Beer and coffee latest: ex-White Hart opening in New Cross, new coffee shop by Nunhead station and much more

As always lots going on in the SE London beer and coffee zone. 

Best news is that a new pub is set to open shortly on the site of the former White Hart in New Cross Gate. The Broken Wheel, as it will be named, will occupy the iconic junction of New Cross Road and Queens Road, a place where there really should be a pub. The White Hart was there for over 170 years, it had its ups and downs but in its most recent incarnation was doing really well with great Sunday lunches including a fine Irish music session. Unfortunately it closed in the Covid period and has been empty since. In the mean time rooms above the pub have been converted to flats which may put some limits on noise and late hours, but hopefully not hamper the pub's success (see more about the pub's history at this earlier post).

work underway at the Broken Wheel (ex White Hart), photo from their insta @thebrokenwheelpub

Not far away the famous Montague Arms is up for let but no sign of a tenant as yet. Like the White Hart the pub closed during the pandemic and at one time looked likely to be demolished. Instead the upstairs has been converted to flats leaving the space downstairs refurbished but smaller. The famous stage is long gone (more about the Monty here), but scope for a good neighbourhood bar. See previous posts about history of this place.

Montague Arms - done up but still empty

A new coffee shop is set to open by Nunhead station soon. I know it sometimes feels like there's coffee shops everywhere but there actually isn't one here for caffeine-hungry commuters and other locals at this end (though there is Goodcup of course by Nunhead Green).  Servesmiths, which runs two shops in Catford, is coming to the site of the former Tony's barber shop at 52 Gibbon Road (next to Silver Fish Chinese takeaway).

Site of new Servesmiths coffee shop by Nunhead station (building in middle to left of Silver Fish)

Hopefully some of these places will become community hubs with space for music and meetings, as happens with many of our existing bars and cafes. It's been amazing for instance seeing the Old Nun's Head become a queer destination pub, and so many people enjoying the music and the craic at Skehans. 

Here's a few more examples from next week:

Welsh electronic duo Overmono are celebrating the launch of their new album Pure Devotion by running a pub for the day, The Two Dogs, in Deptford on Friday 7 August. Actually judging by the address they are actually doing this at the famous Dog and Bell pub in Prince Street SE8.

Bar D4100 (Dinner for One Hundred) are having a party on the 8th August at their Nunhead bar. The pizza people started out at the Hill Station Cafe SE14  (actually I think they started out in a family garden even before) and are very much rooted in the New Cross/Nunhead community. Locally based singer Jessie Ware recently declared them to be the best pizza on London in an interview with Topjaw (she also name checked Eat Vietnam in Deptford)

Joyce in Brockley are hosting another Brockley Queer FLINTA social on 11 August. If you haven't been keeping up with your acronyms that's 'Female, Lesbian, Intersex, Non-binary, Trans, and Agender'. 

Comic, Zine and Bookfairs, Summer 2026

It's hard to keep up with the flourishing zine, comics and book fairs happening at the moment, which I see as a very positive sign.

This weekend (11th and 12th July 2026) sees the ARC festival of contemporary comics taking place in Copeland Park, Peckham with at least 100 exhibitors.

South London Comic and Zine Fair is coming up at Stanley Arts, 12 South Norwood Hill, SE25 6AB on Sunday 19th July 2026. 

At the same venue on 6th September, the London Radical Bookfair is making a comeback, with its first event since 2023.

Pagemasters, who have held successful events at Stanley St SE8 and elsewhere, have a late summer zine fair coming up at the South London Gallery on 29 August.

This year's London Anarchist Bookfair takes place on 26 September. After last year's successful event at Waterloo (Leake Street) - the first @ bookfair South of the River - it's heading back East to Rich Mix.

On the same weekend inQ!, London's Queer Comics Fair, is taking place at London LGBTQ+ Community Centre on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September 2025. 

 

Happy 35th birthday 56a Infoshop

Popped along yesterday to the 35th birthday party for 56a Infoshop, the boutique radical social centre/archive/bookshop at 56a Crampton Street SE17, just down from the Elephant and Castle. Keeping a constant presence, and keeping relevant amidst everything that has changed over this time, is an amazing achievement. Who said anarchists can't organise anything? Caught some poetry and a folk trio, sorry didn't catch their name (anyone know?)

 

General Strike 1926: a riverside clash in Charlton

It is now a hundred years since the General Strike of May 1926, when workers all over the country walked out on strike in support of miners. The strike was strongly supported in South London industries, and there were major clashes with police. One such episode took place by the Charlton riverfront, where the Medway Oil and Storage Company had a fuel depot storing petrol.  This was on North Street, now Herringham Road near to the Thames Barrier.

On the night of Sunday May 9th, a crowd of 800 people were apparently marching towards the depot, presumably with the aim of stopping it operating during the strike. The police tried to disperse the crowd in West Street (now Westmoor Street) and there was at least 20 minutes of intense fighting with the police launching baton charges and the crowd launching a 'murderous volley of missiles' at the police including stones, bottles, and pieces of iron. Or at least that was the police account. 

 Four local men were arrested - Frederick Jay, Henry Coombes, Arthur Morley and Frederick King - and in court defendants denied using violence in the words and deeds attributed to them. Mary Jane Jay, the wife of one of the accused, said that the police had broken down their front door in North Street and truncheoned her in the process. Nevertheless Fred Jay was sentenced to prison with three months hard labour. No doubt there was conflict, but it was certainly not unknown for police witnesses to exaggerate the extent of violence. It seems unlikely for instance that there was genuinely an intent to set fire to the fuel depot, which with 200,000 gallons of petrol would have set off a massive explosion and destroyed the neighbouring houses where we know some of the demonstrators lived.

 

Peter J Carroll (RIP) , Speedwell House sorcerer & co-creator of Chaos Magic in 1970s Deptford

The occultist Peter J Carroll died recently, best known as one of the founders of the Chaos Magic current. As he reflected last year:

'As I turned 72 in January it occurred to me that Chaos Magic really began fifty years ago in a squat in insalubrious Deptford, London, where certain insights emerged during intense study, furious practice, wild experimentation, and meetings with remarkable and/or dubious people'

Chaos Magic basically said: - Make spells by any Analogical Process you like. Invoke or Evoke anything you can Imagine. Use any kind of Gnosis that works for you. Select Beliefs for their Utility. Treat Divination as the Imagination of Possibilities. Magic modifies Probability. Specify precisely what Illumination you seek. As such it represents a radical breakaway from the Authority of Antiquity' (Chaos Magic at 50, 2025).

Carroll was one of several young occultists who moved to squats in Speedwell House c.1976-78, having previously been involved with an informal group that became known as the Stoke Newington Sorcerers.  The now demolished Deptford council block became for a while a laboratory for the development of Chaos Magic, an attempt to update occultism in an age of punk rock, chaos theory and cybernetics. Their experiments included invoking the Celtic underworld deity Gwyn ap Nudd (sometimes known as the King of the Fairies) and forming a rock band Vitriol to perform at the time of planetary eclipses. Carroll wrote up some of his Deptford research in his book ‘Liber Null’ (1978), considered to be the founding text of the Chaos current.

According to Charlie Brewster, another of those involved, 'the beginning of chaos magic' can be dated to 'the Deptford Olympics Goat Roast, which coincided with the Montreal Olympics in 1976. This was a sports day held in a waste ground behind Speedwell House. Pete had obtained a goat from the Halal Butchers in Deptford High Street and this was barbequed on a spit over a huge bonfire, followed by a live punk ensemble thrashing away and a home made pyrotechnic display provided by some of the local anarchists' (as told to Jaq D Hawkins, The Chaonomicon, 2017).

The  Speedwell sorcerers rubbed shoulders with punks and anarchists in the squats. Joseph Porter, founder of the band Blyth Power, has described a visit in the late 1970s to friends living in ‘Speedwell House, a condemned block of flats just off Deptford High St. Technically they were squatting, as the council had given up on trying to collect rent there. The whole place was a magic maze of brickwork, stairways and balconies, covered in graffiti and full of lost souls... Coming back one day after a hard day posing in the West End, I found a minor music festival happening in the courtyards below. The Realists, This Heat, and a host of Deptford's alternative heroes played and jammed until late at night, the whole scene illuminated by the beams of a car's headlights. This was Deptford Fun City at its finest’('Genesis to Revolutions'). 

A resident recalled to Anita Strasser in her book 'Deptford High Street':

'I arrived in Deptford early 1977 and knew I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. I lived in Speedwell House, which was given to Goldsmith's to rent out to students for a low price. It was a good council block but we had no bathroom — there were counters in the kitchen with lids on and under the lid was the bath. So, you'd be having a bath while someone was cooking. Squeeze and Dire Straits used to play around here before they became famous. But Speedwell House became infamous because of two murders, and the council wanted to raze it to the ground without rehousing the students. We prepared for war, eyen looking up recipes for Molotoy cocktails, we were so angry. The council got wind of it and rehoused everyone to the Crossfield estate'.

Anarchist papers from the time include contact addresses at Speedwell House for the London branch of the Anarchist Communist Association (Bread and Roses, September 1978) and for the formation of a 'non-sexist anarchist group' for the Lewisham area' (Zero, August 1978). This was the period too of clashes with the far right National Front. Carroll recalled 'pitched battles' with the NF in his memories of his friend Brewster, so maybe they were there on the historic day of the 'Battle of Lewisham' on 13 August 1977.

[The decision 'to demolish around 200 pre-war flats at Comet House and Speedwell House overlooking Watson's Street' had been taken by Lewisham Council in 1973 - Evening News, 11 December 1973]

(photos of Speedwell House by Marian E Tipler on facebook)

 

Deptford May Day Festival and Jack in the Green 2026

Deptford is bringing in the May this year with Full Bloom, a weekend music and beer festival: 'Led by Villages Brewery and a network of local venues, Deptford in Full Bloom brings together live music, folk sessions, DJs, zine fairs, art exhibitions, and pop-ups across the neighbourhood. Expect everything from open mic nights and jazz sessions to street celebrations and the iconic May Day parade. You can see the full programme here. 

The main event as usual will be the Fowlers Troop Deptford Jack in the Green festival, a revival of a 19th century tradition that has itself been going since 1984. On May Day the procession will begin and end at the Dog and Bell, making its way through the day between various local pubs (route below).

The 19th century Jack in the Green procession was very much associated with chimney sweeps in particular, with May Day known as 'the sweeps' holiday'. As an 1862 court case from Woolwich shows, it wasn't always a respectable affair. In this instance, participants in the local Jack in the Green were accused of fighting and smashing up the Wellesley Arms pub after being refused beer (the now demolished pub stood in Hillreach SE18)

Kentish Independent, 3 May 1862

I have previously written a history of May Day in South London, you can buy a copy of the pamphlet  from Past Tense (please don't order from Amazon, I don't use that account and am locked out of it!). You can also read it at archive.org

See previous posts on May Day in South London

Goldsmiths occupation against new round of cuts

 Students at Goldsmiths University of London have occupied the college library in New Cross in protest against another round of cuts threatening the jobs of hundreds of staff (academic and professional services) and leaving the future of some courses in doubt.

As the occupiers have noted, 'Goldsmiths is a microcosm of the decimation of Higher Education, the arts and our collective society'. The funding crisis is only part of it - it feels that there is an attempt to fundamentally change the nature of the institution and shift it from being a place of critical thinking and experimentation. 

Follows freegoldsmiths for updates. There is a rally on Wednesday at noon

See also - a chronology of Goldsmiths occupations (updated)

"New Cross Hell on Earth"

Ludicrous rant going round on line from a far right wannabe influencer who apparently commutes by train into New Cross from Kent and then gets the bus somewhere. I'm not going to name her as these shameless grifters rely on publicity, but here's a flavour:

 'you have never known hell on earth until you have stepped foot into a gloriously disgusting place called New Cross, It is filth... it is horrific...  It's as though the people are from another planet'. What can she mean? A look at her X timeline show that his self-styled 'Activist. Patriot. Parent' is obsessed with Muslims, Migrant Hotels and brown people standing in elections.

Of course, according to her, 'our capital is being destroyed' - perhaps stay away then.

The Pogues on HMS Belfast, 1985

In 1985, the Pogues launched their great second album 'Rum, Sodomy and the Lash' with a party on HMS Belfast, the retired Royal Navy ship permanently moored between London Bridge and Tower Bridge. All of this was in keeping with the nautical theme for the album, the sleeve of which features  Theodore Géricault's painting 'The Raft of the Medusa' (1819), with the band's heads superimposed on some of its characters.

According to accordionist James Fearnley:

'On the 30th July, the piratical theme reached its apotheosis with the launch party for the record. It took place on HMS Belfast - an early venue for Spandau Ballet. We donned our Nelson-era costumes, invited the press and a slew of friends, acquaintances and others, played a short set on the upper deck under a marquee, and then got drunk. At some point in the evening, a journalist fell into the Thames from a landing stage' ('Here Comes Everybody: The Story of the Pogues').

Record Mirror (10 August 1985) reported that over '2000 bottles of beer and untold amounts of wine and rum' were consumed.

The band performed in vintage martime uniforms, as can be seen in these photos from the night (top one by Andrew Catlin, not sure who took picture of bassist Cait O'Riordan_

See previously:

- Spandau Ballet and Depeche Mode on HMS Belfast

- The Pogues play Skehans, 2025

New Cross and Deptford Free Film Festival 2026

 The 2026 New Cross and Deptford Free Film Festival  starts on 24 April and promises '21 events across ten days, with venues ranging from pubs to parks and from boxing gyms to churches'. 

Some interesting movies and venues, including 'When we were Kings' at Double Jab Boxing Club in Fordham Park and David Byrne's 'True Stories' at Piehouse Coop.

Sticky Fingers Publishing Fair in New Cross, April 2026

Coming up at Goldsmiths in New Cross next week (April 11th), the Sticky Fingers Publishing Fair

'Join us for a fair celebrating feminist, queer, disabled-led and local interdisciplinary publishing, returning for its third year. Featuring 56a Infoshop, The 50-ft Press, The Alternative School of Economics, BitterSweet Review, Burley Fisher Community Press, CAMP!, Ⓐ DUDLEY Ⓔ, Em—Dash, F.A.T. Studio, Freedom Press, Inclusions0000 (by Oisín harmful), Intellitrash, Leomi Sadler/Famicon Express/Pre-Debut, Montez Press, The Mosaic Rooms Bookshop, PageMasters, The People's Letters Bookshop, Physical Interface, Shy Radicals Distro, Slow + Dirty x House of Annetta, Strike Design Studio, TACO!, tallfingerpress & TISSUE, plus 50 titles on our communal table'.

Venue is the old St James church building at top of St James SE14.

Update after the event:

A few photos to give a flavour of what was there...

Figurant at Strange Parade

A mesmerising audiovisual performance at Strange Parade in Nunhead last month (28 February 2026), with Inga Tillere's film piece accompanied by words from Johny Brown (of Band of Holy Joy) and musical accompaniment from Mark Beazley (bass) and Jono Podmore (theremin and other sounds).

'Figurant' is centred around the 'discarded fragments of space and time' embodied in a found 8mm film from 1960s Elmer in West Sussex. Tillere treated the film by leaving it submerged in the River Ravensbourne by Lewisham Hospital, recovering it later, and meticulously scanning it frame by frame.

Super 8 film is always uncanny as a dead, flickering medium carrying memories from at a time when moving images of ordinary people were rare. The effect was doubled by its Ravensbourne wash, bringing out unexpected colours that heighten rather than completely obscure its English seaside footage from 60 years ago. 

I have recently had some old super 8 film digitised, having not viewed it for more than 40  years and not knowing what was on it. There were unexpected glimpses of my late father and grandmother, as well as of my younger self, with that patina of time that heightens the strangeness of old film that has been lying around for decades. 

'Figurant' played with this resurrectionist aspect of old film footage. 'A séance for lost film. A tale of all that survives' that brings back to life its unspeaking minor characters glimpsed through a glass darkly. For a moment there I felt like I was actually present at a seance as the spoken word accompaniment echoed the language of spirt mediums.  Look out for more from the 'One Tree Hill Mystical Society'

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.

For details of the book and where you can get it check here

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'.