Ladyfest at Goldsmiths

A week-long Ladyfest is happening at Goldsmiths Students Union in New Cross right now. You've already missed Monday's happenings but other feminist-friendly events include:

TUESDAY
3- 4.30pm in SLCR: ‘Women and Direct Action’ workshop with NUS Women’s Officer Liv Bailey.

5pm in RHB308: Film Screening ‘Patti Smith - Dream of Life’ plus discussion on Women in Music.
9pm, the Streetch: Ladyfest Pub Quiz.

WEDNESDAY
12.30- 4pm, SLCR: Video Gaming Session.
4.30pm, SLCR: Why I am a Fat Activist. Talk & discussion with fat and queer activist Charlotte Cooper.
6pm. RHB137: Pitbull Film Productions Short Films Screening Talk by filmmakers Bev Zalcock and Sara Chambers. FREE
7pm, RHB143: Performance Art with Justyna Scheuring, Bojana Jankovic, Nicole Dimitrakopoulou, Becky Fury, Kinetic Aesthetic.

THURSDAY
12 - 2pm, SLCR: Crafternoon - tie dye, make - do and mend & knittingworkshop.
4 -7pm, Common Room: Ladyfest Live - Accoustic Afternoon.
9pm - onwards, The Streetch: Ladyfest Band Night with BRACELETTES, WETDOG, PENS and VERONICA FALLS. Tickets available from Students’ Union Shop or online on http://www.wegottickets.com/event/71683 (£3) or on the door(£4).

FRIDAY
12-4pm, The Streetch: Jumble Sale and Craft Stalls.

All events FREE except Ladyfest Band Night but donations are appreciated and will go to Women’s Liberation charities.

(Click to enlarge)

ROOM DETAILS:
Special Collections = Special Collections, ground floor, Goldsmiths Library
Common Room = the Common Room, first floor, Goldsmiths Students’ UnionBuilding.
SLCR = Steven Lawrence Committee Room, ground floor, GoldsmithsStudents’ Union Building.
RHB308 = Room 308, second floor, Richard Hoggart Building (main building).
The Streetch = The Streetch Bar, second floor, Students’ UnionBuilding.
RHB137 = Room 137, ground floor, Richard Hoggart Building (main building).
RHB143 = Room 143, ground floor, Richard Hoggart Building (main building).

For any questions please contact - Evy on evy.samuelsson[at]gmail.com

London's Lost Garden

Yet another Deptford history blog on the block. London's Lost Garden aims to explore the history of Sayes Court, the 17th century garden of John Evelyn in Deptford - now remembered in the local Sayes Court Park. Only one post at the blog so far, but promises more.

Southwark Clubbing History

Excellent article - by Tim Burrows in the Daily Post (5 February 2010) on the clubbing history of Southwark. There's even a helpful map for the South London disco tourist. Among the places featured are:

- the Royal Oak, Tooley Street (demolished to make way for the Hilton hotel) - the location for Nicky Holloway's pre-acid house Special Branch soul/disco nights in the 1980s, where Danny Rampling, Pete Tong and Gilles Peterson also DJed.

- Dirtbox warehouse parties in Tooley Street (where Hay's Galleria now stands) put on by Phil Dirtbox with DJs including Jay Strongman and Rob Milton.

- Shoom - Rampling's early acid house night, held in the Fitness Centre on Thrale Street (Southwark Bridge end).

- Clink Street - home to the RIP parties in 1988, legendary hooligan house: 'Chelsea fans and Arsenal fans would warily eye each other up but later on they’d be having a right good chat and dance, just chilling, which was obviously due to the ecstasy' (Mark Easton).

- Jacks, 7-9 Crucifix Lane - still going, this was the venue for Andy Wetherall's Sabresonic parties in the mid-1990s.

- Cynthia's Robot Bar (later Club Wicked, now Astria), 4 Tooley Street - location for 21st Century Bodyrockers, electroclash AcidHousePunkRock nights in 2002.

Much of this activity took place amidst the ruins of dockside industry, but before the developers moved in. Until the 1960s, the Pool of London between London Bridge and Tower Bridge was a thriving dock, but it was all over by the end of the 1970s. The article quotes Rampling: “It was rundown. The whole south side of the river was a series of closed warehouses and industrial units, so it was like a ghost town after dark. But the night spots that sprang up drew people into the area from far and wide.” In this supposed wasteland, London acid house and rave culture was born.

The Daily Post is a temporary free newspaper linked with the Red Bull Music Academy, a month long series of musical happenings with its HQ also on Tooley Strreet.

(cross posted from History is Made at Night on account of its South London content)

Ellen Rogers

Seemingly New Cross-based photographer (and sometime No Pain in Pop associate) Ellen Rogers gets interviewed by Matthew Sheret at Global Comment. The article starts with a little SE14 vignette: 'Maybe it’s the coffee, but on the way into New Cross the graffiti only seems to say ‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’. Alongside the railway line, for what seems like a full five minute stretch, mounds of garbage and industrial waste hurtle and spill, a vista of twisted white metal, most of it less than a decade old. It’s now just trashed and dashed between old railway arches and cracked shutters, poked at by men in yellow jackets riding yellower machines, sharp and torn and used. It’s hateful, but London puts up with it... and suddenly I’m not on the train anymore. I’m in a cafe surrounded by the fsssssh-pak of an espresso machine and the retro-jazz of New Cross with photographer Ellen Rogers'.

Alan Moore and Kenneth Anger get name checked, and indeed some of her images would be at home in the Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity exhibition featured here recently. For instance this image from her 'Morrigan follows her now' series reminds me of a Victorian spiritualist photograph:

ⓒ Ellen Rogers

ATV: 1978 interview

As mentioned here before, Mark Perry of the great punk band Alternative TV (as well as being editor of punk zine Sniffin' Glue) was living in Deptford at the time - to be precise at 24 Rochfort House, Grove Street. This November 1978 interview from the radical magazine The Leveller mentions that he went to West Greenwich secondary school and had an unsuccessful trial for Millwall FC. He also expounds on his DIY philosophy with Deptford Fun City records.

Click on images to enlarge - I haven't transcribed the whole thing, but here's some sections:

How is it done at Deptford Fun City?
With ATV we go in and produce the record ourselves, cut it and get it pressed. That way, it you do it wrong it's all your own fault. I sit down and design the cover. We get the photos taken, nick a SLADE sticker. We organise and distribute the ads - all dwon the line. It's all about doing it yourself.

I don't worry about anything. Record companies make you worry, come up and say, 'Look I don't think there's a single there lads'. So you get these 18 year old kids going mad trying to make a hit single... and they've signed for five years.

Tom Robinson says he signed with EMI because he wanted to reach the largest possible audience.
We get to 5000 people on Deptford Fun City. Directly to them -crash. The profits come right back to us and we put it into the next record. We don't own oil wells and all that. Tom Robinsom sells 20 -30,000, making profits for EMI, which I don't think is a good thing. The people who really wanted it would've bought it anyway. You don't know what dastardly things people like EMI are into.

Why have you never done a Rock Against Racism gig?
There's a lot of bands doing it and I don't think it needs ATV. In the end it's down to if you enjoy a RAR gig and I never have. What we did enjoy was the SUS benefit in Deptford. SUS - the campaign against the vagrancy laws - was a little thing run by the blacks in the community. RAR's more of an organisation ... I went on the march, but didn't fancy the gig [Carnival]. What they're doing's great. But RAR needs a wham-bam, Generation X type band. And we're not like that. A band can't change the world. And I still think there'd have been a fair few there at the Carnival without any bands. No, playing for nothing and selling albums cheap are the positive productive things you can do for people.

And that's why you did the free tour with Here and Now, the squatter/hippie band from Ladbroke Grove?
Yeah, we went on the tour. They did 30 dates, we did 15 of them. They did us a good turn by organising it and we did them one by making an album of it, 'What you see is what you are', with them on one side and us on the other. It was funny like when we played at Stonehenge, quite a few punks came along and were really freaked out standing next to these long-haried hippes. Another free concert we did there were three bands - all playing for nothing -which isn't bad. This kid comes up to me 'What you playing with this bunch of hippies for? Why don't you play down the club?" I said 'Look you've saved a quid aint' you? Have a couple more drinks'.

You chose the name Alternative TV because that's what pisses you off more than anything, the brain-softening mass media?
Power is in the hands of those rich enough to buy it, especially in culture. Because if everybody was involved we'd all do it so much better. Look at kids in school bashing around in the music room, playing great music on cymbals and all that. Then when they get out of school, with all the trash put out on the radio, they forget about the music room. I think it's a shame. I played xylophone, violin, trombone at school. I'm still like that now. So-called hip kids are all guitarists - that's all they do. They play All Right Now, play solo just the way it is on record.

No, most people with the arts thing in their bonce know nothing about life, use it to buy white powder. The people who need it can't get it. I really hate Harpers & Queen - they went all through punk and decided it was finished. Five pages on my life and I hated those bastards. They don't know what it's all about. They're living in Chelsea with their rich Daddies. If they lived up the road from Mullins, a big factory in Deptford, with their Dad watching ITV, buying the Mirror and Sun ... They don't know about things like people having to find a flat, your Dad getting chucked out the docks 'cos the docks have closed.

Where do you live?
With my Mum and Dad in Deptford, where I was born.

Skate Park Action Group

The Skate Park Action Group were out leafleting last weekend as part of their campaign to get some skate facilities in the New Cross area (Telegraph Hill Ward).

They are having a consultation day on Saturday 27th February from 11am - 3pm in Telegraph Hill Lower Park - on the basketball court. There will be a chance to comment on designs and options for potential sites, skating workshops and a free mobile skate park for the day.

What is being proposed is not a big skate park like on Peckham Rye but a smaller, low impact facility that can be fitted into one of a number of local under-used spaces. With skateboarding once again popular in the area, it sounds like a good idea.

My personal preference, which would fit in with the Bold Vision plans for a new community cafe at the Telegraph Hil Centre, would be to pedestrianise the section of Kitto Road by the church (i.e. the one way section between the top of Pepys Road and Jermingham). You could then add skate facilities, and open the new cafe out directly on to the park.

Contact skateparkactiongroup@hotmail.co.uk or check out their facebook group.

Brockley Ukulele Group Valentine's Ukebox

Brockley Ukulele Group will be doing their ukebox thing at the Amersham Arms on Valentine's Day, so come along and shout out for your favourite romantic/anti-romantic song.

South East London Folklore Society & Southwark Mysteries

Lots coming up at South East London Folklore Society, starting this Thursday 11th February with Jack Gale talking on 'ATOZOMANCY - the Game of Chance and the Speaking of the Landscape, how shamanism, Chaos Magic and Earth Mysteries take tea together with the London A to z!'

The on 11th March Alan Murdie will talk on 'Unknown Ghosts of London', followed on 8th April by Alan Brook on 'Haunted Pubs of London', and on 13th May by Janet Dowling on 'Fierce and fearless Women'.

All talks at The Old King's Head, Kings Head Yard, 45-49 Borough High Street, London, SE1 1NA. Talks start at 8.00pm, £2.50 / £1.50 concessions.

There's also a special SELFS-hosted event coming up on the 25th March (6pm-9pm) on Southwark Lore, with songs and stories from John Constable, Nigel of Bermondsey and more - further details to follow. This one will be at the Old Mayfair Carpet Gallery, 301-303 Borough High Street, Southwark, London, SE1 1JH, a temporary gallery/project space.

Southwark Mysteries

John Constable meanwhile is busy preparing for the staging of The Southwark Mysteries in Southwark Cathedral in April, where it was first performed in 2000. Remarkably, he was featured extensively in last week's BBC Songs of Praise talking about the play cycle and its links to Cross Bones burial ground, also shown in the programme which was themed around Modern Southwark.

John is blogging about the preparations for the play at 100 days of Southwark Mysteries, where you can read about the call out for members of the community cast.

Party at the Telegraph

It's been a year since The Telegraph opened at the old Earl of Derby in Dennets Road SE14, and some new people are taking over running it - John and Leila Davie. To mark the change of management they are having a party next Friday 12th February from 6:30 to 8:00 pm complete with drink (well it is a pub) and complimentary Cassoulet.

As well as food, drink and general conviviality, the pub already has a regular Monday night quiz night with salsa/Latin dance classes planned, presumaby upstairs in the function room.

French for Cartridge

French for Cartridge are celebrating the release of their new album Liquorice (Dinner with Daisy records) with a week-long residency 'pop-up shop' at Speedies, the retro shop in Shoreditch.

Last night they did a short acoustic set with Catherine Kontz (keyboards, vocals and stylophone) and Henri Vaxby (guitar, vocals and autoharp) accompanied by DJ Walde's human beatbox - the striking black haired figure standing in front of them in the photo is in fact a mannequin. Often described as 'art pop', they certainly have plenty of interesting time signatures and experimental touches as befits a band originally formed by students at Goldsmiths music department in New Cross with a mission to make 'atonal pop' music. But the pop part of the equation is also very much present with otherworldly melodies and strong songs. Henri, incidentally, is also part of Finnish indie popsters Icons of Elegance.

The rest of the week at Speedies (81 Redchurch Street London E2) includes varous sound installations and performances, including of John Cage's Cartridge from which the band took their name (I believe the 'French for' bit was added later to avoid confusion with another similarly monikered band). On Friday 12th February from 7:30 there's the Liquorice album launch party with support from KawaKawa.

Oh in line with the album's name there's also a selection of free liquorice sweets and some nice liquorice tea!


Full details of events over the week at the band's website. From the album, here's 'Oooh!' (film by Riccardo Arena):

(OK French for Cartridge are currently East rather than South London based, but they were formed at Goldsmiths in New Cross, used to live in Lewisham, and still teach piano, guitar and songwriting to kids in New Cross - so that's enough to justify me crossposting this from my music site to Transpontine)

Lewisham Nazi working at City Hall

Never let it be said that the BNP is not an equal opportunities employer. Why, they are happy to employ people with a background in all sorts of neo-nazi factions, not just those who have been consistently loyal to leader Nick Griffin.

According to Adam Bienkov at Liberal Conspiracy, BNP London Assembly member Richard Barnbrook has employed Tess Culnane, who stood for the National Front in competition with the BNP candidate for the London Assembly seat of Greenwich and Lewisham in 2008. She has also associated with the openly Hitler-worshipping British People's Party.

Seemingly she has now been welcomed back into the BNP, which she left in 2006 citing differences with the leadership. She stood for the BNP in the February 2009 Lewisham Council byelection in Downham ward. You can get a flavour of her supporters on various far right forums which I won't link to here. Here's once choice comment: 'Thank you Tess, The foreigners and queers who run Lewisham on behalf of our parasite enemies did not have an unchallenged contest'.

Kender Triangle and the New Cross Gas Lamp

I went to the exhibition at Kender Primary School last week about Transport for London's plans to change the traffic flows around the Kender triangle area. Essentially it is planned to scrap the one way system at that end of New Cross, so that New Cross Road and Queens Road become two way roads. Good news for people living in Kender Street and Besson Street, in that the traffic will no longer be diverted through them.

Rather sadly, the works will more or less eradicate our beloved Island opposite the White Hart pub on the junction of New Cross Road and Queens Road, with the railings and remains of the underground toilets disappearing. The Gas Lamp will survive however, being moved on to an extended pavement by the pub. It was saved from destruction before thanks to a campaign by local historian Jess Steele and others in the 1990s, and is now a Grade II listed building. This time around it has found another local advocate in the form of Adrian Bradbury, who has not only researched its history but secured agreement from TfL and NXG NDC to pay for it to be turned back into a working gas-lamp, lit automatically every night.

Adrian has kindly agreed for Transpontine to feature extracts from his article, which has been published in full by the Telegraph Hill Society as 'The Gas Lamp at New Cross Gate (No. 7 in an occasional series of historical notes on the local area)':

'The Gas Lamp in the centre of the island at New Cross Gate is perhaps one of the Gate’s most instantly recognisable features, but, as local historian Jess Steele revealed in her brilliant and successful campaign to save it from destruction in the 1990s, this is no ordinary lamp-post.

Not only is it of some interest to engineers: it doubles up as a ventilation pipe for the (now
derelict) toilets below ground; it is also of great interest to historians: it is Grade II listed for embodying the only design of Scottish architect Alexander Thomson’s work to survive south of the border... Alexander “Greek” Thomson (1817–75), is described by historian Gavin Stamp as “Scotland’s greatest Victorian architect”. He brought Greek, Egyptian and Levantine influences to bear on his design of buildings throughout Glasgow the Firth of Clyde.

Incredibly much of his work was demolished in the 1950s and 60s in the name of progress, though still standing today are his Egyptian Halls in Union Street, which is where the story of our lampstandard begins. The Egyptian Halls were built in 1870-72 and six lamp-standards with complementary Egyptian pattern were erected on the pavement outside. These lamp-standards were manufactured by the Saracen Foundry of Walter Macfarlane & Co.

[The Glasgow lamp-standards were removed soon after, apparently because they did not have planning permission]

...So how come residents of New Cross Gate now have a lamp-standard identical to those pulled down in Union Street, Glasgow? We can only guess that George Jennings, Sanitary Engineer for the Greenwich District Board of Works, had a copy of Macfarlane’s catalogue on his shelf when he commissioned public conveniences to be built on our site in 1897, and chose that very same design. He needed a ventilation pipe, but presumably wanted to disguise it as a lampstandard, as was common architectural practice in those times....

1900

1923

Incidentally, the only other example of Thomson’s work to survive outside Scotland is an identical lamp to ours which was commissioned for a similar set of public conveniences in
the triangular road junction where New Cross Road meets Lewisham Way. These toilets
were destroyed but the lamp-standard was saved and replanted a few yards away in Clifton Rise, opposite the New Cross Inn

The New Cross Gate lamp-standard, the original ornamental iron-work around the toilets and the cannon bollards marking out the edge of the original pedestrian island, which were cast in the same Saracen Foundry as the lamp-standard, have all survived to the current day, although the toilets themselves are now closed and derelict'.

1850 - the turnpike that put the gate in New Cross Gate, before the lamp

1910

1933


Artist's impression of the future, with lamp moved and a small pedestrian island replacing the current structure (click to enlarge)

Work is due to start this month on changing the roads around and will take the best part of a year. My only concern, other than largely aesthetic considerations about the loss of island railings and toilets, is about the pedestrian crossing. It looks like people would need to cross from the south side of New Cross Road onto a small island, then cross Queens Road at the junction, then cross New Cross Road from outside the White Hart. This would be three stages instead of the current two, and not a straight line either. The result could be that people could be tempted to take a short cut across a very busy road. Why not have a proper pedestrian crossing straight across the road just a bit further up past the junction towards the bus garage?

New Orleans, New Cross tonight

Cafe Crema in New Cross Road is closed for February for decorating and garden maintenance, but they will still be doing Thursday night films shows.

And tonight they are hosting one of their New Orleans, New Cross piano jams. Bring along instruments and voices and join in. 8 'til late at 306 New Cross Road (admission free). It's a lot of fun - see review of a previous session.

New Deptford History Blogs

Not one, but two new Deptford history blogs!

Old Deptford History's title is self-explanatory. This one will certainly be giving Caroline's Miscellany and Transpontine a run for our money, combining as it does some proper archival research with an interesting family history angle particularly focused on Albury Street.

Already some good material up on the Irish National League (local headquarters at 35 Albury Street) and a folklore goldmine about 34 Albury Street. Family stories, backed up by press cuttings from 1950 and 1977, tell of a haunted attic, a hidden doorway, and a local legend of secret assignations there between Lord Nelson and his lover Lady Caroline.

Then there's Shipwright's Palace, focusing on the maritime history of Deptford. Only a few posts so far, but again looks very promising with some referenced research, architectural drawings and much more.

Kat Drake

There was a good turn out at St Catherine's Church (SE14) last Friday for the Bold Vision benefit with 250+ people packed in for a programme of music, comedy and drama. It's clear that momentum is growing to convert the empty undercroft of the Telegraph Hill Centre in Kitto Road into a community cafe, with £30,000 already raised towards the estimated total budget of £80,000.

As well as local classical musicians playing the Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns, music included blues band Little Devils and Mazaika, whose Russian accordionist Igor Outkine played a selection of Abba songs. They've both been featured on Transpontine before, but new to me was Kat Drake - a New Cross-based folk singer with a beautiful voice. She has even written a song called Telegraph Hill, so that's another one down for the great South London songbook.

Here she is singing a version of Damien Rice's Volcano with the American singer Tommy Wallach:



Kat is also part of Cloak and Dagger, up and coming electro-folk outfit. Here's the video for their track Along Came the Spider:

A coffee in Broca

This is a sight I have seen many times, P. making a coffee in Broca (by Brockley station for all you out of towners). Nice film by former Broca coffee man Lawrence Martin:

One Regular Cappuccino and a Blueberry Muffin Please from Lawrence Martin on Vimeo.

Transpontine Music Club?

A while ago Transpontine organised a successful afternoon of South London Songs as part of the Hillaballoo festival in New Cross. At this site, we have featured many songs connected in various ways to South London.

Wonder if anybody is interested in getting together to learn, play and perform some of these songs, maybe even write some new ones?

The notion is to get together a group of acoustic musicians and singers with a view to getting together a performance later in the year. Whether people wanted to take this further and become an ongoing band would be reviewed later on, but for this stage it would involve a few months of rehearsals, to take place at child friendly times every couple of weeks. Enthusiasm definitely more important than experience or virtuosity.

If you might be up for it, get in touch via the email at the top of the site.

Tek No More

We recently featured Franco Rosso's 1980 reggae movie Babylon, largely filmed in Deptford. At Uncarved, John Eden notes a few occurrences of samples from the film, most notably on Dizzee Rascal's Tek No More on his latest album. This track, produced by original junglist Shy FX, features a sample from Aswad’s Warrior Charge (from the Babylon soundtrack) as well as Brinsley Forde's chant 'Can’t Tek No More of That' from the film's closing scene.



The end of Babylon, filmed I believe, in the Crypt of St Paul's Church, Deptford:

Dark Monarch

The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art is an excellent exhibition exploring the influence of folklore, mysticism, mythology and the occult on the development of art in Britain. It was first displayed at Tate St Ives last year and has now moved to the new Towner gallery in Eastbourne. There are no plans for it to come to London as far as I know, so if you want to see it you will have to take a trip to the south coast before 21 March, when it closes.

The reason I mention it here is because it includes works by a number of visionary artists associated with South London, including in no particular order:

Graham Sutherland, Cray Fields (1920)

(artist studied at Goldsmiths in New Cross)

Derek Jarman, Sulphur (1975)

(one of a series of super 8 films made when he was living on Bankside)

Austin Osman Spare, The Dawn (1920)
(artist lived in Walworth Road)

The Four Queens Find Launcelot Sleeping - David Jones (1941)

(artist grew up in Brockley)

The Fairy Feller's Masterstroke - Richard Dadd (1864)
(painted in Bedlam asylum, St George's Fields, Southwark)

Samuel Palmer, The Lonely Tower (1979)
(artist grew up in Walworth)

Damien Hirst - The Child's Dream (2008)

(artist studied at Goldsmiths in New Cross)

Well worth a trip to the seaside, these images don't really do justice to the works, for instance the drawing by David Jones includes an incredible amount of detail as does Gadd's painting.

From New Cross to 'Ampstead

The great London Nobody Sings has been featuring songs from north of the river this week, specifically songs about Hamptead. One of the numbers featured is All Aboard for 'Appy 'Ampstead, sung in 1932 by Gracie Fields:



A quick listen shows that this is really a South East London song, or at least a song about South Londoners going on a day trip to Hampstead. It starts off "can't you 'ear the charabanc coming down the Old Kent Road", then we hear that they're on a "New Cross Bus with the beer and lunch" with a cast of characters including "Blimey Bill from Denmark Hill". The song was written by Albert Chevalier, who also wrote 'Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road' - the tune quoted in the opening bars of this song.

In search of The Deptford Wives

The Deptford Wives is such an obvious pun on the Stepford Wives that it has been used a few times - there was an episode of Radio 4 Sci-Fi comedy Nebulous with this title in 2006, a local band of that name, and a song title by Hatcham Social.

But what I'd really like to find out more about is an 1984 film. The BFI database has some limited information about it, stating that it was made by Bethnal Green Women's Film Collective and sponsored by Tower Hamlets Arts Association. Those involved included Virginia Heath, Zuni Luni, Robyn Forbes, Angela Preece and Stef Heinrich.

It is described as 'Feminist science fiction. Women are forced back into the home under constant surveillance, and find ways and means to rebel'.

Intriguing - does anybody know more about it? Was it actually shot in Deptford? Does anyone even have a copy of it lying around that could be used for a showing?

Hole in New Cross

On 22 August 1991, Hole played at the Venue in New Cross, along with Mudhoney. As mentioned here before, Kurt Cobain and the rest of Nirvana were in the audience that night. Some great footage of Courtney Love & co. playing that night has surfaced on youtube, pretty awesome stuff it is too:



More from this gig here and here

Miles Franklin in Deptford

The Australian novelist and feminist Miles Franklin (1879 -1954) is best known for her 1901 autobiographical novel My Brilliant Career (filmed by Gillian Armstrong in 1979).

She lived for a while in Chicago, where she worked for the Women's Trade Union League, and then spent the First World War in England involved in various feminist projects including Charlotte Despard's Women's Freedom League, based in Nine Elms. She was also recruited to help with Margaret McMillan's Deptford nursery for the children of munition workers and described the nursery in an article published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 13 May 1916:

'Here in Deptford, under the shadow of St Nicholas's flanked by 'The Plume of Feateher' and 'The King's Head', like Scylla and Chaybdis, in the window of one of the humble houses of the locality, is a hand-printed advertisement of a day-nursery where working mothers are invited to leave their babies from 7 am till 7 pm and that there is a doctor in regular attendacne. The signature at the foot of the announcement is 'Margaret McMillan'...

Underneath it is tunnelled with great cellars leading down to the Thames, and legend has it that the smugglers once kept their goods in the stowage. At any rate, the creek where Drake kept his boats is at hand, and misty lore has it that Queen Elziabeth sat under the mulberry tree around which the toddlers sing 'Here we go round the mulberry tree'....

Inside the enclosure, safe from the brewery lorries and brawlers of the public-houses is a charmed land of infants and toddlers in a newly-planted rose gardem, ranging from six months up to four years of age, who practically spend the day in the open air'

The full article is included in A gregarious culture: topical writings of Miles Franklin.

See also The McMillan sisters and Rudolf Steiner in Deptford

King and the Olive Fields

Phil from New Cross-based King and the Olive Fields has been in touch to tell us that they will releasing their debut 10" EP, 'Fireworks', on Monday February 22nd 2010.

The official EP launch party will be on Friday February 12th at the Duke of Uke near Brick Lane, following that they are doing a number of dates including an instore at Puregroove in Farringdon.

As a preview you can listen to/download one of the tracks from the EP, Postcards, here. Lovely in a Magnetic Fields/indie pop kind of a way.

Linkage

The links on this site have been woefully out of date, so I have had a bit of an edit. So it's hello to:
A Room of One Zone, good stuff from Deptford Marmoset including joining the wonderful Caroline's Miscellany in the search for the great ghost signs of South London.

Greenwich Industrial History - not only does what it says on the tin, but can probably tell you that that tin was made at Tinmakers & Sons in Woolwich in 1923.

Sydenham & Forest Hill Society - quality rather than quantity at Steve Grindlay's blog.

Swimsuit Issue - New Cross-based feminist blogger, not too much local-specific content, but impeccable politics and music taste.

... and it's goodbye to:

- Someday I will treat you good - Andrew broke his blogging addiction and hasn't posted for over a year. Sure he's up to something, but not quite sure what - move over Miliband, next leader of the Labour Party?

Don't Ask Nothing/Deptford Arts Network - site has vanished, perhaps they have moved on and decided Peckham is the new Deptford? Or, hazard for people doing interesting things in SE London, headed off to Shoreditch thinking it's Hollywood/the Emerald City. It isn't and the wizard is a fake.

The Man from Catford - deleted his blog :-( Have said it before in my sometime historian guise, but hey people blogger is free, unless your blog was so personally embarrassing that it would compromise you for it to exist, please don't delete it. In ten years time (maybe sooner), your seemingly trivial observations about details of life in your ends will be gold dust to somebody.

Kate - another good blogger missing in action.

In the music links I have taken out Moonbow Jake's (closed) and updated Rocklands/Music Tourist Board plus added a few South London-based bloggers including Decks and the City, Rouge's Foam, Punch Brothers Punch and The London Nobody Sings . As for record labels I have left in Angular even though they have left the hood, their New Cross roots are still showing, and added No Pain in Pop.

David Hepher's beautiful tower blocks

Currently on display at Tate Britain gallery is this painting by David Hepher (born 1935). 'Albany Flats' (1977-79) depicts the Bradenham block on the Aylesbury Estate (not the Albany Estate as is erroneously stated in this otherwise informative description at the Tate Website, though they are off Albany Road).

The painting is one of a series depicting tower blocks in South London, with others including ‘Peckham Flats’ (1975–6), ‘Walworth Flats’ (1976–9), ‘Stockwell Flats I’ (1974–5) and 'Camberwell Nocturne' (1984)- below - featuring Habington House, a block on Camberwell's Elmington Estate.

He has said: ‘ I like best to work from council blocks, preferably stained and eroded by the dirt and the weather, where the facial appearance is continually changed by the people who live there, their comings and goings, and the changing decor. I would like to think that the pictures could make people look differently at the flats around them, to see beauty in objects that they normally dismiss as ugly.’

Naturally this put me in mind of South London militant modernist Owen Hatherley, generally appreciative of high rise beauty - though I notice that even he draws the line at admiring the tower blocks on the Aylesbury.

Hepher studied and taught at Camberwell College of Art. There's some pictures of his studio in Camberwell by Pete Marshall here.

Bold Vision benefit - with Mazaika

Bold Vision's plans for a new community cafe at the Telegraph Hill Centre in New Cross are pushing on, with a benefit night at St Catherine’s Church on Friday January 29th. They say:

'The evening will include a performance of Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals (‘The Swan’, ‘The Elephant’ etc.), and appearances by folk singer/songwriter Kat Drake, blues band Little Devils, readings and drama by actors who you will recognise (and not just from Sainsbury’s), accordion and violin duo Mazaika, comic interventions by Phil Nice, and much more (including a Bar). The first half will be child-friendly and last approximately 45 minutes, so bring all the family for this community event and an introduction to some great music.

Tickets available from the Telegraph Hill Centre from 18th Jan (when open) and on the door. The concert is free to under-18s, and to adults on a pay-what-you-can-for BOLD VISION basis! (Suggest £5 +)'.

Mazaika

I am particularly looking forward to seeing Mazaika, who are based locally and have played at Brockley Max etc. but who I keep missing. They are an accordion/violin duo who play Russian and Gypsy music. If you've seen Cronenberg's Eastern Promises - in the top 5 'set partly in Deptford' films ever - you'll be familiar with accordionist Igor Outkine, as he performs in the film. Violinist Sarah Harrison has also played with an outfit called the Hot Club of New Cross - not sure if they are still going, but they sound good. Marc Almond recently performed with Mazaika at Cecil Sharp House:

From Nunhead to the Titanic

When the Titanic sunk in 1912 one of the survivors was a young wireless operator, Harold Bride.
Bride first told his story to the New York Times immediately after the disaster. 'I was born at Nunhead, England 22 years ago, and joined the Marconi forces last July. I first worked on the Hoverford, and then on the Lusitania. I joined the Titanic at Belfast'.

Bride seems to have been one of the last off the ship and spent some time swimming in the sea before being picked up. He recalled listening to the band as the ship went down: 'The way the band kept playing was a noble thing. I heard it first while still we were working wireless, when there was a ragtime tune for us, and the last I saw of the band, when I was floating out in the sea with my life belt on, it was still on deck playing "Autumn"'.

On the rescue ship, Carpathia, he quickly went to work on the wireless, sending messages from survivors.

You can read his full story at the New York Times archive for 19 April 1912. See also the entry on him at the Encyclopedia titanica. Bride was born in 1890, in 1903 his family moved to 58 Ravensbourne Avenue, Shortlands, where there is now a London Borough of Bromley plaque.

Colin Wilson: an outsider in Brockley library

The always excellent Another Nickel in the Machine has an interesting piece on the the writer Colin Wilson. Wilson was feted as a genius after the publication of his book The Outsider in 1956, which popularised existentialism. Soon though the newspapers turned on him when it became known that - shock horror- he had left his wife and child and was living with his girlfriend Joy. Wilson may never have regained his reputation as the English Jean-Paul Sartre, but he has done OK as a writer, publishing continuously ever since, especially books on the paranormal.

As Another Nickel... documents part of the early myth was that he had written the book while sleeping rough on Hampstead Heath and studying in the British Library. This may have been partly true but, as Wilson has subsequently confirmed, the title was conceived in New Cross. In his book 'The angry years: the rise and fall of the angry young men' (2007) he writes: ''By September 1954, the autumn rains had driven me back indoors, and I took a room in the auspiciously named Endwell Road in New Cross, and found a job in the Lyons Corner House in Leicester Square. Joy had now become a librarian in Stanmore, and we were so far apart that I saw her only at weekends having convinced my landlady - a kindly soul named Mrs Harris - that we were married and obliged to live apart until Joy passed her librarianship exam'.

Wilson spent Christmas Day 1954 in his room 'dining on egg, bacon and tinned tomatoes... and that afternoon headed a page in my journal: "Notes for a book The Outsider in Literature", followed by the words: "To show that the outsider is evidence of a particular type of moral development that has its finest fruit in the Christian tradition"... In the local library I had discovered an excellent section on the mystics, and I had been reading Jacob Boehme and Saint John of the Cross. Within an hour I had sketched out the whole book'.

In his autobiography 'Dreaming to Some Purpose', Wilson states that the exact address was 31 Endwell Road and that 'Brockley Public Library had the best collection of the mystics in London - most of them in the reserve section in the basement'. Before the book was published he had moved back across the river, but evidently the local library had almost as much of a role as the British library in the conception of his best known work.

Brockley in the Telegraph

The Brockley Christmas fair and a certain local ukelele group get a mention in the Telegraph's gardening section this week (14 January), with Matthew Appleby writing:

'I ran a pop-up garden shop in up-and-coming London suburb Brockley recently. We sold the dream ticket of secondhand books, local photo cards of Brockley in the snow, cupcakes, and slug and weedkillers. Only the chemicals failed to shift. This retail offering may sound like a health and safety nightmare, and indeed one child complained about tinfoil in their fairy cake, but the event had a lovely community feel, with a ukulele band, Santa and mulled wine on offer. We used a cute baby as bait (my idea) and gave the proceeds to charity (not my idea).

However, no-one bought any garden products. Maybe it was the time of year. Maybe the trendy Brockley-ites want to do it for free. Maybe the seeds and grow-your-own thing is now so embedded that no-one thinks they need garden chemicals any more. Maybe they are all organic and self-sufficient. But I doubt it'.

Local allotment holders might also be interested in the item in this same column on a new company setting up private allotments to compete with the 'socialist system' of council-run allotments - apparently 'Allotments used to be for pensioners and the poor. Now they are for the middle classes'. Discuss.

Incidentally, has anyone else noticed the over-use of the term 'pop-up' everywhere for anything vaguely temporary? Someone sticks a few pictures on a cafe wall and now it's a pop-up gallery; or in the example above, a stall in a Christmas market is rebranded as a pop-up shop.

Chicken Run

That dreadful Tory poster is on the Old Kent Road among many other places - you know the one, 'we're going to cut everything, but may just stop at your throats'. There are many spoofs out there (see for instance Liberal Conspiracy), but I'm not sure if anybody else has remarked upon the remarkable resemblance between David Cameron and a chicken - more specifically Ginger from Chicken Run. Are they by any chance related?

South London French Exiles (2): Emile Zola

The great French novelist Emile Zola lived in the Queen's Hotel in Upper Norwood from October 1898 to June 1899 while in voluntary exile during the infamous Dreyfus affair. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French Army, had been falsely accused of spying, largely as a consequence of the widespread anti-semitism in ruling circles. Zola famously came to his defence by writing an open letter to the French President, "J'Accuse" and as a result was sentenced to a year's imprisonment for criminal libel. It was to avoid this that Zola fled to London, where he remained until the death of the President and the withdrawal of the threat of prison.

Zola led a lonely existence in Norwood, his whereabouts concealed from all but trusted friends. His visitors included the French socialist leader Jean Jaures, Yves Guyot (a prominent Dreyfusard), J H Levy of the Personal Rights Association, and the novelist Octave Mirbeau.

Zola spent his time working on his novel Fécondité, cycling and taking photographs of the local area, including the following one of the Crystal Palace.

Interestingly when Zola had visited London five years previously he was deemed sufficiently a literary celebrity to be honoured in one of the regular grand fireworks displays at the Crystal Palace. Along with the 'Ascent of two Large Balloons, bearing torches and Aerial fireworks' and and 'Aquatic Forest of Floating Trees of Fire' the 23 September 1893 display included a 'Fire Portrait of Emile Zola with motto "Welcome"' (Patrick Beaver, The Crystal Palace: a portrait of Victorian enterprise, 1986).

There is a blue plaque for Zola on the hotel in Church Road, Upper Norwood (close to Crystal Palace triangle). A collection of Zola's photographs of the area has been published by the Norwood Society.

Lewisham Communists, 1926

This photo of Lewisham Communist Party members was taken in 1926. It is featured on the cover of 'Communism in Britain, 1920-39: from the cradle to the grave' by Thomas P. Linehan (2007). I found another, smaller version of the same photo online in which you can see that as well as the main banner ('Communist Party Lewisham Group, 1905, 1917, Workers of the World Unite'), they are carrying red flags with hammer and sickles.

Alexander Wolfe - New Cross Rembrandt Dealer?

From The Sunday Times, 10 January:

'...Alexander Wolfe was a lead singer without a band after their keyboard player left to sign a multi-million-pound solo deal. What was to be spectacularly good news for Jamie Cullum left Wolfe wondering where next to turn. Then he remembered the artwork he had inherited from his French grandfather. The small lithograph of an elderly beggar seeking alms, produced in 1630, had been hanging on the wall in his bedsit in south London for more than a decade. It was a precious treasure: the only link to a family he never knew and, by his own admission, “the only thing of value that I owned”. However, it was also the passport to his dreams.

Wolfe took it down, wondering what it might be worth. “And on the back there was a letter to an ancestor of mine from the painter, who gave it to him as a gift. And it was signed ‘Rembrandt’.” At auction, the print fetched £9,000. Within days, Wolfe had gone out and bought everything he needed to bring his music dreams to life...

Says Wolfe: “It was hard to let the painting go, because it was my only connection with my French family, but there was no real point in hanging a Rembrandt in a bedsit in New Cross. I justified it as selling art to make art.” He adds: “I never knew my French grandfather. We only met once and he died when I was 14, but I owe my career to him.” With his new equipment, Wolfe set to work to make Morning Brings a Flood, a beautiful album with echoes of Nick Drake, inspired by an artistic vision. “The idea was to make a record about darkness and light,” he says. Recorded over the course of a year, much of it in his own home, Wolfe played almost all the instruments — guitar, bass, piano, drums, sitar, organ, harmonium and glockenspiel — and produced it himself'.

The album was recorded in New Cross - at his twitter feed, Alexander describes himself as 'the only French lord in New Cross'!. Here's his song Teabags in Ashtrays:

Cous Cous at Café Crema

Thursday night film screenings are back at Café Crema (306 New Cross Road) with the licenses all sorted once again…

This week on January 14th they are showing Abdel Kechiche’s ‘Couscous’, a portrait of the French-Tunisian community in the French port of Sète. 'Basically an ensemble piece, it pokes into the lives of the two extended families belonging to a separated, 60-year-old immigrant shipworker, Slimane (Habib Boufares). When unemployment hits, it is the grain and red mullet dish his estranged wife so lovingly prepares which he hopes may prove the central selling point of a new restaurant he plans to open on a reconditioned quayside barge'.

Film plus polenta, or sweet cakes and wine, all for £6. Doors 7.30pm; film starts at 8.oopm.

Chew Lips

London electro-popsters Chew Lips are launching their debut album, Unicorn, later this month. Clash reports that the trio 'formed almost exactly two years ago, playing their first show at a friend's party in the fashionable New Cross area of London'. In fact, singer Tigs and James Watkins were living in New Cross when they started out, with the remaining member Will Sanderson in Dulwich. Don't know if they're still in the 'hood, but that's enough of a SE London connection to get them on Transpontine.

Here's the video for their single Salt Air, released last summer:

Young London Artist Awards at Sydenham School 2010

There's an opportunity to see some exciting work by young South London artists later this month at Sydenham School.The Young London Artist exhibition and awards on Friday 29th January 2010 (6:00-7:30 pm) will feature work by 46 A-level students, including live cooking of Eritrean cuisine, large sand installations, live video feeds linked to CCTV, painting, sculpture, photography and much more.

The prize will be judged and awarded on the night by Grazyna Ciuksza, the schools learning officer at the Horniman Museum, and Tara Page, a lecturer in art and design education at Goldsmiths College. Some of the work being produced is of degree standard and will be worth checking out whether or not you have connections with the school - all visitors are welcome.

Sydenham School is located in Dartmouth Road, London SE26 4RD. It is a comprehensive secondary school for girls, with a mixed sixth form (Hillsyde) combined with Sedgehill and Forest Hill schools.

Murder in New Cross and Thornton Heath

A 19 year old who was attacked last April in Sandford Street, New Cross, has died after being in a coma for eight months. Johnson Ndjoli died on January 5th from the injuries he sustained when he was shot, stabbed and run over by van. In November 2009, two brothers were jailed for 35 years for his attempted murder. Dwight Callender, aged 23, of Mercator Road, Lewisham, and Derrell Callender, aged 20, of Leybridge Court, Eltham, were said to have been part of the 'Shower Gang' and to have carried out the attack following an argument with Ndjoli's friend Mohammed Turay, who was also injured.

The New Year started with a murder in Thornton Heath, where the family of the victim have criticised police handling and press coverage of the crime. The Deslandes family run the Newton Arms pub in Thornton Heath. Their account is that after an argument at a New Year's Eve party, a man was ejected from the pub and came back later with a gun. 34 year old Darren Deslandes was shot dead, and and his 25 year old brother, Wintworth [Junior] Deslandes, remains in the Critical Care Unit.

The Sun, however, reported that 'Two men shot after a New Year party are believed to have taken part in a Wild West-style shootout. One man in his 30s died from gunshot wounds and the other, in his 20s, is critical after the gun battle in Thornton Heath, south London'. In the press release (reproduced in full at Black Looks) 'The Deslandes family formally demand a full apology from the Sun and a full retraction of the cruel lies they have spread about the Murder of one innocent, law abiding young man and the attempted murder of another . Wintworth and Leline have a third son, James, age 13. He witnessed the Murder of his eldest brother. His other brother is fighting for his life and his parents are irreconcilably devastated'.

What this case shows is that the magic words 'Operation Trident, the force's black-on-black gun crime taskforce, are investigating', along with innaccurate press reporting, can create complacency and indifference amongst the wider community. There is an unspoken assumption that anybody who gets shot was probably involved in gangs, maybe even deserved it, and that nobody else should worry or even care. But people with no involvement in violent crime can get killed if they argue with the wrong person, try to break up a fight or go to the aid of a friend. And even when the victims are involved in gangs, it remains a tragedy for their families and for all of us that young lives are being wasted.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

This year's Telegraph Hill Community Production will be Stephen Sondheim' s 'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street'. Registration/rehearsals are taking place this weekend (9th and 10th of January) at St Catherine's Church at the top of Pepys Road.

In case you haven't been to one of these before, the Community Production usually features a cast of a couple of hundred children and adults, with two months of rehearsals miraculously resulting in a generally high quality weekend of performances during the Telegraph Hill Festival (13th and 14th March). So if you live in the New Cross/Brockley and fancy a sing song, check out the Festival website for details.

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?

Deptford Urban Free Festival

I can't do justice to the Deptford Urban Free Festival in one post, so will return to it shortly, but suffice it to say that from 1990 to 1995 there was an annual full-0n festival in Fordham Park, New Cross that attracted tens of thousands of people from all over London. It wasn't some municipal music do, but a proper free festival bringing the spirit of Stonehenge and Castlemorton into town for the weekend complete with loads of bands and sound systems. It was too good to last, in the climate of the post-Criminal Justice Act crackdown on open air raves and festivals Lewisham Council refused permission for it to continue in 1996. I was lucky enough to be there for several of them.

To get things started here's some footage by Nigel Smith of the 1991 festival:



Then from 1993, here's New Cross-based (and internationally known) band Test Department playing:



From the same year, here's Brixton-based RDK Hifi sound system:



More to come. Bring on the memories...

New Cross Care Home Seeks Bagpipe Player

This is London reports that the Manley Court Nursing Centre, a care home in New Cross is looking for a bagpipe player for piping in the haggis on Burns Night (January 25). I do actually have a bagpipe chanter, but have never managed to get more than a few notes out of it. If you can do better, you could call the Centre on 0845 600 4622.

The Centre is in John Williams Close, off Cold Blow Lane.

New Year's Eve in Telegraph Hill Park

New Year's Eve was celebrated as usual in Telegraph Hill Park (top park), a couple of hundred people drinking and watching the fireworks exploding over London - the view of the main London display now newly obscured by the Strata building at Elephant and Castle. The other new development was the number of people launching Chinese lanterns in the park - no doubt prompting a rash of 'UFO sightings' across the capital. It was a full moon and a very clear night until just after midnight when there was a sudden snow shower sending everyone home with snow in their hair.

See also: New Year's Eve in Telegraph Hill Park, 31 December 2012

Twelfth Night on Bankside

The Lion's Part put on their annual Bankside Twelfth Night celebration today. There was the usual arrival of the Green Man by boat...

... followed by wassailing outside the Globe theatre, not forgetting my favourite polar bear costume.

All of this plus a St George Mummers Play, this year featuring lots of topical lines about banks and the recession ('the banks have taken the money, and now we're all toast").

Dead Santa fails to abolish Brockley poverty

Christmas photo special - Brockley graffiti artist bemoans Santa's failure to abolish world poverty ('Xmas has come - Why am I still poor?'). But maybe the answer is to be found in Deptford, where this shocking photo from the church of Santa Claus (or St Nicholas) suggests that Santa may actually be dead!

Santa photo from Laura W. on facebook; Brockley graffiti on Foxwell Road on site of demolished Maypole pub, Brockley's own Democracy Wall, previously graffiti'd here and here.