Fox Hill: monkey-puzzle and Victorian villas

Image: © Stefan Czapski Taken: 1 Mar 2016

I suspect that both the tree and villas date from the 1850s. The Crystal Palace was re-erected on the site to the east of Anerley Hill in 1854, and the railway arrived that same year, at the Low Level station - opening this hilly area up to suburban development. As for the monkey-puzzle tree, dipping into an old 'New Naturalist' volume (Dudley Stamp's, 'Man and the Land') I see that the Chile Pine (Araucaria imbricata) was introduced into England in 1796. A friend who was with me when I took the photo remarked that the species has now become scarce in London. Apparently the monkey-puzzle is susceptible to hard frost - but I suspect many of the losses were due to the storms of 1987 and 1990. The roadway here must be one of the steepest in South London - steeper, I'd say, than streets such as The Downs and Edge Hill in Wimbledon.

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