Forest Hill To Honor Oak: A Quirky Historical Walk

I recently went on a wonderful historical walk around Forest Hill in South London. My exploration took me through the quirky Horniman Museum and Gardens and along part of the Green Chain Walk.

You can see the map of my route and the stops below.

Sights of Forest Hill

The first thing I spotted in Forest Hill was this carved relief. 

It depicts some elements of Forest Hill’s story and has three panels with a little bit of background on the area’s history. There are nods, for example, to Horniman’s tea and to the Oak of Honor. 

The relief is actually located on a wall that once formed part of the towpath of the Croydon Canal. The Croydon Canal opened in 1809, linking Croydon to the Thames. It was drained in 1836 by the London and Croydon Railway Company and the railway laid out on the site. It was the arrival of the railway that led to Forest Hill going from a largely wooded area into a built up London suburb. 

Three Historic Survivors

Walk down Dartmouth Road to find a row of three historic buildings. First, the Forest Hill pools.

This Victorian building was constructed in 1884 and originally contained one pool for the working class and one for the upper classes. The Victorian bit today is just the entrance, with a modern block behind. 

Next to that is Louise House, a building that once housed a ‘Girl’s Industrial Home’.

Constructed in 1891, it was essentially a type of boarding school that offered a basic education and training to earn a living. Both the pools and home were designed by architect Thomas Aldwinckle. It also has an historic but tragic connection. In 1911 the home was visited by Janusz Korczak, a Polish, Jewish paediatrician, author, teacher and campaigner for children’s rights. 

His campaigning led eventually to the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, later adopted by the UN. He was inspired by his visit to the home here to set up a similar home in Warsaw. In 1942 Janusz, his staff and 192 children at his orphanage were rounded up by the Nazis. He was given the opportunity to escape but he would not leave the children. They were all taken to the Treblinka concentration camp and never heard from again. 

Next to that is the Forest Hill Library. 

Constructed in 1901 in an Arts and Crafts style, it was one of over 600 ‘Carnegie Libraries’ that opened in the UK. These were libraries built with money donated by Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. 

The Stray City of London Church Spire

Around the corner on Round Hill you will find something odd: a church spire. A church spire, I should clarify, without its church. 

Dating from 1682 and designed by Sir Christopher Wren, it once sat atop the tower of St Antholin’s Church in the City of London, one of Wren’s post-Great Fire of London rebuilds. 

In 1829 the tower of the church was damaged in a storm and the heavy Portland stone spire removed and replaced with a lighter one. St Antholin’s church ended up being totally knocked down in 1875 to make way for the new Queen Victoria Street. 

The spire was due to be discarded, but instead was sold to a churchwarden and pioneer in the printing business called Robert Harrild. Harrild ended up buying a manor house called Round Hill House here in Forest Hill and displaying the church spire in his gardens. 

The house was demolished in the 1960s and the housing estate there today constructed. The spire however remained and sits amongst the houses, looking slightly lost and incongruous to its surroundings. 

I have written a full blog post previously about this church spire here.

Havelock Walk

I then headed back towards the Horniman Museum but, on the way, had a wander down the photogenic Havelock Walk. 

This charming cobbled mews street was laid out in the 19th century, but after the Second World War was run down and partially derelict. 

Since the late 1980s however, it has developed into a creative haven of artists’ studios and today is home to a community of artists, photographers, sculptors, ceramicists and more. They have regular open days to the public. 

The Horniman Museum

I continued up the hill to The Horniman Museum. 

The museum first opened here in 1890 as the Surrey House Museum in the Horniman family home, but was refounded in 1901 by Frederick Horniman in the current purpose-built building. 

The building and the collection were essentially built on tea. Frederick’s father John Horniman set up Horniman’s Tea in 1826 and over the course of the 19th century it grew into the largest tea trading business in the world. In the 1870s Frederick took over the business. He put a lot of his money into philanthropic endeavours, but also travelled the world and was an avid collector. 

The unusual building was designed by Charles Harrison Townshend in this striking and playful style.

It includes elements of the Romanesque, Arts and Crafts and quirkier elements as well. For example, the round edges are supposed to be reminiscent of the curves found in the natural world. 

Do not miss the large mosaic on the facade by Robert Anning Bell called “Humanity in the house of circumstance”.

The Exhibits

When I visited, part of the museum, the Natural History Gallery with its famous overstuffed walrus taxidermy, was under refurbishment, due to be reopened in 2026. However, there is still plenty to see. 

It is a true cabinet of curiosities and includes items from a huge number of different time periods, cultures and countries. 

To make sense of it all, I found the ‘highlights’ section on their website useful. I found it, at first slightly discombobulating to have so many items from different cultures and countries side by side, however it was also fascinating, because it makes you realise, I think, that the fundamentals of the human experience and how we try to make sense of it have barely changed over millenia. The items are sometimes grouped by theme: danger, beauty etc. 

The museum does not shy away from the reality of how many of these items were acquired. Horniman was a philanthropist, but his fortune was acquired through the deeply exploitative tea trade and there is lots of information in the museum looking at the connections between empire, colonialism and its collection. 

What To See

Here are a few items that stood out to me: 

Not a cheerful one to start by the Spanish ‘Torture Chair’. 

This was one of Horniman’s first purchases and is said to have been used in a dungeon in Cuenca in Spain in the 17th century, during the Spanish Inquisition. More recent research has determined that many elements of the chair are genuine, but also bits were added in the 19th century to make it look more gruesome. 

This is the inner coffin lid of an Egyptian mummy, that is somewhere between 3000 and 3500 years old. 

Below are canopic jars that would have been used to store different organs from the body to help preserve them as part of the embalming process. 

The coffin was given to the museum in 1896 by the Egypt Exploration Fund in gratitude for a donation of £100 made by Frederick Horniman.

Oddities and Curiosities

My favourite section was right at the back of the World Gallery, covering all sorts of curiosities.

This is a huge papier-mache sculpture of a story from Hindu mythology. 

The figure is Kali, the mother goddess and consort of Shiva. She has killed a monster that was destroying the world and according to the Horniman website, ‘Kali dances on Shiva after he lay down in front of her to calm her down, as her celebratory dance was so frenzied it shook the world.’

This is a Fake Merman, from Japan, dating from the 19th century. 

This is an Ancient Egyptian cat mummy. 

This a hand-grenade from World War One. 

There is also a music section that has a vast array of different instruments on display from across the centuries. 

Below, for example, is the Carlton Drum Kit. It was made in 1937 and played by George Robertson in his band The Five Aces. 

It became a very popular design of drum kit for jazz performers because of its compact design and varied components. 

Grappling With A Colonial Legacy

These bronze plaques are part of a larger group from Benin City, Nigeria. 

They were violently looted from the city by British soldiers in 1897 and, in 2022, the museum agreed to return the items to the ownership of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NNCMM). They are now back on loan from the NNCMM to the Horniman. You can find out more here.

The Gardens

The gardens of the museum are also filled with delights. Their huge conservatory was constructed in 1894 at the Horniman family home, Coombe Cliff House in Croydon. It was moved and reconstructed at the Horniman in 1989. 

There are lots of plants and trees to keep horticulturalists happy. Their oak tree, which is sadly coming towards the end of its life, is probably over 300 years old. 

There is an animal walk you can do, as well as a butterfly house and aquarium that can be visited for an extra cost. It is therefore a very popular day out for children and families.

You also get an incredible view towards central London from the bandstand. It is a great place to sit, relax and digest some of what you have seen at the museum.

The Green Chain Walk

I then finished my morning by walking along part of the Green Chain Walk, a fifteen mile route through South London, linking up many green spaces and waterways.

The route passed through Camberwell Old Cemetery, which opened in 1855. 

I also passed by a family butchers called KJ Libretto and Daughters.

Outside of which, as you can see, are a couple of rusting old cars: a 1967 Daimler 250 V8 and 1959 Ford Consul disguised as a New York yellow taxi. It seems the owner is somewhat of a collector.

One Tree Hill

I then climbed up One Tree Hill. One Tree Hill is a surviving remnant of largely lost ‘Great North Wood’. Towards the summit you will find the ‘Oak of Honor’. 

An oak tree once stood here to mark the edge of the boundary of the Norman ‘Honour/Honor’ of Gloucester, a land holding owned by the Earl of Gloucester. An ‘honour’ was the traditionally the word for an estate that gave the holder dignity and status and developed over the centuries into referring to the virtue more generally.

According to legend Queen Elizabeth I rested under an oak here on her way to visit Sir Richard Bulkeley at Place House in Lewisham in 1602. 

By the 19th century the land had been largely cleared and only one tree remained: the Oak of Honor. The current one you can see is the third version, planted in 1905 after the second version was struck by lightning in 1888. 

You will also find a gun emplacement constructed during the First World War in 1916.

It would have been the platform for a Royal Naval gun to defend London from Zeppelin and later Gotha bi-plane air-raids. 

I then hopped on the train from Honor Oak Park to London Bridge. Thank you for joining me on this historical jaunt from Forest Hill to Honor Oak!

More historical walks below…