The Huguenots in Wandsworth: a Riverside Radio Conversation

0:49JuliaHello, good afternoon everybody, and welcome to People and Places with me, Julia Bright, on Riverside Radio. I have two guests for you today.

Firstly, Tim Kidd, whose knowledge of the Huguenots in London knows no bounds. He is a London guide and Blue Badge holder, and last week gave a fascinating talk about the Huguenots in Wandsworth at a meeting of the Wandsworth Society.

And here (he's come nice and early, which is brilliant) is Ian Gray, and we'll talk to him as well. He's a long-term Wandsworth Society member, and probably the longest-serving committee member of this illustrious, wonderful, distinguished local society. So welcome, Tim, and welcome, Ian.

1:40TimThank you.

Why the Huguenots came, and why Wandsworth

1:41JuliaWe'll kick off with Tim. I'd love you to tell us a little about why thousands of Huguenots came to settle here in England, and then what was so special about Wandsworth.

2:02TimThe important thing about the Huguenots is that they were French Protestants, and they were driven out of France. They were being persecuted by the Roman Catholics, particularly in the reign of Louis XIV, who said in 1685 that he wouldn't tolerate any Protestant worship in France.

So they had to escape, although Louis XIV tried to prevent them from leaving, so they had to be smuggled out of the country. They went all over Europe, including the UK. The UK at that time was a Protestant country, so it was an obvious place for them to try and get to. And French people had been slipping across the Channel for hundreds and hundreds of years.

2:44JuliaAnd water is what they needed in particular. I wondered why it was Wandsworth.

2:49TimWandsworth in particular, because it was London's industrial centre at that time. It benefited from the River Wandle, which drove an enormous number of watermills, and that was what drove the industry. It was the electricity of the time, if you think about water power.

Many of them were very skilled in mechanical operations, and they were looking around London for a place very similar to where they'd come from in France. So Wandsworth was the ideal place.

3:25JuliaAnd the little river… the Wandle. The famous Wandle.

3:34TimYes. The Wandle is a very short river, only eight miles long, but it slopes about seven times more steeply than the Thames. So there's an enormous force of water coming down from the North Downs into the Thames, and that drove all the watermills.

3:51JuliaOf course. And the faster the water flowed…

3:55Tim…the more powerful.

3:57JuliaHow many watermills were there along it?

4:00TimGetting on for fifty or sixty, probably, in eight miles. It varied, and there were enormous disputes, because if your upriver neighbour put in a new watermill, that deprived you of some of your power. So there were constant legal disputes. It was quite fraught sometimes.

4:23JuliaWandsworth was a village then, was it?

4:28TimAt the beginning of the eighteenth century, about two thousand people; at the end of it, about four thousand five hundred. So we're not talking about huge numbers, and the Huguenots weren't swamping the area with thousands of people. In other parts of London there were greater numbers moving in.

4:50JuliaWere they welcomed here in Wandsworth?

4:55TimThey were very welcome, yes. There were sometimes disputes between the local tradesmen and the incomers, and you can see this because some of them changed their names. They anglicised their names from the French, to blend in more.

Huguenot names, and some well-known descendants

5:11JuliaCan you give any examples of names that were originally Huguenot?

5:16TimYou would have had a name like Blanc, B-L-A-N-C, and they would change it to White, or Blanche. Or Charpentier to Carpenter.

5:24JuliaJustin de Blank, the restaurateur and foodie of some years back (he didn't live in Wandsworth, I think) would probably have been originally Huguenot. Can you tell just from names?

5:37TimNot necessarily, because some of them changed their names. And these days people are keen to look into their ancestry. They're tracing their family trees, and some people have now changed their names back, from the anglicised version to the French, because they want to show that they are descended from the Huguenot families. So it's very complicated to pin down.

6:03JuliaAnd they'd be very proud of their heritage.

6:05TimVery proud of their heritage.

6:06JuliaI know Ian is going to talk about some of the Huguenots he knows, aren't you?

IanWe could do that now, as a matter of fact. Well-known Huguenots: [one of] the Wandsworth Society's members was Christopher Cazenove, the actor.

6:31JuliaOh, yes.

6:32IanI was talking to Tim earlier about the Mount Nod Huguenot Cemetery. The Wandsworth Society put up a plaque in the corner of the cemetery, and it was unveiled by Chris Cazenove.

6:50JuliaWas it?

6:51IanWhen I was a child, my father, who was a vet, would go and treat animals that belonged to the Oliviers, and I believe the Olivier family was another of Huguenot descent. So I would meet Larry and the gorgeous Viv occasionally. The most beautiful thing I'd ever seen was Viv, I think.

7:17JuliaHave you ever given a talk to the Wandsworth Society about those encounters?

7:22IanI haven't. I've talked to them about follies and grottoes. Another family that springs to mind is the one responsible for present-day Eltham Palace, which is such a beautiful example of the architecture of its period…

7:42TimThe Courtauld family.

7:44IanExactly.

7:45JuliaHow did they make their money? It was textiles, wasn't it?

7:50IanNot the particular couple who lived there; they were another branch of the family. But that's right, the Courtaulds were textiles people.

7:58JuliaThat is a magnificent palace. Would you describe the style, for people who haven't been there?

8:05IanI would think of it as Art Deco, with elements of Art Nouveau as well. And it's attached to a building where Henry VIII spent part of his childhood. It's a wonderful place.

8:22JuliaThe Tudors: O levels, or whatever we called them then.

8:25TimIt was Henry VIII who turned us into a Protestant country, so this is very relevant. From then on, with the exception of Queen Mary, we were persecuting the Catholics, and the Catholics in mainland Europe were persecuting the Protestants. So it made for a nice two-way traffic.

8:44JuliaStormy, actually.

8:52JuliaThere was somebody else in Wandsworth you might have mentioned…

8:57IanI was talking to Tim earlier about whether Charlotte Despard might have been a Huguenot descendant. In fact, it turns out that Despard was her husband's name, and the connections were far from being Huguenot, but rather Sinn Féin.

9:12JuliaI see. Because of course we're on Charlotte Despard Avenue here.

9:19Tim[Some] Huguenots went to Ireland. They came to London first, then up to Liverpool, and then straight across to Ireland, because Ulster was strongly Protestant, so that attracted them as well. So there's no reason why the Despards couldn't originally have been from France.

9:40JuliaAnd de Valera, which just came to mind: he sounds pretty French.

9:46TimYou do have to be very careful, because William the Conqueror was French as well, and he was by no means Protestant. We've got centuries of links between us and France.

10:00JuliaThinking about the Normans and their predominant genes… blue eyes. Did the Huguenots have blue eyes, do you know?

10:13TimI don't know about the eye colour.

10:17JuliaMy former next-door neighbour came from Sicily, and his name is Oreste: curly hair, blue eyes. And that's the Norman.

10:30TimWell, the Normans were originally Vikings. They came from Scandinavia.

Refugees and their networks

10:35JuliaWe'll talk a little later about some more names. But what I would love to know about Wandsworth is this: there's the river, and the industrious nature of these people, who obviously had to make a living. They were refugees, after all.

10:52TimYou arrived probably penniless, because you'd been smuggled out of France. Some of them came across in empty wine barrels and things like that. You didn't come with lots of money.

But some of them came to established families, so they had a network. When they came, they had a network of contacts which they built on, and they became very wealthy.

11:13JuliaWas that one of the reasons they were able to establish themselves in the first place [?], because their families had been here for a long time? It wasn't like the Russian Jewish people from Lithuania, who came with little jewels sewn into their coats. It was completely different.

11:34TimNo, but they often came into an established network of contacts.

11:39JuliaWell, I think we ought to play the first piece you've chosen, Tim, and then carry on from there. This one is "London Pride", a very old version, sung by Noël Coward. And you've got a reason for choosing it.

11:59TimI'm a London tour guide, and if you go to St Clement Danes church, which was restored as the RAF memorial church after the Second World War: the roof had caved in, and London Pride was growing in the gaps between the flagstones. It was one of the first things that sprouted.

As a plant it's a bit of a weed, but this was one of the first things that appeared. That's why it's so moving: after all the bombs, this was what came up.

12:31JuliaWhat an amazing bit of information. Did you know that, Ian?

IanNo, I didn't.

JuliaThere we go. "London Pride", Noël Coward.

[Music: "London Pride", sung by Noël Coward, 12:39–15:48]

Chalk water, scarlet dye and felt

15:55JuliaTo get back to Wandsworth, and the water…

16:05TimThe River Wandle comes through chalk. It's a chalk stream, so the water is alkaline. And the Huguenots came from areas of France where they had exactly the same chalk downs, and the water was alkaline.

That was particularly good for setting a dye. If you dye a piece of cloth, it's essential that when it rains the colour doesn't run out of it. With alkaline water, the cloth will dye properly and won't run.

So when they came, they were looking, apart from anything else, for this alkaline water, which they found in the Wandle. And they could also use the water power to drive the mills to make the cloth. So the two came together in a very convenient way.

16:55JuliaAnd where did they sell the cloth?

16:59TimThey were very good at a particular colour, which was scarlet. Each colour has its own variations, and you have to get the chemical formula right. They were very good at scarlet, so they got the contract for the scarlet red coats of the British Army. It was very important that they didn't run when the soldiers went into battle in the pouring rain.

But more interestingly, they were able to produce the scarlet cardinals' hats used by the Roman Catholic Church. Richard Chartres, who was Bishop of London until he retired recently, is descended from a Huguenot family, and he used to delight in telling the story of how these Protestants, who'd been driven out of France by the Roman Catholics, got the contract to make the cardinals' hats in Rome, in scarlet material, and felt as well.

They were very good at making felt. To make felt, you needed to hammer the fibres together to fuse them and make it thick, and they used hammers powered by the water from the watermills.

18:17JuliaIt's quite incredible. As a Catholic myself, imagine that we used these cardinals' hats made by the Wandsworthians, as they came to be.

18:25TimThey put in a tender, and they won it. A lot of competitors, but they won it.

18:33JuliaAnd of course, hats. Felt hats.

18:36TimEverybody wore them. They were called beavers. They brought the beaver fur from North America, from Canada, into London, and used the fur to make the felt. Felt predates any woven fabric, as far as materials are concerned.

18:55JuliaAnd who were the buyers?

18:59TimBuyers would come out from the City of London, buy the stuff up and sell it in the City. They made contacts, and probably had agents.

19:14JuliaSo they exported, and they also developed…

19:18Tim…sending them out to other parts of Europe.

19:20JuliaAnd clients, and cloth merchants and so on.

The Bank of England, the work ethic and All Saints

19:23TimYes. When they came, they had this network of contacts. The first Governor of the Bank of England was Sir John Houblon, and houblon is French for hop, so his family were probably brewers.

His family came over before the 1685 exodus and had established themselves as merchants in the City of London, and they came with a ready-made network of contacts throughout Europe. He did very well indeed and became the first Governor of the Bank of England.

19:56JuliaSo they were intellectually very bright, and also incredibly dexterous…

20:04TimThey were very industrious. There was a work ethic about them which went with the Protestantism, I think. They didn't like to waste a single moment: when they weren't worshipping, they were working. That's how they got ahead.

20:22JuliaAnd the so-called Huguenot church is All Saints, isn't it?

20:27TimNo, that was not a Huguenot church, but they would worship there. Very often, when the Church of England service (in English) was over, the French Protestants would go in and worship in French. It was a very amicable arrangement.

The Church of England vicar was quite happy with that. He welcomed them, because they were all Protestants, so there was no tension between them.

20:57JuliaMy history is a bit bleak at this point, but when there were encounters with the French, in politics and battles, where did the Huguenots stand?

21:09TimThe Huguenots supported the English army fighting against the French army. Some of the cannons for HMS Victory were made in Wandsworth, and they were made to fight the French navy. So the Huguenots had given up their Frenchness in exchange for their Protestantism.

Lenses and frying pans

21:30JuliaThat's amazing. I read somewhere that they were very clever at making scientific instruments of some sort.

21:39TimYes, the Dollond family. They were weavers originally, but the young Dollond was very keen on grinding lenses (you had to be mechanically very gifted). He was interested in astronomy and microscopy, and eventually formed the opticians Dollond & Aitchison.

22:04JuliaFrying pans: that was in your talk…

22:08Tim[They came] from Holland. The frying-pan makers were Dutch. They were brought over to make frying pans in Wandsworth because, again, they had access to the Wandle and its tremendous power source, which you needed for hammering the metal.

They weren't smuggled out of the Netherlands; they were brought over on purpose, because the people of Wandsworth wanted experts in making frying pans. So they came way before 1685. They came from the Netherlands, but some of them were French exiles who'd nipped across the border into the Netherlands, because that was a Protestant country.

22:50JuliaGood heavens.

22:50TimAnd the people of Wandsworth referred to any foreigner as a Dutchman. If you couldn't understand the language, you'd say, "You're a Dutchman", and that's where "double Dutch" comes from. So they might have been French, and speaking French, but they were conveniently called Dutchmen.

23:11JuliaYou've got all these wonderful nuggets of information. This is far too short a programme. But we're going to play your second piece of music, from Porgy and Bess, by the Modern Jazz Quartet.

23:37TimYes: "It Ain't Necessarily So", which every tour guide should remember.

[Music: "It Ain't Necessarily So", the Modern Jazz Quartet, c. 23:45–27:35]

Street names, Garrick and Mount Nod

27:37JuliaLovely. "It Ain't Necessarily So." Tim, from your knowledge of the Huguenots [?], what do you reckon is their most interesting legacy?

27:52TimI think the street names are the most interesting, because they're what people take for granted without realising. If you go to the top of East Hill, where it joins St John's Hill, there's Bartholomew Close.

St Bartholomew's Day in 1572 was when a lot of the Huguenots in Paris were massacred. There was a big gathering in Paris for a royal wedding, and the Roman Catholic aristocrats took the opportunity to massacre a lot of the Protestants. St Bartholomew's Day is the 24th of August, and it's a very important day in the calendar of the Huguenots. So you've got Bartholomew Close.

28:44JuliaAnd there are quite a lot of Bartholomews in London. Were they originally Huguenots? I've got a goddaughter who's a Bartholomew.

28:51TimThere's St Bartholomew's Hospital, which of course goes back way before the Huguenots.

JuliaWhat other street names have you got?

28:59TimGarrick Street, near Bartholomew Close, is David Garrick: Garrick Street or Garrick Road. He was descended from a Huguenot. His grandfather was an elder of the church in Threadneedle Street, which was the French cathedral, as it were.

Garrick was living in Lichfield. He was a pupil of Samuel Johnson, and they both came down from Lichfield to London to make their fortunes. And it was David Garrick who revived the interest in William Shakespeare, who had fallen out of fashion. Garrick realised that this great body of work existed and that people didn't celebrate it, so he started a Shakespeare festival in Stratford-upon-Avon. That's when the renewed interest in Shakespeare started.

29:50JuliaI didn't realise [?] that at all. Tim, I must come on your walks in the City.

TimYou'd be very welcome.

JuliaYou know so much; it was simply fascinating. And there's one legacy that springs to my mind, which is the cemetery.

30:10TimYes, the Huguenot cemetery, Mount Nod, which is a euphemism for falling asleep: nodding off. That was a bit of common land that was rescued from being common and fenced off.

All Saints Church in Wandsworth was running out of space for burials, so they moved up to the top of the hill in about 1680. So it was before the great Huguenot exodus. But when the Huguenots came over, and died, they needed burial space, and that was the obvious place to bury them. And the Wandsworth Society put up a plaque to commemorate this fact.

30:51JuliaIan, you might have been part of that, being a long-standing committee member?

30:55IanThere's one longer-standing than me: a chap called John Dawson, who was there at the outset in 1971. So we're going to be fifty next year.

JuliaGosh.

31:09IanHe's the one who knows it, and of course he's not here. I can tell you a bit more about other things the Wandsworth Society has managed to do during the time I've been involved in it, which is from the mid-seventies.

[Music: third piece, not named in the recording, c. 31:25–34:05]

The tears on Wandsworth's coat of arms

34:05JuliaThat was rousing.

TimIt was.

34:06JuliaIt's put me in a much better mood after all these technical hiccups. We decided it's important to talk about the coat of arms: the Huguenot part of the Wandsworth crest.

34:23TimWandsworth was originally in Surrey, and so it incorporated into its crest the arms of the Warren family, who were Earls of Surrey from the time of William II. That's the blue and gold chequerboard pattern at the top of the coat of arms.

On the blue squares there are gold teardrops. People say they're either the tears of happiness of the Huguenots when they arrived in Wandsworth, or tears of sadness at having been driven out of their home country. Nobody's quite sure, but it's a very moving addition to the arms of the borough.

34:59JuliaOne would never have known that unless one had heard about it, or you'd told us. Where can people see it? It's on the Civic Centre building, isn't it?

35:13TimThe coat of arms is over the top, and there are a lot of sculptures along the outside of the building. If you look very carefully, you can see two Huguenots dressed in eighteenth-century costume. There are a lot of other people there as well, but there's a plaque underneath the sculptures which tells you exactly who everybody is, so look at that carefully.

The Wandsworth Society

35:38JuliaIan, was that something the Wandsworth Society helped with, or the local council?

35:47IanThe local council is a principal focus of the Wandsworth Society's efforts to improve the quality of life in this area. The building itself is 1930s, I guess.

35:59TimEarly thirties.

36:00IanIt's one of Wandsworth's splendours, if you like that period of architecture. We have contacts with most of the leading branches of the council's activities, the main councillors and so on. But the building itself: we wouldn't let anybody touch it.

36:25JuliaGood for you. When did the Wandsworth Society start, and how, and why?

36:31Ian[?] society was already in existence, and the Wandsworth Society was a sort of spin-off. For a very brief period in 1971 it was known as the Wandsworth Action Group, WAG, for reasons lost in the mists of time, I suspect. It became the Wandsworth Society, and next year celebrates its fiftieth birthday.

36:56JuliaGosh. What are you going to do about that?

36:58IanI don't know. We have an events committee, of which my wife is a member, and I'm sure they're working on something special. We put on events like Tim's talk last week, about once a month.

We have an AGM on the 12th of March, followed by what I'm sure will be a super talk from Duncan Sambrook, whose Sambrook's Brewery is moving to the Ram Brewery site in April. There's been a chap called John Hatch brewing there ever since Young's moved out.

37:39JuliaOh, Hatch's beer.

37:41IanThat's right. He brews to order for special events, and he's an absolutely lovely man. And so is Duncan Sambrook. I think he will be a super speaker.

37:51JuliaI must come along. Will I be invited, do you think?

37:54IanYou don't have to be. I'll expect you there.

37:59JuliaTim, where do you live?

TimIn Purley, near Croydon.

JuliaOnly a little bit out of our area, then. It's Croydon borough, is it?

38:13TimIt's part of Greater London.

38:14JuliaDo you wish you lived up here? Only joking. Everywhere has got something special.

38:28TimEverywhere you go, if you look around you, and pause, and stop and look up.

38:36JuliaHow did you get so interested in the Huguenots?

TimI trained as a City of London guide in 2006 with a descendant of the Huguenots, Charlie de Wet. She set up the Huguenots of Spitalfields, a charity which particularly educates schoolchildren. They produce materials to show schoolchildren their Huguenot heritage, and she uses the money she raises to produce these materials and send people into schools to give talks.

And in looking at all the Huguenot influences, you move way out of Spitalfields, to Soho, Greenwich, Wandsworth: all over.

39:20JuliaAnd up to Suffolk, isn't it?

39:24TimSome of the silk weavers moved away from East London up to Suffolk. Portals, who make the paper for the banknotes, moved down to the Winchester area. But they're all Huguenots.

JuliaIt's quite incredible, the impact on our lives…

39:46Tim…which we just take for granted.

39:48JuliaAnd the Wandsworth Society: what year was it when it started?

39:52Ian'71.

39:53JuliaSorry, you mentioned that. And its mission?

40:01IanThere's the Wandsworth Historical Society, which could tell you anything about Wandsworth's history, including what we've been talking about today. But the Wandsworth Society is what's called an amenity society: in a phrase, it looks after the quality of life.

It's run by a combination of experts like, for example, the late Shirley Passmore, who was responsible for saving the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building, and getting a chap called Paul Tutton to buy it for one pound. I could tell you an awful lot about that, but we probably haven't the time.

40:48JuliaPerhaps we'd better come back to it.

40:52IanBut the Wandsworth Society has been involved in some very important things. The council of the day wanted to build a sports stadium immediately in front of the house I lived in at the time, on the south-eastern side of Wandsworth Common, and that came to an abrupt end thanks to the Wandsworth Society.

We were also instrumental in preventing what was called the Western Environmental Improvement Route [?], or something like that, known as WEIR, which was going to disgorge huge amounts of traffic through the centre of Wandsworth. That didn't happen.

41:32JuliaWell done. We should know all about this. Does the local press blow your trumpet for you?

41:40IanOccasionally.

41:42JuliaIt's very important: all the things that affect people's lives. Decisions are made, and you push against anything that would be detrimental…

41:58Ian…without being confrontational.

41:59JuliaDiplomacy.

42:01IanPeople who have nurtured relationships with the important people at the town hall. And they come to us for our opinions, and sometimes our advice, on ideas that are floating around the town hall.

42:16JuliaAnd you've earned a lot of respect.

42:20IanWe were behind, for example, the creation of what are called management advisory committees. I think it started with Wandsworth Common, and the protection of the Common as a common, as distinct from a park, is very important to us. It was very important to me when I lived opposite it, and it is now that I work on its north side.

The MAC idea, as it's called, has spread to other parts of Wandsworth, and is very valuable for protecting places like Tooting Common, where I've gone on walks with guides. And the same sort of thing happens on Wandsworth Common.

42:59JuliaI remember when that was set up, a few years ago: the Wandsworth Common one, and then the Friends…

43:05Ian[?] Again, that was the inspiration of our genius one-time chairman (my predecessor as chairman) and one of the founders, Shirley Passmore. She was behind the creation of the management advisory committees, and was on one for quite a long time.

43:26JuliaAre you chairman of the Society?

IanI was. We rotate: most people are chairman for three years, and I was succeeded by my deputy, and so on. We've got a wonderful chairman called Margaret Romanski [?] at the moment.

43:45JuliaI was going to say her name is wonderful. She's definitely not a Huguenot!

Members, talks and speakers

JuliaYou put on wonderful talks, and the events are always fascinating and informative. Are there one or two from the past that you remember as wonderful, or people who came to lecture? Timothy West is a member, or was, wasn't he?

IanTim and Prue, yes.

JuliaBless them. And of course Wendy Gifford, also an actress.

44:22IanWendy goes back to the very earliest days. Her husband, John Cater, was a very notable actor as well, sadly no longer with us. A super man. And a jazz enthusiast as well: he played the vibraphone, so he'd have got on very well with Milt Jackson and the MJQ.

44:45JuliaI hope Wendy might be listening. But is there a talk or event that really stands out in your memory?

44:56IanI suppose the two or three talks that I've given stick in my mind, because I got such a wonderful reception. We had technical hitches one night as well: I had to read something very funny about George III just when the system broke down, and as soon as I'd finished that bit, it all sprang into action again.

We had a chap who came and talked about the Columbia record company, which was based in Wandsworth, and it was an absolutely super talk. It's very difficult to pick out individual ones, because they've been so good.

Very recently, a matter of weeks ago, we had a lady called Nina Kowalski [?] talking about front gardens, as something in danger of… She's a guerrilla gardener.

45:59JuliaA guerrilla gardener!

46:00IanExactly. It was a super talk, with her sister providing a lot of the information, because she said she didn't care for public speaking. But you've never seen a more lively and natural public speaker than Nina. Terrific.

46:17JuliaAnd you've got events and talks lined up for the spring?

46:25IanMore than likely. My wife, who's on the events committee with several other inspirational people, has got things planned for the next year.

46:36JuliaThere are so many interesting subjects on which one can find a really knowledgeable speaker; that's the key thing. And humorous too. When Tim spoke last week, there was a lot of humour in the way you spoke to us.

46:55TimThere was a range of people in the audience. Some of them had been members of the Wandsworth Society for a long time and knew a lot of what I was talking about, but others were visitors…

47:09IanSue [?], of course.

47:10JuliaSue's a good friend of mine.

47:13IanShe'd have known quite a bit about what he was talking about, so you can guarantee that there was a lot you talked about that the others didn't know.

47:20TimSome were probably at their first meeting, and were coming to it with very little knowledge at all. The humour was to welcome them in.

47:29JuliaDidn't you say you'd never spoken to so many people in one place? It was so well attended.

TimI was talking to a room with people upstairs on the balcony. That was a first for me.

47:47IanIt was standing room only, wasn't it?

47:53TimThat's a test for a speaker, if there are people standing at the back, because they'll soon lose interest if you're not holding them.

48:00IanSo long as you're speaking to the person at the back, you're OK.

The Folly Fellowship, and an obelisk on Putney Heath

48:05JuliaHave you done any public speaking yourself, Ian?

48:09IanIt's difficult to make me sit down.

48:12JuliaIn what capacity?

48:14IanI'm involved in running a charity called the Folly Fellowship, which is interested in follies and grottoes and things like that, and has been going for over thirty years. I'm an enthusiast, which is what Tim and I agreed we both were, rather than experts. I certainly don't regard myself as an expert on follies and grottoes, but I'm very enthusiastic about them.

48:41JuliaThat's the best way, isn't it? Enthusiasm.

48:47IanYou can imagine that a subject like that attracts rather one-off people. I've chaired the organisation, and I'm perpetually on my feet at outings stressing that the fellowship is at least as important as the follies. And the history of some of the follies is so wonderful.

49:14JuliaAre there quite a few in Wandsworth, by any chance?

49:17IanThere are some.

JuliaWe must talk about them another time.

49:20IanIt's difficult to call it a folly, but there is an obelisk on the south side of Putney Heath which commemorates the fireproof house. The King and Queen are said to have dined on the first floor while a fire was blazing on the ground floor.

49:41JuliaWhich king and queen would that be?

49:42IanI can't remember offhand.

49:44JuliaHanoverian?

49:46IanI'd suspect Hanoverian, but I'm not certain. The stone facing of the obelisk (Portland stone, I think) has all come away, so what you see is a brick obelisk. It's behind the Telegraph pub, which sadly is out of action at the moment.

50:05JuliaReally?

50:06IanSo don't go there for a drink for a while.

Wishes for Wandsworth, and the last record

50:09JuliaIt's quite a long way from Balham, although I do go a long way for a drink, I must say! We're coming, very sadly, towards the end. Is there one thing you'd really love the council to do in Wandsworth, or that you'd like to see happen? And then I'd like to ask you about the song you've chosen, because we play ourselves out with that.

50:29IanWhen it comes to what the council should do, it's the Wandsworth Society's subcommittees that would best answer that. We've got a roads and transport committee, an open spaces committee, and a planning committee, which is an absolute powerhouse of experts.

They home in on anything controversial, like the demolition of the B&Q site, to be replaced by blocks of flats. There are various implications in that: infrastructure, the loss of trees, and so on.

51:13JuliaThe trees, and the wildlife, and the swans on the Common.

51:18IanCan Wandsworth Town station cope with all this? I believe there won't be any parking for the residents, so they'll have to pile onto the trains, and that's going to be a bit of a trick.

51:34JuliaI must thank you both so very much: Ian Gray from the Wandsworth Society, and Tim Kidd, Blue Badge guide and enthusiast for the Huguenots. That was so interesting, and it was such a lovely talk last week. And now, tell us about "Come Softly to Me", by the Fleetwoods.

51:55IanThe Fleetwoods all lived in [?] Olympia, Washington State, and they were all at school, Olympia High School I think.

52:09JuliaWe're talking about the USA now, of course.

52:10IanYes, 1959. Gretchen and Barbara were coming home on the bus, singing a song they'd composed, and they found they were following Gary, a trumpeter in the school band, who was doing a vocal scat of what he was working on. They realised that putting the two together made the most wonderful sound.

They found a chap called Bob Reisdorff, who recorded it on his Dolphin label, I think it was called. It was an absolutely massive hit.

52:54JuliaAnd what was your link with it?

52:55IanI happened to get to know Gretchen many years ago. She stayed with me, and I've stayed with her. When I visited her, we went out on what they call the deck, and lo and behold, two bald eagles flew over the lake in front of the house. What a wonderful sight.

53:17JuliaAbsolutely wonderful. Now we're going to hear… it's not the original, because there are very few originals of the Fleetwoods left, aren't there?

IanThe original label, Dolphin, was succeeded by Dolton, which I think must have bought the rights.

53:36JuliaWe will hear it now: "Come Softly to Me" by the Fleetwoods. Thank you both so very much. This is Julia Bright saying goodbye to everybody. Next week it'll be me again, with the director of the… I've suddenly forgotten the name… forgive me: the Katherine Low Settlement. So thank you very much for listening. Bye-bye.

[Music: "Come Softly to Me", the Fleetwoods, 54:10–55:42]