MARVELS OF THE MINSTER: Much has been lost from the church’s medieval past, but DAVID MORGAN finds some records of one wealthy family’s tombs
History centre: the Minster’s links to medieval England can still be found today
“Good morning everyone and welcome to this tour of Croydon Minster. We are going to start today by taking a trip back into Tudor history by looking at herons and helmets.”
I wish I could begin a tour with this introduction. But there are good reasons why I can’t.
Attached to the south wall of Croydon Minster today is a very small piece of an ancient memorial. Continue reading →
With the government’s settlement for local councils announced this week, our columnist ANDREW FISHER takes a look at what Michael Gove and his so-called ‘Levelling Up’ department is really offering
“Billions more for councils to build back better” reads the upbeat press release from the newly rebranded Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities – which to you and me is the bit of government that funds local councils.
Not what it might seem: Tory minister Michael Gove
Good news for Croydon then, which – depending on who you listen to – has either lost around 80 per cent of central government funding in the last decade or has been driven to rack and ruin by the local administration in Katharine Street.
Either way, Croydon Council definitely needs more funding to build back better.
First, let’s just look at the recent funding context.
Adjusting for inflation, in 2015-2016 Croydon was receiving £146million per year from government. This year, that figure was just £88.2million – a 40 per cent cut. Continue reading →
A pair of friends from Croydon who had the business idea of putting more colour into Christmas have hit the big time, with their collection of festive figurines with black skin tone going on sale at Selfridge’s on Oxford Street.
The world-famous department store began stocking handmade black Santa ornaments and a black nativity scene this week.
The products have been designed and made by March Muses, a partnership formed by Alison Burton and Natalie Duvall.
Duvall went to the Brit School who now works as an actress and brand event manager, while Burton works as a senior recruiter in the pharmaceutical industry.
Their 24-product range has prices from £8 to £45, and features black angels handmade with close attention paid to details such as skin tone, hair design, body shape and size. Continue reading →
Under pressure: hospital admissions with covid are almost all from unvaccinated people
Nearly every adult hospitalised with covid-19 in Croydon and south-west London over the past two months had not been fully vaccinated with two doses and a booster.
Local operational figures for five major NHS hospitals in this part of London in October and November show that 97 per cent of the adults being confined to hospital with covid-19 symptoms were not fully vaccinated with their first, second and booster dose.
The figures, from Croydon’s Mayday, St George’s Hospital in Tooting, Kingston Hospital, Epsom Hospital and St Helier Hospital, also show that having the two doses plus the top-up meant people were eight times less likely to get seriously ill with covid. Continue reading →
There be monsters:Medea (Daisy Worby) takes on the Dragon Snake (Ciaran Kovach)in Theatre Workshop Coulsdon’s Jason and the Argonauts
BELLA BARTOCK donned her mask and covid passport and after picking up her old friend Claudia de Boozy from outside Purley Tesco, set off for a big night out in Coulsdon
Claudia was waiting as my Rolls rolled up.
“I am so excited to be back, getting out and watching a live show again,” Claudia said, her cheeks a little redder than could be accounted for simply by the rouge she’d applied.
“I’ve got my gold lamé fleece on. It is Jason and the Argonauts we are going to see, isn’t it?”
I nodded. I’d lost count of the number of times I’d explained to Claudia in the week beforehand that we were returning to the Coulsdon Community Centre where, before the dreaded plague, the Theatre Workshop Coulsdon regularly used to perform professional-looking productions, and that this was most definitely not a pantomime. “Oh no it isn’t,” I remember telling her.
EXCLUSIVE (and available in all good, and some not-so-good, newsagents): The exec who walked away with a £440,000 pay-out from the borough she helped to bankrupt has re-emerged with a juicy ‘consultancy’ from one of the firms she used to hire when running the council.
By STEVEN DOWNES
Revolving doors: Arup consultant Jo ‘Negreedy’ Negrini
Self-acclaimed “regeneration practitioner” Jo Negrini has regenerated her own career, the failed council chief executive emerging with a juicy consultancy deal at Arup, one of the firms she favoured so lavishly when she was frittering tax-payers’ money from the executive floors at Fisher’s Folly.
The special Ho-Ho-Ho edition of Private Eye magazine, published today, reports that “… thanks to the wonder of revolving doors, ‘Negreedy’ has resurfaced as a ‘cities and development consultant’ on the books of Arup, the giant engineering and planning specialists”.
Negrini, the council’s £200,000-plus per year chief exec, quit Croydon in September 2020, but only after she had screwed a £440,000 golden handshake from the borough she had done so much to help bankrupt. Continue reading →
Food banks in Croydon and across the capital are preparing for their most challenging Christmas yet, as they struggle with rising demand and dwindling public donations.
A time to give: Aldi and other supermarkets are taking donations from shoppers as well as donating surplus food to food banks
According to a survey by community giving platform Neighbourly – which Aldi partners with to distribute surplus food from its stores – 76per cent of food banks, charities and community causes in London are worried about having enough food to support people this Christmas.
Neighbourly polled more than 600 food banks and community causes and found that 90 per cent in London expect this Christmas to be their busiest yet, with more people than ever needing their support.
The survey also revealed that 93 per cent of food banks in London have witnessed a drop in donations in recent months – with the fallout of the pandemic and rising cost of living continuing to impact contributions.
This video has been produced by Croydon Council to accompany a report from Croydon’s director of public health.
In her first annual report since the covid-19 outbreak, Rachel Flowers praises Croydon residents, communities, schools and businesses for their continued strength and determination, while making “a number of recommendations for Croydon to bounce back as a fairer place”.
Tragedy: the house in West Sutton where the four boys died last night
A 27-year-old woman has been arrested on suspicion of child neglect after two sets of twins, all boys, aged three and four, were killed in a fire in a house on Collingwood Road, West Sutton last night.
The children were given CPR by firefighters and were taken to two separate hospitals where they later died, the London Fire Brigade said.
The boys had been left home alone, the LFB confirmed. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
This morning, speaking to reporters at the scene, London Fire Brigade deputy commissioner Richard Mills said, “Firstly, I’d like to acknowledge the terrible tragedy that took place last night and our thoughts remain with the family, friends and community of the sad loss of life of four young children. Continue reading →
CROYDON IN CRISIS: If 2020 was Croydon Council’s year of Negreedy and bankruptcy, 2021 has been the year of leaks, mould and a local authority exposed as incompetent and uncaring about those living in its properties. And there are worrying signs that little has yet changed.
By STEVEN DOWNES
The shame that won’t go away: the latest edition of Inside Housing magazine, featuring Regina Road and ITV News reporter Dan Hewitt
“The only ‘leaks’ that Steve Reed, Hamida Ali and their chums at the Town Hall should be worrying about are the ones in the council flats in South Norwood,” one Katharine Street source told Inside Croydon this week, as the local Labour Party continued in its course of vendettas, internal wrangling and self-destruction.
Councillor Ali will go down in history as leader of Croydon Council for less than two years, her political “career” forever stained with the scandal of the council homes on Regina Road – “the worst homes in Britain”, as they were described on national television.
And according to the reporter who broke the story which shocked the nation on ITV’s News At Ten on March 22, there’s still a lot more to come.
“During our investigation, we could have run a piece every single night on this,” Daniel Hewitt, ITV News’s political correspondent, says in an interview in the latest edition of Inside Housing magazine.
Hewitt has spent most of the past year researching and following up countless other instances of appalling conditions in council and housing association homes.
“Rightly,” Inside Housing states, “this is the story that everyone who lives and works in social housing has been talking about this year.”
In the lengthy interview, Hewitt says that the moment he stepped into the council home of Fransoy Hewitt in South Norwood, “It was the most angry I’ve ever been as a journalist, as a human being.” Continue reading →
The NHS vaccination programme cranked up an extra gear or two this week, as part of the national effort to offer millions of Britons a covid-19 booster vaccine by the end of the year in a race to protect the nation against the Omicron variant.
But not in the south of the borough of Croydon, it seems.
On song: Ronny Krippner’s time as musical director has seen the Minster’s choirs flourish
DAVID MORGAN pays tribute and bids farewell to an influential figure
There are only a few more days left before Dr Ronny Krippner’s term as Musical Director at Croydon Minster comes to an end.
His final service is on Christmas morning, after which he leaves for Ripon to take up the musical baton in the cathedral there. Combining his Minster duties with work at Whitgift School, Dr Krippner has spent the last nine years in Croydon encouraging, nurturing and cajoling hundreds of singers and musicians to produce glorious music.
With less than three days to go in their investment crowdfunding, Croydon-based craft brewers have exceeded their target by almost double as they seek to launch a Porter which they hope will offer an alternative to muti-national giant Diageo’s Guinness.
My goodness: could the Croydon brewery’s new line take on a global beer icon?
Anspach and Hobday were established in Bermondsey in 2014 and opened their Croydon brewery in 2018, thanks to a similar kind of crowdfunding investment, which raised £525,250 from 542 investors, and has helped seen the business quickly grow to a £1million annual turnover concern.
This time round, with the launch of their London Black dark beer, they hoped to raise £300,000. With the crowdfunding deadline this Thursday night, Anspach and Hobday’s whip-round to develop and market the new beer has reached nearly £580,000 from 744 backers, all thirsty for success and profits.
Anspach and Hobday told Inside Croydon today, “Since the launch of London Black in April 2021, we’ve already landed 32 house lines in pubs and sold over 670 kegs. That’s over 35,000 pints of independent, locally produced dark beer.
“Due to the early success of London Black, we could see that now was the time to raise capital and invest in our brewing to keep up with demand.” Continue reading →
South London killer: the polluting Viridor incinerator at Beddington, imposed on south London by Tory, LibDem and Labour councils
Air pollution kills 64,000 per year – and burning rubbish is doing nothing for the nation’s net zero climate crisis goals, according to report from an all-party parliamentary committee
A Parliamentary committee headed by a former Croydon MP has called for the complete halt of the building or expansion of all waste incineration plants, and for the introduction of an incineration tax to protect human health and cut carbon emissions.
A report by the all-party parliamentary group on air pollution concludes that ultrafine particles released by incineration at scale constitute a significant health hazard. Continue reading →
CROYDON LABOUR IN CRISIS: Not content with bankrupting the borough and then ignoring the will of their members by opposing the move to an elected Mayor, the rump of Newman’s numpties has embarked on a petty vendetta which seems intent on losing them the Town Hall elections next May.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Croydon’s Labour Party, in its latest act of deliberate self-harm, is forcing one of their sitting councillors to undergo a second interview this week that seems likely to lead to their de-selection.
It is one month since Andrew Pelling was democratically selected by an overwhelming majority of party members in Waddon, the ward he has represented since 2014.
This latest move against Pelling has been conducted by a rump of old mates and supporters of Tony Newman, the now-discredited ex-leader of the council, who despite their part in bankrupting the borough and undermining the party’s reputation with the public, somehow still hold considerable influence.
“It’s a desperate act of revenge, part of a vendetta that’s been going on for years,” a Croydon South party member told Inside Croydon today. “They just won’t accept that, on so many issues, Andrew’s judgement has been proved to be sound, while Newman and his mates got things terribly wrong. It’s snide and it’s nasty.” Continue reading →
The government is calling in the army in an effort to double the number of covid booster jabs delivered to more than 1million per day between now and the New Year in a desperate effort to limit the spread and impact of what the Prime Minister has called “a tidal wave of Omicron”.
Doubling up: the government wants to deliver 1m covid jabs per day up to the New Year
In Croydon, infection rates from the virus have doubled in the space of one week.
Boris Johnson made a (pre-recorded) televised address to the nation last night to announce the ramping up of vaccinations, and avoid imposing further restrictions.
The diversion of medical professionals and volunteers towards the massive increase in vaccination roll-out will see other procedures at NHS hospitals, including GP appointments, non-urgent operations and cancer treatments, postponed.
The Prime Minister announced that the booster is to be provided to everyone in England over the age of 18 (until now eligibility has been limited to over-40s), and that the wait between second jabs and boosters would be reduced from six to three months. Continue reading →
Harry Smith, Ethel Corduff and Keith Nancarrow are off to the Fairfield Halls next week, with a guest of their choice, as the three loyal Inside Croydon subscribers and lucky winners of our fabulous competition to see the Len Phillips Swing Orchestra’s Swingin’ Christmas concert.
Harry, Ethel and Keith were the first three names out of the hat from the correct entries who knew the answer to our question (or Googled it, anyway) that Irving Berlin’s timeless festive show-stopper White Christmas was first performed in the Oscar-winning movie Holiday Inn. Continue reading →
Croydon Minster at Christmas: next weekend’s concert on the green, with the Salvation Army band, log fires and mulled wine, promises to be a heart-warming community event. Photo: David Adamson-Hill
“It turns out, 10,000 lights don’t look like a lot once you get them into the trees,” Father David Adamson-Hill, a vicar who is relatively new to Croydon, says somewhat self-deprecatorily.
It was, after all, Adamson-Hill who sourced the lights and, together with a colleague from Croydon Minster, Father John Ackland, was spotted last week as “two vicars up a tree”, as they laced the lights across Minster Green ahead of what promises for them to be a busy few weeks, even by the standards of the Church of England at Christmas time. Continue reading →
High rise: Farthing Downs holds many historic secrets
NATURE NOTES: The City of London rangers who look after Farthing Downs, Coulsdon Common and other precious green spaces are as hard at work over the bleak midwinter months as the rest of the year, including important projects to unlock the area’s Iron Age history
There is little doubt that a warming climate will have a profound impact on people and planet.
One of the overriding themes to come out of the UN’s COP26 conference in Glasgow last month is the importance of not only reducing our carbon emissions but how to store carbon, namely through the chief protagonist: trees.
This was the theme at a recent talk in Old Coulsdon organised by the Friends of Farthing Downs and Happy Valley, including speakers from the Woodland Trust, Croydon Council’s street tree team and rangers from the City of London. Continue reading →
News, views and analysis about the people of Croydon, their lives and political times in the diverse and most-populated borough in London.
Based in Croydon and edited by Steven Downes. To contact us, please email inside.croydon@btinternet.com
