South East London blogzine - things that are happening, things that happened, things that should never have happened. New Cross, Brockley, Deptford and other beauty spots. EMAIL US: transpontineblog at gmail.com Transpontine: 'on the other (i.e. the south) side of the bridges over the Thames; pertaining to or like the lurid melodrama played in theatres there in the 19th century'.
Showing posts with label Goldsmiths Tavern/New Cross House. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Goldsmiths Tavern/New Cross House. Show all posts
The New Cross House has closed for refurbishment. I went down last week and it was down to its last few closing down beers, so took a few photos to document it before it changes. I've enjoyed its current incarnation - my payday treat of a book from the Word bookshop opposite followed by happy hour margaritas, pizzas a plenty including after my first London Marathon when food never tasted better, farewell drinks in the old stables block with my international colleagues after I finished a postgrad course at Goldsmiths... Hope they hold on to their queer friendly vibe, which has included drag nights upstairs.
Still I've been around long enough to see this pub flourish through so many changes. I danced there in late 80s when it was a gay pub the Goldsmiths Tavern, hung out in the garden mid-90s when it was a techno charged 'crusty' bar known as GMT Lager Daleks, went along to its relaunch as the New Cross House (its original name) in 2011. It is after all the pub that gave New Cross its name, or so it seems, so one way or another will hopefully be around for many years to come.
As mentioned here before, there's a whole series of events led by Goldsmiths coming up in next couple of weeks to mark the 40th anniversary of the 'Battle of Lewisham' when, on 13 August 1977, the far-right National Front (NF) attempted to march from New Cross to Lewisham town centre, leading to violent clashes with counter demonstrators and the police.
For the whole of August there will be a photography exhibition 'What are you taking pictures for?' in the Kingsway Corridor of the Richard Hoggart Building at Goldsmiths (that's the main old building on Lewisham Way):
'For the first time, photographs documenting the events of 13 August 1977 are exhibited alongside ephemera and newly discovered archive material. This exhibition brings together striking images featured in radical photography journal Camerawork and rarely seen photographs taken by some of the most important photographers documenting life in Britain in the late 70s.
Featuring work by Mike Abrahams, Peter Marlow, Chris Schwartz, Syd Shelton, Chris Steele-Perkins, Homer Sykes, and Paul Trevor.
Opening event with drinks reception: 6pm on Thursday, 3 August. All welcome'.
Image below by Chris Schwartz, I think this is New Cross Road taken from Clifton Rise - building on left is New Cross House, the car place (The Motor Way Centre) opposite is on corner of Laurie Grove is now the Word Bookshop. Banners visible include a couple of anarchist ones ('Struggle' and 'Anarchist Black Cross - Oxford Group') and 'Socialist Challenge' (newspaper of the International Marxist Group).
'Not Just Bits of Paper', edited by Tony Bull and Mickey Penguin is 'A series of recollections, memories, imagined dreams perhaps from the collective memories of those who lived through the punk and anarcho-punk years' of the 1980s (available from Situation Books). It includes lots of flyers and other 'ephemera' and I noticed these two from the Transpontine area.
The first is from November 1984 and is for a gig at the Ambulance Station on the Old Kent Road. This famous squatted venue was in what is now the home of Blue Mantle Antiques across the road from Old Kent Road Tescos - confusingly it is generally known as the old fire station; maybe it housed both emergency services in its history (see more on the squat by the Ruinist).
The line up for this gig looks good - Antisect were an incredibly powerful, almost heavy metal, hardcore band from Northamptonshire.
No Defences, my favourite band from that scene, were very different - kind of mutant punk funk with mesmerising deadpan vocals. They recorded an album for Crass's label but it never got released - apparently there was too much bass for Crass to handle! Former members of the band are working on putting out some of that material now, so maybe it will finally get the appreciation it deserves 30 years later.
Karma Sutra were my friends from Luton, where I was living at the time. I travelled down with them in their van to the Ambulance Station a few times, and I know I saw them play there as well as Conflict, Chumbawamba, No Defences and State Hate, but I have no memory of seeing Antisect there, so not sure if I was at this particular gig. Exit-Stance were from Milton Keynes and Sedition from Northampton.
The fire station in its hey day (opened 1903)
Hagar the Womb
The second flyer is for a gig at the Goldsmiths Tavern (now the New Cross House) on 12 May 1984. Headliners Hagar the Womb were originally an all-woman band which was very rare in the punk scene at that time, though later they also had male members including drummer Chris Knowles - who went on to become London acid tekno DJ/producer Chris Liberator. Hagar, once described by Billy Bragg as the new Shangri- Las, reformed a few years ago. Support act State Hate were in the Conflict hardcore punk mode.
The picture below of Hagar the Womb was from an NME interview (11 August 1984), and was apparently taken in New Cross's Fordham Park in the rain. At least one member of the band then lived in the SE14 Nettleton Road 1980s punk nexus (lots more about this band, and indeed the whole scene at the excellent Kill Your Pet Puppy site)
'Cornelius Cardew (1936-81): a life unfinished' by John Tilbury (Copula, 2008) is a monumental biography of the radical composer by one of his closest collaborators. Its 1100 pages document in close detail Cardew's musical and political life, cut short at the age of 45 when he was hit by a car in East London.
Cardew became involved with the musical avant-garde in the late 1950s, working for a while as an assistant to Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne. He helped introduce the work of American and other experimental composers into British musical circles. For instance in in July 1963, Cardew was involved in organising a Little Festival of New Music at Goldsmiths in New Cross with performers including John Cale (later of the Velvet Underground), Enid Hartle, Fred Turner, Griffith Rose, Robin Page, Tomas Schmitt and members of the Fluxus group George Macunias and Emmett Williams. Two concerts, one in the afternoon and one in the evening, including pieces by La Monte Young, Nam June Paik and Williams' 'Counting Song', which consisted of him counting the audience.
In 1966 Cardew joined the improvisational group AMM, founded the year before by Lou Gare, Keith Rowe and Eddie Prévost (Prévost had been to Addey and Stanhope school in Deptford, and been introduced to percussion in the 19th Bermondsey Boy Scouts marching band).
In 1968 Cardew began an Experimental Music class at Morley College in Lambeth. Many of those attending 'were later to form the nucleus of the Scratch orchestra' including Michael Parsons, Howard Skempton, Carole Finer (a lecturer at London College of Printing and later at Camberwell College of Art) and Psi (Peter) Ellison (who for 'some months... squatted in a clothing shop in Deptford'). The Scratch Orchestra's approach to music was playful and inclusive (see Stefan Szczelkun's participant account) but this was soon to be rejected by Cardew as he came under the influence of the 'Maoist' Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist).
The last ten years of Cardew's life were dominated by his involvement in this group, and musically he turned away from experimentalism towards didactic political song aiming to put across the party's line to the masses through vehicles such as People's Liberation Music. His earlier collaborators were denounced as bourgeois in texts such as Stockhausen Serves Imperialism.
In October 1975, Cardew started an evening class at Goldsmiths, 'Songs for our Society', its participants including 'composer Howard Skempton (occasionally), a homeopathic nurse, a lady on day release from a mental hospital, a young German called Holger, a retired railway worker' and others. Afterward 'the class would adjourn to a nearby pub, usually the Goldsmiths Tavern, occasionally the Marquis of Granby, and there would be a further two hours of intense political discussion'.
One outcome of the class was a gig for prisoners at Brixton Prison Medical Wing in 1976, where a band including Cardew, Eddie Prevost and Keith Rowe treated the audience to songs including Up and Over the Wall and The Ballad of George Jackson - the latter written and sung by a member of the class, Jim Ward, who recalled it as 'rather strong.... with its references to racist pigs and fascists in the prison service'. Later, in June 1981, Cardew organised a concert at Goldsmiths to commemorate the deaths in the New Cross Fire that year, though as Tilbury recalls there some controversy about the event being used to push the party line.
Cardew and his comrades were frequently in conflict with the police - he was arrested in the anti-National Front 'Battle of Lewisham' in August 1977, and in another anti-NF demonstration in Camberwell in 1980. In the latter case, Cardew was already on a suspended sentence following a previous arrest, and he was jailed for a month in Pentonville after an appearance at Newington Causeway Magistrates Court.
Cardew's song/piano piece 'Four Principles on Ireland' was inspired by another local confrontation. According to Tilbury, it 'related to a demonstration in East Street market in South East London in 1972. The Party comrades who were leafleting were "brutally attacked" by the police and several received prison sentences' - Cardew's subsequent song was based on the leaflet.
For me the devotion of Cardew and others to the tiny maoist sect seems rather tragic. Their sectarian, dogmatic rhetoric had little impact other than contributing to the image of radical leftists as ridiculous fantasists - their grandiose sounding front organisations such as South London Revolutionary Youth and South London People's Front no doubt inspired the 'Tooting Popular Front' of late 1970s sitcom 'Citizen Smith'. One of the more comic touches in Tilbury's book is a reference to Cardew taking part in 1980 in a delegation to Germany as part of the 'Stalin Youth Brigade'- at the time Cardew was 44 years old and the other 'youth' delegates were aged 33 and 'mid twenties'!
While Cardew may have been on the right side of history in fighting against fascists in the 1970s, he was also an apologist for mass murderers like Stalin and Mao, and you have to wonder what atrocities he would have been capable of countenancing if his unlikely fantasy of the party taking power had been realized. No doubt other kinds of radicals - denounced as social fascist - would have been first against the wall - a 1972 letter talks of 'Revisionism, Trotskyism, Anarchism, Reformism,Terrorism, the Labour Party etc' as lines to be struggled against: 'isolate them and wipe them out, so that we can achieve the necessary unity to go forward'. Those with the wrong musical line would probably also find themselves having to 'work harder with a gun in your back for a bowl of rice a day' (to quote the Dead Kennedys 'Holiday in Cambodia'). In 1977, the party's Progressive Cultural Association published an infamous 'Punk Rock is Fascist' article in its journal Cog and Wheels. I'm sorry but give me The Clash any day over Cardew's late period songs such as “Revisionist Somersaults And The Opportunist Opposition”
Punk drummer Francisco 'Paco' Carreno died last week, at the age of 49. Paco was a key figure in the 1980s anarcho-punk scene as drummer with Conflict, and later in the New Cross music scene.
Conflict hailed from Eltham, specifically the Coldharbour Estate. Paco started drumming at the age of 12 with a band called Strontium Dog, and was still only 15 when he joined Conflict in 1981, playing his first gig with them at the Red Lion in Gravesend and shortly after going into Crass's Southern Studios to record the band's first 'House that Man Built' EP (see 'The Day the Country Died' by Ian Glasper).
I saw Conflict many times at their mid-1980s peak, including gigs at the Ambulance Station (Old Kent Road), Thames Poly in Woolwich and the Clarendon Ballroom in Hammersmith. After Crass split up they were the biggest band in the anarcho-punk scene - not many other bands were able to translate the sense of urgency/righteous anger in that scene into a convincingly urgent/angry sound. A key part of that was Paco's skilled and powerful drumming. Of course much of this righteous anger was in the service of animal liberation and hunt sabbing, even though Paco himself wasn't vegetarian!
In the 1990s, Paco was very involved with the Goldsmiths Tavern in New Cross (now the New Cross House) in its wild GMT Lager Daleks phase. He helped put on numerous gigs there, and Inner Terrestials (who Paco joined as drummer in 1996), recorded their 'Escape from New Cross' album in the pub.
Colin Jerwood from Conflict is planning to put on a memorial/benefit gig for Paco's family. Get in touch with him via Conflict on facebook.
Plenty to do in New Cross on New Year's Eve. The New Cross House and Amersham Arms are both having parties with late opening and free admission, the latter with Simon Obee of New Cross Bags fame DJing and promising - or threatening according to your taste - lots of Fleetwood Mac (oops they got the date wrong in flyer!). There's also a Deadly Rhythm party in the back room, but that's already sold out.
The New Cross Inn has lots of bands playing including Soul Delirious, Valve Control, The Hotelles, Giant Burger, Omar, Pusca and The Only Sun 8:00pm to 8:30pm. £6 in advance, £8 on door with concessions for regulars. Further details here.
The Royal Albert is charging £5 in.
At the Bunker Club (46 Deptford Broadway), Breton and Deptford Army are putting on a party, £5 before midnight, £7 after, open until 4 am (facebook details here).
Of course there's a New Year's Eve party at the Venue in New Cross Road, with the spirit of Michael Jackson appearing - £15 in advance, £20 on door, cheap drinks and guaranteed hangover.
Or for a free all ages event you could just walk up to the top of Telegraph Hill where hundreds of people will gather as usual in the top park (Kitto Road SE14) to count in the New Year and watch the fireworks go off across London. Weather forecast is for rain earlier in the day, but dry by midnight - although no doubt muddy in the park.
As part of their work in encouraging potential students to choose Goldsmiths, the college has produced 'A little book about South East London'. It's kind of a print version of the film they produced last year, and features the New Cross House, Panda Panda, The London Particular and many other places.
Some good advice in it from Joe, manager of the New Cross House:
'Do you have any top tips? Follow local blogs like Transpontine (transpont.blogspot.com)
and Brockley Central (brockleycentral.blogspot.com)
to find out about what’s happening in the neighbourhood'.
Lovely new video from Goldsmiths promoting the joys of South East London life - Deptford market, Greenwich Park, Telegraph Hill Park, the New Cross House, Royal Albert, London Particular, Cafe Crema, Utrophia, Panda Panda, Birds Nest, Blossoming Together cafe etc all feature.
I like the fact that it doesn't try and put too much of a 'wow it's such a creative arty area' gloss on it, rather it shows that what people appreciate is living somewhere with its own identity and community.
Following recent feature on Smash Hits cover stars, here's some fab photos from Select magazine, August 1991.
But what are they doing at Transpontine? Can you guess the South London connection? (click on images to enlarge).
Julian Cope - but wasn't he in that Liverpool band The Teardrop Explodes? Yes, but in the late 1980s/early 1990s he moved down to London and lived in Albany Mews by Burgess Park and at 149a Tulse Hill. I remember seeing him around on anti-poll tax demos in fancy dress.
The Creatures - Siouxsie Sioux, born in Guys Hospital, was famously part of the early punk Bromley Contingent - though technically she was from Chislehurst (she went to Mottingham High School). KLF - Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty. 'KLF HQ' was Jimmy Cauty's house in Camberwell: ' KLF activities were then based around their Camberwell HQ, a huge Victorian terraced house. In the basement were the ersatz 'Trancentral Studios', where their finest moments were recorded. The upper floors were home to Cauty and wife Cressida, herself an artist, and several others. Friends recall the good times, at the height of the acid-rave scene, when the KLF would throw "really brilliant fuck-off parties", sometimes lasting all weekend, with a fairly relaxed attitude to uninvited house guests' (Guardian 21 May 1994). Not sure exactly where this was, but love that some of the stuff I was dancing to at that time was recorded just down the road.
What She Said is a blog by Melbourne-based Hariklia: 'Every day I post an entry from one of my diaries, that was written on the same day (date and month) that I post it, from any year between 1970 to the present'.
From 1986 to 1988, she was living in New Cross, seemingly in a housing co-op in Hatcham Park Road area. Her diary entries for that time feature various local landmarks amidst the usual diary boy/girl trouble - shopping in Lewisham, going for a date in the Goldsmiths Tavern (now the New Cross House), indie club A Million Rubber Bands at the Harp Club (now the Venue), night bus journeys home, playing pool in the (now closed) Royal Archer, stepping out in Nunhead Cemetery with local heart-throb Johny Brown of the Band of the Holy Joy:
'24 January 1988... I’m sitting, right this very second, in the park atop Telegraph Hill. It’s a lovely day for this time of the year. But I’m so reminded of JB here. How many Sundays ago was it that we walked through this very park going to Nunhead Cemetery? I keep thinking I’ll see him walking past with another girl, hand in hand. Another Sunday, another girl. That day was so wonderful and I remember thinking how I was sharing something I really enjoyed, for a change. We saw a few solitary people there, and I thought that for once it wasn’t me, walking alone and seeing a happy couple, thinking how romantic it would be. I was part of a couple, having a romantic walk amongst the graves and statues and fallen trees. JB tried to catch a falling leaf for good luck'
(hope Hariklia won't mind me using this great picture of a gravetop Johny in Nunhead 1987)
I moved down to London around this time too, living in Brixton. So sure our paths have crossed a number of times at many of the places she mentions, as I too frequented the Harp Club, the Town and Country Club, The Falcon (Camden) and Band of Holy Joy gigs. And indeed I once kissed a girl who (claimed to have) kissed Robert Smith of The Cure who... well, maybe we are also connected in a 'I've danced with a man, who's danced with a girl, who's danced with the Prince of Wales' kind of way. Shame I missed out on two things she managed to do - seeing Prince at his peak in London and going to the last ever gig by The Smiths at Brixton Academy (though I did see them three times).
An earlier post on the history of the Goldsmiths Tavern/New Cross House generated some great recollections and discussion. Now Rhian Jones has kindly offered her article 'Elegy on the Death of a Good Pub' first published in Smoke magazine (#7, 2005):
Number one on absolutely no one else’s list of Good London Pubs is the sadly defunct Goldsmiths Tavern. When I lived in New Cross as a student I didn't go near this place for months - it was open past 2am but was extremely dodgy in look and reputation, you heard various stories about plans hatched and deals done that would've made Guy Ritchie come on the spot.
My first Tavern experience came, like so many others, at the end of a very good night up and down New Cross Road when all other pubs had decisively shut up shop. So in we went, and yes, it was as skanky as it looked. You stuck to the floor. The gig/dance floor/backroom bit was too dark to see anyone who engaged you in conversation. The other backroom was reached by a system of connecting doors that led you through the women's toilets. The pool table never had all the requisite balls.
And yet. Good music and good people make for a good pub. The jukebox at one point seemed to have every single Clash album on it - even Sandinista. Hell, even Cut the Crap. And the jukebox was free. And there were random ska nights and punk nights and fetish nights and open-mic nights all over the shop.
In terms of clientele, the Tavern felt a bit like a scuzzier version of the canteen in Star Wars. I had some of the most interesting, strangest, scariest and most amusing conversions of my life in there. Everyone was a refusenik of some sort: students who hated students, local petty criminals who wished they ran a bookshop in the West Country, struggling artists who really should've been civil servants (and vice versa). And you know what? No one even pretended they were minor celebrities of any description. That wasn't the point of the place. The most famous regulars I encountered were Eastenders’ Joe Absalom, the unnameable Only Fools and Horses actor who played Mickey Pearce, and someone who claimed to be the Super Furry Animals' sound engineer, but probably wasn’t. There were even moments when you and your companions would feel like the most celebrated people in there. It was gloriously unpretentious and accepting. If you wanted to pose, you could bugger off to East London.
I must admit that the Tavern appeared to degenerate in its final months. More than once I'd walk up New Cross Road and have to keep on walking, seeing its corner cordoned off in black-and-yellow tape and, once, a pool of blood outside the entrance. Finally there came the Tavern's Last Stand, when a probably justified but somewhat gratuitous looking police raid shut it down during the early hours of an otherwise nondescript night in the spring of 2003. The street filled up with ejected punters and bemused onlookers. Rumours persisted after the event that a couple of die-hard regulars had linked arms and attempted to form a protective cordon across the entrance, to no avail. A now highly-respected figure in the anti-fascist wing of student politics was said to have climbed up the drainpipe of the squat across the road, whose Trustafarian occupants resolutely refused to send reinforcements, shouting rebukes along the lines of 'Call yourselves fecking bohemians?' All it needed was Bogart standing on the stairs while we all sang La Marseillaise.
So that was that. And they could have left the shell of the Tavern alone, but to add insult to injury, if you're ever down SE14 way these days, you'll see it’s become one of several creepingly gentrified salsa-class-and-tapas bars, plastic, sterile and catering for townies downing overpriced beer before staggering off to the Venue, and for students who know no better. And they call it the Goldsmiths Tavern, still, but it's not and never will be.
OK 'pub wars' is a bit of an exaggeration, but there's certainly some vigorous business manoeuvring going on .
The Capital Pub Company own 34 pubs across London, most notably locally they recently relaunched the New Cross House (formerly the Goldsmiths Tavern). They also run the Victoria in Peckham, the Florence in Herne Hill and both the Actress and the Bishop in East Dulwich.
The larger Fuller, Smith and Turner is both a pub owner and a brewer. They have pubs in Rotherhithe and Bermondsey (including The Leather Exchange in the latter) and also run The Pilot in Greenwich, though they don't have much presence further south in London.
Now Fuller's has made it clear that it wishes to take over Capital Pubs. Its bid to buy it has been rejected by the Capital board, but the Financial Times reports that an attempted hostile takeover might be on the cards, with Fuller's trying to buy up shares in Capital to gain a controlling interest.
Not sure what this all means for drinkers or indeed pub staff. Both Capital and Fuller's have a good reputation among beer enthusiasts, but larger and larger chains don't always bode well for diversity of drinking establishments.
Pubs are too good an idea to die out, and recently we have seen two iconic South London hostelries refurbished and re-opened: the New Cross House (ex-Goldsmiths Tavern) and the Thomas a Becket on the Old Kent Road (opposite Tescos on corner of Albany Road). I haven't been into the latter yet, but looks good from the outside.
Plenty of places seem to be thriving, for instance I had a drink in the Elephant and Castle last week - the successor to the pub that gave that area its name is not much to look at from the outside, but it has a good atmosphere and plenty of people were enjoying its Thai food as well as the beer.
Elsewhere though, pubs continue to close. On Walworth Road both the Temple Bar and the Beaten Path have closed recently.
If pubs are closing, other businesses seem to be doing fine in the economic downturn. Next to the Beaten Path is Payday Loans, Temple Bar is rumoured to be in line to be replaced by a Poundland store. Legal loan sharks, pawn shops, pound shops, betting shops -the spreading retail architecture of poverty and hopelessness in the less affluent high streets of South London.
Meanwhile elsewhere in Walworth, the Crown on Brandon Street has closed after 130 years. Local campaigners are concerned that having failed to secure planning permission to turn it into flats, the owners - Terramek Ltd - might consider demolishing it to make way for new build housing.
Monday sees the full opening of The New Cross House, the refurbished former Goldsmiths Tavern. I went down to take a look last week, and it's pretty impressive.
The wall between the front bar and the large back room has been knocked through to create a large open space, complete with a new pizza oven. The food is mainly in the under ten pound bracket, with quite a few vegetarian options (not just pizza).
It is the freshly decked outside area at the back that has the real wow factor. If you've been there before you may remember there's an outbuilding there, perhaps originally a stable. Think it was where the barbecue was located in the 1990s GMT. Anyway it now has a new floor in it to create a kind of two storey outdoor snug complete with table football. It felt like being in a bar in Italy or Greece, mind you it had been a sunny day!
As explored at Transpontine before, this is an iconic pub with New Cross the area actually named after the New Cross House. In its long history it has been through many transformations, some of them still fondly remembered. Now with a substantial facelift it awaits its public. Who knows exactly what kind of pub it will be this time? The great thing about pubs is that ultimately it is the people who choose to go there and the things they do that create the atmosphere.
It certainly won't be like the 1990s Goldsmiths Tavern with its 'crusty' outlaw vibe, but that was very much a product of the times and its musical, social and cultural environment. You couldn't recreate that now if you wanted to - and I am sure Capital Pubs who now own it don't want to! But it has every chance of it becoming a vibrant social space where people can eat, drink, listen to music, laugh, argue, fall in love and all the other things that human beings do in public.
The last section of original tiling in the New Cross House, probably dating back to when the current building went up in the late 19th century. The newly refurbished pub features a specially designed wallpaper based on these tiles.
If you've been in solitary confinement or trekking in the Himalayas recently you might not have heard about Meateasy. So just so you know - it sells burgers above a pub, get over it.
The pub in question is the Goldsmiths Tavern in New Cross, currently closed for refurbishment and due to be relaunched in May as the New Cross House. Meateasy is a temporary 'pop up' restaurant run by people who usually run the Meatwagon burger van. It does sound quite buzzy and I am tempted to pop down to one of its Friday night music sessions featuring the likes of Joe Muggs and Kongo Sound System. Trouble is being a vegetarian for nearly 30 years means that I'd rather put tabasco in my eye than eat there.
The place has been glowingly reviewed in The Metro and The Standard (Sexy feast: the most popular burger joint in town). Today it made it into the Independent on Sunday with the kind of condescending opening paragraph that makes me want to shout out loud: 'It's New Cross – a part of London I can't really identify, never mind find. Is it east or south? Isn't it one of those places without a Tube station?'. Is it too much to ask that a journalist could write about something in South East London without starting with a variation on omg where is it/will I get murdered?
Anyway Meateasy is due to close on April 16th but wouldn't be surprized if it popped up again more permanently.
Anna Calvi has been generating a lot of press on the back of her recent debut album release (e.g. this piece in the Guardian on the 'gothically inclined singer songwriter').
Quite liking this, so naturally would like to be able claim her for the Great Work that is South East London music making. Not entirely sure what the connection is yet, but Ceri James recalls her hanging round the old Goldsmiths Tavern in New Cross as a teenager, and she seems to have played some early gigs locally, including at at the Montague Arms in 2008. Anyone know any more?
More bad news (and a little bit of good) on the SE London pub front.
Southwark - one of the areas worst hit by pub closures in recent years - has suffered some more losses. On the Walworth Road both the Beaten Path (formerly Prince Alfred) and the Temple Bar have closed recently. The latter was one of the pubs where the artist Austin Osman Spare exhibited his work in the 1940s.
In Nunhead (Lausanne Road), the Swiss Tavern is seemingly being converted to flats. Until the death of its landlady Miss P (Patricia Walters) last year this was a popular African Caribbean pub. So many people turned up there when Miss P died that the police had to close Lausanne Road.
Up on Stuart Road SE15, the famous Ivy House has closed with its future uncertain. This is an iconic venue with a long musical history, including in its previous incarnation as the Newlands Tavern. The most recent managers pursued a policy of discouraging the previous locals with the aim of making it more of an event venue pulling in people from further afield. Some of the events have been very successful, such as comedy nights and the Brockley Jack Film Club Piccadilly showing. But I imagine that the pub's location, a long way from the nearest rail or tube station, makes it hard to keep it really busy like that on a regular basis.
In Brixton, popular pub/music venue Rest is Noise is closing (maybe already has) - a busy place so doesn't look like revenue was the major issue. For discussion of possible reasons to do with the building's landlord see Urban75.
Better news from the Old Kent Road, where the even more iconic Thomas a Becket looks set to reopen as a cafe/bar soon after being closed for a few years (other than being partially used as an art gallery). Not sure if they will keep the name, I would like them to because of the whole link to the Kent Road pilgrimage route. The pub stands on the site of St Thomas a Watering, mentioned in the Canterbury Tales as the place where the pilgrims stopped for refreshment on the road to Becket's shrine in Canterbury Cathedral. But if they do go for a name change can I propose Ziggy's or Stardust?
The relaunch of the Goldsmiths Tavern as the New Cross House is on track - new owners Captial Pub Company took possession today (see more about their plans at Food Stories). And Brockley Central reports a new bar may be opening soon in New Cross - but nobody seems to know where or when?
(any other news, updates or corrections, please comment)
Growing up in the 1970s, Saturday afternoons were often spent watching wrestling on TV. The sport was massive, populated by larger than life characters with outlandish costumes. Mick McManus's nicknames were "The Man You Love to Hate" and the "Rugged South London Tough Guy", a diminutive London Irish fighter (he was five feet six) not averse to bending the rules.
Although TV wrestling became increasingly theatrical (everyone knew it was fixed - but who cared it as long as it was entertaining), McManus had been a serious fighter, winning his first British championship in 1948.
McManus was born Michael Matthews on 11 January 1928 in New Cross. According to a discussion at Downham Online, he was a member of the New Cross Tramways Swimming Club and was trained at the John Ruskin Amateur Wrestling Club - not sure where that was, but guessing Camberwell.
Evidently he also liked to sing country and western in his spare time - in that Downham Online discussion, somebody recalls hearing him sing in a pub 'next to and underneath Lewisham Odeon in the 70s'.
There is also New Cross folklore that at some point in the 60s or 70s he ran the Goldsmiths Tavern/New Cross House . Anybody know any more about this or have any tales of his SE London connections?
Here's a classic from 1976, Mick McManus vs. Kung Fu - note that on screen he listed as 'Mick McManus, New Cross'.
Update: 22 May 2013: Mick McManus died today, aged 93. Several obituaries recall that he was also known as 'the Dulwich Destroyer', not a very credible name for a hard man really.
The Goldsmiths Tavern in New Cross has been acquired by Capital Pub Company, which owns another 31 pubs in London, including both The Actress and The Bishop in East Dulwich. Contracts have been exchanged with completion due next month, followed by refurbishment and reopening around Easter. With pubs closing all over the place it's a relief that there will continue to be a pub here. Capital's other pubs seem to have a good reputation with beer lovers and while there will be a strong emphasis on food my impression is that it will be at the more affordable end of 'Gastro' rather than a full on restaurant masquerading as a pub. Interestingly, according to Hollow Legs, they intend to rename it as the New Cross House (see also discussion at Brockley Central). Those who remember various Goldsmiths Tavern golden ages may baulk at this but actually the New Cross House was its original name, as you can see from the top of the current building. And rather than the pub taking its name from the area, the area actually seems to have taken the name from the pub.
According to Christopher Hibbert and Ben Weinreb's London Encyclopedia, New Cross 'takes its name from an old hostelry and coaching house bearing the sign on the Golden Cross, which was famous for centuries'. Presumably at some point this pub must have been replaced with a new building, hence 'New Cross'. The diarist John Evelyn, who lived in Deptford, wrote in 1675 that he met a friend at 'New Crosse' in his coach before travelling down through Kent and on to France.
DarrielSpurgeon states in his 'Discover Deptford and Lewisham' (1997) that the area 'is said to have taken its name from an old pub, New Cross House, 316 New Cross Road, now known as the Goldsmiths Tavern, the present building being of 1895'. Others have suggested that the New Cross Inn - opposite the New Cross House - is on the site of the original pub, but it seems that the New Cross House/Goldsmiths has the greater claim.
The New Cross House was on the border of Kent and Surrey and next to the original New Cross turnpike where travellers heading into London had to pay to continue on the road. The tollgate opened in the early 18th century and remained there until it was moved to the junction of the New Cross Road with Peckham Lane (now Queens Road) in 1813 - near the present White Hart pub.
This picture shows the tollgate in 1783 - the New Cross House sign can be seen on the left:
Like other pubs, the New Cross House was not just a place for eating and drinking but an important centre of social life. For instance, in 1871, the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway Servants' Benevolent Fund held its annual meeting 'at Mr Gordon's, the New Cross House, New Cross, on Wednesday evening, July 16'.
In the 1950s, the pub was associated with local gang the New Cross Boys and was smashed up in a battle with rival South London gangsters, as described in Brian McDonald's book Elephant Boys. Later things must have calmed down, because there seems to have been a folk club there in the early 1960s.
I am not sure at what point it changed name to the Goldsmiths Tavern, but when I first went there in the late 1980s (1988?) it was a gay pub. I recall dancing to Bronski Beat or something similar.
The Goldsmiths Tavern was where comedians Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer started their show ‘Vic Reeves Night Out’ in 1988 (they had first met in a Deptford bar called Winsons’, where Vic was performing his 'Variety Palladium'). Music for some of their New Cross nights was supplied by Eddi Reader and Mark Nevin, soon to have a hit record as ‘Fairground Attraction’. After Vic and Bob’s Thursday night shows became too big for the Goldsmiths, they moved to The Albany Empire and then on to TV.
In the 1990s the punky/squattty/alternative crowd that used to hang out in the Dewdrop Inn in New Cross gravitated to the Goldsmiths. I used to go there sometimes for techno nights, here's some notes I made in September 1997: 'From the outside it now looks like a squat, a badly painted sign reading 'GMT Lager Daleks', the front plastered with posters. There's music every night and a 2 am bar. The relevant poster read 'Dekode - Tekno Upload - Bangin' Acid Tekno Trance'. Inside anti-vivisection and anti-arms trade posters on the walls, stickers around the bar and in the toilets (Millwall Anti-Fascists, Anti-Fascist Action, Anti-Election) but even here there was some 'Princess Diana, dearly loved, sadly missed' graffiti in the gents - is there no refuge? At the back of the pub is a big room with a sound system, camouflage netting for that free party effect and the dancefloor. Beyond that is a yard outside, a South London drug den with loads of people smoking. Presumably the barbecue is to disguise the smell' (of cannabis). As well as techno/drum'n'bass nights, there were punk and ska gigs. The Inner Terrestials recorded their Escape from New Cross album there in July 1997 . It was also during this period that Gil Scott Heron played a gig in the pub, as recalled here. Local band The Cherry Reds had a song called Lager Daleks on their 2004 album Fairytale of New Cross.
Inevitably it was eventually closed down following a big police raid and re-opened in 2003 in its current incarnation, originally with an Italian restaurant upstairs. Lately there have been funky and r'n'b nights there, not sure how they have gone.
So now a new chapter is set to begin, but the story definitely isn't over...
If you have memories/photos/flyers of the Goldsmiths Tavern/New Cross House in its various incarnations let us know.
I was talking to Moonbow John last week, as he will forever be known to me despite it now being several years since he decided to move on from running cafes in Brockley, New Cross & Catford. He mentioned to me that Gil Scott-Heron, legendary American proto-rapper, had once performed at the Goldsmiths Tavern in New Cross, but acknowledged that he hadn't actually been there himself. I replied that I'd heard that story too, but neither of us were entirely sure whether it had really happened or if it was one of those urban legends compounded of rumour and wishful thinking. In fact I wondered whether I might have actually told the story to him some years ago as speculation, only for him to repeat it to me as fact - such are the feedback loops that myths are made of.
However the story has some independent verification, if only in the comments to posts on various blogs. Brockley Central mentioned the Goldsmiths Tavern in 2008, prompting a couple of relevant comments. 'Mezzer' said: 'One of the most memorable gigs of my life was here: Gil Scott Heron about 6 or 7 years ago. Apparently, he liked the inner city vibes of New Cross and agreed to come down and do a show. It wasn't until he walked on stage that I even believed that it was going to happen. Magical'. Likewise 'neanderthal d' said... I .The Gil Scott-Heron gig was in late '97 on a Sunday night. It couldn't be advertised locally because the Goldsmiths' Tavern didn't have a Music Licence on a Sunday night - hence the hush-hush nature of the gig. If i remember correctly, somebody knew the Promoter or Tour Manager for that particular tour and the gig was a kind of favour or something. Sadly, i missed the gig because i was languishing pennilessly in Plumstead at the time'.
At The Daily (Maybe), Bob from Brockley recalled 'One of the best, perhaps the very best, live concert of my life was seeing him in the Goldsmiths Tavern on New Cross Road about a decade ago' while johnhunt at Pinkfishmedia stated: 'i've seen gil a few times. the most memorable of which was at the goldsmiths tavern in new cross in 95? or close - arranged because one of his managers used to drink in there. the pub had a room out back for max 100 and quite decent sound. my friend and I arrived early , had a couple of beers while gil as, i rememeber it, stood behind the bar smoking a spliff. as gigs go it put a smile on my face for weeks afterwards'.
So we have at least three people who were present, one of whom is a friend of mine, enough to confirm that it actually happened. Hard to believe perhaps that this globally-appreciated performer popped into a pub in New Cross, but no more so than that the Chicago-born musician is the son of the first black footballer to play for Glasgow Celtic (and that's true too). Anybody remember anymore, or indeed have any good GMT memories, please comment.
Gil Scott-Heron has been responsible for some awesome tracks over the years including The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Whitey on the Moon, Johannesberg, Winter in America and The Bottle.
