Bright spot: estate agent John Blake was so well-regarded by his peers in Croydon that they paid for a stained glass window in the re-built Parish Church, now Croydon Minster
CROYDON CHRONICLES: Property auctions are nothing new. There have been businesses wheeling and dealing over house sales and land disposals for hundreds of years.
DAVID MORGAN pores over the property ads placed by auctioneer John Blake to discover more about the two 200 years ago
If the BBC’s Escape To The Country had been aired in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries (yes, I know, John Logie Baird was just a couple of hundred years too late), then Croydon must surely have been one of their top locations to search for property.
A comfortable carriage ride from London, you could make the journey into the Surrey hills from Gracechurch Street in little more than an hour, and find yourself in a town with a sparkling trout river, the Wandle, little countryside hamlets nearby, larger houses built in attractive parkland or common land, thriving markets… it even had its very own palace!
Such attractions would have proven irresistible for the upwardly mobile of Georgian England, who might have a business or trade in London, but who preferred to move out to the fresh air, away from where theft and robbery were daily occurrences and where the unsavoury side of overcrowded city life seemed to be on the increase.
For those who in Regency England had money, Croydon and its surrounding villages could provide that rural idyll which was much sought after by the sort of folk whose fortunes were on the rise. Continue reading
Meetings are held in the United Reformed Church Hall, 3 Sanderstead Hill, CR2 0HB. There are usually two talks each month; they start at 8pm and finish at about 9pm.
Croydon’s Green Party councillors have written an open letter to Zotefoams, the Mitcham Road company that provides the go-faster foam for world-beating running shoes, to pause their redundancy process and re-think its plans to shift production to Vietnam.
CROYDON COMMENTARY: The collapse of a multi-million-pound contract to manage a children’s home in the borough has exposed the flaws in the procurement process and sunk Mayor Perry’s claims of running a ‘more efficient’ council.
It’s a seemingly modest light industrial site not far from Mitcham Common. Yet the cutting-edge materials produced at the Zotefoams factory are credited with helping deliver up to 20 running world records in the last decade, thanks to innovative “super shoes” made by US sportswear giant Nike.
The Labour opposition group at Croydon Town Hall has demanded that Mayor Jason Perry set up a “fast-track” and independent inquiry into how his council was forced to cancel a £8.6million contract with a care provider less than six months after the children’s home was opened.
St Christopher’s Fellowship strongly disputes a number of the assertions contained in Croydon Council’s report about our management of [home name], a care home offering short-term respite support for children and young people with complex needs.
