[AWH – Possible start to booklet? Out the window modern, cube-shaped flats and maisonettes were springing up. In just xx months, his house would be demolished.
Maybe try to find the Catford letter.]
The Rev A. Miller Hagerty, sat in his soon-to-be demolished vicarage near its soon-to-be-demolished church, hammering out a letter that railed against change. “”Everything in this age and generation is suffering from change,” he wrote, as modern flats and maisonettes sprung up around him.
That change “inflicts itself on the community life socially, economically and even religiously,” he added in his letter to the Sydenham, Forest Hill & Penge Gazette’s “You Tell Us” page. “Road traffic bewilders us, housing is an ever growing problem, the equitable adjustment of wages and prices, the turmoil of strikes, with thier dislocations, are a nightmare.” Beyond Courtlands Avenue, things were even worse. “The international strife of the powers breed the fear of the possible disintegration of civilisation.”
He kicked off a tradition of Courtlands Avenue letter writers. Though they were less angst-ridden as time went along.]
Sydenham, Forest Hill & Penge Gazette – Friday 16 September 1960
