The Walworth Beauty

The Walworth Beauty (2017) by Michele Roberts is a novel featuring two entwined stories set in the same area of south London over a 160 year period. One thread concerns a man working for Henry Mayhew carrying out research into the lives of prostitutes in the early 1850s. Unknowingly retracing some of his steps in 2011 is a recently redundant lecturer who has moved to Walworth.

The novel is partly a reflection on what has changed and what has not changed over this period of time and also on how the ghosts of the past haunt the present both figuratively and perhaps sometimes literally.



The precise setting is a fictional Apricot Place (described as being near to John Ruskin Street) where the Lecturer now lives and where in the 1850s another key character, Mrs Dulcimer, runs a home for young women with secrets: a black woman who when questioned about where she is from replies 'from Deptford, Mr Benson. My family roots in London go back generations. Further than yours perhaps'.



Walking into town, Madelyn in the 21st-century is aware of her predecessors:



'Walworth Road felt sleepy, some shops still shuttered, a few people about. The scent of warm spice, yeast and sugar drifted out of the Caribbean bakery. The newsagent’s door swung open and shut. She plunged westwards, through cramped backstreets of 19th century artisans dwellings each with its little bootscraper on the pavement just outside the front door. She headed towards the Imperial War Museum rearing in the distance. The tap of a boot on paving stones; the flying ribbons on a bonnet. Women walked out of the pages of books and accompanied her. Mary Wollstonecraft, briefly domiciled, as a young woman, in Walworth, fretting about what to do with her life’. The Elephant and Castle roundabout and East Street market (or East Lane as commonly known and referred to in the book) are among the other locations that figure.



With concerns like these it is perhaps no wonder that the novel features a description of a Halloween Crossbones gathering which presumably the author must have witnessed, as it is very accurate (and I am sure Crossbones MC John Crow/Constable didn't mind the description of him!):


'A small crowd, 40 or so strong, has gathered, spread along the strip of pavement in front of the fence sealing off the ancient burial ground. The wind rustles the ribbons and strings of beads laced to the wire barrier, the bunches of dried flowers, the gilt streamers. People cup lit candles in their gloved hands. A few children jig from foot to foot. A musician in a striped woollen cap strums a guitar...

The fence separating off the burial ground in Redcross Way purports to divide the living and the dead. Does it? Perhaps the dark air on either side teems and flickers with spirits… A man in a brown tweed coat steps forward from the group of women bunched near the stone Madonna. Clear eyed; open face; his attention focused like a beam of light on his listeners… A shaman with golden wings he seems, beating through smoky air, wielding the sword of dissent; slashing through hypocrisy, praising prostitutes, his beautiful, misunderstood sisters.…The poet–priest drops his arms, turns back into an ordinary man, merry and sexy, full of jokes and cheek'.


Michele Roberts moved to South London in the 1970s, living in a semi-commune in Talfourd Road SE15, something she has written about previously and which I might get round to posting about another time.

The Paying Guests - a novel of 1920s South London

Sarah Waters' latest novel, The Paying Guests (Virago, 2014) is set in 1920s South London, where a mother and daughter fallen on hard times after the First World War take in lodgers in their once grand home on the Camberwell/Dulwich borders: 'Champion Hill, on the whole, kept itself to itself. The gardens were large, the trees leafy. You would never know, she thought: that grubby Camberwell was just down there'.

The lodgers are of a lower class, moving over from Peckham Rye, and with one of them the daughter of shopkeepers on the Walworth Road. Most of the action takes place in this Champion Hill/Camberwell/Walworth Road area, with Ruskin Park featuring significantly. If you know Sarah Waters' previous work (including Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet), I don't think it would be giving too much away to reveal that the plot includes crime, class and lesbian romance in a meticulously recreated historical context (she thanks Lambeth and Southwark local studies archives for their help). The author lived in Brixton for many years, then Kennington, so knows this part of the world very well.

The novel also features a paean to the joys of wandering through London:

'She loved these walks through London. She seemed, as she made them, to become porous, to soak in detail after detail; or else, like a battery, to become charged. Yes, that was it, she thought, as she turned a corner: it wasn't a liquid creeping, it was a tingle, something electric, something produced by the friction of her shoes against the streets. She was at her truest, it seemed to her, in these tingling moments - these moments when, paradoxically, she was also at her most anonymous. But it was this anonymity that did it. She never felt the electric charge when she walked through London with someone at her side. She never felt the excitement she felt now, seeing the fall of a shadow of a railing across a set of worn steps... It was like being a string, and being plucked, giving out the single, pure note that one was made for'.

Music Monday: Filthy Boy

A big summer for Filthy Boy, playing festivals and getting national radio airplay for their new single That Life (from their album 'Smile that won't go down').



The young band, based in the Peckham/Nunhead area, played early gigs at the Ivy House and recently had a friends and family gig at the Old Nun's Head.

Singer Paraic Morrissey explained in Time Out, the video for their earlier single Jimmy Jammies was filmed in 'Deverell Street, off the New Kent Road'.



Yes there are comparisons with Nick Cave (maybe Tindersticks too). But if an Australian artist can channel a singer from the American South, why shouldn't a boy from South London?

Walworth radical history walk

Interesting radical history/geography walk last weekend from 56a InfoShop in Crampton Street,  around the the top end of Walworth Road and the Pullens Estate SE17 courtesy of Past Tense.

How the poor die

One theme was who gets remembered and who get forgotten in the official record, with reference to Orwell's How the Poor Die. We were reminded of Ayikoe Atayi, found dead in 2006 in the cupboard where he had been living in Perronet House SE1 while working as a cleaner sending money back to his famiy in Togo.

Reminded too of Richard O'Brien, a 37 year old father of seven who 'died in April 1994 after being pinned to the ground by three officers who said they were arresting him for being drunk and disorderly... Mr O'Brien's family say that his pleas that he could not breathe were ignored, and alleged that officers shouted anti-Irish abuse at him. Mr O'Brien suffered injuries in 31 areas including 12 cuts to the face and head' (Guardian 14 May 2002)

O'Brien was arrested while waiting for a taxi outside English Martyrs Catholic Social Club and taken to Walworth police station. A jury found that he had been 'unlawfully killed' by the police, but in 1999 three police officers were found not guilty of manslaughter. Nevertheless after being found liable for his death under the Fatal Accidents Act, the police finally paid £324,000 compensation to O'Brien's family in 2002.

Walworth Working Men's Lecture and Reading Rooms

There was also some reflection on the parallels between the 56a InfoShop -  a radical bookshop and archive in the area since 1991 - and an earlier local institution, the Walworth Working Men's Lecture and Reading Rooms in Camden Street. The poster from the 19th century invited people for lectures, discussion meetings, 'all the best of the periodicals' and 'books lent from the library' - all for 'one shilling per quarter'. Though don't think we would want to advertise today 'take your Wife that is, or is to be'!

'Just the place to go when work is over, you can see there all the news of the day'
(not sure of the date of this, though the place was certainly going in 1855)

See Red Women's Workshop: feminist posters from SE5/SE17

See Red Women's Workshop was a feminist screenprinting collective based in Walworth/Camberwell from around 1974.

According to Jess Baines: 'See Red's activities included the designing and printing of their own posters and calendars, as well as taking on design and print commissions for other organisations. See Red developed a range of feminist posters that attempted to address different issues ranging from the domestic isolation of mothers and unethical marketing by pharmaceutical giants to racism in Britain and solidarity with anti-imperialist struggles abroad. The posters were distributed internationally both from the workshop and through alternative bookshops. They also gave talks and demonstrations on screen-printing. The group varied in number; overall 25 women worked at See Red during its lifetime. After working from home in the early days, the collective progressed to renting shared space with Women in Print, at 16a Iliffe Yard, off Crampton St, London, SE17. The workshop was initially run without grant-aid, and the women contributed up to three working days a week to the workshop while earning a living elsewhere. In the early 1980s the collective was supported by funding from the Greater London Council. This facilitated a move to new premises at 90 Camberwell Road, SE5. Women in Print (an offset litho collective) moved with them but folded in 1986'. See Red closed in the early 1990s.

See Red in action at Iliffe Yard in the early 1980s

Ink Now: Posters, Collectives and Art

Recently there has been a revival of interest in the work of See Red. There was an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts last year, and next month members of the collective will be taking part in 'Ink Now: Posters, Collectives and Art', an event at London Met. 'Ink Now' will be 'An evening of presentations and discussion about how posters have been used in different radical, political, feminist, collective and community settings. By looking at specific historical moments we hope to open up a conversation about radical ideas and collective practices in the contemporary art context'.

WHEN: 6.30-8.30pm, Tuesday 4th June. Refreshments available from 6pm
WHERE: Lecture Theatre CR100, London Met University, 41-47 Commercial Road, London, E1 1LA

Suzy Mackie and Pru Stevenson, founding members of the See Red Women's Workshop Collective, which produced silkscreened feminist and community posters from c1974 up to the early 1990s, will show poster images and talk about why and how the collective was set up and the first 8 years.

Jess Baines (LSE/LCC) will be presenting her research on the history of late 20th century radical and community printing collectives and co-ops in the UK - including: poster collectives, service printers, typesetters and print resource centres. Jess is also a former Member of the See Red Womens Workshop

Dean Kenning (Kingston University and CSM) will be talking about the recent show at Portman Gallery: ‘Poster Production’ where he worked with art students from Morpeth School, Central St Martins and ReadingUniversity, and with several contemporary artists to produce posters based on different themes and according to various methods of working.

Rachael House and Jo David from artist run Space Station Sixty-Five on posters and archives in the art space, including poster-related shows such as 'Shape and Situate'. 'Rachael will also talk about her recent exhibitions 'Feminist Disco' and 'A Space of Potential' which draw on feminist cultures'

Chair: Anne Robinson (senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University and former member of See Red Womens Workshop). Admission free and all welcome, but please register at: http://inknowposters.eventbrite.com

See Red anti-National Front poster, 'Don't let racism divide us'
The photograph used was taken in the anti-NF  'Battle of Lewisham' in August 1977

Cuming Museum Fire

Devastated by the news of the fire on the Walworth Road this afternoon. The old Walworth town hall building next to the Heygate Estate houses the Cuming Museum, and that part of the building seems to have been worst hit by the fire (photo above from SE1 on twitter).

Of course it's great that none of the people working there seem to have been hurt - the fire spread very quickly - and that the same applies to the many firefighters who have helped tackle the blaze (many of them from stations threatened by Boris Johnson's fire service cuts).

But the Cuming Museum is not just a great local history museum, it also houses two irreplaceable collections, the 19th century Cuming collection of weird and wonderful global artefacts and Edward Lovett's collection of objects associated with early 20th century London folklore. I spent some happy hours researching in the latter collection a few years ago for the Folklore Society's London Lore conference.

It seems inevitable that these collections will have been severely damaged at least, if not destroyed altogether.

Three young people killed in two weeks

All the UK tabloids have the story of Megan Stammers on the front page, the teenager who ran away to France with her teacher. Pleased as I am that she is safe, I can't help noticing that the lives and indeed deaths of other young people just don't seem to be deemed of national significance. Here's a few sad South London stories from the past couple of weeks:

- On Thursday night, 15 year old Junior Nkwelle was stabbed to death on the Loughborough Estate in Brixton.

- The day before, Wednesday 26 September,  a 21 year old man was stabbed to death on the Aylesbury Estate in Walworth.

- Two weeks ago, on the 14th September, 14 year old Kevin Ssali was stabbed to death after getting off a bus in Burnt Ash Road, Lee. A 17 year old from New Cross has been charged with his murder.

- On that night too, a 19 year old was stabbed and critically injured in New Cross Road.

To be fair some of these stories have had brief mentions in the national media, but the tone of 'another stabbing in London' quickly dismisses them. Three young people killed in South London in two weeks should be a national scandal, and you can't help thinking that if the victims had been pretty white girls it would be.

Second thoughts, 2 October: reading back over this a few days later I still agree with the thrust of my initial reaction, but perhaps it was a bit clumsy to bring Megan Chambers into the story. She's got her own problems which I don't want to belittle. And I certainly don't want to suggest that terrible things don't happen to 'pretty white girls'. I guess the wider point though is who gets constructed in the mainstream media as deserving of sympathy, and it does seem to be that measured simply in terms of the amount of sympathetic press coverage, the lives of young people stabbed to death (many, but not all of them, young black men) are afforded less value. Kevin Ssali had been missing from home for some time before he was murdered, his worried family weren't on the news.

I do think racism has something to do with this, even if we want to use the term 'institional racism' whereby the fact that black people end up being treated worse is the salient point, whether or not the individuals making decisions are personally prejudiced. Linked to his is an implicit notion of what kind of people it is imagined that a newspaper's audience will relate to as 'one of their own' and what kind of people are the 'others' they fear. And there is also the fact that sometimes there isn't a straightforward good vs. evil morality tale - some of the people who get stabbed might be involved in violence themselves. But even when the latter is true, we mustn't lose sight of the broader tragedy - why are young people killing each other? There is no straightforward answer or solution, but to acknowledge its importance in the first step.

Swandown

Swandown at Dilston Grove (Cafe Gallery) in Southwark Park is an installation to accompany the film 'Swandown' about Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair's journey, in a swan-shaped pedalo, from Hastings to Hackney - a journey described by Sinclair as a kind of mute 'counter grand project' to the Olympics and similar initiatives. It is on until July 29th.

I went along a couple of weeks ago (1st July) to a talk featuring Sinclair and the writer Marina Warner in conversation about the complex mythology of the swan - as both graceful and violent, pure and terrifying, creature of the water and the sky. The many swan names in the river city of London were referred to (and indeed, though not mentioned, there is a Swan Road in SE16 and Swan Street SE1, as well as numerous Swan pubs).

Marina Warner and Iain Sinclair talking in the swan

Dilston Grove - built in 1911 as the Clare College Mission Church, this early concrete building
is now Grade II listed. The church itself closed in 1966. Clare College Mission was a philanthropic
settlement linked to the Cambridge University college.

Among the documents in the exhibition is this 1987 flyer for an appearance by
Sinclair and Brian Catling at Rasp - seemingly a poetry night held at 67 Balfour Street, SE17

Actual swans in Southwark Park

History Corner: Syndicalism in Catford 1912-13

The period before the First World War is sometimes referred to as the 'Great Unrest' as the status quo of Edwardian Britain came under attack from suffragettes, Irish nationalists, and striking workers - in 1912 for instance there were major strikes in London on the docks and amongst tailors in the East End and West End.

Within the workers movement there was intense debate about the way forward. Was the answer to get workers representatives elected to Parliament, as the emerging Labour Party argued? Or was a more radical party committed to abolishing capitalism required? Another current, the syndicalists, argued that political parties were not the answer at all. Rather workers should organise at the point of production, and their industrial organisations would eventually take over the factories, workshops and offices to usher in a classless society.

Proponents of this idea - the best known of whom was Tom Mann (pictured) - formed the Industrial Syndicalist Education League, and published a newspaper 'The Syndicalist & Amalgamation News'.  Reports in this paper show that South East London was one of the areas where these debates were raging.

In December 1912, a Sunday night meeting at the Catford Clarion Club saw 'a large and enthusiastic audience assembled to hear an address by Guy Bowman on Syndicalism. Local enthusiasm had recently run high on the subject of Syndicalism. Previous lectures had centred around the questions of parliamentary action, and Syndicalism, Direct Action, and Sabotage'. The meeting was chaired by 'Comrade Richardson'. The syndicalists presciently criticised a form of socialism as top-down state management, with Bowman arguing at that meeting that this 'would lead the workers into a worse form of tyranny that at present, as at the head of each department of industry we should have a politician comfortably fixed in a job of which he knew no more about than the average chairman of a trust does about the industry form which he draws his profits' (The Syndicalist, January 1913).

Another meeting was held in the same place a few months later - 'The Syndicalist' report by 'Richardson' states that: 'The room was full at the meeting of the Catford Clarion Club on March 9 to listen to a lecture on Social Democracy. Owing to indisposition Guy Bowman was not able to attend, but from the enthusiasm accorded Nefydd Roberts this did not militate against the meeting. In a fighting speech lasting about an hour our "Bobs" put the Syndicalist position so convincingly as to carry the audience entirely with him. He showed how parliamentarianism had led workers up a cul-de-sac. The sending of men to a middle class environment so put them out of contact with the workers as to cause them not to represent the workers at all. He held up to ridicule the Socialists of the docketing type who regard mankind as so many units to be classified out of existence'.

'His constructive criticism was as strong as his destructive. The workers' great need was to unite in militant industrial organisations. Sabotage, the Irritation Strike, and all other means to train the workers to intelligent organisation were shown to be indispensable. The moral objection to these methods was well shown by reference to Lafargue's "My right to be lazy". The case was so strongly put that although the chairman appealed for opposition, it was not forthcoming, This should promise well for linking up of our Catford friends with the ISEL' ('The Syndicalist', March-April 1913)

The same issue also reported meetings at the Morris Hall in Clapham and in Walworth, with Olive Strong writing a report of Dave Armstrong's syndicalist speech at the latter.

I don't know where the Catford Clarion Club was, but the Clarion movement was a national network of socialist clubs (which incidentally included the Clarion Cycling Club).

Tom Mann and Guy Bowman (who spoke at the December 1912 Catford meeting) were among those jailed in 1912 for Incitement to Mutiny after calling on soldiers not to open fire on strikers. Mann went on to be a leading figure in the Communist Party and the National Unemployed Workers Movement, and later in the 1920s was living in Brockley (in 1927 his address was 1 Adelaide Road). His son Charlie Mann was involved in radical theatre troupe Lewisham Red Players in the 1930s

History Corner: Resisting the National Front 1980

In 1977, the famous Battle of Lewisham occurred when a march by the extreme right wing racist National Front from New Cross to Lewisham centre sparked fighting between anti-fascists, the NF and the police. But sadly this was not the end of the NF in South London. In 1980 there were two marches in quick succession, one in Southwark and one in Lewisham.

The NF march in Southwark took place on Sunday 2 March 1980, despite an earlier unsuccessful attempt by Southwark Council to get it banned. 'Around 1,000 Front supporters took part in the march from Wyndham Road, along Camberwell Road, to Camberwell Green, turning left in to Peckham Road, along Lyndhurst Way to residential Holly Grove [in Peckham] for an open air rally. The marchers - mostly teenage skinheads... chanted "National Front is the white man's Front, join the National Front". There were roars of "N---er Lovers" and "Kill the reds" whenever the few onlookers - mainly from windows - shouted anti-Front slogans' (South London Press 4 March 1980). The leader of this motley crue of racists was then NF Chairman Andrew Brons, who spoke at the rally at the end. He is now a BNP Member of the European Parliament.

The NF speak outside derelict house in Holly Grove 1980,
© Jim Rice, www.londonphoto.co.uk

A similar number of anti-racists turned out to oppose the march, with the counter-demonstration called by Southwark Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (SCARF)*. But they were prevented by the police from getting near to the NF: 'Hundreds of officers threw a cordon around them as they gathered outside the London College of Printing, Elephant and Castle... The organisers were informed of the progress of the march by motorcyclists riding between the two rallying points... Some marchers headed for New Kent Road only to be turned back by lines of police'.  Police also cordoned off all side roads along the route, banning pedestrians and traffic. There were ten arrests (SLP 4 March 1980). At one point 'A group of demonstrators started running, trying to get ahead of the escorting police, and scuffles broke out. Several policemen were bowled over' (Times 3 March 1980).

'Keep Britain Two Tone - Demonstrate Against National Front March' (Rock Against Racism)

The Lewisham March

On Saturday 12 April 1980, 100 NF marched from Clapham Junction to Wandsworth High Street. The following weekend they moved on to Lewisham. The march there has been called after Lewisham Council refused the NF permission to use a Council building for a meeting during its Greater London Council election campaign for its West Lewisham candiate Lynda Mirabita.

The route of the NF march on Sunday April 20 1980 was kept secret until the last minute - it went from Forest Hill to Catford where 'A rally was held in a confined areas bordered by Catford greyhound stadium, a railway embankment and bridge, a second railway line and a canal' (Times 21 April 1980). According to the South London Press (22 April 1980):  'Estimates varied between 250-700 NF marchers - mostly young skinheads - against 1,000 counter marchers. Marquees were put up in Hilly Fields for the 4,000 police drafted in for the day'. The police used similar tactics to those employed in Southwark: 'The Anti Nazi League grouped its supporters by Lewisham Town Hall but they were unable to reach their target because police had cordoned off all side streets along the route... mounted police prevented counter-demonstrators breaking through a cordon at Holbeach Road. About 50 protestors tried to reach the Front marchers by cutting across the Private Banks Sports Ground and a football match was temporarily halted as police rugby tackled the demonstrators on a pitch... Another group, armed with spanners patrolled the streets in a car searching for Front members'.

The St Pauls riot in Bristol had taken place just before the Lewisham march, and The Times reported (21 April 1980): 'After the march several hundred of the Anti-Nazi League counter-demonstrators suddenly turned and charged down Lewisham High Street. A few bottles broke against windows to cheers and a brick smashed a tailors shop window. Some youths, mainly black, changed 'Bristol, Bristol' as they ran... Mounted policemen were sent through back streets to cut of the charging youths.' Five people were arrested when police found four petrol bombs in a car in Lewisham High Street, and in a trial later that year four teenagers were jailed for six years each for possession of the petrol bombs which the prosecution claimed they had intended to use against the National Front (Times October 22 1980).

In total 72 people were arrested on the day of the demonstration, the majority of them counter-demonstrators. The police tactics were criticised by Christine Trebett of the All Lewisham Council Against Racism and Fascism: 'Police were present in enormous numbers and prevented the counter-demonstrators reaching the National Front by sealing all routes to the march and threatening arrest to those who tried to break through; counter demonstrators in Brockley Rise were lined up against the wall and people leaving the local public house were prevented from going home. At about 4.00 pm the National Front were diverted into the Catford stations and the counter-demonstrators started to march towards Lewisham. The police lost control and started to run along the main road, driving vans fast along both sides of the carriageway; the police then formed up and drove back the demonstrators, kicking and knocking down any who resisted and making arrests. The police were particularly violent towards the women demonstrators' (report to West Lewisham Labour Party, 1980, included in 'Modern Britain since 1979: a reader', ed. Keith Laybourn and Christine Collette, 2003).

A racist GP in New Cross

Shockingly, a local GP addressed the NF march at the end: 'Dr Robert Mitchell, who has a surgery in Queens Road, said yesterday he would advise his patients against mixed marriages only if asked for advice. He also believed in repatriating black people. Dr Mitchell polled 1,490 votes when he stood as National Front's Parliamentary candidate in Deptford last year'. Lewisham Labour Councillor David Townsend said 'We must take an urgent look at how a doctor with such appalling views can be allowed to practice in such a racially sensitive area as New Cross' (SLP 22 April 1980).

The following March, the NF proposed to hold a provocative march past the scene of the New Cross Fire but this, and a planned counter-demonstration, was banned by the Home Secretary (Times, 5 March 1981).

Racist attacks

Marching wasn't the only thing NF activists were up to at that time. In May 1980 the sometime chair of Southwark NF, Kenneth Matthews, was jailed for six years for a plot to burn down Union Place Resource Centre. This workers co-operative printshop was on Vassall Road near the junction with Camberwell New Road (next to the Union Tavern pub), and printed lots of radical literature.

Matthews(aged 44) lived in Lorrimore Square SE17 and worked for Southwark Council as a dustcart driver. Stephen Beales, another NF member, was jailed for 3 years for the same offence and for petrol bombing a club used by Irish people in Lorrimore Sqaure. A third member of the gang was sent to Borstal (South London Press 22 May 1980). They had been caught outside Union Place with petrol, thunder flashes, and wires intending to make an electronically-detonated petrol bomb (Times 23 May 1980).

Not long afterwards, three other men were jailed for a violent racist attack on a black van driver at East Greenwich service statin (SLP, 10 May 1980)

*The Ruinist found some SCARF graffiti from that period still visible in 2009 in Amelia Street, Walworth - can you still see it?:

Last updated December 2023, added RAR image.

Ed Gray - London Souls

I went along to London Souls last week, an exhibition of prints by Ed Gray in The Crypt Gallery under St Pancras Church opposite Euston Station.  Gray, who was recently interviewed on the Robert Elms show on BBC London, mainly paints London street scenes.

I had a quick chat with Gray - in fact he made me a cup of tea - and it transpires that he lives in Rotherhithe, worked for several years as an art teacher at St Thomas Apostle secondary school (Nunhead/Peckham) and is represented by GX Gallery in Camberwell. So unsurprisingly there are plenty of South London settings - Camberwell Green (pictured below), a nightbus in Old Kent Road, a Paddy Power bookies on Walworth Road, Brockwell Park Lido, London Bridge, Electric Avenue, Salsa dancing at The Loughborough Hotel (Brixton) etc.

Really though it's London people rather than buildings that are at the centre of the paintings, walking about, working, snogging, commuting, eating, drinking... all kind of Hogarthian but without a sense of any moral judgement.

  
London Souls is open until 22 December 2011, 10am-6pm, admission free (great space by the way, proper old crypt with piled up gravestones etc.)

South London Shellac

My friend Richard Sanderson (Hither Green-based musician) shared his fine collection of 1930s records with me last week, with their sleeves historical documents of South London record shops in that era.





The Musical Box (proprietor G.H. Papworth) was at 254 High Street, Lewisham

Wallace was at 111 & 113 New Cross Road ('opposite free library')

L.R. Robin was at 96 and 98 East Street, Walworth.

Saunders & Fortescue had branches at 251 Rye Lane, Peckham and 135 High Street, Lewisham. They sold bicycles and prams as well as records.

Richard plays his records on this rather fine wind up gramophone.

He was using it as part of a sound performance at the 10th December lanch party for  issue no.4 of the surrealist journal Patricide, held at Massive Little World. This is in one of the railway arches behind the Deptford Project railway carriage cafe.

The event included 'Richard Sanderson with an amplified toothbrush and wind-up gramophone, poetry by Daniel Lehan and Jazz Poetry accompanied by improvised trumpet, bass and drums'. It was concluded by Sonic Egg, which featured an egg being boiled to an improvised soundtrack including a man playing guitar with a mannequin's foot. Or as Patricide reported it 'the Elite were soft boiled in egg form before being dashed against a wall'.



(by the way Grace Pailthorpe, later a British Surrealist painter, worked in New Cross during the First World War, as previously discussed at Transpontine).

South London Select

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.

Vic Reeves - career took off via nights at the Goldsmiths Tavern (now New Cross House) and the Albany in Deptford.

Sadly haven't managed to write Robert Smith himself into the South London Story, unless you know better...

Wonders and Tales of SE17

Coming up at East Street Library (168 Old Kent Rd) next Thursday 14th July, Chris Roberts will be giving a talk on 'Wonders and Tales of SE17: urban legends and ghost stories of Walworth, Elephant and Camberwell'. The event runs from 6 pm to 7:30 pm and admission is free.

South London Folk

A couple of good folk nights coming up.

Southwark Folk

On the Friday 24th June, Nigel Of Bermondsey is hosting 'Southwark Folk', a free evening of songs about Southwark by local artists at the Cuming Museum (Walworth Road, Elephant and Castle end) on Friday 24th June between 6pm and 8pm. It's a post-work early evening do and will start at 6pm prompt.

Artists include:

Nigel Of Bermondsey: 'a South London psycho-geographical singer-songwriter. He sings songs about Bermondsey, Rotherhithe, Walworth and Wapping. He will soon be incorporating more boroughs into his song almanack. His third album, “Bermondsey Folk” will be released this year'.
John Constable: 'celebrated South London playwright, author, poet and singer. His acclaimed work, ‘The Southwark Mysteries”, was performed in Southwark Cathedral in April 2010.

Russell Dryden: 'runs the fish stall in the Blue Market in Bermondsey and has lived and worked in Bermondsey all his born days. His songs are inspired by his experience of the day-to-day locale'.

Transpontine Music Club 'ballads of Nunhead Cemetery, New Cross Road and other South London beauty spots'.

Stewart Forester: 'Lives in Mitcham but is so good he is playing'.

Facebook events details here.

Kit and Cutter

Meanwhile Kit & Cutter have another night coming at the Old Nun's Head (15 Nunhead Green SE15) on 2 July with the Irish travellers' songs of Thomas McCarthy - featured recently in the Guardian.

Cinema event at Cuming Museum

I enjoyed the Museums at Night event at Southwark's Cuming Museum this month (13th May). It was loosely themed around the cinema, starting out with Chris Roberts giving a quick overview of teddy boy riots at the Coronet Cinema and other tales of Elephant and Castle 'juvenile delinquents' including the Elephant and Castle mob and the Forty Elephants female shoplifting gang. The Lava Link in Camberwell was also mentioned, one of the country's first roller skating rinks in the late 19th century - with a floor supposedly made from volcanic lava from Vesuvius.

Martin Humphries talked about the Cinema Museum, based appropriately enough in a former workhouse building in Lambeth where Charlie Chaplin once stayed (2 Dugard Way, SE11). The place is a cornucopia of cinematic artefacts - posters, furniture, fittings, even some very natty usherette uniforms which the Cuming staff modelled on the night. I must check out the Cinema Museum sometime, their exhibits includes some stuff from the Gaumont Cinema in Lewisham. They actually have a couple of talks coming up on June 11th going into the history of the Trocadero and other Elephant and Castle cinema buildings in more depth.

Andrew Pavord from Southwark’s film office talked about film making in the area today - not just crime shoots on the empty Heygate but all kinds of other movies, adverts, TV programmes and music videos. The biggest movie shot locally recently was The King's Speech, with Iliffe Street on the Crampton estate transformed into a 1940s street scene.

Vanessa Woolf-Hoyle gave a magic lantern display, telling the story of Peter Pan using some original slides from a century ago. Her lantern is a refurbished original, rescued from Nigel of Bermondsey's grandmother's attic in New Cross.

Incidentally, the Trocadero on New Kent Road by the Elephant had musical as well as cinema signficance - Buddy Holly and the Crickets played their first UK gigs there in 1958, attracting a crowd of 4500 over two sets . The great Paul Robeson also appeared there, I believe in the 1930s.

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.

Silver Screens of Southwark

For Museums at Night 2011 next Friday 13 May, the Cuming Museum will be having an early evening event themed around 'Silver Screens of Southwark', to include:

- An opportunity to get a closer look at objects from the Cinema Museum’s incredible collections;
- Chris Roberts, London writer and erstwhile editor of the 21st Century penny dreadful One Eye Grey will recount Teddy Boy riots in Elephant and Castle cinemas in the 1950s;
- Martin Humphries from the Cinema Museum will talk on the Cinema Museum and early cinema;
- Andrew Pavord from Southwark’s film office will discuss modern filming in Southwark.

6 to 8 pm at 151 Walworth Road, SE17. Details here.

I recommend that you also check out the discussion about this on Resonance FM radio show Lost Steps.

See it Come Down

Yes the demolition of the Heygate Estate (SE17) is really happening . This picture (click to enlarge) was taken from the top of the 343 bus - you can't see much from ground level because of the hoardings.

Though I'm not old enough to say I saw the Heygate go up, there must be a lot of old people who did and who are now seeing it come down, putting me in mind of the great song See it Come Down sung by Roy Bailey (written by John Pole): 'We was all one where we lived, wish we were now, We had debts and dole and kids but we did have neighbours. Where the street was they want to build a tombstone tower, Like a monster concrete moneybox for strangers. Every last square foot of it worth a hundred pounds, Some day we'll see that come tumbling down'.

Still in the song, it's an office block that replaced the housing, in the case of the Heygate the situation was perhaps more ambiguous. Sure the flats weren't the most beautiful buildings in the world, but easy as it is to romanticise the terraced streets they replaced some people probably found the central heating and space to be an improvement. Some would argue that it was never the architecture that was the problem but the poverty and all that goes with it.

In the background of this photo another building is going up - the Shard at London Bridge. Who knows, maybe there are children growing up now who will see it come down too, demolished one day as an early 21st century folly.

Lewisham Carnival Against Cuts

Despite the cold and the rain, between 700 and 1000 people took part in yesterday's Carnival Against Cuts in Lewisham. Protests outside local services affected by cuts, such as libraries and one o'clock clubs, were followed by a march from Catford to Lewisham town centre (by the library). It wasn't exactly Rio or Trinidad weather, but there was a samba band and jugglers.

Sue Luxton has a report and more photos at Green Ladywell (from where the photo above was sourced) and there's also a decent report at the Newsshopper (see also this film clip). There's also been a debate raging at Brockley Central where I have stuck my oar in.

Here's a short report by Camila Luise Hemmestad for EastLondonLines:



Elsewhere in South London, there were a number of actions at local Barclays Bank branches as part of the UK Uncut protests including on Walworth Road (pictured) where occupiers gathered round their 'Make the banks pay for their crisis' for an impromptu read-in.