South East London 1786

John Cary's 'Actual Survey of the Country Fifteen Miles Around London' from 1786 (at Old London Maps) is fascinating. A few things to note -

- it's 'Rotherhithe or Redriffe' (hence there is now a Redrif Primary School in the area);
- 'Watering Bridge' on the left of the picture is where the junction of Albany Road and Old Kent Road is now, by the Thomas a Becket pub (the place referred to in the Canterbury Tales at St Thomas a Watering);
- today's Queens Road is 'Peckham Lane';
- also on what is now the Old Kent Road there is a 'Halfway House' and a 'Black Boy Lane' (near where Ilderton Road is now?);
- the section of the road coming into New Cross is called '5 Bell Lane' - the Five Bells pub was clearly already there;
- what was the 'Rainbow House' in Peckham?



In the following section, note:

- 'Plow Garlick Hill' - now Telegraph Hill;
- 'None Head' (Nunhead);
- 'Brockley Gn' (Brockley Green) - this was the area around what is now Brockley station;
- 'Loom Pitt Hole' (now Loampit Vale) - this was a quarry.
- 'Fryum Farm Hill' in Dulwich, 'Pigg Hill' (sometimes Pig Hill) in Sydenham and 'Mount Misery' on the way from Lewisham to Bromley. Do any of these hills still have names? The building up of London means we are aware of slopes when we're walking or cycling but we don't really get a sense of the distinct shape of the hills.

Pubs Living and Dying

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.

Henry Cooper RIP

Boxer Henry Cooper died today, two days short of his 77th birthday.

Cooper grew up on Farmstead Road on the Bellingham council estate. He went to Athelney Road School in Lewisham, and when he left school he worked as a roofer in Evelyn Street, Deptford and as a sheet metal worker in Sydenham. He later recalled: 'In my day, if you came from a working class area, there were two ways out – football and boxing’. After amateur boxing with Eltham Amateur Boxing Club, he turned professional under the management of Jim Wicks.

Wicks opened a boxing gym above the Thomas a Becket pub on the Old Kent Road. Cooper returned there in 2008 to open a Southwark Council blue plaque and recalled that for 14 years from 1954 he trained there up to 5 or 6 times a week. He is also remembered in the name Henry Cooper Way, a road in Eltham.



At the time the blue plaque was unveiled, the pub was closed and functioning as an art gallery. Good news is that the Thomas a Becket has just re-opened as a pub - a pretty historic one, as mentioned here before it has connections with David Bowie, Burl Ives and the film Performance as well as Henry Cooper.

Burl Ives on the Old Kent Road

Came across this picture at the Getty Images Archive. It shows the American folk singer Burl Ives in the Thomas a Becket pub in the Old Kent Road. The picture was taken by Kurt Hutton in 1952 and published in The Picture Post at the time. Not sure what he was doing in the pub, possibly it was simply a staged photo opportunity. In any event in May 1952 he sold out the Festival Hall on the South Bank, so he was seemingly beyond playing in pubs.

1952 was a signficant year for Ives - he had been blacklisted for having Communist ties but then in that year appeared before Senator McCarthy's House Unamerican Activities Committtee. His decision to testify - and talk about other supposed Communists - lifted restrictions on him, but led to other folk singers denouncing him, notably Pete Seeger. They didn't make up until 40 years later when they appeared together on stage.

Ives went on to become known as an actor as well as a singer, notably in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and East of Eden.