Pear Trees
Pear Tree
The pear is a fruit tree of genus Pyrus and also the name of the tree's edible pomaceous fruit. The pear is classified in subtribe Pyrinae within tribe Pyreae. The apple, which it resembles in floral structure, is also a member of this subcategories.
The English word "pear" is probably from Common West Germanic, probably a loanword of Vulgar Latin pira, the plural of pirum, akin to Greek api(r)os, which is likely of Semitic origin. The place name Perry can indicate the historical presence of pear trees. The term "pyriform" is sometimes used to describe something which is "pear-shaped".
The pear may be readily raised by sowing the pips (seeds) of ordinary cultivated or of wilding kinds, these forming what are known as free or pear stocks, on which the choicer varieties are grafted for increase. For new varieties the flowers can be cross-bred to preserve or combine desirable traits. The fruit of the pear is produced on spurs, which appear on shoots more than one year old.
Pear Tree, Derby
Pear Tree is an inner city suburb of Derby, England. It is situated next to the areas of Normanton, Rose Hill and Osmaston. Pear Tree (sometimes spelled as Peartree) could be described as a suburb within a suburb; because the people of Derby would identify it as an area in its own right, but it could easily be described as forming part of the larger area of Normanton.
Until recently, Pear Tree's most famous landmark was the Baseball Ground, home of Derby's professional football club, Derby County F.C., for most of the twentieth century. However, the stadium was demolished in 2004 having been largely unused since the club's departure to Pride Park some seven years earlier. The site is now being developed to provide private housing and some social with landscaped grounds and a memorial to the site's historic past.
Pear Tree House
Pear Tree House was the former Civil Defence control centre for South-East London. It is a block of council flats in the Central Hill Estate of Upper Norwood with 8 two-bedroom flats and the control centre in the basement.
In the early 1960s the Metropolitan Borough of Lambeth was grouped with the neighbouring boroughs of Southwark and Camberwell to make up civil defence region 53a. Negotiations took place between them for a site to build a control centre for the area during the heightened atomosphere in the era of the Cuban Missile Crisis. A large area of Gipsy Hill in Lambeth was designated for a new housing estate and, as it was in the extreme south of the borough and well protected by the local hills, a site at the junction of Lunham Road and Hawke Road in SE19 was chosen.
Whilst the two-storey bunker was being designed and approved the structures of civil defence and London government were changing. Work on Pear Tree House started in 1963 but it was now merely going to be a borough control centre, the existing borough control in St Matthews Road, Brixton was to become a sub-control. It cost £31,850 of which the Home Office paid 75% (£23,250). The 18-room bunker and flats were completed in 1966 and the bunker went into care and maintenance when civil defence was stood down two years later.
In 1971 London was designated a civil defence region again and in 1973 the GLC set up emergency planning teams looking at the future structures of civil defence in the capital. It was decided that London would be split into 5 groups of boroughs each having its own control centre. The GLC selected the Pear Tree House bunker as the South East group war HQ and although not ideal it was converted in 1979.
Because of its location Pear Tree House received a lot of attention in the 1980s. It was a focus of local CND marches, its blast doors were fly posted and it was open to the public for a week in 1982 for CND's Hard Luck campaign which coincided with the dates of the cancelled Hard Rock exercise. Speakers during that week included Duncan Campbell and Bruce Kent.
In the late 1980s the arrangement to rent the bunker from Lambeth expired and 'nuclear-free' Lambeth threatened the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority with eviction. Another site was looked for but an agreement was made and it remained the South East group emergency centre until 1993. It was later used as a social services store and is now empty.