Out Now: 'New Cross, New Cross: a cultural history of London SE14'

'This new book from the man behind the indispensable Transpontine blog is a deep cultural history which ripples far beyond SE14' (Emma Warren)

New out in Summer 2026:  300+ pages covering music, radical politics, sports, spirituality, pubs and much more. Price £15.

You can now buy the book from the following: 

The Word Bookshop, New Cross Road SE14 

Crofton Books, Brockley Road SE4 

Books Peckham, Maxted Road SE15

56a Info Shop, 56a Crampton Street SE17

Past Tense (stalls and online)

You can also order online here: https://transpontine.sumupstore.com/ or use QR code below:

[At the moment there is free delivery if ordered online for people living in the following postcode areas:  SE1, SE4, SE5, SE6, SE8, SE13, SE14, SE15, SE16, SE22. If this applies to you, at the checkout under 'shipping method' there will be an option to select 'local delivery'. If you select this it will ask for your postcode to check and if you are in one of these areas you should be eligible for free delivery] 

Some of the people and things mentioned in the book:

 Geoffrey Chaucer – Executions at the Foul Oak – Peasant revolts –  James Bond -  Noel Coward – the abandoned Ringway motorway-  cycle and road protests - New Cross psychogeography –  London Clay- Great North Wood - Romans in New Cross – Robert Browning – is the area named after a pub or vice versa? –  Welsh and Irish workers in market gardens – Octavia Hill and the campaign for Telegraph Hill Park – slavery beneficiaries and anti-slavery campaigners – New Cross in books and films – Joyce Cary – Kae Tempest – Gary Oldman –  Nil by Mouth – Shaun of the Dead – Tales of a Vampire – the first Indian nationalist to stand for parliament – a prisoner in Irish jail is nearly elected as MP – Charles Parnell – the Irish War of Independence comes to New Cross – Canals – Train factories – Chartists – the First International and a New Cross basket makers strike – tram and bus unions – the 1926 General Strike – Stone’s Engineering – Lady Flo’s squat – lost sounds and smells – 19th century vegetarians – the first Indian and Chinese restaurants – Nouvelle Quiche – Uncle Wrinkle -New Cross Hospital – New Cross Fire Station – Libraries – Spiral Tribe -Hatcham Liberal Club – labour, socialist and anarchist clubs – an anarchist bomb in New Cross Road – unemployed protests – Sylvia Pankhurst – Spanish civil war – The Field – Avalon Café – Haberdashers schools – Suffragettes – the burning of St Catherine’s church – feminism – music hall – Louis Armstrong – Fats Waller – cinema – Spike Milligan – the Harp Club – the Venue – Blur – Placebo - Oasis – a horse racing course – swimming pools – athletics – first cycling clubs – the roller skating boom – the founding of the Football Association – Gaelic Athletics – Millwall not scabs – wrestling – boxing – speedway – greyhounds – war damage – peace protests – CND – Montague Arms – New Cross Inn – Bonzos - New Cross House/Goldsmiths Tavern – Vic Reeves – Julian Clary - Paul O'Grady - Denton Welch -  Gil Scott Heron - Deptford Urban Free Festival – Skehans – Shirkers Rest - Royal Albert – Kate Bush - Nubia Garcia – Paradise Bar – New Cross Scene – Angular records – No Pain in Pop - Deadly Rhythm – Five Bells – Charles Dickens – Marquis of Granby – the first Great Train Robbery  - Wellards Record Shop – Eddy Grant – Saxon Studio International – Dennis Bovell – Mad Professor – Jah Shaka – Lovers Rock- the Richardsons –  Underhill Studios - Chocolate Factory – Band of Holy Joy – Test Dept - Hagar the Womb – pirate radio – Double Trouble – Rebel MC - Digital Holdings – UK Funky – Drill – Jamz Supernova -  Music Room -Danger Mouse – Ultramarine – Planet Wax – Victor Le Lubez – secularists – churches - New Cross Synagogue – kindertransport -Harry Price, ghosthunter – Conan Doyle and spiritualists –  Chaos Magic – Did a New Cross Golden Dawn member invent peroxide for hair?  - the Anglo-Caribbean Association – New Cross Fascists and Anti-Fascists -Fasimbas -  The Battle of Lewisham 1977 – the New Cross Fire -  Linton Kwesi Johnson - David Rocastle – Ian Wright - 2011 riots - Fred D'Aguiar -  Queer New Cross - Venue MOT - Deptford Ravens FC - Corner  – Gentrification? - 'The New Shoreditch'– Edith Nesbit - Milton Court Estate- 'Crack City' - Squats and Housing Co-ops – Sanford – Nettleton Road –  Venue MOT – Paul Gilroy - New Cross Commoners

 

RIP Colin Jerwood - SE London punk legend

Colin Jerwood, lead singer with South London anarcho-punk band Conflict, has died.  At their 1980s peak they were very influential in the punk scene and famously once played a huge gig at Brixton Academy in 1987 ('The gathering of the 5000') which ended with 52 arrests and fighting with the police in the streets outside.

I believe that Colin was born in 1962 in Nettleton Road in New Cross, but was living in the Coldharbour Estate in  Eltham in the early days of the band and as an anarchist punk having to deal with violent racist skinheads. The band played out across South London and beyond - I saw them in mid-1980s at Thames Poly and at the Old Kent Road ambulance station squat - and put on a regular punk night in the crypt of St Pauls Church in Deptford. Later in the 1980s Colin was involved with putting on acid house parties at the Harp Club in New Cross, and in 1994 at the same location (now called the Venue) recorded their live album 'Conflict in the Venue'. Through their Mortarhate record label they put out stuff by other punk bands including New Cross favourites Hagar the Womb.

Conflict announce the start of 'The Centre' on Mondays at St Pauls Church SE8 (think this must have been late 1985/early 1986)

1986 gig at the Crypt with Potential Threat, Unknown Colours, Mentacide and Under the Gun

Colin played one of his last gigs with Conflict at the New Cross Inn in November 2024

According to Mark Wallis from Liberty (another SE London anarcho-punk band) "In the early days, Colin was an anarchist living on an estate in Eltham [the estate] with John and Paco, surrounded by NF skinheads

South London Street Art Gallery, September 2023

Refugees Welcome - Nettleton Road SE14

Refugees Welcome - Nunhead

'Now playing Stereolab Parsec' - Station Passage SE15

'Stop lying' - Peckham

'South London is Anti-Fascist' - Peckham High Street

'Edelweiss Piraten' sticker, Nunhead (name of underground youth subculture in Nazi Germany)

Multilingual radical posters Bellenden Road SE25

'Transphobia belongs in the bin' - sticker, Brockley

'Justice for Chris Kaba', New Cross Road (shot dead by police in Streatham in September 2022)

'Black Lives Matter' - Choumert Grove Car Park, SE15

#

'Black Lives Still Matter' by Aliyah Art from her exhibition 'Anime through Black Eyes' at Peckham Levels (OK not actually street art, but thematically linked)

Test Dept:Redux - Return to New Cross

Test Dept are surely one of the most influential bands to emerge from the local area, starting out in New Cross in the early 1980s (some band members lived at 8 Nettleton Road) and pioneering a politically committed industrial sound. 

In the last couple of years members of the band, who have remained active across musical and other cultural fields, have been involved in a number of events commemorating the  30th anniversary of the miners strike in which the band were very involved - during the strike they played benefits at the Albany in Deptford among other places.  I went to a great event at the Ritzy in Brixton last April which included the band presenting and discussing the film  DS30, a collage documenting that period.

This Saturday September 10th at the Amersham Arms sees a rare live performance:

'An intimate immersion into the Test Dept machine on our return to New Cross, South London with support from Feral Five and DJs providing an eclectic mix of Dub Sub Punk Noise Electro Industrial.

Live:
Test Dept:Redux
Feral Five

DJ
Elena Colombi (NTS Radio)
Amélie Ravalec and Travis Collins (Industrial Soundtrack For The Urban Decay)
Satellitic (Test Dept)
GrayC (Test Dept)

Roof Terrace BBQ Tickets £10 + booking fee available in advance from Eventbrite; £10 or £8 Concession on the door' (facebook details here)

A little while ago I played a set of music from the miners strike at am Agitdisco benefit for Housmans bookshop, and met Paul Jamrozy from Test Dept who was also playing. Here's my mix which of course includes some Test Dept.

Music Monday: Anarcho punk 1984 in New Cross & Old Kent Road

'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.

'No Defences' banner at the Ambulance Station-
'The worst thing imaginable is happening now'
(from Graham Burnett's anarcho-punk archive)

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)

Radical Housing Weekend in New Cross

An interesting programme of talks, films and visits in New Cross this weekend as part of the Radical Housing Network's London-wide Housing Weekender events.

On Saturday 26 April there will be films from 2 pm at New Cross Learning, whille in Cafe Crema (306 New Cross Road) talks will start at 1 pm, with speakers including:

'Jon Glackin on……Street Homelessness: Jon Glackin from World Homeless Action Movement is a street homeless campaigner who currently works supporting those on the streets with soup runs and advocacy. Jon will be speaking about the encroaching criminalization and discrimination of the homeless, such as the Met Police’s Operation Encompass and the banning of soup kitchens in certain areas. He will also be outlining the ways in which homeless people are self-organising and providing basic services for themselves.

Owen Hatherley on….. Urban Blight: Owen Hatherley is a journalist and writer, author of several books and articles around the issue of housing and urban architecture, including Militant Modernism, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain and This Property is Condemned. Owen will be speaking about bad architecture, poor design and the take-over of our cities by profit-driven corporativism.

Jon Broome on……Self-Build: Jon Broome, self-builder and one of the UK’s leading self-build architects who worked with Walter Segal using an innovative building method which made self-build easy, accessible, and affordable. Groups like the Lewisham Self-Builders adopted this approach in the 1980′s, and was later used to good effect at various sites in Lewisham, Southeast London, Brighton and elsewhere. He will outline: What we mean by self-build, What are the potential benefits, Examples of people who have done it, Who can take part, Participatory design, Low energy building and Sustainable neighbourhoods'.

There will also be an opportunity to tour two local Housing Co-ops:

SANFORD HOUSING CO-OPERATIVE:  Established in 1973, Sanford is currently celebrating its 40th year as an independent housing co-operative. Tours will be running during the day, exploring the gardens, fish ponds, renewable energy measures, and looking inside the 8-person shared houses.

NETTLETON ROAD HOUSING CO-OPERATIVE: Nettleton Co-op was established in the late 1970’s/ early 1980’s, when derelict council houses that had been squatted were turned into a housing co-operative. Nettleton co-op is made up of a number of terraced houses on a pedestrianised street, and is renowned for its annual community street-party.

Further details/full programme here

Music Monday: Test Dept and the Miners Strike

Continuing the series of posts on the 1984/85 miners strike and South London, we turn to Test Dept. As discussed several times here before, the influential industrial band started out in New Cross, specifically at 8 Nettleton Road where some of the band were living.

Many bands played benefit gigs for the miners, but Test Dept went further and put out a joint album with the South Wales Striking Miners Choir. The choir and the band played gigs together around the country, as well as putting out the album to raise funds for the strike. One of the gigs was at the Albany in Deptford on 18 September 1984, recalled by Neil Stoker: 'We did a huge benefit at the Albany Empire in London with a Welsh male-voice choir, and a band called Test Department. I can only describe Test Department as a band which filled plastic drums with water and sand and banged them in a rhythmic way. It was a bizarre night--these Welsh miners came down in a coach and were stuck in the middle of Deptford with these punks banging plastic drums--but there were a thousand people there!'

The album. Shoulder to Shoulder,  was recorded at various venues including Crynant Rugby Club (South Wales), Snowdon Colliery Welfare Club (in Kent coalfield), and Cold Storage studio in  Brixton. Some tracks featured the choir, and some Test Dept, but on what track - Comrades - they performed together.

From the back of album - note that at this time the contact address for Test Dept was 41 Billington Rd SE14

Last month Test Dept founders founders Graham Cunnington and Paul Jamrozy put on installation commemorating the strike at the AV Festival on Tyneside.  Paul told the Quietus: 'for the people who took part in it and lived through it, it's certainly not forgotten, and bringing up the 30 years of the strike brings it to the fore. People are still very bitter, there's a lot of anger. I think it's important to engage with that. Seumas Milne is bringing out the new Enemy Within book, and there's some stuff coming out with the Freedom Of Information Act, there are people still looking for some truth and justice to come out of it, with Orgreave and how the strike was policed... It was also the first signs of the militarisation of the police force in a way that is now just accepted: whether you're a pensioner or a student you're going to come across against people in full riot gear ready to attack you at the slightest excuse. That all became normalised during the Miners' Strike'.

Shoulder to Shoulder - the label

Housmans benefit this week

As it happens, Paul Jamrozy and myself are both DJing this Thursday 10th April at a benefit for Housmans, the long established radical bookshop at Kings Cross. The event, at Surya on Pentonville Road, is themed around the Agit Disco project, with people playing tunes they define as political. I'm actually going to be playing a short set of tracks linked to the miners strike, and had already decided to include Test Dept when I heard that Paul is playing too. Others taking part include Stewart Home and John Eden - full details at Facebook

See previously:

Lewisham Miners Support Group/Women Against Pit Closures

Supporting the Miners at Goldsmiths

What next for the Montague Arms?

So last night there was an event at the Montague Arms, a Christmas party for the Nettleton Road Housing Co-op. Sorry for any confusion about this - last week somebody involved in it sent us the flyer (below) and asked us to promote it, so we put up a post about it. Then somebody else contacted us and said it was a private party and that if we didn't delete the post, it might be cancelled. So we took it down.

Pleased to report that party went ahead (photo below was posted on Twitter by My Tiger My Timing), but it seems that this was the last event before the building is handed over to new owners next week. The place is fondly remembered by many, as recalled here before, but other than the odd private event it has been closed as a pub for almost a year.

So what next? Property Company Kingsbury has announced that the building has been 'acquired for development' (see below, accessed from their website yesterday). They say that it 'will be subject to a planning application to restore viable commercial activities at ground floor level, with a number of residential apartments above'. It's unclear whether the intention is to  refurbish  the existing building, or to put in planning permission to demolish and rebuild, but Kingsbury have told the Newsshopper that it won't be a pub. So it looks like another good pub gone, unless the new owners have a change of heart. There is certainly scope for a viable pub in that area, for a start Southwark Council has opened a big new office opposite Queens Road station with nowhere nearby for staff to drink after work on Queens Road between Peckham and New Cross.

Did squatting save Victorian London?

In his book 'A Summer in the Park: a Journal of Speakers' Corner' (Freedom Press, 2004), Tony Allen puts forward the view that 'squatting saved Victorian London'. His argument is that 'Government Housing policy of the late 1960s was to knock down the crumbling grandeur of London's inner city Victorian terraces and replace them with tower blocks and housing estates. They placed CPOs - Compulsory Purchase Orders - on the old property and then spent years moving the tenants around and gradually trashing and tinning up the voids'. Many of the empty properties were squatted, and subsequently squatters and remaining residents joined forces and campaigned against Council demolition plans.

'By 1979 the policy was finally changed. "Renovate the Victorian terraces and divide and rule the squatters". The more articulate and organised of the squatters did a range of deals with the various councils and ended up living as co-ops or council tenants on controlled rents in the renovated Victorian terraces. It may not have been a deliberate anarchist policy, but nevertheless the squatters of the seventies saved Victorian London'.

The example he gives is North Paddington/North Kensington, but does the theory hold true for South East London? There are certainly housing co-ops in Victorian terraces to this day in New Cross with origins in the squatting movement (e.g. Nettleton Road), and indeed many houses in Telegraph Hill area were squatted in the 1970s and 1980s - when I stripped the wallpaper in my house I found some great old squat punk graffiti including a picture of a punk with a mohican and 'The Exploited' . This was a period when middle class taste was for new-built housing away from the inner city. I am one of many ex-squatters living inVictorian housing round here - some in co-ops and housing association properties, some who got cheap mortgages when not many people wanted to buy Victorian terraced houses, and/or when Housing Associations were buying people out of their tenancies by paying for them to put down deposits on houses.

So if Tony Allen is right there are a number of levels of irony here - the good burghers of the conservation areas partially owe the survival of the Victorian fabric of the city to a bunch of punks and anarchists. And conversely the latter inadvertently paved the way for the (re)gentrification of the inner city.

What do people think?

Band of Holy Joy/Test Department

We've enthused about The Band of Holy Joy here before, arguably the best band to come out of New Cross in the 1980s. Good to see they are busy again - in fact they are doing a cabaret/theatre piece, Troubled Sleep, at Chat's Palace in Hackney this week (5 December). Good too to see BoHJ singer Johny Brown getting a four page profile in The Wire magazine (December 2008), expounding on influences including Brecht, Behan and Burroughs.

Brown now lives in Stoke Newington, but in the interview he recalls that in the 1980s 'we were rooted in New Cross. Test Department and [UK comedian] Vic Reeves, they were our peers'. In the mid-1980s, he was sharing a house in Nettleton Road with another band, Test Department, who he compares with BoHJ; 'Test Department were incredibly masculine ... and we were extremely feminine. We were about romance, about a Britain that was fading away, contrasted with a reality that was quite dark. But there was definitely a spirit shared. Test Department were polemic where we were quite poetic, personal, romantic, the way we saw things. But then again, personal is political. They were out on tour with the miners during the strike, and you can't get more personal than people's lives being affected like that... It was totally opposite to Test Department, who were in training upstairs being militant. We were downstairs on drugs writing these really weird dirges. It was chalk and cheese'.

In terms of the local scene, Brown remembers 'there was lots of cheap housing in New Cross then, lots of squats and housing association houses, and there was Goldsmiths College too. [Test Department's] Angus was top boy at Goldsmiths, so it was mix of squatters, students, genius guys and general misfits. Vic Reeves was a very informed guy, with this art background and he was a really brilliant musician, very much an improvisor, working with people like Steve Beresford way before he made his hit record. The very first music I made when I came to London was with Brett [Turnbull film maker], Vic Reeves and his girlfriend Lucie Russell, and a guy called George on saxophone. We used to do this beautiful free rolling stuff with this cheap and nasty yellow and black plastic Wasp synthesizer. Of course everybody eventually moved away'.

(Thanks to John at Uncarved for letting me know about this article)

Deptford Arms Talk

Tuesday's talk at the Deptford Arms on the musical history of New Cross and Deptford threw up a few new (to me) local connections.

One of the emerging themes of my research into this is that the amount of sustained musical activity in the area is not a result of some magic creative dust (well there might be some powders involved, but whether they promote or impair creativity is another matter), nor is it solely due to having Goldsmiths in the middle of the area (though that is definitely one contributor). A key factor has always been the availability of cheap/free places to live, rehearse and play music, with for instance local housing co-ops like Nettleton Road and Sanford being significant musical hubs.

So it was good to hear of some recent Sanford musicians. Apparently the bassist of New Young Pony Club lived there until recently...



... as did a couple of members of Spektrum (this is Kinda New):

.

Some other stories people came up with:

- Richey Edwards sometimes hung out on Crossfields Estate with Detpford-based Manic Street Preachers roadies.
- Futures nightclub was on Deptford Broadway where the Lady Florence Institute is now.
- The shop at 21 Deptford High Street that was the 1960s Soul City (Europe's first specialist soul shop) was later used as the base for Deptford Fun City records.

As always, keep the stories coming in if you have memories of any of this or related tales.

Walking New Cross (5): Hatcham Conservation Area South

The area bordered by New Cross Road, Brocklehurst Street, Sainsburys and Avonley Road is, like the Telegraph Hill Area on the other side of New Cross Road, a conservation area of Victorian housing developed under the auspices of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers, who owned the land. The Hatcham Manor Estate (as it was originally known) was built between 1848 and 1894 on land that had formally been the grounds of Hatcham House, with most of the housing intended for working class people

The building of houses in Hatcham Park Road started in 1848, following the rebuilding of the Five Bells pub in 1840 (the present building, now grade II listed). There had been a pub on this site for many years before however, in fact before it was renamed in 1850, Hatcham Park Road was known as Five Bells Lane (as was Besson Street on the opposite side of New Cross Road). I believe that Gary Oldman's 1997 film Nil by Mouth was shot in the pub, he did after all grow up round the corner.

I'd never explored Hatcham Mews before this weekend - the sign saying 'private road - owned by GLE Properties Ltd' doesn't invite passers-by to stroll in.

I was surprized how much is up there - the back of the post office sorting office, some modern flats with interesting design and the Hatcham Mews Business Centre in converted Victorian builidings. A glance at the list of tenants outside Block A says a lot about the South London labour market - five of the nine firms listed are security guard companies.

Nettleton Road has been explored at Transpontine several times before with its housing co-ops and myriad musical/sub-cultural connections, so for now I will simply note the Rubbish Fairy magic caravan parked there, reading 'recycle or die', 'rubbish fairy' and Syph - the latter apparently decorated it for a trip to Glastonbury last year.

Not much to say about Hart's Lane other than it is dominated by the wall that separates it from the Sainsbury's car park, the wall predating the superstore so presumably being a relic from the railway yards that used to be there. Off Hart's Lane there is a small terrace, Brighton Grove, that was built in 1858 for the employees of the London & Brighton Railway.

Mouse in Nettleton Road

We have chronicled before the various musical/subcultural connections with Nettleton Road in New Cross. Over at Green Galloway, Alistair has posted some information about Mouse (Sharon Beaumont), a Nettleton Road resident in the 1980s. Mouse played bass with various bands including Psychic TV, The Royal Family and the Poor, Fire & Ice and Feast of Hunger. She was also part of the Kill Your Pet Puppy zine collective, a poet and occultist.

Transpontine TV

I’ve put together a Transpontine playlist of videos on YouTube of music and songs linked to South East London. Take a look at:

Band of Holy Joy - What the Moon Saw (1985) – gorgeous song, the band recently reformed and when I saw them at the Windmill in Brixton last year they were fantastic. Cherry Red recently released a retrospective compilation, Leaves that fall in Spring (see review at Swedish Nurse).

Test Department – Total State Machine (1984) - awesome industrial assault from their Beating the Retreat album in solidarity with striking miners.

Conflict – The Serenade is Dead – live anarcho-punk action from 1985.

(the previous three bands all had connections with Nettleton Road in New Cross)

The Violets - Mirror Mirror (2006) – current Angular favourites.

Linton Kwesi Johnson – It Dread Inna Inglan (1979) - unaccompanied reading from dub poet, ex-Goldsmiths student and long time Brixton resident – ‘no matter what they say, come what may, we are here to stay inna Inglan’.

Squeeze - Up the Junction (1979) – from Top of the Pops, ‘I never thought it would happen with me and the girl from Clapham’. The SE London band played early gigs at The Oxford Arms in Deptford (now the Birds Nest).

Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine (1992) – The Only Living Boy in New Cross.

Shirley Temple (1936) – Old Kent Road – US child start goes cockney in the film Little Princess.

Brain of Morbius (2003) – I'm a Busy Bee and I'm loaded – big in New Cross and apparently massive in Hungary

June Brides (1986?) Every Conversation – live version of one of the greatest 1980s indie-pop songs. The band were based in Lewisham (lived in Courthill Road) and used to rehearse at studios off Creek Road in Deptford.

Nettleton Nexus Revisited

Our recent post on Nettleton Road in New Cross and its musical productivity in the 1980s has set a few memories working. Alec Turner, formerly of Nettleton Road and now living with family in a remote part of Norway, has told us that:

- he lived in the early 1980s at number 28. This was where Colin from Conflict was born (pre-housing co-op days) .

- Alec then lived at number 11 along with Karen and another female member of the Hagar the Womb. At this time, Alec himself was in a band with his friend Martin called The Depth Charge Souls. They released a single, The Price of Love, in 1986. It made it to second single of the week in Melody Maker and got played once on John Peel.

- members of The Mekons and a guitarist from Blue Aeroplanes also lived in the street as well as members of Test Dept and Band of Holy Joy (as mentioned in earlier post). Bob from Blood & Roses and Mitch (also of Hagar the Womb) lived at number 5. Alistair from Kill Your Pet Puppy zine thinks he lived at number 24.

All the house numbers aren't very important, as it was a co-op people moved in to one house and then maybe moved to a room in another house as it became available. All this does show though what a cauldron of music this place was, as well as some interesting continuities over time. For instance, Hagar the Womb ended up on Conflict's Mortarhate records, whose founder Colin was born in the same road. Any more memories and documents (print or music)?

Listen to Depth Charge Souls - The Price of Love MP3

Nettleton Road Nexus

Nettleton Road in New Cross is a small street in South London that has had a disproportionate impact on leftfield music, particularly it seems in the 1980s. My understanding is that at one point it was squatted and then became run as a housing co-operative (and still is).



We have already mentioned in these pages that members of Test Dept lived at 8 Nettleton Road, and it seems that members of The Band of Holy Joy did too. We also have it on good authority from somebody else who lived there that Colin Jerwood, lead singer with anarcho-punk band Conflict (pictured here), was born in the street.


Now, over at the always interesting Greengalloway, Alastair Livingstone has recalled a a few more connections:

"Although I spent most of my years in London north of the Thames (in Ilford, Islington and Hackney) I was briefly a south Londoner - New Cross... Part of the psychogeography of south London Transpontine are exploring are music links, and Neil has asked if I know of any... Got three:

Mitch of Hagar the Womb / Snork Maidens / Flack lived on Nettleton Road 10 years ago.

Mouse of Psychic TV lived at 10 Nettleton Road mid/ late eighties (at no. 10)

Bob of Blood and Roses also lived at no. 10 in late eighties".

The bands mentioned all deserve a post of their own, and I will supply more detail when I finish reading The Day the Country Died. Alistair himself was involved in the seminal punk zine Kill Your Pet Puppy and has described a 1983 New Year's Eve party in Nettleton Road:

'Year started with a party at Mouse's house (Nettleton Road/ New Cross) where we listened very intensely to first Psychic TV album. Mouse later became a Psychic TV person (played on Godstar single) . Min was also at party, and by September had moved to Beck Road- next door to PTV Temple HQ. As per previous blog, Min became Zos Kia singer/ wrote words for song Rape. Zos Kia in turn evolved into Coil'.

Some other local music connections

Test Dept

Next up in the roll call of great South East London bands is Test Dept. To quote from Deptford Fun City: 'Test Department were formed in 1981 from a group of people living at 8 Nettleton Road [New Cross]. They broke new ground with their ‘metal bashing’ industrial sound, using scrap metal for percussion. Their support for the Miners' Strike is documented in their 1984 LP, ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’, recorded with the South Wales Striking Miners Choir'.

In his book 'Queer Noises: Male and Female Homosexuality in Twentieth Century Music' (Cassell, 1995), John Gill describes the experience of an early Test Dept performance:

"One sunny Saturday afternoon early in the 1980s, a colleague and I found ourselves wandering the streets of south of Blackfriars Bridge, on a caper that was straight out of Thomas Pynchon. A band who had given us a tape of their music, crashing industrial gamelan music battered out of steel springs, oil drums, sheets of metal, vast tanks, drills and buzzsaws, had invited us to one of their performances. The precise address of the concert had to be kept secret. They hired industrial premises – railway arches, warehouses, industrial depots – under the guise of anonymous charities… We were told to keep an eye out for their initials – TD, for Test Dept, a collective from New Cross in South London…

It was probably the only concert I’ve attended where I wondered if I was going to die. Test Dept were (and remain) stunning, breathtakingly noisy and quite terrifying… As they drummed up metal thunder on an adventure playground’s worth of industrial detritus, violent electronic noise was bled into the mix and grainy Russian revolutionary films were projected on to band and stage… The smell of oil was everywhere, and when they began applying cutting machinery to their instruments, producing volcanic spurts of sparks 20 feet across, people stubbed out cigarettes and backed towards the door". At a similar event nearby some time later, Test Dept were arrested before starting.

I saw Test Dept much later, at the last big night at Brixton squat venue Cool Tan in 1995.

Watch Test Dept - Compulsion (1984) at YouTube

South East London Synagogue

This must be one of the great lost buildings of New Cross - the South East London Synagogue in New Cross Road, where the Jehovah's Witnesses Kingdom Hall now stands.

According to Jewish Communities & Records, this building was consecrated in March 1905 and was destroyed by a German air raid on 27 December 1940. After this the congregation moved temporarily to 117 Lewisham Way (recently known as the Elephant house and demolished just last month). It 'returned to its original site in 1946, first to a temporary hut and then to new purpose-built synagogue in 1956'. However the congregation went into decline and it closed in 1985, by which time it only had 56 male members compared with 294 in 1939.

Afterwards the old synagogue was squatted for a while and used as a rehearsal space for Test Department, among others. I assume the 1950s building must have then been demolished, because the Jehovahs Witnesses hall looks more recent (correct me if I am wrong).

The synagogue seems have been started by Ashkenazi jews from eastern Europe living locally. Services started in a house in 452 New Cross Road in 1888, and then moved to two rooms in Nettleton Road, followed by a hut in in 1889 Lausanne Road until the building above was opened.

Credits - picture comes from South London Liberal Synagogue - I believe this is the earlier building rather than the 1950s one.

Band of Holy Joy

We have lots of writing about music here at Transpontine, but not enough actual music. To correct this we are now going to try and include links to MP3s, concentrating on South London obscurities and otherwise unavailable stuff.

First up, The Band of Holy Joy, decribed in The Rough Guide to Rock as follows: 'Amidst the glossy, superficial optimism of a lot of mid-80s chart music, Band Of Holy Joy were lauded by the music press for bringing the dirt and hurt back into pop. The ramshackle line-up – acoustic instruments ranging from accordion to toy trumpet, and not a guitar in sight – invited comparisons with The Pogues, but there was something very English about a group steeped in lowlife London and happy to make something of it. What they made of it fitted the band’s name. Singer/lyricist Johny Brown supplied the words for strangely uplifting songs of urban angst that brought comparisons with Brecht and Brel, but were firmly contemporary, with privatization, Prince and E-type hedonism all targets for the densely detailed lyrics. The band grew out of a group of friends living in the New Cross area of south London, although Brown was originally from the northeast of England. A south-London indie label, Flim Flam, released their first records, the mini-album THE BIG SHIP SAILS (1986) and the full-length MORE TALES FROM THE CITY (1987)'.

As Deptford Fun City notes, Band of Holy Joy emerged from a squatting (later housing co-op) scene centred around Nettleton Road in New Cross. Vocalist Johny Brown told Melody Maker in 1987: 'It was at a time when New Cross was really brilliant... Me and Max used to live in a big house with Test Department. That was how Holy Joy were formed... in Test Department's basement where they rehearse. We found an old organ there. It was this big house with no windows. They had a black door with a wreath on it and the house was haunted’ (Melody Maker, 1987).

BoHJ’s 1986 album ‘More Tales from the City’ was recorded at Chocolate City in New Cross, a now vanished recording studio on New Cross Road (think it was where that now equally defunct night club stands between the White Hart and Besson Street). The band split up in 1992, although they did reform a couple of years ago.

Mad Dot, from 'More Tales from the City' includes the immortal lines: ‘I get the madness in my head, when I lie for days in bed, or when I walk up the New Cross Road, When I’m starved and I haven’t been fed'

Band of Holy Joy - Mad Dot (MP3)

Some of their later stuff is available at ITunes but not 'More Tales...', which defintely deserves a re-release.