‘We mustn’t let this slice of history simply crumble before our eyes’, say Sydenham campaigners
By Robert Firth, Local Democracy Reporter
A woman fighting for the preservation of a crumbling 113-year-old community hall has vowed to hold it up herself to stop it collapsing.
Julia Webb claims that successive owners of the Livesey Hall, in Bell Green, have failed to properly maintain the building, which opened in 1911.
In 2023, a war memorial at the front of the building was added to Historic England’s ‘Heritage at Risk’ register.
According to the public heritage body’s listing, the memorial is in ‘poor’ condition and at ‘immediate risk of further rapid deterioration’.
Ms Webb branded the decay of the hall next to the former Sydenham gas works site a ‘tragedy’ and vowed to take drastic action to save the building for future generations.
She said: “I can’t deal with any more of this attrition. Coming in every week I’m seeing more bits falling off the wall and damage escalating. It’s not going to fall down. Not if I have to bloody stand there and hold it up. We’ve lost too much.
“There’s a lady called Joy who lives nearby. Her father, his ship went down and he died, in the Second World War and he’s on the war memorial. I couldn’t promise her I could fix it, but I really wanted her to be able to see her father’s name decently displayed again.”
A company called Livesey 54 Limited bought the hall from British property giants, Kier Group, in 2022. In 2022, real estate firm Apex Capital Partners revealed proposals to give Livesey Hall a facelift and build around 140 homes on the site. A planning application has not yet been submitted to Lewisham council.
Ms Webb is unhappy that Lewisham didn’t tell the community about Kier Group’s plan to sell the hall in 2021 when the company notified the council of its intention.
As a result, local groups were unable to make a bid to purchase the building. She believes the council may have been legally obliged to inform residents about the sale of the building because it is listed as an Asset of Community Value.
In July, the council’s director of law and corporate governance, Jeremy Chambers, responded to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request from Ms Webb and denied conditions set out in the Localism Act 2011 applied to the sale of the Livesey Hall.
He wrote: “The provisions of the Act are clear that in order to be a ‘relevant disposal’ the disposal must be with vacant possession. The disposal was not with vacant possession and therefore the conditions do not apply.”
But Ms Webb insists the legal situation regarding the building is ‘complex’ and is fundraising for cash to mount a potential legal challenge, as well as trying to get the council to release more information about decisions taken around the time of the hall’s sale.
She said: “I think someone in the office made a mistake. It happened in lockdown. They didn’t think about the consequences. Mistakes happen. But why are they now not just allowing us to take what there is, go to a lawyer, see if we can sort it out correctly?”
Lewisham council declined to comment further.
Pictured top: (left to right): Julia Webb, Alan Hall and Martin Rowles, campaigners outside Livesey Hall (Picture: Robert Firth)