Croydon Heritage Festival 2017

I have been lucky to be able to take part in the Croydon Heritage Festival for two years now, both times by simply contributing a blog.

Last year, I contributed a blog to the Undiscovered Croydon theme about the history of Old Palace School, which just happens to be the former Croydon Palace, home of the Archbishops of Canterbury and was lucky enough to have it published in the Croydon Guardian. This year the theme is Origins and again that was something that I knew a little about. I have been researching the history of Croydon for a while now, from Roman artefacts discovered in the area, to the Saxon origins of its name and then Medieval and Tudor history of Croydon. After I sent my blog this year, I was invited to take part in a panel discussion on Monday evening, where other participants included the Director of the National Trust. I was lucky enough to speak first about the origins of Croydon and then mainly listened to the rest of the panel. I had to include one point I discovered, that the author Neil Gaiman attended Whitgift school, and based one of his stories (now a film starring Nicole Kidman) 'How to Talk to Girls at Parties' in 70s Croydon, which I had to mention.