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. A 34 year cyclist 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.

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

The Undercover Policing Inquiry has been hearing recently of the activities of spycop HN81, cover name “David Steven Hagan”, codename ‘Windmill Tilter" who infiltrated anti-racist groups in London  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. One of the documents published by the inquiry is a report he submitted on opposition to a National Front march in Bermondsey on 12 May 2001.

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'

The march was actually one of three held 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. 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'.

On the following Saturday and again on May 12th there were very similar scenes as the NF again marched in the area but with dwindling numbers. The NF marches were clearly designed to build up a head of steam for the general election, 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. 

The South London Press (10/4/2001) reports on the first march, with 'around 30 NF members' marching from South Bermondsey station to Jamaica Road, kept apart from opponents by hundreds of police:

The second march a week later (14 April_ was even smaller 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 comments 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'

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

 

Tales from Rotherhithe Street: the Crunchy Frog/Waterside Studios - Sex Pistols, early music and fringe theatre by the river

It's 50 years since the Sex Pistols played their first gig, at Central St Martins art college (on 6 November 1975). But in the weeks leading up to this they rehearsed at various locations including at a venue known as the Crunchy Frog, 99 Rotherhithe Street, London SE16. The full story of that is told below, but there's much more of interest about this space, a former dockside building that became an important alternative culture venue in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Docks

99 Rotherhithe Street is located at the historic core of the old Rotherhithe riverside settlement with old St Mary's Church nearby dating back to the 13th century (and where incidentally my 4 x great grandparents Thomas Say and Frances Blackwin were married in 1790). The nearby Mayflower pub (originally the Spreadeagle and Crown) is named after the ship that sailed from Rotherhithe in 1620 carrying the 'Pilgrim Fathers' to New England, with the ship's Captain - Christopher Jones - buried in the churchyard. The pub, though, was only renamed  The Mayflower in 1957 having been substantially rebuilt after wartime bomb damage.

As the British Empire and global trade expanded so did the docks on this part of the Thames. The stretch of the river from Rotherhithe down to London Bridge became known as the Pool of London, the part of the river that was navigable by ships with masts.

99 Rotherhithe Street was built in the 1840s as part of  East India Wharf where there were two granaries and a barge building yard in the 19th century. No. 99 was a five floor granary  run by W W Landell and later by John Dudin  (1890s) and British Bluefries Wharfage & Transport (1930s).  The building was also known at one time as Archers Wharf.  The granaries were used to store grain at a time when Britain was importing most of its wheat and barley from abroad- mainly from Russia in 19th century and Canada in 20th century. This was unloaded from ships into riverside warehouses like these. 

 Like at most of the docks on both sides of the river, workers at East India Wharf took part in the famous dock strike of 1889. There is a statement from the 'South Side Central Strike Committee' confirming that workers at East India Wharf had agreed  to return to work having achieved a pay rise. It is signed by Tom Mann, who was a key organiser of the strike.

The docks went into decline after the second world war, partly due to wartime damage and the loss of empire but mainly because of containerisation from the 1960s. The larger ships transporting containers were too big for this part of the river and unloaded their cargo further out at places like Tilbury. Surrey Commercial Docks closed down in 1969.

After the London docks closed down in the 1960s, the The Greater London Council took on responsibility for much of the semi derelict dockside landscape. The original plan was to demolish these buildings on Rotherhithe Street but in 1970 it was designated as the St Mary's Rotherhithe conservation area.  No.99 is now an English Heritage Grade II listed building.

By this time the area had a bit of a reputation - for instance in 1967 Jack 'The Hat' McVitie was killed by Reggie Kray and his body left in a car by St Mary's Church.  On the other hand there was a boujee bohemian edge  - 59 Rotherhithe St, demolished in the 60s, was known as the 'Little White Room' where Princess Margaret secretly shacked up with Tony Armstrong-Jones before they got married and where various poshos partied including Noel Coward, Marlene Dietrich and John Betjeman (the latter stayed there for a bit).  As discussed here before, Jessica Mitford had lived at 41 Rotherhithe Street in the 1930s.

The Crunchy Frog

With Rotherhithe Street saved from demolition but no longer needed for the docks others moved in, sometimes squatting for a while or negotiating short term leases and paying rent.

In 1974 Crunchy Frog, a film animation company presumably named after the Monty Python sketch, was granted a  temporary lease for no. 99. This film company doesn't seem to have last long  but various artists, craftspeople and musicians set up workshops there and it was renamed Waterside Studios (though people still referred to the place as the Crunchy Frog for a few years after).

The building was pretty derelict to start with, people had to build their own rooms and put in windows to fill the gaping holes in the walls where old windows had been removed.  Daniel Larson, an instrument maker, moved in during 1974 and has described how it was at the time: 'This building was a four-story structure built on the water's edge. An electric crane lifted grain to the fourth floor, and gravity pulled the flour through the grinding process down to bags on the ground floor. The milling machines were eventually sold for scrap…  The artist group turned the ground floor into a theater on the Fringe Circuit that hosted many experimental programs. A carpenter with heavy machines occupied the first floor. The second and third floors were divided into small spaces and used by light-duty craftspeople such as silk screen artists, knitters, and instrument makers'. 

It wasn't a place where people lived with the exception of a couple of barges that were moored in the Thames next to it, on one of which lived Mike Canty who was a potter and seems to have been a key figure in running the  place. Linsey Pollak, an Australian musician who had a workshop there for a couple of years told me that  in 1978 for a 'a while (1978) I squatted on the barge tied up to his [Mike Canty's] before ours sank'.

'Rotherhithe Warehouse' print by John McGowan shows the building  from river side c.1981 - 'From the late 1970s through to the early 1980s Maureen, my sister-in-law, lived on Barge ‘Olga’, which was moored in the Thames next to “Waterside”, a craft collective at 99 Rotherhithe Street'. See his Rotherhithe Suite of prints.

The space was run as a co-operative originally -  they set up a company called Waterside (Archers Wharf Ltd), everybody involved became a member of the company and was expected to contribute four hours a week to maintaining the building or doing admin.

Waterside (Archers Wharf) Ltd co-operative rules - this and the Waterside drawing above are from a contemporary leaflet sent to me by Linsey Pollak.

 The Theatre

The Theatre at Waterside Studios started out in 1975 - confusingly at different times it was known as the Warehouse Theatre and The Waterside Theatre. In June 1975 the Greater London Arts Association awarded £5000 from its Theatre Conversion Scheme Fund 'to Crunchy Frog, a group working from a disused warehouse... to cover the conversion of the ground floor of the building into a theatre and to set up a rehearsal room and kitchen area'. In the following year structural alterations included turning the first floor level into a cafe/bar and part of the groundfloor bar into dressing rooms.

The Stage (1975) reports that the 'little theatre which us up to now has been known by the delightful name of The Crunchy Frog... is alas more prosaically retitled as The Warehouse.

1977:  'a much needed venture in a neglected area of London' with artistic director listed as Ann Colthart - I am wondering whether this was Ann Coltart (1941-2024), among other things a Greenham Common peace campaigner and chair of Bermondsey Labour Party in early 1980s.

1976 events at the 'Warehouse Theatre'

1977 events at the 'Waterside Theatre'

  The Theatre hosted lots of alternative, experimental and radical theatre performances Among those who performed there were:

- Belt and Braces socialist theatre company  - Gavin Richards later went on to play Tiffany's dad in Eastenders!

- Forkbeard Fantasy who presented 'The Cranium Show' in 1976 featuring Lol Coxhill - he played sax with The Damned for a while and was a big figure in the London improv music scene.

- Eastend Abbreviated Soapbox Theatre - who included later punk singer Patrik Fitzgerald

- the People Show, whose 1976 show no.68 included Mike Figgis, later film director (Leaving Las Vegas etc)

- Robert Llewellyn, who started out as a shoemaker at no. 99 then started hosting cabaret nights there and formed the alternative comedy troupe The Joeys. He later played Kryten, the android character in 1980s/90s sci fi TV series Red Dwarf.

- The Women's Theatre Group, which performed 'Pretty ugly' in December 1977, a musical show for 12 to 15 year olds.

- Incubus, whose 'Soon maybe boogie' (November 1977) was a punk influenced play featuring fictional band The Iron Jelloids who  'endlessly rehearse their unlovely, subversive and eventually super destructive rhythms'. Clearly modelled on the Sex Pistols, and possibly referencing their time using the space.

- Mutable Theatre, whose 'Stairway to Paradise'  (1975) was advertised as also including 'licensed bar and disco'.

- Les Oeufs Malades (Gerard Bell, Bryony Lavery and Jessica Higgs) performing  'I Was Too Young At The Time To Understand Why My Mother Was Crying' (1976) with music by Jam Sandwich.

- Dockwalloper Company staged 'Smile Please. You're on holiday' (1975), 

Nomads and Fools, 'Befooled' (1976)

Fine Artistes, founded by actor Pavel Douglas, performed there in 1976.

(the story of many of these alternative theatre companies is told at the excellent Unfinished Histories) 

Early Music

There was a strong musical connection from the start, interestingly including a quite niche link with the overlapping 'early music' revival and emerging 'world music' scenes. At this time both were seen as somewhat counter-cultural movements, exploring alternative sounds and instruments from history and around the world

 Linsey Pollak had a flute and bagpipe making workshop there from 1976-78. Originally from Australia, he came to England to study instrument making at the London College of Furniture in Whitechapel. Returning to Australia he has continued ever since playing and making woodwind and reed instruments and performing at numerous multi-cultural/'world music' festivals and events. 

Linsey Pollak 'every few months he and his colleagues put on a lively and informal musical evening when they play the instruments they make'. Source: Tony Aldous, The Illustrated London News Book of London's Villages, 1980. This book is based on a series of articles, one of which from 1977 focused on Rotherhithe. 

Outside Waterside in 1977 - Linsey Pollak with flute, Mike Canty holding poster.

Dan Larson, another London College of Furniture student, made early musical instruments including lutes at his Waterside studio and has continued to do this since in the USA.  Other instrument makers who used the space included Janet Bird (who made reeds and lived on barge with Linsey  Pollak), Jeremy Lowe (woodwind repairs, 1970s) and in the 1990s  Brian Stapleton (ukelele maker including for the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain) and Anna Dolling (lute maker)

A list of people based in the workshops c.1977

 The Sex Pistols connection

The Sex Pistols connection with the Crunchy Frog came at a pivotal moment in the formation of the band. In summer 1975 they were still trying out for a lead singer to join with Glenn Matlock, Paul Cook and Steve Jones and they rehearsed a number of times at 99 Rotherhithe Street.

 Robert Neely, who describes himself as  'the original Cruchy Frog person' who found the warehouse around 1974 and leased it off the GLC' has recalled: 'yes the Sex Pistols started to practice there I jammed with them a few times. McLaren used to some along in a green leather suit'.

The venue had been suggested to Malcolm McLaren by Peter Christopherson who around this time was starting to rehearse with Throbbing Gristle. McLaren biographer Paul Gorman suggests that Christopherson knew the place through his work with album cover designers Hipgnosis who may have used it in some capacity. Gorman has also suggested that Cosey Fanni Tutti of Throbbing Gristle may also have worked at Crunchy Frog/Waterside at some point (though this is not confirmed).

The Pistols had a number of rehearsals with David Harrison as a possible singer, but seemingly they didn't feel he was the right fit. Harrison told Gorman that one of the things that didn't go down too well  was that he would comment on the Thames wildlife, saying things like 'look there's a cormorant' (Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, 2020).  

David Harrison - a nearly Sex Pistol

 In August 1975 John Lydon was famously auditioned miming to the jukebox in McLaren and Westwood's Sex shop on the Kings Road.  He was invited to a rehearsal scheduled for the next week at the Crunchy Frog and turned up there with his friend John Grey. But nobody else turned up. Lydon told Jon Savage 'I felt a fool walking round Bermondsey Wharf, it's dangerous down there, particularly the way I looked at the time' (England's Dreaming: The Sex Pistols and Punk Rock, 1991).  Glenn Matlock - who described  The Crunchy Frog as 'a hippy commune/warehouse/community centre by the Thames' - said that the rest of the band 'couldn't be bothered to go' and that he had been put off by the difficulties of bunking the fare across London. It is clear that Jones, Matlock and Cook were not keen on Lydon joining the band at this point.

So while the Sex Pistols may have rehearsed there, Lydon never did (as he confirmed in 2024 - see video below). Shortly afterwards, on 31 August 1975, Lydon rehearsed with the band for the first time at the Rose and Crown in Wandsworth.

In a 2022 interview with John Robb,  film director Julien Temple claimed to have stumbled across the band rehearsing at the Crunchy Frog while wandering as a film student round the area, hearing them playing The Small Faces 'I want you to know that I love you'  before they had played a gig. It is possible but if he did, Lydon wasn't with them. 

Later music

The Pistols association with 99 Rotherhithe Street was quite fleeting, but there was lots of music there in this period and after.  This flyer from 1980 (I think) includes Red Rinse (a  band who played for Rock Against Racism), Diz and the Doormen (with South African-born blues pianist Diz Watson) and the Red Lights (who I think were a Deptford punk band).

The folk band Blowzabella, still going today (as of 2025) also feature on this programme and played there a number of times. Cliff Stapleton joined the band as  hurdy gurdy player having previously  been involved in putting on 'drolls'  -  16th and 17th century street theatre  - at the Waterside Theatre. He later toured with Coil (2002). 

Mountebanck Zanies with music from English Folly (1977?)

Blowzabella poster for a 1979 gig, designed by Juan Wingaard

 There were disco nights there in the 1970s and in the mid-1980s Meltdown all nighters playing soul, reggae and African music. I believe Coldcut/Ninja Tune cofounder Jonathan More was involved with this night - he presented a Meltdown show on Kiss FM.

In the 1980s there were regular jazz nights  promoted by John Edge.  Musicians including Steve Berry, Django Bates, Dave Patman, Christ Batchelor and Steve Buckley played together regularly at Waterside, then joined the influential Loose Tubes.

In September 1985 the venue hosted a late night Jazz/Salsa Fish Fry  with Baz Fe Jazz & Andy McConnell plus the Tommy Chase Quartet. As Giles Peterson recalls, Chase was a key figure in 1980s London jazz scene. In this period Peterson himself was DJing at the Royal Oak in Tooley Street along with Nicky Holloway, and the latter was involved in putting on a warehouse party at 99 Rotherhithe Street.

source: https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2017/06/london-warehouse-parties-oral-history

I haven't found any trace of any live music events after the 1980s (happy to be corrected), but the space continued to be used for workshops until 2003 when it closed down and the site was redeveloped as flats. The history of the building reflects the dockside story on both sides of the river. Dockside industrial buildings falling into decline; empty buildings being used for a period as cheap space for arts, music, living; then being redeveloped for high end housing.

Thanks to Linsey Pollak, Cliff Stapleton and Chris Gunstone  for posters/flyers and memories. Would love to hear any other stories/memories people may have.

Last year me and Neil Controlled Weirdness did an episode of 'Drifting through the streets' all about this:

Southwark against racism and apartheid - 1970s/80s

SCARF (Southwark Campaign Against Racialism and Fascism was set up in late 1970s to do what it said on the tin. At one time it was based at 136 Lordship Lane SE22

As well as fighting against far right organisations in the UK such as the National Front, it was also linked to international anti-racist campaigns, notably the Anti-Apartheid Movement. A Southwark branch of AAM was set up in 1978 and as reported in this SCARF newsletter held meetings at Bookplace, 13 Peckham High Street (a community bookshop):

This Southwark Against Apartheid benefit gig took place at North Peckham Civic Centre on the Old Kent Road, with acts including ska band Potato 5, One Style, Luddy Samms, Attaco Decente, and Clea & McLeod (I think this must have been in 1987 as May 22nd fell on a Friday that year).

(with the exception of the Bookplace photo these images were included in a Black History Month exhibition at Southwark Council's Tooley St HQ in October 2025)

See previously:

No Nazis in East Street - SCARF 1979

Morocco Bound - Bermondsey bookshop

Morocco Bound bookshop/bar/cafe in Morocco Street SE1 (off Bermondsey Street) has a fine selection of books, as well as drinks. There are regular events including jazz, folk and poetry nights.

The Cramps in Nunhead Cemetery (1990)

The great US band The Cramps visited London in 1990 and were photographed in a cemetery for a Melody Maker shoot by photographer and drummer Joe Dilworth. Online there has been debate about where exactly these photos were taken, with candidates discussed including Nunhead Cemetery, Abney Park and Kensal Green.

I am going to go with Nunhead for now because somebody else who was there says so. Caroline Collett was at the time producer and presenter of the Movie Show on BSB, and has recalled on twitter: 'Nunhead Cemetery, the day I interviewed Lux & Ivy about their fave horror films... I think they were slightly bemused at how far from the centre of town it was. They did come sailing through in a hearse, which was the best possible way to arrive! [guitarist Poison Ivy] 'was absolutely freezing and spent most of the time in the Director’s orange VW Beetle with the heating on high!'. She mentions the Melody Maker photoshoot happening at the same time.

Of course that all fits in with the cemetery's goth reputation with black clad hearse drivers being a familiar sight at the its annual open day.

© Joe Dilworth

But still - I would like to be able to confirm. Nunhead was/is famously overgrown with trees which fits with the pictures. And the arch behind them in one of the photos looks similar to the chapel. Of course in 35 years since some stones have fallen and some trees have grown very big so it's hard to tell. But if you can find the exact location of where Poison Ivy trod on the Nunhead Ivy let me know!

Update 13th October 2025

After a fine autumn afternoon's walk around the cemetery yesterday I have found the locations of these photos. In fact all the photos from this shoot seem to have been taken in the same area. When you come in through the main cemetery entrance on Limesford Road there is an avenue directly in front of you heading up hill towards the chapel. At the top of this avenue on the right there is a group of monuments behind which the photos were taken. Here's some evidence:

The decorated pillar behind them in photo is the Wetherel family monument which also aligns correctly with what is clearly the arched entrance to the chapel

In several photos from this shoot they are standing by a grave stone. This still exists and is located just behind where the previous photo was taken. Unfortunately the headstone is now broken and has fallen back but you can still make out the lettering - it is the grave of Thomas Aldred and also of Emma Aldred whose name can be made out near its base.

In one further detail note the brickwork corner of another monument next to Poison Ivy in the gravestone photo. That same corner can be seem in this photo, with the gravestone toppled over in the back right of photo.

The bricks are on the base of this monument.

In further discussion on line, Caroline Collett has confirmed that she is '100%' sure that it was in Nunhead, and she arranged the licence for filming. She has also provided the additional detail that while Ivy was freezing 'Lux was fearless, striding across the undergrowth in his high heels'.   She has also put up a film clip of Lux and Ivy from the same day.

Meanwhile Stoke Newington History confirmed on twitter that the chapel in the photo definitely isn't the one in Abney Park cemetery. 

So I would say that is case closed and we can say for sure that the Cramps were in Nunhead Cemetery early in 1990, most probably in February as the Melody Maker article with photos by Joe Dilworth was published on 3 March 1990. You can't simply recreate the photos today - graves have fallen, trees have grown, and there has been landscaping and subsidence. I also wondered with the chapel photo whether there has been some touching up of the photo itself, there are some tell tale blurs (not an unusual occurrence). But the location is clear. Would be good to see that gravestone cleaned up and repaired in memory of its inhabitants and of the late Lux Interior who once leaned over it fabulously.

 

They are in good company, we know that Marc Almond has definitely visited too, photographed here with collaborator John Harle while promoting their 2014 album 'The Tyburn Tree (Dark London)' [photo sourced from London Dead]

More Nunhead Cemetery posts