Sunday 8 April 2018

A tribute to Carolyn Carter




Nick and Carolyn Carter in the Ashburnham Arms
 ATA chair Chris Ward writes:

It is with great sadness that we announce that Carolyn Carter passed away on 19th February in the Lister Hospital, Stevenage. Her funeral service was in St Alfege's Church on 27th March.

Carolyn and her late husband Nick lived in Devonshire Drive for many years and were active in the Ashburnham Triangle Association. They led the organising of an early ATA street party some thirty years ago, and Carolyn was a central member of the association from when it re-started in 2006 until 2015. She worked tirelessly in the Security Hub liaising with the police alongside David Scales, and with Harold Marchant (in a joint effort with the Greenwich Society) erasing unsightly graffiti from the neighbourhood. She was also largely responsible, through the ATA, for Greenwich Council's planting of three trees in Devonshire Drive. 

Outside the ATA also, Carolyn was a staunch activist for a better environment. In the early 1990s she was a prominent member of the successful campaign to preserve the Roan School building in Devonshire Drive and have it listed as grade 2

In the late 1990s when the DLR Cutty Sark station was being built, she was central to the campaign by the Docklands Light Rail Monitoring Group (DLRMG) to prevent the demolition of buildings at the river end of Greenwich Church Street. This was an intensive battle requiring a thorough grasp of legal complexities in order to combat professional lawyers at public inquiry and other hearings. The DLRMG, represented at the July 1999 House of Lords hearing by Carolyn, Alan Brett and Philip Binns, was the first community group ever to win an appeal in the Lords. The buildings they were defending are still there and are a crucial part of the character of Greenwich town centre. 

Carolyn was involved with her local community in many other ways too, belonging to groups like the Friends of St Alfege and of Greenwich Theatre, campaigning in the Liberal Democrat party, and acting as an expert patient for  the Greenwich Primary Care Trust. She suffered from various long-term medical conditions, and bore them with a light stoicism. 

She loved her locality and was fearless in its protection on security and environmental issues. She was even known to go into over-noisy pubs at the height of the evening to remind them of their legal obligations. She was instrumental in having the No Entry signs installed at the bottom of Devonshire Drive, and could sometimes be seen out on the streets photographing rogue drivers who took the shortcut through them. 

Thank you, Carolyn, for everything you have done for the ATA and for the community you so passionately believed in. 

She will be greatly missed by us all.



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