By George Berger.
THE ORPINGTON-VICTORIA LINE
#9 / WEST DULWICH
Being the ninth in a series of psychogeographical memories of the trainline that took me from nowhere & nothing to somewhere and… something.
I came straight up from nowhere, I’m not going straight back there.
* * *
WEST DULWICH
As the train rolls lazily on from Sydenham Hill to West Dulwich, a glance out of the window to your left gives you the clear impression that you are now in the inner suburbs — a place that feels very different to the outer suburbs.
The serious money here is often in town houses rather than the deliberate detached self-isolation in the more wide-open suburbs. People seem more successful and less bitter, a bigger sprinkling of liberals on your suburban ice cream. Of course, this is all projection and perception, but experience rarely seems to contradict it in the eighties.
Which is another factor increasingly coming into play — the inner suburbs, as I write in 2023, are changing apace and have been for many years. The development of Docklands, largely funded by stolen Brinks Matt wealth, opened the door for a wider gentrification of inner south-east London. The old docks on the south of the riverbank are often unrecognisable, and the new demographic changed almost completely.
A slight digression, perhaps, but it’s important to point out that the West Dulwich I’m talking about is very much of the early- to mid-80s. I haven’t had cause to alight the train there since.
One thing that never seems to change though, is the view to your right as you approach the station. Vast expanses of rugby pitches and cricket pitches that could be lifted and used for cutaways in If…
This is Dulwich College: a private school and semi-official groomers to the future inhabitants of the corridors of power. And Nigel Farage.
I finished the previous chapter with my old primary school friend talking about the lightbulb wars in the train tunnel. He was a Dulwich College pupil and was in the same year as Farage — “a bit of an oaf” he recalls, in telling language. They would sing the contemporary hit by XTC “Making Plans for Nigel” to him, I’m told, but presumably without the menace that might have accompanied it had it been sung by pupils of the other school in the tunnel wars.
We’d parted educational ways when secondary education blew some holes in British pretension about meritocracy. I’d done better in my eleven-plus, but his parents had more money, so simply paid for an upgrade. He had a most satisfying time during his years of puberty, and I had a nightmare. It shaped both our lives ever since.
Like most fee-paying schools, there’s an underlying arrogance surrounding its aura. A surety that the cards will always be stacked in their favour. It dominates the view from the trainline and acts as a constant reminder of “them and us”. If… got it so right.
West Dulwich is, at this point in the early 80s, significantly different to East Dulwich, it’s poorer cousin. It leads down from the train station to an area that knows itself as Dulwich Village.
In the punk and post-punk social circles, significant barriers are broken down, at least temporarily. Punks mixed regardless of background and even set up a shared semi-pretence that this would last. So, we mix together and convince ourselves that this is it, that punk rock is more important than privilege or the lack of it. I end up drinking tea in a fantastic town house, with the distinct impression that this is a thrill for the inhabitants, rather than the hostility and disgust delivered back in the outer lands. And I feel at home, more accepted in this house than back in my own domain.
That wasn’t an illusion, it was real, in real time. But it’s hard to ignore what happened later — that the recipients of privileged education were generally the ones that ended up in the careers (or with the income) that had been planned out for them.
Dulwich goes back a long way. The name originally derives from “where the dill grows”, subsequently mutated by the Chinese whispers of time, language and invaders. The was pre-Battle of Hastings, to give you an idea of its antiquity. Dulwich College itself dates back to 1619. West Dulwich station itself was opened in 1862. All of this lineage feeds into the local psyche, albeit on subtle levels. The nearby well-known Lordship Lane has a literal historical meaning. PG Wodehouse attended Dulwich College and went on to have his main success with stories of a man who had a valet. So it goes. A walk from Dulwich station to the village is dominated by the omnipresence of the college, serving as a permanent in your face reminder of how things are in the UK, just in case you try and forget any of this stuff.
Personally, I’m often given to reminding myself that that which unites is so much greater than that which divides us. That’s certainly what we tried to play out in the punk years. But it’s a hard viewpoint to maintain in Dulwich. Peter Cushing was another local celebrity — who spent a famous part of his acting career fighting vampiric energies, of course.
I listened to a lecture by Ram Dass before writing this. A beautiful wise man. I reflect on how he would somehow glide over all this had he been on the train. That he’d find different things to focus on, deeper, less trivial things. Less divisive matters. Then I realise I’m getting cold and have an internal debate about whether I can afford to put the heating on, and it all comes swimming back.
Dulwich is sandwiched between Streatham and Peckham, neither of which was a byword for affluence or indeed safety back in the 1980s. The ups and downs of the economic roller coaster are packed pretty tight around here. Best friends are brought together by shared musical, cultural and fashion tastes.
It was at Orpington College that I first saw Simon, who would become the guitarist in my first band, the Anabollic Steroids. He bowled up as a student, whilst me (‘James Bondage’ at the time) and Steve Steroid were hanging around there on a daily basis, making the place look untidy.
Simon was training it down from West Dulwich and sported a red mohican and a scruffy grey coat with the band 999 written on the largely split back. Steve and I were omnipresent graffiti artists, so it didn’t take much of a leap to realise this must be the author of the “999 Si” moniker that we’d seen on those self-same trains.
When Si joined the band, this gave us the top 3 graffiti artists in south-east London. That’s how the Steroids rose to parochial fame. “They swindled their way to the bottom” as my slogan went, from idea to badge. The music didn’t really matter much, which was just as well.
Thus, was born a meeting of two areas of punks and general layabouts — the Orpington / Bromley end of the line and the posse from Dulwich / Herne Hill. With it came the mix of private and publicly educated punks, which was a bit new to us but felt largely irrelevant, as described previously. The place where the dill grows meets the place where the dull go. Or leave, if they can.
Various best friends to this day remain from both gangs. Though it’s noticeable that the people from the Dulwich end of things usually tended to move on to other climes, whilst the outer suburbans often stayed put. There’s no right or wrong to that of course, but it’s a definite thing.
When Thatcher thought she might lose the 1987 election, she raised a few eyebrows by buying a house in Dulwich “within 10 feet of the Dulwich and Sydenham golf course” according to an article archived in the Daily Telegraph. 11 Hambledon Place, a mock-Georgian five-bedroom house, if you want to look it up on Google Maps. Between the station and Dulwich Village.
The article continues “for his part, Denis decided that it would be very nice for Margaret because she could ‘walk out and watch the Dulwich boys playing rugby… She can toddle down to the village shops with her basket. And if they need her for anything in the Lords, they can send a car’.”
The idea of Thatcher feeling safe enough, at that moment in time, to stroll around Dulwich village is indeed an eyebrow-raiser. They moved there on the day they left Downing Street in November 1990 but sold it the following year.
Of course, every article you’ll ever read about any area will be completely informed by the writer’s tastes and prejudices. What they choose to include, to focus on, and to leave out. This one is no different. But the view from the train is dominated by Dulwich College to one side and posh town houses to the other. Both aesthetically pleasant, after which you can apply your own filters, perhaps borne of memory, hearsay or a cornucopia of experience. Or just by what you read on Google. Like Bickley, earlier up the line, West Dulwich results feature estate agents rather heavily.
No surprise there — it’s a place where money and power reside, whilst future money and power is nurtured. But it’s lovely for all that.
An archive of all the articles in this series can be found here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
George Berger has resumed this 3:AM column after a 15 year hiatus. He’s written the official biographies of Crass and The Levellers, a book on mindfulness and various other books that can be found here. He’s also the singer in Flowers in the Dustbin. He’s recently finished his memoirs In Case Of Dementia, Break Glass.
