Now on YouTube: Tidemill Documentary ‘The Battle for Deptford’ Celebrates Community Solidarity and Resistance
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It’s now a month since filmmaker Hat Vickers’ documentary film ‘The Battle for Deptford’ had its world premiere at St. Nicholas’ Church, in Deptford Green, as part of the Deptford and New Cross Free Film Festival, and three weeks since it had its online premiere, and I thought it was time to do my bit to promote it, in case anyone out there who’s interested in resistance to environmental destruction and the baleful housing ‘regeneration’ market hasn’t seen it yet.
The launch was an inspiring event that brought together over 200 people, many of whom had been involved in the focal point of the film, the long struggle to save the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden, a magical community garden, and Reginald House, a structurally sound block of council flats next door, from destruction as part of a fundamentally flawed and destructive housing project. Afterwards there was a lively Q&A, at which I was one of a number of panellists, and another lively Q&A followed the online premiere a week later, revealing an appetite for the resumption of the struggle for housing justice, and against environmental destruction, that has not been dimmed by two years in which the Covid lockdowns largely prevented large-scale protests from taking place.
The struggle to save the garden and Reginald House began in 2012, when the old Tidemill primary school closed and moved to a new location in nearby Giffin Square, and Lewisham Council first proposed to redevelop the site of the school as housing, with the Victorian school buildings converted into ‘luxury’ housing, and with new residential blocks built on its former playground, and on the garden, which, with its beguiling concentric circles, its Indian bean trees, and its extensive tree cover that mitigated the worst effects of traffic pollution from nearby Deptford Church Street, had been designed by pupils, their parents and their teachers in the late 1990s. Also included in the plans was the demolition of three blocks of council flats — two on Giffin Street, and another on Reginald Road.
WORLD PREMIERE: ‘The Battle for Deptford’ – New Documentary Film Tells the Story of the Struggle to Save the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden
Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
This Thursday, April 28, sees the world premiere of ‘The Battle for Deptford’, a new documentary film, directed by Hat Vickers, about the long struggle to save the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden, a community garden in Deptford, in south east London, and Reginald House, a block of council flats next door, from destruction for a new housing development.
The struggle, which involved campaigners fighting for years to get the council and the developers (Peabody and Sherrygreen Homes) to change the plans, sparing the garden and Reginald House from destruction, culminated in the occupation of the garden for two months, from August to October 2018, until its violent eviction by bailiffs hired by Lewisham Council.
After many months in which the council, at exorbitant cost, paid bailiffs to guard the empty garden, the last of the trees were torn down in February 2019, but building work didn’t begin until October 2020. 18 months on, it’s an ugly building site, with dense blocks of housing rising up, and little sign of any significant green space materialising, let alone anything to rival the beautiful lost garden.
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