The idea behind this picture was a short story by the Scots writer Edward Crassick Gibbon called ‘Green Den’.
It featured in a trilogy of stories by Gibbon shown on TV in the 1970’s starring Fulton McKay. In the trilogy McKay took the part of a mobile grocer who told the stories and drove around in a vintage van.
The story ‘Green Den’ features a woman who in the day lived in a house on her own in the woods. She was driven mad by the darkness and lack of sun in the wood and being on her own.
In the picture, the derelict house ‘The Elms’ is in permanent darkness due to the canopy stretching over the road. In the background is the grocer’s van silhouetted against the sunlight which lights a church in the background (the church was St Johns Parish church in Penge where I attended primary school.
