South London Landscape History

I strongly recommend 'Commonplace: a South London Landscape History', a series of limited edition zines/pamphlets written by John Gray with photographs by Sam Walton. There have been three published so far:

'Bostall Heath to Plumstead Common'

'Woolwich Common to Eltham Common'

'One Tree Hill to Peckham Rye Common'

The next one, 'Streatham Common to Tooting Common' will be out in May 2026

Based on wanderings through these areas backed up with detailed research, they mix 'history, ecology, psychogeography, architecture, poetry and memoir to unpack how, taken together, the commons provide the key to the South London landscape'. The look beautiful too, riso printed by PageMasters in New Cross Road with great cover designs by Lewisham-based artist Tennessee Williams and Sally Gunnett.

You can buy copies here.

 

Telegraph Hill Festival 2026: a music walk and a New Cross history talk (and a new book)

Lots of great events coming up in Telegraph Hill Festival this month I am doing two history related talks.

New Cross from fields to factories in the 19th century

Thursday 26th March, 7:30 pm at the Somerville playground, 260 Queens Road, SE14 5JN  - tickets here (donation)

'In the space of a few decades in the mid-19th century, New Cross went from being a largely rural area to an increasingly urbanised one. In this talk, Neil Gordon-Orr looks at what was here before - market gardens and fields - and the canals, railways and associated factories that came to replace them. 

This is part of the Make/Shift strand of environmental themed events at the Festival.

[if you came to my talk at the Earl of Derby last year there will be some overlap in the material but aiming to bring the story forward a bit to include the early factories of the area and the people who worked in them]

A musical tour of New Cross

Saturday 28th March 2026, 2 pm  - walk starts promptly from outside Goldsmiths main building on Lewisham Way (ticket not required)

For one small part of London, SE14 has played an important role in popular music history. A guided walk through the sites of record shops, recording studios and clubs featuring reggae, punk, dance music, Britpop and much more besides.

I will be featuring research from my new book 'New Cross, New Cross: a cultural history of SE14', out this month and available for the first time at these events.

New Cross Giant Redwood

New Cross has quite a few fine trees - London Planes on the wider roads, cherry trees in residential streets and gardens full of all kinds of specimens. But one of the finest must be the Giant Redwood at New Cross Gate station. Legend has it that it was planted from seed in the 1980s by a railway worker who worked on the track there at the time 

The tree today

The tree c.2010 (photo found on ebay)

 

White Bike Cyclist Memorial for Irene Leardini in New Cross Road

 People gathered opposite New Cross Gate station on Friday 6th February 2026 to commemorate the life of cyclist Irene Leardini and to campaign for safer roads in her memory. Irene, aged 39, was among other things an Italian bike mechanic who had worked at Clapham Cycle shop. She was killed by a lorry on 20th January.

A white bike memorial was installed with flowers and candles.

'Irene was a young woman with an enormous love of life. Many many friends and a loving family are grieving her loss and will always miss her dreadfully. Those who loved her say she would have described herself as a happiness seeker and that she was passionate about human rights. She was a cycle mechanic and someone who made a difference in her community. She is a huge loss. Rest in peace, Irene'.

'And Irene is not the only person to be killed or badly hurt on this road. Along its whole length dozens have suffered and many families are grieving and struggling with the ongoing effects of serious collisions. We have known it is not safe for vulnerable road users, walking and cycling here for decades. Yet what could be done to make it safer has not been done. It needs to be done. Now. Safe space for cycling is needed here. If Irene had not had to share this space with a much larger vehicle and its driver, she would be here now. If she had the space she deserved here, her family and loved ones would not be grieving. Safe space for cycling, safe space for people;

'Cycling is not dangerous - this road is' (photo by Alex Raha from Lewisham Cyclists facebook page)

Irene

Sad that this has happened so soon after another cyclist was killed further up the Old Kent Road, and only two weeks after a man was killed by a police car on Borough High Street (see here)

Sports writer/presenter Ned Boulting was there on Friday and has written about it at his substack:

'London has seen considerable improvements over the last decade or so. Some of the infrastructure which has been designed, separating bikes from the motor traffic is genuinely fantastic. But this particular stretch of the A2 is one of many arterial roads managed by TfL rather than the individual boroughs, on which no material changes to protect vulnerable road users have been effected. There are advance stop boxes at junctions, but no clear path to access them for riders. And once the lights change, you’re on your own. It is almost as if the complexities and costs of doing the right thing to protect those who choose to ride are so overwhelming that the default position is simply to do nothing'.

'Freedom for Fatema' campaign at Goldsmiths

Staff and students at Goldsmiths University of London are campaigning for the release of a Goldsmiths student who has been in prison for over a year for alleged Palestine solidarity action. Fatema Zainab Rajwani, who also goes by Ray, is a 21-year-old film student and poet. They are currently being held as part of the Filton24, imprisoned without being convicted for alleged damage of weapons in an Israeli arms factory in England belonging to Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, Elbit Systems, at Filton near Bristol.  Ray’s trial at Woolwich has just concluded, and they are now awaiting jury deliberation alongside five of their co-defendants. Fatema was meant to begin their final year as a Media and Communications student at Goldsmiths in September 2024, but they were remanded after being arrested at Filton in August 2024. Eight other prisoners have taken part in a hunger strike.

According to Goldsmiths UCU:

'Ray is proud of their Indian heritage and East African roots. They are a film student and a poet, and their writing is an attempt to mediate between the existence we are witnessing and the beautiful world we have the capacity to rebuild together.

Fatema’s interests include reading and writing poetry, history, and social theory; Bollywood films and songs; zines; BFI films; Chappell Roan; Buffy; We Are Lady Parts; Sweatshop Boys; and books by Kamila Shamsie. They love meeting new people and hearing about others.

As Fatema has said: “We reject the business of imperialist murder that Britain profits from. The slaughter of Black and Brown bodies that the British arms trade facilitates must end. Long live Palestine.”

 

'Next stop is Queens Road '- aya's Hexed! is Quietus & Wire album of the year

First day back at work yesterday after the Christmas break, and a nice moment of synchronicity. As is my wont at this season I have been working my way through various lists of the best albums of the last year. Number one on the Quietus list for 2025 is aya's Hexed! on Hyperdub, with Claire Dibbles describing the artist 'as a master of sound design, functioning as both a storytelling tool and as a descriptor of emotion'. The album is also no.1 on the Wire magazine's end of year list.

Listening to the track 'off to the ESSO' my ears pricked up at the line 'next stop is Queens Road' as I was just approaching Queens Road Peckham station. OK other Queens Roads are available, but as aya apparently has a studio in Peckham I'm going to take this an SE15 reference

As for the album, it certainly woke me up on a wintry Monday morning. Check out this interesting interview with aya at Fader which describes her 'uncanny, abrasive collages' and the album's 'bewildering journey through pummelling electronic noise'.

aya on the cover of The Wire, May 2025

Ikonika also has a new album out - SAD - on Hyperdub by the way, which puts me in mind of one of my favourite Transpontine posts, from 2013 - the story of Ikonika, Katy B and Ayre's Nunhead bakers.

All Together Now - 1978 Deptford anti-racist festival

All Together Now was an anti-racist festival held in Deptford in April 1978.  According to a contemporary report:

 ''All Together Now' was the name of ALCARAF's (All Lewisham  Campaign Against Racism and Fascism) multicultural festival which ran for three Saturdays before the local authority elections. 

A Community resource centre, the Albany, and a community theatre the Combination under an ALCARAF banner had the idea of celebrating the multicultural nature of Deptford  as a positive step against the National Front's propaganda. So  they built a beautiful bandstand on a derelict site in the middle of the busy Deptford market place and made fun and festivities with reggae music, morris dancers, medicine shows about racism, bag pipes, Chilean children dancers and the Kent Miners Band. 

Around the main stage was a market of 35 stalls from political parties,  anti-racist groups and community organisations. They gave away information, talked to people about their campaigns and sold food and  artifacts from many cultures'.

This was a period when the far right National Front had been gaining momentum in Deptford and other areas, but they didn't make the breakthrough in 1978 which they had been hoping for. The festival seems to have taken place in Douglas Way SE8, before the construction of the current Albany theatre building. The original Albany was at 47 Creek Road and later that year, in December 1978, was seriously damaged in a fire which ALCARAF and others believed was caused by a far right arson attack partly prompted by its role in putting on the festival:

'ALCARAF believes the fire was started deliberately. We have said we think there is every probability that this was the work of the National Front or their supporters. We are aware that in this we are directly contradicting the official statements of the Greenwich police. We are in fact gravely concerned at the apparent indifference to this attack. We intend to try to bring pressure to bar on the Home Office and to insist that suspected racist and fascist crimes are treated with the they deserve. 

Before doing however, we must explain our reasons for reaching the conclusions above. These can be summarised as follows: 

1) the expert opinion of the fire officer in charge of the case is that the fire was almost certainly started deliberately. 

2) The Albany Empire and the Combination theatre group who are based there are well-known for their work in the field of race relations. 

3) The Albany Institute is affiliated to ALCARAF and they played the  major part in staging with us the 'All Together Now' festival in Deptford in the three weeks prior to the May local council elections. We believe this helped significantly in bringing about the National Front's resounding electoral defeat in Lewisham. 

4) A note claiming to come from 'Column 88' (believed to be the paramilitary wing of the fascist movement in Britain) and indicating responsibility was delivered to the Albany shortly afterwards'.. 

Source for festival report: Community Action, no. 37, May - June 1978 - check out the excellent online archive of this publication.  Source for ALCARAF statement on Albany fire: 'Stages in the Revolution: Political Theatre in Britain Since 1968' by Catherine Itzin.

Last days of Peckham Rye Station Arcade

The Arcade in front of Peckham Rye station is empty and awaiting demolition - in fact signs around the site say that it demolition was due to start in summer 2025.

The two-storey building was built in around 1935 to occupy the square in front of the Victorian train station. It was designed by Scottish architect John James Joass who was also responsible for some of the buildings at London Zoo and for Whiteley's department store in Bayswater. Its demolition is part of a plan to reinstate the original square, so that the grand main station building can be seen from Rye Lane (architect's impression below). 

I can't say the Arcade has particularly happy memories for me, the many hours I spent there were mainly in the dentists chair, though there were some really nice dentists there over the years.  Others have had more pleasant experiences, including in recent years some great soul and jazz nights at the CLF Art Cafe & Roof Garden upstairs.

'Brotherhood of Breath' at CLF Arts Cafe, Station Way in 2022

While I might not be going to the barricades to save it, I think in its final days we can certainly celebrate its features and history. There is a faded art deco grandeur to the place and in its current state of graffiti'd dereliction it is the classic example of a kind of early 21st century Peckham grime that is gradually being cleaned up and swept away.

In its earlier life the Station Arcade hosted an Irish dance hall, the Brian Boru Social Club, in the late 1930s:

James Power was the proprietor of the Brian Boru Social Club

During the Second World War the Camberwell district of the Young Communist League had its HQ at 1a Station Approach 

Stalin was right say the YCL in 1943! At this time of course, the USSR was a key ally in the war against Hitler, so such praise was not that unusual in Britain at the time.

'Young Communists' Talent Contest', South London Observer, 23 April 1943

After the war the London County Council ran one of its Civic Restaurants there, one of a chain aiming to offer affordable food. With Jenny's cafe in the arcade in its later years, many thousands of meals must have been eaten in the arcade, and many cups of tea drunk.

When The Pogues came to Skehans

Incredible scenes at Skehans pub (Kitto Road SE14) last week when the surprize musical guests turned out to be... The Pogues. Yes I know Pogues singer Shane MacGowan is two year's gone, but this line up included key founding members Spider Stacey and Jem Finer, and some amazing guest musicians including Darragh Lynch from Lankum and Iona Zajac

(photo from Pogues bassist Holly Mullineaux insta)

The event on 10 December 2025 was actually the Christmas party for food pop up Pears for Lunch, founded by food writer and cook Ben Lippett with the party sponsored by Jameson's whiskey. The place was absolutely packed, as you might expect.

(for people who don't know the pub I should point out that it's not one of those pubs with a big back room for gigs etc - the Pogues were right in the public bar)

Critical Mass mark killing of cyclist on Old Kent Road.

 Hundreds of cyclists rode down Old Kent Road and New Cross Road last week (Friday 28 November 2025) as part of the monthly Critical Mass ride. 

Critical Mass is a monthly bike ride on the last Friday in over 300 cities, started in 1992 and in London in 1994, to highlight bike-unfriendly cities. With no formal leadership, cyclists meet at a set time and place to ride together. In London, people meet on the last Friday of the month 19:00 on the South Bank under Waterloo Bridge.

Critical Mass outside the New Cross Inn

The ride paused on the Old Kent Road near the Dunton Road junction where a 'ghost bike' memorial had been placed to mark the death of a cyclist a week before. 34 year old Gery (full name not released) was killed there on 21 November 2025';  a driver has been arrested 'on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving' 

Flare and flowers on Critical Mass ride

The cyclist has not been publicly named at this stage, but there are some very touching messages from friends on site - 'you were one of the most genuine people we ever met, kind, generous and hilarious' - a reminder that behind each road death statistic is a terrible personal tragedy.

Update January 2026:

Sad to report that another cyclist has been killed on this road so soon after Gery. Irene Leardini, aged 39, died on 20 January 2026 after being hit by a lorry on New Cross Road close to New Cross Gate station. Irene, originally from Italy, was herself a bike mechanic (picture below from Insta),

I cycled through there earlier that day and thought to myself how dangerous that section is. Travelling south east on New Cross Road by the Sainsburys junction there is a bit where two lanes of traffic merge into one and where some of the left lane turns left into Sainsburys and some go straight ahead, so as a cyclist if you stay left you risk being hit by left turning traffic but if you go in the middle you risk being hit by vehicles in the left lane going straight ahead.

On that same route towards/from London Bridge, this time on Borough High Street, 35 year old David Clark was killed by the police when hit by a car on 6 January. His wife commented: 'My husband David was not a headline, a statistic, or a passing news story. He was a loving husband, a devoted father to our baby daughter, a son, a brother and a deeply cherished friend. His death has left a profound and lasting void in our lives'.

Rest in power beautiful people, make it stop those of us still here.

Gellatly Road 'mass crossing for a safer street'

More than 30 people took part in a 'mass crossing for a safer street' protest in Gellatly Road SE14 last week (20/11/2025), the latest move in a long running campaign by 'Drakefell and Gellatly United'  to make these 'roads safer and healthier for residents and the many users who use and cross them'. People crossed slowly an en masse back and forth several times during the school run period.

Although the road changes its name from Gellatly to Drakefell near to Skehans pub, it is in effect one road - the B2142 route from Brockley Cross to Nunhead. As such it is one of the busiest roads in the Telegraph Hill area, and people have been campaigning on and off for more than 30 years to slow and reduce traffic, as well as for safer places to cross the road. While parents of younger children made up the majority of those taking part last week, there were also some older veterans of the early 1990s protests in the road. That earlier campaign did succeed in getting traffic bumps installed and more recent campaigns have led to new pedestrian crossings in Lausanne Road. But the risks remain to people from larger and larger cars cruising at high speed through residential streets.

The corner of Gellatly and Lausanne Road, where last week's mass crossing took place, is particularly dangerous as motorists turn into the road at high speed at a point where parents and children cross on their routes to and from local schools. 

See also:

Gellatly Road 1990s Traffic Campaign: a Geography Lesson

(does anybody have any press cuttings or leaflets from the 1990s campaign - please get in touch if so)

 

Did a member of The Slits live in New Cross?

This image of The Slits by photographer Terry Lott is apparently from a 'Photoshoot At Home Of Band Member In New Cross'. I've seen it dated from 1981 and 1987, former seems more likely as they split up in '82.

But does this mean that a member of the band actually lived in SE14 at the time? I once saw former Slits guitarist Viv Albertine playing at a party at Sanford housing co-op (in 2011) and bassist Tessa Pollitt DJ at Goldsmiths (2019) But did either one of them or singer Ari Up actually live in this part of London for a while?  For the sake of my completist SE14 obsession would love to know more.

Update: in her autobiography, 'Clothes, clothes, clothes; music, music, music; boys, boys, boys', Viv Albertine mentions that soon after the band split up she went 'to evening classes at Goldsmiths College in New Cross, to learn how to read music, practise playing guitar and develop my ear'

National Front, anti-fascists and spycops in Bermondsey 2001

In 2001 the far right National Front staged a series of demonstrations in Bermondsey in an unsuccessful attempt to whip up racist fervour in this part of South London.

Amongst those mobilising to oppose them were at least two undercover cops infiltrating anti-racist groups. The Undercover Policing Inquiry has heard recently of the activities of spycop HN81, cover name “David Steven Hagan”, codename ‘Windmill Tilter". At the turn of the century he spied on the Stephen Lawrence family campaign and on radical anti-racist group Movement for Justice (MFJ) among others. N104 Carlo Soracchi, cover name "Carlo Neri", code name "Craggy Island", infiltrated the Socialist Party and a militant anti-fascist group, No Platform, which included some of its members. 

There were three NF marches in quick succession in South Bermondsey in this period. The National Front had been the dominant force on the racist far right of British politics in the 1970s but by this point they had been overtaken by the British National Party. The NF called its first march for April 2001, seemingly prompted by Millwall playing a match sponsored by Kick Racism out of Football. They clearly hoped to mobilise Millwall fans but they only attracted a handful of people.  

I attended the first and largest counter demo, which gathered on Ilderton Road near to South Bermondsey station. These notes are from a report I wrote for the aut-op-sy radical discussion list at the time:

'On Saturday April 7 2001 the National Front march in Bermondsey, South East London followed a predictable course. No more than 20 flag waving NFers emerged from the train station, protected from around 300 anti-fascists by a police force outnumbering both. The police effort to contain the counter-demo (organised by the Anti-Nazi League and Southwark Trades Council) on the pavement was undermined by a surge onto the road, and a further surge when the NF appeared was surprizingly successful in pushing the police line back to within 10 metres of the fascists [this was under the railway bridge on Rotherhithe New Road near Ilderton Road junction].  After that there was the usual running round the back streets to little effect. 

 This part of South London has seen it all before. In 1937 barricades were set up in Bermondsey as 15,000 took to the streets to oppose a march by the British Union of Fascists. A mile down the road in New Cross, police used riot shields for the first time in London in 1977 when an NF march was physically confronted by a black and white crowd. There were skirmishes between Anti-Fascist Action and British National Party and NF paper sellers in Bermondsey at various points during the 1990s.

These historical continuities can disguise what has changed in recent years. In the 1970s the National Front was becoming a significant political force nationally, with a growing share of the vote, large demonstrations and support for its 'Keep Britain White'  policies. Today the NF and BNP demonstrations have a tiny number of participants. In practical terms the far right seems to have lowered its immediate sights to defending the 'white ethnicity' of small working class areas, hence the ‘Keep Bermondsey White' theme of Saturday's march. It would easy to be complacent and imagine that they are now irrelevant - easy but mistaken.

The march might have been poorly attended, but that doesn't mean it found no echo locally. While few local people joined the march, some of those who stood around to watch were certainly sympathetic, including the woman who called me a ‘n* lover’, the people cheering the NF outside the Golden Lion pub, and the group with their ‘Keep the Blue White’ banner outside the Canterbury Arms on the Old Kent Road. A few hours after the march a 24-year-old Asian man was knocked to the ground in a racist attack on Rotherhithe New Road.  A group of local young people has carried out a number of racist attacks in the past few months. In February a 15-year-old schoolboy was bottled in the face and left unconscious with a fractured skull near the route of the NF march'.

The South London Press (10/4/2001) reported that on this march, 'around 30 NF members' headed from South Bermondsey station to Jamaica Road, kept apart from opponents by hundreds of police:

On the following Saturday (14th April)  there was a smaller turnout, with the Southwark News reporting that  only 'a rag tag group of around 12 NF supporters' took part, compared with 100 anti-fascists and 1000 police. The NF complained that the police had confiscated their Keep Bermondsey White banners the week before.

The Southwark News commented on 'the lack of local support' for the NF 'Who made a very sorry sight as they shuffled quietly through the streets. Just a few hooded teenagers milling around at the edges; excited by all the fuss'.

A police report filed by Soracchi says that the counter demo was regarded as a success by anti-fascists, given the low National Front turn out. If the spycop report is to be believed, No Platform had been hoping 'to attack the NF as they met in Central London' before the demo and had deployed 'scooters and motorbikes' around the Holborn/west end area looking for their meeting point. 

On May 12th there were very similar scenes as the NF again marched in the area but with dwindling numbers. According to one of the police reports, numbers on both sides seem to have been small with around 70 anti-fascists. Hagan reported that 'MFJ and the 'Irish anarchists' walked off together through one of the local estates whereupon they were confronted by a group of some 20 local fascist supporters. However when the anti-fascists stood their ground, the youths thought better of the idea and ran'.

Carlo Soracchi reported that No Platform were hoping to ambush NF activists at Liverpool Street Station.

The NF marches were clearly designed to build up a head of steam for the general election that year, in particular to build support for their candidate in the Southwark North & Bermondsey constituency. In the event their candidate. Lianne Shore, gained a pathetic 612 votes. 

[post updated 6 March 2026]

See previously on spycops:

Jim Sutton - undercover in East Dulwich

May Day 2001 - a police spy at the Elephant and Castle

Undercover - police spies in South London (including their sometime Camberwell HQ)

Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers in Brixton (1992) - as reported by undercover police

Undercover with the Millwall Bushwackers

Kick Out Cars in Croydon (1973) and a police spy on the Croydon Libertarians

Rick Gibson - a police spy in 1970s South East London Troops Out Movement

A police informer in Lewisham during the 1926 General Strike