Charlton Manor Primary School pupils work with the gardener

Headmaster Tim Baker writes:

Visitors will get a tour of the garden and a talk about how the garden is used to support the curriculum. For those that wish we will also give a tour of the children’s kitchen.There will be tea and cakes available on the day. The cakes are made from produce in the garden, ie eggs, honey, carrots etc.

The Secret Garden at Charlton Manor is hidden behind the dinner centre. It provides the children with a quiet area to go at break times and at other times during the day when they may have difficulties concentrating in class. It is packed with learning opportunities and as well as having allotments, a greenhouse and raised beds it also has 4 bee hives, a chicken run home to 10 chickens of different breeds, a stag beetle environment, a composting area containing 4 different composting methods including a wormery, a hide for bird watching, a bird box with cameras linked to the internet, a wildlife area together with pond and an area for conducting investigations using computers such as pond dipping. The children use it through most of the curriculum. Much of the produce is used in the school’s newly built teaching kitchen, enabling them to understand how this all fits with healthy eating.

Champion readers may have seen the school featured on BBC News recently, as they contributed to a garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Pupils have been attending the show and manning a stand to tell the public about the plants they grew, and have been visited by a number or members of the royal family and celebrities visiting the garden.

This correspondent went along to the school’s Open Garden event last year and enjoyed the experience very much (the cake was particularly good). Why not call by to see what’s going on in this green-fingered corner of SE7?

The address:

1970s BBC singer songwriter Peter Swaffield will be performing Folk, Country and Gospel music.

Musicians and audiences have discovered that the church has wonderful acoustic properties commenting that the music whether opera, folk, gospel or jazz sounds great.

Unfortunately, and incredibly, the kids there haven’t been given a school crossing patrol – despite the fact that it sits on a dual carriageway that sees some pretty poor driving at the best of times.

Ed Simmons’ petition hopes to change that – and is well worth your support.

Find out more, and find out what Southeastern and Network Rail are doing about it, at the Charlton Rail Users’ Group open meeting on Monday at 7.30pm at Charlton Liberal Club, Charlton Church Lane. Other topics will include trains stopping at the far end of the platform, and the mooted switch of Southeastern services to TfL.

More details at CRUG’s new website.

The Guardian this week highlighted a report on the postcode lottery of broadband speeds across London, with some suburbs having notably better service than areas in central London. The report claims that the fastest average download speeds to be found across London are actually in Charlton. Anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that there’s a wide range of speeds even within our postcode.

So what’s your experience of broadband in SE7? Good, bad or indifferent? Have you any tips for improving your broadband speed? Let us know in the comments below, and maybe we’ll get an idea of which broadband providers are serving Charlton best.