The ghost of a woman, uninterrupted
South East London, Honor Oak Park. A Queen, an ancient oak tree and a ballerina.
What if you could linger here performing your art for eternity?
Imagine if there’s a way that we could choose to stay in this realm, repeating what we love best over and over and some lucky few caught a glimpse of us?
In South London’s Honor Oak Park, part of the Great North Wood at the top of Peckham Rye and just down from Forest Hill’s Horniman museum and gardens, a glimpse of a woman suspended in this state has been seen.
A woman, uninterrupted, doing what she loves. In perpetuity, without distraction or obligation. No-one to correct her.
The manifestation of a dream state.
It’s 1948 and London is exalted, in the throes of the Games of the XIV Olympiad.
The second world war is 3 years gone and bomb sites still abound, especially around these parts, so rich in railways. The UK is still under rations.
Germany and Japan were not invited to participate and Russia declined to send her athletes.
Margot Fonteyn is the greatest ballet star of the day, and a name you may well still know even outside ballet circles. Galina Ulanova is setting light to the Bolshoi.
On One Tree Hill, Honor Oak Park, just by the beacon, the ghost of a ballet dancer is spotted in the woods performing perfect and complex dance moves on the hill late at night without disturbing the leafy ground.
In the night under the pale moonlight, spotted by lovers soon to be married, out for the air, or more, in this tree-filled secluded place.
It’s dark, the ground covered in leaves and debris from laid down by the wind. The dancer turns just above the ground, pirouettes on point, wrists aligned. I imagine an unsupported penché as she leans forward, flat, into an Arabesque.
A breathtaking sight, and possibly quite a terrifying one, when you realise it makes no sense at all. Because we are always trying to explain away the weird, to make the story fit the vision.
A ghost? Tylwyth Teg far from home? This is not the site of a ballet school, or any recent buildings. No graves are this far up the hill, and no houses save for those around the convent and further down the hill towards East Dulwich.
This story, logged in the paranormal database, has named witnesses in Andrew MacKenzie’s Frontiers of the Unknown: The Insights of Psychical Research. She has not been seen more than once, and is not associated with any local misdeeds.
There is no tragic story of a ballerina of Dulwich and surrounds who met an untimely end here.
We like to reassure ourselves a story is vaguely true if we can find three sources. In this case, there is only one couple so by rights this should be a non-starter.
And yet.
There is something so beautiful in the notion that a woman might, without harassment, alone at night, be free to perform her art into eternity.
I am drawn to this story as a local woman, who consults on gardens and woods around this area. Who wishes she could walk and dance alone and night, but for men.
So what if after this life we could choose what we do, where we linger, and that it’s not all wailing and walking through walls?
This hill of grace, this park, is the ideal place for it because it has been long associated with regal women.
It’s called Honor Oak because according to parliamentary records Queen Elizabeth I was entertained by the Welsh courtier Sir Richard Bulkeley at Lewisham. According to legend, they picnicked under the oak atop this hill. He was married to one of her maids of honour, and her procession is recorded. So at least one part of this story is entirely true.
Here is a view of London similar to the one from the top of One Tree Hill. It’s impressive.
The peak of the hill hosts a beacon. There has been a beacon here since we needed to warn of the Spanish armada. In short, it is a place layered with meaning for people from residents to the military.
The site of the First World War heavy anti-aircraft battery, which was armed with a 3-inch gun in 1915, is an ideal platform to view the city from.
Winter is the time to go, when the trees are not yet in leaf blocking the view.
I walk here and have tried running here when my knee allows. I see this hill from the train station and it looms above everyone playing and walking in Peckham Rye Park.
I would like to think I could connect again to this night dancer, and that of course the witnesses saw what they saw. And if they didn’t, and it was imagined, what a vision.
To visit, take the overground to Honor Oak Park Station. Walk up to the hill to take in the view on the gun placement. Walk on along the ridge to the Horniman museum and gardens, taking the view from Canonbie road, then walk all the way to Crystal Palace Park and rejoin the train at Crystal Palace Station. Use the famous transmission towers to guide you.