Mural | Forest Hill Society

New Mural at Forest Hill Station

It was time to bring this empty wall space to life.

Thanks to an NCIL grant from Lewisham Council, the Forest Hill Society worked with the local community to enhance this large wall next to Forest Hill Station and the A205 South Circular with a mural.

Read on to learn more about the story, and check out the gallery at the bottom of the page.

Throughout Spring and Summer 2024, the Forest Hill Society consulted with residents, businesses, artists and visitors to help us to decide what this mural should look like, and what story it should tell. This process generated many great ideas, and we got some very strong views about what people wanted this site to explore. These ideas were then developed, working with Artmongers and the London School of Muralism in order to bring these ideas to life.

Our goal has always been to make this space more welcoming to visitors to the area, whether they are arriving by train or passing through by car, as well as to brighten the day of local residents and shoppers.

Together we came up with three possible alternative designs, and we put these to you, the members and residents of Forest Hill and Honor Oak in September 2024. This generated an AMAZING number of responses, with over 1000 preferences and comments. We took all these and, in consultation with an expert local panel, we decided that there was overwhelming support for one particular option, entitled "A Bug's Eye View".

To read more about the background to this project, and the different options, including a summary of all the comments we received and reviewed, please read this document.

Painting got underway on Saturday, 28th of September 2024 and the hope is to have the mural in place this year and in pride of place for all our activities in 2025.

We hope that you get some inspiration from this new addition to Forest Hill and that it becomes a source of local pride for many years to come.

Thank you again to Lewisham Council for the NCIL fund programme that made this possible, to Artmongers and the London School of Muralism for their ideas and work, to all members of the Forest Hill Society, including all those on the committees who worked on this project, provided ideas, feedback and support. And thank you, of course, to everyone who has taken part in this community process, and a VERY warm thank you to everyone who has stopped to say hello and help us choose and paint this mural.