Forest Hill Springs

Maybe we should just rename the area Forest Springs.

A bit like Peckham Springs perhaps?

Maybe we should start bottling it up too and slap Forest Springs labels on them.

As seen in the Watson’s General Telegraph

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I miss pubs.

What’s with all the water leaks on Honor Oak park at the top by the junction with Honor Oak rd? One pops up every couple of months. Quick and bad repair the another a few weeks later. The road going down the hill to Honor Oak station is degrading.

Could springs be to blame for the ponds forming in Mayow Park?

If you Google ‘Ancient Streams on Sydenham Hill’ There is an article from Sydenham Town Forum written in 2007 .
Apparently “At least 5 streams once flowed in Sydenham and Forest Hill”

On that map, the big blue blob is actually the reservoir for the canal. It was where Willow Way is now.

Many of the streams are underground now but pop up as spring fed wells in the gardens of some of the houses on the side of Sydenham Hill. The hydrology is one of the reasons why the proposed pile driving on the Ridge is such a bad idea and why the remnants of the Great North Wood still thrive.

Plenty of clues in the names Wells Park, Springfield Rise, etc should give Lewisham planners and Thames Water a bit of a clue, but …

One popped up a few weeks ago running across Baxter Field and is now cutting its own groove near the Radlet entrance.

Thanks @JohnH1 that’s good to know in view of all the recent and proposed building works just uphill of there.

We can’t always rely on springs popping up where they have in the past as they find new and interesting routes and old culverts collapse. When the well in a back garden a few doors uphill from us on Kirkdale was sealed up by builders a few years ago the frogs (or toads, I don’t know which they were) that had been regular visitors to our garden disappeared and the stream didn’t re-emerge in our garden but re-emerged near entrance to Otto Close, which was uphill

More predictably, I’m told that following the development at St Clements Heights people downhill had springs pop up where they’d never had them before.

On Wells Park Road spring water emerges through the tarmac near Hesper House and the old railway tunnel. Helper House is going to be demolished for development and many established trees have already been removed there, so it will be interesting to see where that water goes.