Bonhoeffer's home in London

In the same way I am fascinated with anachronism, the idea that other times are not our times, and how to understand the slippage between different historical periods, I am also fascinated with place, and how difficult is it to convey a sense of place through photos and descriptions. I was therefore delighted last week when I had a chance to see the house where Bonhoeffer lived during his 15 months as a pastor of two German parishes in London.  It was fascinating to visit the house, because photos, by decontextualizing a site or building, often distort one's concept of it.

The house where Bonhoeffer lived  during his time pastoring two German churches in London as it looks today, in 2015. It is close to the street. though there is a shallow circular driveway in front of the home. 

During his time in London from October 1933 to March 1935, Bonhoeffer lived in the neighborhood of the wealthier of his two parishes, Forest Hills, on the south side of the Thames. His home was the attic floor of a house that was used as a German girls' school, at 2 Manor Mount.

A view of part of the attic where Bonhoeffer lived. The cast of the home's brick is yellowish.

I had seen a number of pictures of the house and read about its large, overgrown backyard. Because the photos showed the house alone, because it functioned as a school, and because of the big back garden, I had imagined it set off apart from other houses. In fact, it is completely integrated into a row of houses, at the top of a hill of residential homes all lined up neatly close to the street. In fact, looking at it, it is surprising to think it could have held a school. I was also surprised at how pale the brick is, consistent with the rest of the neighborhood: this is not apparent in black and white 1930s photos.

This photo doesn't exactly capture the extent to which Bonhoeffer's house was at the top of a hill or integrated into the row of houses at which it stood at the top and corner, but it does, at least, provide a view down the street from the vantage point of the sidewalk in front of the house. Imagine the house as fairly close to the sidewalk, a part of the urban neighborhood. A far better shot of Manor Mount, showing both the steep slope of the street and the proximity of the houses to the road
can be found on page 19 of a pdf about Forest Hills at  https://www.lewisham.gov.uk/myservices/planning/conservation/living/Documents/ForestHillConservationAreaAppraisalPart1.pdf

Manor Mount is faded now, but the street seems largely unchanged from how it must have looked when the neighborhood was a prosperous, if even then fading, suburb of diplomats and businesspeople in 1930s London.  Many of the houses look like the house Bonhoeffer lived in, suggesting the neighborhood was constructed by a single builder. The large size of the houses, which would have needed servants to maintain, and Bonhoeffer's records of the dilapidated state of his attic--drafty, mice infested, lacking central heat-- indicate a pre-20th century date for the neighborhood, and apparently many of the large homes were constructed in the 1860s, after rail travel to London became convenient and after the relocation of the stylish Crystal Palace from central London to Forest Hills.

Workers at the house let us take photos and peek into the back yard. The lot must have been subdivided since the 1930s, as the back garden is now narrow and small.

Here you can see the shallow circular drive in front of the house. Again, it must be emphasized how close the house is to the street, set back just a little. From pictures I have seen, the facade looks unchanged from Bonhoeffer's time. The house was probably built in the 1860s, so that it would have been about 70 years old when Bonhoeffer arrived.

Another surprise for me was how far the church Bonhoeffer pastored was from his house. Somehow I had pictured this home and the church as adjacent or on the same block, especially as the attic flat was often referred to as the parsonage. In fact, the church Bonhoeffer pastored  is on the other side of the main thoroughfare dividing Forest Hills, about four or five blocks from where Bonhoeffer lived. He would have gotten good exercise walking to the church  in the hilly neighborhood.

The rebuilt church, modern and much different architecturally from the church Bonhoeffer pastored, is bordered closely by buildings on either side. 

I have gained a different picture of Bonhoeffer's life in London: hillier, integrated into a neighborhood of large houses, and farther from his Forest Hills church than I had imagined.

Interestingly, I spent my junior year of college living in Lewisham, very close to Forest Hills, and studying at Goldsmith's College of the University of London. While there, although I had read Letters and Papers from Prison, I had no idea Bonhoeffer had spent any time in London, no less so close to my London home. I wonder if others have been surprised by Bonhoeffer sites looking different than they expected?

A plaque is the only indicator that the house, which looks like the other houses on the block, had anything to do with Bonhoeffer.  Apparently it was once hidden by shrubs, but as can be seen, these have been trimmed away.