London Wildlife Trust Open Day – Sydenham Hill Wood
Join the LWT to celebrate 30 years of maintaining and improving Sydenham Hill Wood on Sunday September 9 from midday to 6.30 pm with walks, talks, tea & cake
Contact: Daniel Greenwood dgreenwood@wildlondon.org.uk / 0207 252 9186
Access via Cox’s Walk (Buses 176, 185, 197, 363), Lapsewood Walk, Crescent Wood Road (Buses 363, 356). Nearest trains: Sydenham Hill Station on foot via Dulwich Wood or buses from Forest Hill, Sydenham, Crystal Palace.
More details below:
Wood you believe it?
30 years of conservation at Sydenham Hill Wood
Celebrate the 30th birthday of London Wildlife Trust’s first nature reserve at free events starting this September. Sydenham Hill Wood, saved from a series of development threats in the 1980s, was opened as a freely accessible nature reserve in the autumn of 1982, as one of the first steps by London Wildlife Trust to demonstrate people’s desire to protect sites in the neighbourhood for wildlife.
Volunteers for the newly formed Trust had identified the Wood – standing on the upper ridges of Sydenham Hill and enclosed by corrugated zinc fencing – as a potentially valuable wildlife rich reserve. Once the site of large demolished Victorian mansions and part of a closed railway line it had fallen into dereliction, and most of it was earmarked for the development of a new housing estate.
Working with many local groups, the Trust successfully helped to defeat the plans for housing, and rapidly established the Wood as a reserve, removing debris and constructing new features to make it safe and attractive for the public. Since then, the Trust has successfully helped to establish the Wood as Southwark’s first statutory Local Nature Reserve (in 1990), receive the UK Man & The Biosphere Urban Forum award of excellence (in 1996), and – through further campaigns – secure greater protection of the Wood from development threats. Southwark Council have provided resources to enable the Trust to staff Sydenham Hill Wood through to the present day.
Over the next few months London Wildlife Trust will be holding a number of public events to celebrate Sydenham Hill Wood’s 30th birthday, beginning with an Open Day on Sunday 9th September. There will be walks and talks to discover more about the Wood’s wildlife and its history, as well as cake stalls and a chance to meet people who have been involved at the Wood down the years. The event will run from 12noon to 16:30 with the main congregation being situated at the top of Cox’s Walk, near the footbridge.
lAccess via Cox’s Walk (Buses 176, 185, 197, 363), Lapsewood Walk, Crescent Wood Road (Buses 363, 356). Nearest trains: Sydenham Hill Station on foot via Dulwich Wood or buses from Forest Hill, Sydenham, Crystal Palace
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