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

Music Monday: 'Welcome to the Party' - Professor Green in Brockley

Professor Green is often to be seen at coffee shops and similar in the Brockley area, so perhaps no surprize to see him filming his latest video in Coulgate Street, home of Parlez, Brown's and Broca. 'Welcome to the Party' gently self-mocks his journey from working class boy does good to 'one foot in the grave, one foot in the rave' deli lifestyle. Some very funny lines, e.g. 'I don't wear crocs, but I wear birkenstocks, they're not sliders, they're sandals, I like buying coasters and candles'.

 

The Gig Guide - 1995 South London music listings

I found this June 1995 issue of  The Gig Guide for London in Revolution Records in Penge. I don't remember it from the time and it certainly doesn't cover the breadth of music from that period. Its focus is very much on the pub music scene but it provides an interesting snapshot of South London venues, some no longer here. 

There are some recognisable names. Placebo are listed at playing at McMillans in Deptford which must have been an early gig for them. Brain of Morbius are at the Prince of Orange SE16, Pavement and Motorhead at Brixton Academy and Shane MacGowan and the Popes at the Clapham Grand - followed a week later by Whigfield.  

Most of the other artists aren't familiar - to me anyway - but The Station and The Roebuck in Lewisham, the Rutland in Catford, the White Swan SE10,  the Pie & Kilderkin in Forest Hill (now the Signal), the Paradise Bar in New Cross and the World Turned Upside Down on Old Kent Road are all busy with various rock, jazz and indie nights.  Clubbing was probably bigger than gigging in 1995, it certainly was for me, but that doesn't get too much of a look in here apart from The Fridge in Brixton with its gay nights Love Muscle and Gridlock. Drummonds in Beckenham High Street promises 'the best funk and soul bands' every Thursday.

 

Music Monday: Martin Carthy celebration (and rehearsals in New Cross Road)

A lovely night at EartH in Dalston on Saturday to celebrate the life and songs of folk legend Martin Carthy.

The event was organised by Jon Wilks and Campbell Baum (Broadside Hacks), with the stage set up as a mythical pub, The North Country Maid, where musicians sat at tables and refreshed their glasses at the working bar (some more frequently than others!).  Oh and the barman was Jon Boden from Bellowhead, who burst into song at one point. 

Joe Boyd - producer of Nick Drake, Fairport Convention and so many others -  started the proceedings highlighting in particular Carthy's contribution to guitar playing. In the early 1960s folk scene, singers of traditional song like Ewan MacColl disdained accompanying songs on guitar or other instruments and Carthy was one of those who went against the grain.

 Then in three sections a great line up of folk and other musicians old and new played their versions of songs associated with Carthy through his 60+ year career as a solo artist and member of various influential folk groups including Steeleye Span, the Albion Band, Brass Monkey, the Watersons and Waterson:Carthy and the Imagined Village.

Martin was on stage throughout and performed a couple of songs on his own, including High Germany, as well joining in with others at times. He sounded in good voice singing 'The Maid of Australia' with a young brass section and Brass Monkey collaborator John Fitzpatrick.  How many musicians still perform when they are in their 80s?

Daughter Eliza Carthy was central to the proceedings of course, doing a fine version of  'When I first came to Caledonia', once sung by her late mother Norma Waterson. Other highlights for me included Graham Coxon of Blur singing 'The Trees they do Grow High', Martin Simpson's 'Palaces of Gold' and a couple of songs from Goblin Band. The latter played an enthusiastic part in the proceedings through the night, dancing in the wings and joining in the destruction of a prop 'piano' at the gig's finale. The latter referencing an incident in 1962 when Carthy and Bob Dylan chopped off bits of an old piano for firewood at Carthy's London flat. Dylan sent a video message to Carthy that was broadcast on the night.

Towards the end Billy Bragg sang a great version of 'The Hard Times of Old England Retold', previously recorded by him and the Carthys as part of their Imagined Village project, and recited his 'England, Half-English' lyrics with a topical twist: 'St. George was born in Free Palestine, How he got here I don't know, And those three lions on his shirt,  they never sprung from England's dirt,  Them lions are half English, And I'm half English too'.

All this and Angeline Morrison, Maddy Prior (Steeleye Span), Nick Hart, Jackie Oates, Emily Portman and many more...

So yes this all happened in Hackney, but the day before those involved took over the Music Rooms in New Cross Road to rehearse. On his Facebook page Jon Wilks has posted a few photos from this, including Billy Bragg and Graham Coxon having a cup of tea in the Music Rooms bar and Martin and Eliza Carthy walking up Casella Road by the Corner coffee shop.

Broadside Hacks have been putting on more and more ambitious events, hard to believe that not too long ago they were running a small session at Skehans SE14.  Martin Carthy of course is no stranger to the folk circuit of  South London pubs, I last saw him at the Goose is Out folk club at the Ivy House in 2023, and I once performed briefly at the same event as him at the Deptford Arms back in 2010.

Martin Carthy at the Ivy House in 2023

Previous posts:

Broadside Hacks at the Rivoli Ballroom

Goblin Band at the Ivy House

Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger and the Critics Group in Beckenham

Martin Carthy at Kit & Cutter May Day special, Deptford Arms 2010

Lots more South London folk 

Folk song as solidarity with the dead: Broadside Hacks/Shovel Dance/Goblin Band, Ewan MacColl & Walter Benjamin

Miners strike benefits 1984: Deptford, Woolwich, Old Kent Road with Test Dept, The Mekons and more

There were many fundraising gigs in support of the miners during their 1984/85 strike, including across SE London. One of the most musically significant took place at the Albany in Deptford in September 1984 where Test Dept played with the South Wales Striking Miners Choir - starting a strong relationship between the two that led to the album 'Shoulder to Shoulder'. I've written about that here before, but there's some additional detail in an interview with Test Dept's Graham Cunnington at Electronic Sound. According to Gra:

“Pat Brown, who was in the Deptford Labour Party at the time, was putting on this benefit at the Albany arts centre, but all the bands he’d earmarked to play had pulled out. Jack Balchin, who was our sound guy and who worked in Deptford and Lewisham teaching music to young kids, said we should do it. He went up to Pat and said, ‘I’ve got the band for you’. Pat had never heard of us, but he said OK, and because we were used to putting on our own shows, we said we’d organise the whole thing. We also said we should have some direct involvement with the mining community, not just do a benefit and send the money out'.  I didn't realise that the Choir was originally pulled together for this gig, rehearsing their songs on the bus on the way to London.

Poster for the Albany gig by Brett Turnbull
(sourced from Test Dept facebook group where there are some pics from the gig)

The Ambulance Station squat on the Old Kent Road also hosted gigs. This 'Solidarity with the Miners' punk benefit in August 1984 featured Your Heterosexual Violence, The Unknown Colours, Violet Circuit and State Hate (I saw the latter play there on another occasion). The Ambulance Station building (which seems to have actually been a former fire station) still stands opposite the Tesco supermarket on Old Kent Road.

In November 1984 The Mekons played a miners benefit at Thames Poly cellar bar in Woolwich with 5 Go Down to the Sea, the Eels,  A Popular History of Signs and the Violet Circuit (again)

See previous posts:

Test Dept and the Miners Strike

Lewisham Miners Support Group/Women Against Pit Closures

Supporting the Miners at Goldsmiths

A mix of music from the miners strike I did a while ago:

 

Bermondsey Folk Festival 2025

Bermondsey Folk Festival is back on Saturday, 27 September 2025 in the Blue market (SE16 3UQ) from 12 noon to 5 pm, in an event that will feature Jacken Elswyth (amazing banjo player with Shovel Dance Collective), Cunning Folk (launching new album Folk Process 2), Bity Booker, Indika Akuus, Gemma Khawaja, Okinawa Sanshinkai and others.

The festival has been going in one from or other since 2015. I remember seeing the great Andy Irvine (Sweeney's Men, Planxty etc.) playing at the 2019 iteration at the Biscuit Factory.  Incidentally Andy is back at the Ivy House SE15 in November at the Goose is Out folk club).

Andy Irvine at 2019 Bermondsey Folk Festival

Cenotaph South - South London's poetic landscape

'Cenotaph South: mapping the lost poets of Nunhead Cemetery' (Penned in the Margins, 2016) by Chris McCabe is a remarkable book. Partly it is what it says on the cover – an exploration of some of the largely forgotten poets buried there including Marian Richardson and Albert Craig. But he also wanders over the wider South London poetic landscape, extending from Robert Browning's cottage on Telegraph Hill, through the cemetery and onto William Blake's Peckham Rye and then to Dulwich woods and village where the Crown and Greyhound pub ('the Dog') hosted poetry gatherings upstairs from 1940s to 1980s. He also mentions contemporary Peckham poets like Caleb Femi, performing at the Review Bookshop in Bellenden Road.

He goes in search of a hawthorn tree suitable for Blake's vision of angels on Peckham Rye and find the most appropriate candidate is to be a tree on the Rye Hill estate:

'Quaint English Bauhaus. There is a map of Peck Hill and Rye Hill Park Estate laid out in the colours of a Butlins map: south London joyland. I check the Rocque map, completed almost to the date that Blake was here: this would have been open fields, the edge of an enclosure separating the Rye from what was most likely private fields. I weave through the outskirts of the estate. The land around Frome House is lined with what look to be ancient trees, bark knotted in folds. The trees grow within yards of the windows of the flats, past the patched light that breaks through the skeleton of a scaffold. The trees are trying to grow inwards, towards the sun. There is what looks like a hawthorn here - gnarled and ancient-looking, awesome in scale, towering over the flats. This is a hawthorn to take on the oaks. A hawthorn worthy of any angel'.

We don't have to take literally that this is the tree - the details of Blake's childhood visions are sketchy to say the least - but I like the idea that it might be found not in the park itself but in nearby council estate. 

In 'mapping out the woods, pubs, colleges and houses of South East London's dead poets' he finds the area to be 'the richest landscape of poetic activity in London'. Is it something about the hills, home to the muses in classical times according to Robert Graves so why not here too? 

'The word muse, we are told, comes from the root mont, meaning mountain. I think of the high points around Nunhead cemetery, Telegraph Hill (where Robert Browning lived) and the higher neighbouring peaks of Sydenham Hill and Forest Hill. There is a pull to poets in these high points, an irresistible urge for the heights: light, perspective, space'.

Pagemasters Zine Fair 2025

Coming up next weekend (6/7 September 2025), the Pagemasters Zine Fair at ArtHub Studios, Stanley Street SE8 4BL (near New Cross station). More than 40 publishers stalls plus lots more. Look out for some local history from Past Tense and South London Landscape History. More details here

Update after the event:

Good to see the Pagemasters zine fair in Deptford so busy last weekend, lots of stalls and interesting publications. A tribute there too to the recently departed Mark Pawson, inveterate zinester, badge maker, mail artist and more.

 

Band of Holy Joy at Dash the Henge

Dash the Henge in Camberwell has so much interesting stuff going on in addition to selling records, not to mention having a pop up Henge in Brixton arcade. This Saturday 23 August sees a performance at 5 pm by the legendary Band of Holy Joy, launching a new CD of poetic psychogeographical experimentation 'Data breach on haunted beach', also available at bandcamp.

Check out their Bad Punk show on Resonance FM too. 

'to the broken bottled beach once more...'

Update after the gig:

Really enjoyed the performance at Dash the Henge, a stripped back BOHJ mainly performing from 'Data Breach...' with a spoken word tale of drugs, death and revenge on the North East coast. But they also played a few of their early favourites including Rosemary Smith and Fishwives, the latter's dysfunctional relationship now reconciled with a new ending where they go out together and join a Palestinian solidarity demonstration. Good to see some members of Test Dept there too, a band who like BOHJ started out in New Cross. Look out for some early unreleased recordings from them coming out soon, also look out for BOHJ doing a full band gig in Brighton on 26 October 2025.

RIP Charles Gallagher (Dog & Bell) and Bill Mannix (Rivoli Ballroom)

Sorry to hear of the death this week of a couple of SE London nightlife legends:  Charles Gallagher, landlord of the Dog and Bell in Deptford from 1988 to 2016, and Bill Mannix who has owned the Rivoli Ballroom in Crofton Park for the last 40 years and against the odds has kept it alive and thriving as London's last remaining ballroom of its kind.

Like many others I have spend many happy hours in both these fine places, which have had an enduring impact of the life and culture of SE London and beyond. 

Charles Gallagher (1947-2025)

William Mannix (1938-2025)

 (photos from @the_dog_and_bell and @rivoliballroom on insta)

Previous posts on the Rivoli (a lot)

Previous posts mentioning Dog and Bell

Lewisham 'Stop Starving Gaza' protest

 200+ people out tonight at Lewisham Clock Tower for a 'Stop Starving Gaza' pot and pan protest, called by Lewisham Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Lewisham and Greenwich CND.

There were similar events elsewhere, as Brixton Buzz reports the protest at Lambeth Town Hall included Vanessa Redgrave banging a saucepan

Photo from Brixton Buzz

Romy at the Old Nun's Head

Lots of local pubs were busy last Sunday for the final of the Women's Euros between England and Spain but the particularly enthusiastic crowd at the Old Nuns Head included Romy from the XX seen here waving a Lionesses scarf. 

New Cross Songwriters Circle

The indefatigable Martin Howard is doing more than most in keeping the flame of acoustic live music going in SE London, promoting the long running Acoustic Anarchy nights at waterintobeer in Brockley, helping with Deptford Folk at the Endeavour bar and in the latest move putting on a monthly night upstairs at the Shirkers Rest SE14. The New Cross Songwriters Circle, on the first Sunday of the month, aims to showcase people's own songs. I went along for the July session and caught the great Magic City Trio. Next one is on August 3rd with Chris, Lou and Leo (who are really good), Neil Gordon-Orr and Martin himself.

 

The Torch of Anarchy: 1890s meetings in Southwark Park

The Torch - sometimes known as The Torch of Anarchy - was an 1890s anarchist communist journal started by Olivia, Arthur and Helen Rossetti,  three young siblings from an artistic family (the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti was their uncle and the poet Christina Rossetti their aunt)

An issue from 1895 (April 18th) mentions that 'An Anarchist-Communist Group is being formed in Bermondsey' with open air meetings to 'be held in Southwark Park every Sunday morning at 11 am'. The contact give is C. Freestone, 5 Brandon Street, Bermondsey New Road'

A subsequent issue (18 July 1895) lists 'Anarchist Open-Air Propaganda' meetings in Southwark Park, Deptford Broadway and other London paces. The Torch is listed at being available from Devenny, 108 New Kent Road.

'Indoor Lectures' were also advertised at Deptford Workingmen's Educational Club, held at Smith's Cocoa Rooms, Deptford Bridge as well as at Liberty Hall in Wimbledon (Torch, 18 October 1895), 

See also: Bermondsey Socialist Club in the 1890s

 

Music Monday: Kae Tempest 'Sunshine on Catford

Loving the new Kae Tempest album, Self-Titled, from a transpontine perspective the track 'Sunshine on Catford' in particular, which features Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys.

Bermondsey Socialist Club 1890s

The Bermondsey Socialist Club was at 78 Grange Road, SE1. This notice from 1897 lists its Sunday lectures. There's Felix Volkhovsky, a prominent Russian radical exile of the tiime; John Hunter-Watts, socialist and secularist; and future Labour Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald.

The club seems to have developed alongside the Bermondsey Industrial Co-operative Society based at the same address. Established in 1881, they also put on regular lectures. This programme from 1886 includes speakers from the Social Democratic Federation (Harry Quelch, Nunhead based socialist) and the Vegetarian Society as well as a Political Economy class taught by the Fabian socialist Sidney Webb.

Number 78 Grange Road is now a vet's opposite Bermondsey Spa Gardens. It's an old building so unless the street numbering  has changed I assume this was the site of the club.

 (these flyers and many other treasures to be found in the Max Nettlau papers at the Institute for Social History online archive)

See also: Bermondsey anarchists in the 1890s