Burgess Park creation was started after World Ward Two in the post war ruins between Albany Road and St.Geroge’s Way. It came from the 1943 Abercrombie plan for London’s open spaces and has been assembled over the decades. London County Council surveyors while recording all the war damage recognised that with large swathes of London flattened it was an opportunity to reconfigure London.
My great aunt had a shop on Albany Road that was demolished along with many homes as part of the creation of this park. It will be quite an achievement when Burgess Park is eventually finished – perhaps in time for the 70th year since the idea was first conceived.
Why so much damage in South London?
V1 rockets were fired from Normandy directly south of Tower Bridge which was the aiming point the Nazis used. V2 rockets were fired from Normandy directly east of Tower Bridge.
Apparently the Nazis briefed field agents to report if these weapons and earlier bombing raids had hit the target. Most if not all of these Nazi agents had been “turned” and the War Cabinet debated whether these double-agents should be used to send back inaccurate reports to Germany. During July 1944 a secret report was prepared for the War Cabinet to illustrate what the impact would be on various London boroughs of a deception operation to convince the Nazis that V1’s were overshooting and thus further shorten their range and miss central London. The Minister of Home Security, Lambeth MP Herbert Morrison, opposed the idea of playing ‘God’, perhaps also suspecting an attempt to protect government officials and the wealthy at the expense of working people in south London. It seems that the War Cabinet agreed that the plan would be wrong in principle, but apparently a final decision was – exceptionally – not minuted in writing. This exceptional ambiguity has led many to conclude that attempts by the intelligence services to deceive the Nazis continued.
Bermondsey had the most V1 hits per 1,000 acres, Camberwell came 3rd and Lambeth 4th. It appears the War Cabinet had decided to play god. The Citizens of Southwark were being sacrificed to help protect Westminster and the City of London. The implication was that this was a continuation of earlier policies regarding bombing raids. Thirty percent of homes in Bermondsey, Camberwell and Southwark were destroyed or very badly damaged. The residential population halved between 1939 and 1941.
In recognition of the 5,349 residents of Bermondsey, Camberwell and Southwark killed of seriously injured – many as a result of these deception operations to protect the seat of central government – a gesture of penance is long overdue.
Making Burgess Park a Royal Park in my mind would be such a gesture.
What do you think?
I wrote to the Prince of Wales and suggested the very same thing and got a short reply back that it would require an Act of Parliament so there was no point! He then got the CEO of the Royal Parks Agency to write to me who offered ‘a couple of days’ of an officers time. I was very disappointed that he failed to take on board my comments that all of the Royal Parks in London are in exclusive post codes and it reflected bad on the monarchy. Now that there is a possibility of funding from the Mayor instead I think that would be a much better solution.
Ideal world Burgess PArk receives £2M from thE GLA, £4M from Southwark Park/Aylesbury New Deals for Communities. It then gets transferred to the Royal Parks who have the resources to maintain it to a very standardto refelct the debt London owes south London for being sacrificed to WWII Nazi bombing. Equally Victoria Park in the east London should be so treated.