Fantastic news: the developers have withdrawn their application to demolish the RACS building on the corner of Hebdon Road/Upper Tooting Road.
Read more at the Save the RACS building website.
Posts Tagged ‘Tooting’
Success: the RACS building is saved
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
PDF Save the RACS building (and Dadus and the Kastoori)
Monday, June 14th, 2010
The RACS building at the corner of Hebdon Road and Upper Tooting Road
Those of you who know and love Tooting as much as I do, will be appalled to know that there is a planning application to demolish the RACS building at the corner of Hebdon Road & Upper Tooting Road.
This wonderful art deco building is currently home to the Sivayogam Temple, the focus of some of the most visible and wonderful aspects of Tooting’s community life. Remember the August Bank Holiday chariot festivals? They start here. At a meeting held recently to Save the RACS buidling, we were taken upstairs to the third floor to look at the temple, which was quite the most wonderful thing I have seen in Tooting. It’s not just the temple itself, it’s the unique views over the local area that you can see from it.
The plan is to demolish this, and the whole block that it’s in – which would include Dadus and the Kastoori. To me, Dadus symbolises everything that is wonderful about this part of Tooting – freedom from big chain supermarkets, opportunity to buy an enormous variety of things from independent retailers, and shops which are a service to the community. And Tooting without the Kastoori just wouldn’t be Tooting.
Local MP Sadiq Khan is supporting the campaign to save the RACS building. If you’re a local resident and you want to object, follow the advice here about writing/emailing Wandsworth Planning department. But do it QUICK, as the meeting to discuss the plans is imminent.
- About the threat to the temple (BBC news story)
- Save the RACS building on Twitter
- Save the RACS building on Facebook
- Petition to save the RACS building
Tooting swimming times again
Thursday, February 18th, 2010One of the commonest searches on my site is for Tooting swimming times: when DCL at last published them online, I did a page about it, but the link is dead, and the brochures available either are out of date, or they don’t include the pool times. So here you are, fellow Tooting swimmers, I’ve scanned the sheet and posted it here. Don’t blame me if it’s wrong, but it’s better than not publishing it at all.
Click here to get the latest Tooting-swimming times
The Tooting heron
Saturday, February 13th, 2010
Heron in Tooting
This wonderful heron visits our end of Tooting now and again. It’s a wonderful sight. The only one I’d ever seen before moving here was a concrete one in the back garden of our house in Dorset. Funnily enough, I’m going to Heron Quays just now…
Ten out of ten for the Tooting top ten
Monday, February 8th, 2010
Here’s a blog after my own heart: Tooting Top Ten, a list of, guess what, the top ten things about Tooting.
I like this guy’s writing. If you do, his new blog is at SavidgeTales over at WordPress.
Man Holding Ram is 22
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
Man Holding Ram (1988) by Mark Folds
I’ve passed this statue hundreds of times in the 20-ish years I’ve lived in Tooting, without ever knowing what it was, or who made it. I’ve watched it decay, and fall to pieces, and now achieve a kind of dignified weather-wornness that’s almost more interesting than how it was when it was new. And finally, I found out what it is: it’s called Man Holding Ram (well, thanks to woodworm, he’s dropped it now) and was done by Mark Folds in 1988. Apparently, it’s made from timber that had fallen in the hurricanes of 1987. So now we know.
Musical surprises #25: A bit of Tooting history
Friday, December 25th, 2009
My grandfather's shop in Garratt Lane, late 1930s, I think.
Happy Christmas! Today’s revelation is not strictly a musical surprise, except that it vaguely concerns me and I’m a musician. But it’s quite surprising all the same, and I love it. I came across this old photograph of my paternal grandfather’s cornchandler’s shop at 759 Garratt Lane a couple of years ago. The site doesn’t exist anymore as it was bombed in the blitz, but I believe it was at the junction with Franche Court Road, opposite Summerstown. Isn’t it slightly weird that after being born in Bournemouth, moving to London, and over 20 years of adult life, working my way down a succession of residences on the Northern line, I should end up where I live now, which – entirely by chance and without knowing about it – is only a few minutes walk from where my grandfather had a shop?
If there’s a point it’s this: this Advent Calendar has often been about pointing out the realities behind abstractions, ideals and false unities in music. So it’s rather appropriate that I point out the realities behind the author of these posts. I rather like the idea that this blog, however metaphysical at times, is just the ramblings, from Tooting, of the grandson of a Tooting grocer.
