Blackheath Society Celebrates 75th Anniversary
The Queen celebrates her Diamond Jubilee, the 30th Olympic Games are taking place on our doorstep, and the Blackheath Society also has reason to celebrate as it marks its 75th birthday.
Our inaugural meeting was held at Blackheath Concert Halls on 11 March 1937. Two months earlier a group of local people, concerned about preserving the buildings in the area, met at All Saints Parish Hall (now Mary Evans Picture Library) to create a society “pledged to safeguard by all possible means the amenities of Blackheath.”
Since then the Society, one of London’s oldest and largest amenity groups, has been working to preserve local buildings and encourage good new design. All the battles it has won - and lost - are Guardians of the Heath, published in 2009 to mark our 70th anniversary in 2007.
The Society is more active than ever today. As well as regular activities to support and preserve the Village and the Heath, our new initiatives include: creating the new Hub on the Heath; supporting the new Village Community Centre and Library; launching a new digital archive of Blackheath photographs; promoting a new Westcombe Woodlands organisation.
We have also just joined Twitter and Facebook and are improving our Website.
We will hold a reception for our own volunteers at the end of March and will then celebrate our birthday with a further three special events during the year:
• A family Picnic on the Heath on Midsummer Day Sunday 24 June open to everybody with free children’s entertainment and the formal unveiling the Hub to mark our 75th.
• We have arranged for BBC Radio 4’s popular Any Questions programme to visit Blackheath on Friday 26 October in the Halls – and again open to all.
• On Friday 30 November we will host a Gala Event for Society members, also at the Halls, to mark the end of our anniversary year.
Notes for Editors:
For more information about the Society’s activities, and photographs, please contact Committee member John Bartram on 0208 852 2322, or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Interviews can be arranged, if required, with the Society’s Chairman Howard Shields and its Vice-Chairman Frank Smith. For all general enquiries about the Society in the future please contact our Secretary Wendy Shelton in the first instance on 0208 297 1937 or at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Copies of our Guardians of the Heath book and recent Society newsletters can be provided on request.