William Blake’s vision of angels in Peckham
Left: possible oak tree planted in honour of Blake; right: Blake mural at Goose Green
It takes almost as much imagination as artist and poet William Blake had to picture him, aged 7 or 8, walking to Peckham Rye on his own and having his first (of many) vision of angels there, but that’s how the story goes: “A tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars”. Around 1765 the boy William, not liking built-up central London where he lived, liked nothing more than to walk seven miles or more (sometimes as far afield as Croydon) to the common at Peckham Rye. One Blake scholar says these formative walks had a strong influence on future poems such as Songs of Experience.
Locating the actual tree is impossible now; for one thing the common was a lot larger than it is now, for another, even if it’s still there, does it actually matter? We had enough trouble tracking down the small oak tree that was planted in 2011 by artist John Hartley in honour of William Blake (there’s no plaque or sign, and we had only had a vague map of the park with a red cross where the tree is. It was a case of not being able to see the tree for the trees). Nearby, on Goose Green, there’s a mural to Blake's vision of angels, painted in 1993 as a community project.
(Did we see any angels? was the inevitable question asked us when we returned from our wanderings. Well, actually yes. I thought I spotted one on the common, but it was a dead tree. But we saw them on the mural, and then in Nunhead cemetery, our next stop.)