This week 10, 20, 30 years ago

10 years ago

A schoolboy who warned a community warden, “I’m gonna light you up”, before letting off a firework in her face was jailed for 18 months.

The 15-year-old pointed the Roman candle “like a gun” at Carmen Zapatero’s face, leaving her with burns in and around her eye.

Ms Zapatero feared she had been blinded as the coloured flames scorched her, Inner London Crown Court heard.

She had gone with a colleague to the scene in Sedgemoor Place on the Sceaux Gardens Estate in Camberwell, in the run-up to Guy Fawkes Night last year.

A model and TV personality’s former Victorian home had been put up for sale.

The home of Kelly Brook, in Lawrie Park Road, Sydenham, was on the market for £325,000.

The 30-year-old television presenter lived in the three-bedroom flat with ex-boyfriend and Hollywood actor Billy Zane before moving out three years previously.

The house included features from Big Brother presenter Ms Brooks’ time in the house – including a pink front door and floor-to-ceiling shoe storage in the master suite.

Prominent figures from the boxing world paid tribute to South London born commentator Harry Carpenter, who died at the age of 84.

Mr Carpenter’s knowledge of the sport was “meticulous”, according to veteran trainer Mick Carney.

Promoter Frank Maloney said simply: “He was a gentleman.”

Mr Carpenter was born in South Norwood and attended Selhurst Grammar School.

After two years in the Navy during the Second World War, he began his career on sports papers.

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20 years ago

Monumental masonry took on a whole new meaning at Hilly Fields park in Brockley when a stone circle was erected.

Twelve granite stones were arranged to make a sun dial to mark the new millennium.

The stones, which weighed up to six tonnes, were chosen from a Scottish valley and craned into place.

The Brockley Society, which helped organise the monument, hoped it would become a new focal point for the area.

One in four homes was to disappear from the Silwood Estate under a £24million rebuilding plan.

The estate, on the Rotherhithe border between Lewisham and Southwark and beside Millwall’s The Den, was to be flattened and rebuilt.

Lewisham council said the new estate would be less dense with a quarter fewer homes.

The estate’s high-rise towers were to be replaced, with no block more than four storeys.

England under-21 football star Hayden Mullins was attracting attention from clubs.

One Premiership club had already lodged an offer for the 20-year-old Crystal Palace midfielder, and a move was expected by his agent.

Agent Andy Mills said: “He could see out the season at Palace, but I don’t think he’ll be at Crystal Palace next year.

“Hayden is a bright prospect at Palace and if he continues to develop his game he is destined for the Premiership.”

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30 years ago

Plans to honour a Japanese literary giant were being blocked by the Government after community protests.

Lambeth council had planned a tribute to Natsume Soseki on Clapham Common as part of its twinning project with Shinjuko City, the writer’s home town.

Soseki spent two years around the turn of the century living in Clapham and the council had hoped the tribute would attract Japanese tourists.

But the Clapham Society and Clapham Conservation Association’s claim that it would be out of place was backed by the Department of the Environment.

The Old Kent Road was disappearing into a sea of rubbish, without a street sweeper in sight, residents said.

Frustrated traders, residents and shoppers backed environment minister David Trippier’s claim it was the dirtiest in London.

Shop owner Ken Bowden, 50, said: “You have as much chance of seeing a white rhino as a road sweeper in the Old Kent Road.”

Families on a council estate badly damaged in the Second World War were still waiting for repairs.

Most of the flats on the Browning Estate in Walworth suffered severe damage to window frames in the Blitz.

Pic: South London boxing commentator Harry Carpenter died this week ten years ago.