We sat on the veranda watching the riverbank intently. The storm had passed but we knew that the river was running dangerously high. Suddenly we saw it! A brimming-over converged into a thin silver stream running down the bank and formed an ever-growing pool of water in our field. In spite of the railway sleepers that our father had used to shore up the bend, the river pushed its left bank aside with contemptuous ease and the powerful current flooded through the 10ft gap. We jumped for joy as the water crept nearer and nearer to the pavilion. The field had become our lake to explore in the punt with a dog seated at either end enjoying the fun too.

      

My brother and I on the temporary lake

On quieter days, we paddled on the sandy riverbed with the water rippling a few inches over our feet. In July and August, the banks enclosed us with their towering growth of the Indian plant, Impatiens glandulifera, imported nearly 150 years ago from the Himalayas. To us, it was firemen’s hats. As we pushed among its thick red stems and handsome flowers from palest pink to deep claret, we came under fire from its snapping seed capsules, fascinating to pinch.

Himalayan Balsam flowering in August by the river bank.

In the corner of the field, we had a knotted rope hanging from an oak tree on which we could swing across the river. A brood of Black Leghorn chicks raised by my pet hen soon discovered another way. They took off and landed safely on the other side leaving their more portly parent clucking anxiously until their return. We first came to the ground in 1930 because the Japanese of the Yokohama Specie Bank had just employed our father as steward and groundsman. There was a white shed at the bottom of the field, perfect for the pony, donkey, chickens and turkeys although the first heavy rain demonstrated that ducks would have been more suitable. Our father was woken up by the sorrowful braying of the donkey just managing to keep his head out of the water. The River Pool had reclaimed its flood plain!

The ground was originally part of the eight-acre field of Copers Cope farm as shown on the map on the front cover. It was at the limit of the farm’s land close to the Lewisham border. When purchased by the Southwark timber merchant, John Cator, in the late 1700’s, the intention had been to develop a high-class suburb with large houses and tree-lined roads. The Cator family leased the land out for building when the railways built in the 1850’s with stations at New Beckenham and Lower Sydenham opened up the area. In 1961, the lighting at Lower Sydenham station was only then being changed from gas to electric. As a child I had always envied the porter who walked from light to light pulling down the chain to light the lamp with a ring on the end of a stick.

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