

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Help Marlpit Lane Bowling Green by joining their volunteers

Posted on April 23, 2023 by insidecroydon

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Chessington engineers plan to strike on May bank holidays

Posted on April 22, 2023 by insidecroydon

Chessington World of Adventure is facing severe disruption over the spring holiday season as engineers plan to stage four weekend strikes in a dispute over pay.

They’re having a giraffe: safety workers at Chessington will down tools over four weekends in May

The highly trained engineers are responsible for the smooth running of the park, including ensuring that its safety systems on its high adrenaline rides are fully operational.

Calling for a pay rise in line with the real rate of inflation – RPI is currently at 13.5per cent – the workers are planning to strike in four blocks in May, including the May Day weekend, the Coronation weekend and the late spring bank holiday. Continue reading →

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Wildlife under fire in more cruel shootings at Beddington Park

Posted on April 22, 2023 by insidecroydon

There are extra community safety officer and police patrols in Beddington Park, following the shooting of at least two wildfowl in the last week by a spiteful vandal with an air rifle. Residents report finding other wildlife, including foxes, as being shot with air pellets.

Shot and shocked: the Canada goose, with pellet hole in its beak, as found this week

It is the latest outbreak of animal cruelty in the Sutton park, following a spate of similar attacks on wildlife in previous years.

According to a report from the BBC, a mallard was found dead with a gunshot wound to the neck in Beddington Park on Wednesday, April 19, while a Canada goose was discovered with a shot beak.

The goose survived the attack but is being monitored by locals.

Animal rights activist Saffron Gloyne told the BBC, “The mallard was shot in the neck, and the wound bled out – it would have been so painful.” Continue reading →

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£200 ‘Golden Ticket’ offer for lucky customers at new M&S

Posted on April 22, 2023 by insidecroydon

Early bird customers who flock to the new Marks and Spencer store on the Purley Way when it opens next Thursday could win themselves a Golden Ticket worth £200 of goods from the store.

Golden ticket: the first 200 customers through the doors will win a prize – from a packet of Percy Pig up to £200

The 38,000 sqft new store features a clothing and home department and a large M&S Foodhall with a new fresh-market feel. Highlights include fresh displays brimming with produce grown by M&S Select Farms, an M&S Bakery serving freshly baked breads and cakes and a dedicated Wine Shop featuring an award winning selection of popular favourites.

Percy Pig will be on-hand to welcome shoppers to the new store as the team hands out Golden Tickets to the first 200 customers through the door. Every golden ticket-holder is guaranteed a win – whether it’s a free bag of Percy Pigs or freshly baked cookies from the bakery, with one lucky customer winning a £200 voucher. Continue reading →

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Coulsdon Town Safer Neighbourhood Team surgery: Apr 24

Posted on April 22, 2023 by insidecroydon

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SNCK fundraising Quiz Night, Albert Tavern, Apr 27

Posted on April 22, 2023 by insidecroydon

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Genius at work: Ayckbourn committee comedy hits the Marx

Posted on April 21, 2023 by insidecroydon

BELLA BARTOCK’s visit to the CODA production in Selsdon of Ten Times Table brings back many happy memories

Rallying to the cause: Graham Callison, as Marxist Eric, and Deborah Liu (Philippa) in Ayckbourn’s Ten Times Table

I don’t know about the Massacre of the Pendon Twelve. By the time we got to an hour before curtain-up of CODA’s latest production, I was contemplating the Massacre of the Selsdon One.

Let me explain.

We’d decided, my old school chum, Claudia de Boozy and I, to leave the Roller behind for the night. Young Kenny, who’s not as young as he once was, has been muttering under his breath about ULEZ for the past few weeks. I haven’t paid attention to him. I never do.

I told Kenny that I am sure that Mr Rolls and Mr Royce will have ensured that our lovely, red leather-upholstered Silver Shadow was entirely “compliant” (whatever that’s supposed to mean), together with 90per cent of all the other vehicles on our roads. But on this one occasion, to put him at ease (and to allow him to watch the United match on the new ultra HD television we have just had delivered from Richer Sounds), I would take the No64.

More fool me. Continue reading →

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Centrale’s owners set to sell-up to Westfield in cut-price deal

Posted on April 21, 2023 by insidecroydon

Our vacated shopping centre correspondent, MT WALLETTE, on the latest multi-million-pound boardroom manoeuvres over Croydon’s developer-blighted North End

For sale: Centrale could be off-loaded to Westfield

It has taken more than a decade, but Westfield’s hostile takeover of the Centrale shopping mall in Croydon town centre looks as if it is finally going to happen.

But the sale of Centrale by owners Hammerson to their erstwhile Croydon “partners”, now known as Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, “would terminate decade-long plans” for the town centre’s redevelopment, according to one trade publication.

It is 10 years since Boris Johnson, when Mayor of London, together with his Tory mate, Gavin Barwell, inflicted the shotgun marriage of “Hammersfield” on Croydon, through a forced joint venture between Hammerson and Westfield, the Whitgift Centre landowners’ preferred developers.

Inevitably, like rats in a sack, the property speculators have ended up eating one another. Continue reading →

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Chinese police station on High Street leaves MP Philp spooked

Posted on April 20, 2023 by insidecroydon

Two Croydon MPs clashed in the House of Commons yesterday, as the Tory Government faced criticism from security services and its own backbenches over its failure to act against infiltration by the Chinese state.
By WALTER CRONXITE, political editor

Disaster: Tory MP Chris Philp in the Commons yesterday

Croydon MPs Sarah Jones and Chris Philp clashed in the House of Commons yesterday, as an Urgent Question over the security threat posed by secret “Chinese police stations” that are dotted around the country – including one on Croydon High Street – brought a suitably flaky and typically unsatisfactory response from the Tory Government’s spokesperson.

The UQ saw Philp standing in for Tom Tugendhat, the absent security minister. Philp was, once again, found to be woefully out of its depth. Or, as John Crace, the Grauniad’s parliamentary sketch writer, noted today, “a disaster”.

Crace wrote of Philp: “His desperation makes the skin crawl.” Continue reading →

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Vicar’s plea: Out of shocking destruction – let’s come together

Posted on April 20, 2023 by insidecroydon

One week on from the wanton destruction of at least 20 ancient gravestones in the churchyard at Croydon Minster, Canon Andrew Bishop, the Vicar of Croydon, has appeared in an emotionally-charged video posted on social media. Continue reading →

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Special offer: Get £10 off your pre-marathon pasta meal

Posted on April 20, 2023 by insidecroydon

Croydon’s marathon runners can do their pre-race carbo-loading for free this weekend, thanks to a deal being offered by Deliveroo and Pasta Evangelists.

Go the extra mile: Pasta Evangelists have teamed up with Deliveroo to offer a £10 discount

From midnight on Friday, Deliveroo and the pasta restaurant are giving away 4,000 vouchers each worth £10 towards your big pasta meal ahead of Sunday’s London Marathon.

Runners making their final preparations for the big day after months of training can claim a free portion of pasta on Saturday, April 22, from Deliveroo, who will deliver it from one of Pasta Evangelists’ London restaurants, with 27 restaurants participating in the offer, including a Croydon branch. Continue reading →

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Council bureaucrat gives red light to Love Lane Green’s future

Posted on April 20, 2023 by insidecroydon

A whole lotta Love Lane: community gardeners turned a dumping ground into a valuable local asset – but have been rebuffed by Croydon Council

CROYDON COMMENTARY: A children’s play area, reclaimed from wasteland by volunteers over the last eight years, has had its important status erased with the stroke of a pen by a senior council official.
EMMA HOPE-FITCH and the other Friends of Love Lane Green received the devastating news this week

I knew it was not going to be great news the instant I got the text message from Simon Bashford, “community relations manager for Croydon Council”, informing me of the email I was about to receive.

It was the decision for the nomination of Love Lane Green to be included on Croydon’s list of Assets of Community Value.

Simon has been courteous and helpful, but he has also said things in conversation that have led me to request that he email me, as I would not wish to misrepresent his opinion with regards to what an ACV is for and how it is an important part of the Localism Act of 2011. Continue reading →

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Make your phone safe when Emergency Alarm sounds alert

Posted on April 20, 2023 by insidecroydon

RoSPA, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, is urging road users to leave their mobile phone alone if they are in control of a moving vehicle at 3pm this Sunday, April 23.

Don’t even think about it: motorists using their phones while driving cause hundreds of collisions every year

The Government is testing its Emergency Alerts System on Sunday afternoon, when mobile phones across the country are expected to sound a siren, and RoSPA is one of a number of organisations who have issued advice ahead of the event to ensure that the safety test is not… well, unsafe.

Refuge, the charity for those who suffer domestic abuse, are recommending that anyone who has a second mobile phone so that they might use it for calls or messages that their abuser doesn’t see or hear should turn the device off for an hour either side of 3pm on Sunday, to ensure its presence goes undetected. The advice is backed by the Government. Continue reading →

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Chestnut Gardens residents make some new furry friends

Posted on April 20, 2023 by insidecroydon

To mark Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, staff and residents at Barchester Healthcare’s Chestnut Gardens home in Purley were treated to a visit from some beautiful therapy pets.

Barking: Ruth with pooches Maisie and Baxter at Chestnut Gardens earlier this week

The pair of cockapoos caused a great deal of excitement with the residents at the Foxley Lane home.

“All of the residents enjoyed the visit, they petted and fed the animals, who seemed to appreciate meeting their new friends,” said Louise Wood, a member of Chestnut Gardens staff.

“Animals have a wonderful calming effect and the residents love to stroke them, talk to them and play with them.”

And according to the dogs’ owner, “It was lovely to see the residents getting so much pleasure from the visit, I think it is fair to say Maisie and Baxter have a new fan club!” Continue reading →

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Croydon loses out in the long run with just 21 marathon grants

Posted on April 19, 2023 by insidecroydon

This year’s London Marathon on Sunday will be celebrating the event having distributed more than £100million to good causes over the last 42 years. Yet Croydon has the worst record of all London boroughs in applying for grants, as STEVEN DOWNES reports

Marathon fund-raiser: Croydon has been left trailing when it comes to accessing charity grants

Just days before the staging of the 43rd London Marathon, back on its regular Blackheath to Westminster course and back to its regular spring-time date, the organisers have flourished the fact that they have managed to award an astonishing £100million to various good causes in and around the capital.

And Inside Croydon has discovered that the borough which has received the fewest number of grants from the London Marathon’s charitable foundation is… Croydon.

In the 42 years since that first London Marathon, just 21 sports and recreational projects in Croydon have successfully submitted bids for funding. Two of those 21 projects were handed their grants only in the latest round of awards, announced last week.

Croydon’s failure to tap into the London Marathon’s rich vein of sports funding reflects the local authority’s failure to organise a professional bid team in Fisher’s Folly to assist the borough’s sports clubs and community associations to access such readily available cash. Continue reading →

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Shoppers and pensioners hit hard by food inflation at 19.2%

Posted on April 19, 2023 by insidecroydon

There’s no sign of the cost-of-living crisis abating any time soon, with one business expert warning: ‘Supermarkets pursuing endless price increases are heading down a path of mutually-assured destruction’

‘Profiteering scourge’: Sharon Graham’s Unite has found corporate profits up 89% in three years

Food price inflation was up to 19.2per cent in March, from 18.2per cent in February, according to the latest figures released today by the Office for National Statistics.

That means that any food that you bought for £1 in March 2022 will have cost you £1.20 this year.

More generally, the ONS reported a slight slowing of general inflation rates in March – though for households in Croydon, these figures precede the likely seismic shock of the 15per cent Council Tax hike which the Conservative Mayor, Jason Perry, helped by the Tory Government, is hitting the borough’s residents with in April.

One of the country’s trades union leaders has pinned the blame for continuing soaring prices on “the scourge of corporate profiteering”, while a business figure working in the retail sector has warned that “Supermarkets pursuing endless price increases are heading down a path of mutually-assured destruction”. Continue reading →

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University campus gets down to business with leak-proof pants

Posted on April 19, 2023 by insidecroydon

The London South Bank University campus, which opened in October 2021 in the town centre, has so far helped 14 Croydon businesses through its Help to Grow training programme. The LSBU says that more than 250 businesses across London and the south-east have signed up for the £7,500 12-week courses, which receive a 90per cent Government subsidy.

‘Incredibly helpful’: Kelly Newton, founder of Croydon start-up Nixi Body

The LSBU Croydon campus, based in the listed Electric House building, already offers a range of business and accountancy degree courses.

The 14 Croydon firms who have received support from Help to Grow have had help through training, covering financial management, leadership and digital skills, and personalised support through tailored growth plans to enable them to increase earnings, revenue and profits.

One of the latest Croydon firms to sign up under Help to Grow at LSBU is Nixi Body, a start-up that makes leak-proof knickers for women with incontinence, periods, maternity and menopause. Continue reading →

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No ducting the issue after grease fire at Norbury takeaway

Posted on April 19, 2023 by insidecroydon

A fire in a London Road takeaway in Norbury on Monday, which caused the evacuation of 26 people living in flats above the premises, has renewed calls for stricter safety checks on restaurant extraction systems.

Abby’s grilled: the takeaway and its ducting system were damaged in Monday’s fire

It took 10 fire engines and around 70 firefighters to tackle the fire at Abby’s Grill, causing the closure of the main London Road on Monday evening, including during the peak rush hour.

London Ambulance Service and police were also attending.

“The fire is believed to have been accidental and caused by grease igniting within the extraction system,” a statement released by the London Fire Brigade said. Continue reading →

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Burst water main causes severe traffic disruption in Kenley

Posted on April 19, 2023 by insidecroydon

There are significant road closures in the area close to Kenley railway station, following a burst water main on Kenley Lane on Monday.

Pipe down: the gaping hole in the road on Kenley Lane after the mains burst on Monday

SES Water implemented the emergency road closures overnight, and they suggest that they could be in place at least until this Friday, April 21. But the utlities company has not ruled out the works, and the road closures, continuing through the weekend.

Last night, they closed Hayes Lane between the junction with Park Road and Kenley Lane. Continue reading →

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Ruskin House Screen Club presents: We Are Many, Apr 28

Posted on April 19, 2023 by insidecroydon

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Locals petition Perry over neglect of South Norwood reserve

Posted on April 18, 2023 by insidecroydon

From sewage farm to sanctuary: South Norwood Country Park is an example of how a large area in the middle of a built-up borough can be reclaimed. Now the cash-strapped council’s neglect is putting all that at risk

The dereliction and decline of another of Croydon’s cherished public open spaces has prompted residents to petition Jason Perry, the Mayor of Croydon, to re-open the visitor centre in South Norwood Country Park.

More than one thousand people have already signed the petition; at 2,000 signatures, the petition can be presented at a Town Hall meeting.

According to Croydon Council’s own website, the visitor centre is “closed for refurbishment”. But park users have been waiting for three years to hear any news from the council when that promised refurbishment might happen. Continue reading →

Posted in Community associations, Croydon Council, Croydon parks, Environment, Friends of South Norwood Country Park, Schools, South Norwood, Wildlife, Woodside | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Reach for the skies: Streatham Common Kite Day set to return

Posted on April 18, 2023 by insidecroydon

High rises: a bright and blustery day provides the perfect conditions for Streatham Common Kite Day, a free festival which makes a return this May

After a covid-enforced gap, the Streatham Common Kite Day returns next month for its 22nd staging.

The organisers claim the Streatham Common Kite Day is London’s only free family-friendly kite festival, combining world-class displays with the opportunity to fly your own kite.

Thousands attended the last kite day in 2019, and this year’s event, on Sunday May 14 from 11am to 5pm, promises the same mix of expert displays with delicious food and drink on offer at the stalls. Continue reading →

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Foxley Lane care home is inviting community groups to lunch

Posted on April 18, 2023 by insidecroydon

The residents of Chestnut Gardens extended a warm welcome to their friends from the Selsdon and Sanderstead Rotary yesterday.

Lunch party: Rotary club members and Chestnut Gardens residents met yesterday

Chestnut Gardens, on Foxley Lane in Purley, is run by Barchester Healthcare, one of the country’s largest care providers, supporting older people living independent lives. Barchester Healthcare has more than 12,000 residents across 248 homes and hospitals for short breaks to long-term stays.

Chestnut Gardens provides dementia care, residential care and respite care.

The Rotary club members meet every week and usually have to pay for their lunch at their regular venue. This week, their lunch was paid for by Chestnut Gardens. Continue reading →

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