In June 2023 I gave a talk on the ‘Penge Parliament’, a debating society largely forgotten now but well known in its day, which ran from the 1930s to the 1950s.

By 2023, I had been presenting local history talks for the annual Penge Festival for several years, and I was always surprised by the numbers of people who turned up. No matter how obscure the subject, people came. It was clear that there was a real local appetite for history, for learning more about the past. And it seemed to me that a single talk, once a year, was a rather feeble way of feeding that appetite.

So, at the end of the talk on the Penge Parliament, after the questions and discussion, I floated the idea of a Penge History Group and invited people to let me know if they were interested. Twelve people signed up, and we were off! Our first meeting took place in Penge Library on 17th July 2023.

Since then we have met monthly, and established upstairs at Southey’s Taproom as our regular venue. The numbers on our mailing list continue to rise steadily. We don’t have a formal membership structure with annual subscriptions or a committee; anyone who is interested can come along to the monthly meetings and make a contribution.

Some meetings are an opportunity for informal discussion and swapping notes on research or reading. Sometimes we organise a speaker or presentation. And sometimes we plan a more ‘public’ event. Highlights so far include:

• Andrea Vail’s talk on her work as an accredited City of London historical guide
• Graham Reeves’s talk on the history of St. John’s School in Penge
• John Prideaux’s presentation on the London & Croydon Railway, Penge’s first railway connection to London 
• ‘Crystal Palace Park History’: three short talks presented in the Brown & Green café in the Park itself
• ‘Hidden Treasures of Penge’, a group-guided walk around local architectural quirks, oddities & traces, run as part of the 2024 Penge Festival and London Festival of Architecture.

Watch this space for more information on our activities in the months ahead.