Yes, if you walk around the streets near Mayow Park, you will see many pear trees still standing (and bearing fruit). Which the local children like to throw around and smash.

They've overlooked to mention the Earl of Tewksbury's gaff at the top of the Hill. Unlike Freddy H he never got around to bequeathing his land to the community in his will and it got replaced by the uninteresting '30s / '50s suburbia we see up there today. His folly's still there in someone's back garden on Liphook Crescent though. You can see it from the street. I suspect that's older than anything in Forest Hill.

The little darlings.

Yes. The more industrious amoung them, take the smash and let it ferment creating a pear-liquior, which they drink on street corners...because alas, they are not allowed in the pub.

You are sadly correct.
If local people didn't use these take aways and tacky bussiness's, then they wouldn't exist, therefore the area has dumbed down like I've said before.

But I have a plan.
Maybe we should have a vetting procedure where people wanting to move here have to sit before a local committee to see if they are deemed worthy of living in FH. A few simple questions could be asked.

Do you use take aways ?
Do you use a Betting Office ?
Do you take your children to the pub ?
Do you use a pound shop ?
Do you buy the Big Issue ?

If they answer 'yes' to any of those, then they wouldn't be aloud
to live here !! It weeds out the lower class and undesirable type people
who currently live amongst us.

I would guess within a year or two ,we could get rid of people who rent,
after all why should they live here if they can't afford to buy ??

I think I'm onto a winner

Looking at the price of a take away pizza the question should be "can you afford to get take away"?

Was Ian the pedant of previous posts?

As an early settlement Perry Vale wins hands-down, but you have to go back to a time when it was called "Perry Slough", which translates as "a muddy place where pear trees grow". The first recorded mention of Perry Slough is in the early 18th century when it was no more than a small cluster of humble cottages (the poet Thomas Dermody apparently died in one of them in 1802).

"Forest Hill" was the name given by a developer to the group of villas he built along Honor Oak Road in the 1790s; Hill House and The White House are the two best survivors. So, east of the tracks is older, west of the tracks is posher.

that must be why I live on the east side - old, and definitely not posh