Jumping trout: the New Zealand town of Gore, famed for its fishing, has subsumed the Victorian settlement called Croydon, named after its founder’s childhood home
SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: Of the various places called ‘Croydon’ around the world, the one on New Zealand’s south island has a particularly well-recorded history, as DAVID MORGAN found out
Frontiersman: Nathaniel Chalmers was a Victorian adventurer
Nathaniel Chalmers was a pioneer and a frontiersman, one of the people in the Victorian era who left their home in the relative safety of Croydon to pursue a new life, and fortune, overseas.
Born in Scotland in 1830, Chalmers grew up in Croydon after his father moved south to take up an appointment to the staff of the East India College in Addiscombe. Once he was of school age, Nathaniel was sent to Christ’s Hospital School, then in the City of London, where he became a “Blue Coat”.
After leaving school aged 15, he went to work in a shipbroker’s office in Liverpool. In 1847, he got a position in the London branch of the Royal Bank of Australia.
Two years later, in 1849, Nathaniel and Gerit, his brother, made their life-changing decision and boarded SS Ajax bound for Otago, New Zealand. Continue reading
CROYDON IN CRISIS: The fee-paying girls’ school in Old Town has been shortlisted for a prize at a national awards event to be staged at a 5-star hotel where tickets cost £245 per head. By GENE BRODIE, education correspondent
NHS Blood and Transplant has revealed there are 4,303 donors in the capital with the vital O Negative blood type whose last donation was more than 12 months ago.
Office space has been cleared and meeting rooms booked, as staff from the Care Quality Commission arrived at the council offices in Fisher’s Folly this morning for a three-day inspection of Croydon’s adult social care services, including support for the borough’s carers.
The capital’s transport authority is running a public consultation through the summer which includes proposals for a new Cleaner Vehicle Discount to incentivise the uptake of what they call “the cleanest possible vehicles”.
The Croydon Insider is the only news podcast for London’s most populous borough, and in our latest episode our panel discusses a range of news stories and the issues that matter to them – including difficulties encountered in reducing the amount of anti-social behaviour in one of the capital’s most crime-blighted areas.
