Eye - 23 January 2015
From the clouds to Bermondsey
For the love of the sky
A campaign to save Luke Howard’s house was launched by the Tottenham Civic Society in December.
In a paper written in 1802 Luke Howard, aka ‘the namer of clouds’, proposed many of the cloud classifications still in use today. The Bruce Grove house in which he lived is the only building in Tottenham to bear an English Heritage blue plaque. However, it is currently on the ‘buildings at risk’ register due its derelict condition.
The Tottenham Civic Society has launched an online petition asking the local council to force Redwing Estates Ltd, which owns the building, to undertake essential restoration works – for which planning permission was granted in 2013. The petition can be found at: http://bit.ly/7BruceGrove
The Cloud Appreciation Society added its support to the campaign, saying: ‘We can’t allow this historic home of the man who did so much for the love of the sky to crumble to the ground.’
Luke Howard was a Quaker who attended Tottenham Meeting and is buried in Winchmore Hill Meeting’s burial ground. The 150th anniversary of his death was marked by a CloudFest event last July (see ‘Eye – 4 July 2014’)
The Salters return to Bermondsey
Figures of the Salter family – Alfred, Ada and Joyce – now grace the riverside walk near Cherry Gardens Pier in Bermondsey.
A seated bronze statue of social reformer Alfred Salter was stolen from the site in November 2011, presumably by metal thieves.
Three years later, on 30 November, newly installed statues were unveiled.
‘Dr Salter’s Daydream 2014’ was created by Diane Gorvin, the artist also responsible for the first statue. Alfred’s likeness now sits alongside a statue of Alfred’s daughter Joyce and her cat. A new statue, of Alfred’s wife Ada Salter, completes the family group.
The Salter Statues Campaign raised half of the £120,000 cost of the project. The group said it received ‘a flurry of donations’ from Quakers, following a piece on Ada Salter in the Friend (10 January 2014).
Alfred was involved with Quakers for some years. With Ada, he campaigned for free healthcare, and for better living conditions for the poor. The Salter Statues Campaign website says: ‘Not only has justice been done to Alfred Salter, whose statue was stolen… but the addition of Ada is historic for all of London, where currently there are only fourteen public [open air] statues of women compared to hundreds of men.’
Ada’s statue is the ‘first public statue of a woman environmentalist, the first of a woman trade unionist, the first of a Quaker woman and the first of a woman politician’.
