Hillaballoo

Gilson Pereira suggested that we could try to link up with the hills either side of us in the old ‘optical telegraph’ chain, in order to send some kind of sign to each other. The other links in the chain were:

- Going towards the Admiralty, Telegraph House in West Square, behind the Imperial War Museum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Square. The house is lived in by Dr Alan Borg, the ex-director of the museum. His house incorporates the structure from the telegraph in his roof. I met him recently when he said he was very interested in the history of this telegraph, and sent me a paper he’d published about it.

- The link in the other direction is Shooter’s Hill, the highest hill in London http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooter%27s_Hill . Does anyone know anyone who lives there or if there is a local society that might be interested? There is the Shooter’s Hill Camcorder Club who meet on the top of the hill, and might be able to set up a webcam or similar digital video connection http://www.shootershillcamclub.co.uk/

I’d be really pleased if someone is interested to pursue these ideas and set up a 21st Century way of recreating the old telegraph.

The Park Users Group has been offered a large amount of bulbs by the park management company. But, what to do with them before they sprout? Any ideas? Post in comments to this website or contact Sylvestra on park@thehill.org.uk

More news about the Park: The Users Group applied to Lewisham for a grant to celebrate Abolition 200. The proposal was to organise a planting ceremony in the Park, to result in a display, a plaque and plants to remind us of the slave trade. Children from Edmund Waller School would learn about slavery and about the plants and agriculture in West Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. They would select suitable plants and contribute in other ways. The proposal was accepted so watch out for more news about the event. If you want to contribute, contact Sylvestra as above.  

Malcolm Bacchus, of the Telegraph Hill Society, has pointed out my error. He says “The telegraph didn’t pass messages to Parliament.  It was a naval telegraph chain which passed messages to the Admiralty.  At least until near the end of its life when it went private and passed messages to a telegraph office in Victoria. Nothing to do with Parliament, I’m afraid. See my website on Telegraph Hill history via www.thehill.org.uk or more directly at http://www.cix.co.uk/~baccma/html/telegraph.html“

I think I relied on a bush telegraph in believing that the messages went to Parliament. But I guess a message that goes to Admiralty is bound for Government ultimately.

Bill Blanco is a local artist who teaches photography at art colleges and also acts as the treasurer for the Telegraph Hill Centre. He has very kindly worked on a series of five photographic compositions for Hillaballoo publicity. One of them is used in the header for this website - with pieces chopped off to fit I’m afraid. Hopefully there will be a chance to see good prints of the photos around the day as using them in publicity doesn’t do them justice. Bill uses his own unusual technique for joining each photo together to make a broad scene, so that there is a jagged external outline. The semi-seamlessness between each separate photo and the width of the finished image gives a strong impression that you are looking at the real scene. But the irregular edge strongly reminds you that the scene is created with rectangles formatted by a camera.  

Many thanks to Bill.