Women of Lewisham

The 'Women of Lewisham' banner outside Prendergast School on Adelaide Avenue SE4 features a number of women associated with the borough. From left to right author Malorie Blackman, singer Kate Bush (who lived in Brockley), Suffragette Emily Davison, community activist Sybil Phoenix and housing/open spaces campaigner Octavia Hill (who helped create Hilly Fields park).

 

Royal Albert for Sale

Last week's Transpontine pub round up mentioned that the New Cross Inn is up for sale. Now it seems that another key local pub, The Royal Albert, is also up for sale. To be precise the terrace of buildings from 460-464 New Cross Road, which includes The Royal Albert, is on the market.  As well as the pub, the site includes three other Victorian buildings, two with shops on ground floor and flats above, and one next to the pub not currently in use. There is also an empty site behind the terrace (see photo below).

Worryingly it is being marketed by Kalmars in the 'development sites' section of its website. However, there is no reason to think that there is any immediate threat to the Royal Albert. TBAC Ltd signed a 15 year lease for the pub in 2009, so there's another 12 years to go on that (I believe TBAC is associated with Antic who run the pub). Antic are adamant that there is no danger to the pub.

The Royal Albert has a long history stretching back to the mid-19th century. At times it has been an important music venue. In the 1970s Kate Bush was among those who played there. Local band Rubber Johnny, who grew out out of the Albany in Depford, played a Friday night residency there from around 1978-1981.  The picture below shows the band playing there, as well as the mural in the pub.

picture by Steve Golton from a set from this time at Flickr

Later it became the Paradise Bar. The flyer below is from a 1992 event promoted by SYLVIA (Support Your Local Venues and Independent Artists) promising 'Deptford Beat bands' including The Proles and Moral Panic.

1992 flyer from set of Proles flyers by mdx at flickr

In 2003/4, the Paradise Bar was the centre of the 'New Cross scene' associated with Angular Records and Caffy St Luce's Pop of the Tops night. - Bloc Party, Art Brut and The Long Blondes all played early gigs there  (happy days). When Antic took it over in 2006 it reverted to its original name, and is now a very comfortable pub with good food and drink.

Bloc Party at Paradise Bar 2003
(from set of photos by Paul Madden at flickr)

Although there seems to be no reason to worry now about the future of the Royal Albert, the fact remains that a property developer could buy up the site with a longer term ambition to redevelop it. That is happening to pubs all over the country, including just down the New Cross Road where the recently closed Walpole faces demolition to be replaced by a hotel. Perhaps we shouldn't wait until the places we value are about to shut down before we take action to preserve their future. For a start, anybody can recommend that a building be listed by English Heritage (details here). And there is also the option of getting a pub listed as an 'asset of community value' as Southwark Council have done for the Ivy House in Nunhead.

Update 19th November: just realized that Bill at Deptford Misc has previously researched the history of the pub, starting out with this early history: 'The first recorded mention of the Royal Albert Public House was when Frederick Andrew Hall was granted a license for the premises on 6th September 1848. On the 1851 census Mr Hall is described as a Master Bricklayer aged 47, born in Plumstead employing 10 men; his wife Elizabeth aged 60 was born in Rotherhithe. Three children Betsey 36 , Harriet 23 and George 20 (a Carpenter) are listed along with Ostler John Dickenson 22 and Pot Boy George Runham 14. Apart from Betsey who was born in Rotherhithe (presumeably Elizabeth's daughter by a previous marriage) they were all shown as born in Deptford'. Lots more here: http://deptfordmisc.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/royal-albert-pub-has-stood-on-corner-of.html

A lot of owners, licensees, bar staff and drinkers have passed through since 1848, which only serves to highlight that whoever currently owns old pubs like this really only have temporary custody of them before they pass them on. They shouldn't be able to wipe out decades, even centuries, of continuous social life in pursuit of a short term property deal. But that's exactly what countless owners of these buildings are being allowed to get away with.

Kate Bush: the Brockley demos

Kate Bush's Brockley years have been covered at Transpontine before (as has her time using Wood Wharf Studios in Greenwich). In the latest edition of Uncut magazine (November 2011), there's a feature on the greatest bootlegs of all time, with 'The Cathy demos' by Kate Bush at number 12: 'Between signing to EMI in the summer of 1976 and recording her debut album, The Kick Inside, a year later the 19-year-old Bush spent 12 months dancing by day and writing by night in her top floor flat at 44 Wickham Road, Brockley, London. The results are captured on this home-recorded collection of 22 voice/piano demo. Five songs - including 'Violin' and 'Hammer Horror' - later appeared on albums but the majority have never been heard since. The haunting 'Something like a Song' is one of her finest early piano ballads, more intriguingly on Organic Acid her brother John recites an erotic poem about mutual mastrubation while Bush demurely trills the chorus. Also known as the Phoenix demos after the Arizona radio station KSTM' (which first broadcast the tapes). You can find various tracks from this on Youtube and elsewhere.  

At one of the many Kate Bush fan sites, there's some more detail about this period. Seemingly, not all the neighbours were appreciative: 'I'd practice scales and that on the piano, go off dancing, and then in the evening I'd come back and play the piano all night. And I actually remember, well, the summer of '76 which was really hot here. We had such hot weather, I had all the windows open. And I just used to write until you know four in the morning, and I got a letter of complaint from a neighbor who was basically saying "Shuuut Uuuup!" cause they had to get up at like five in the morning. They did shift work and my voice had been carried the whole length of the street I think, so they weren't too appreciative'. 

 And yes in March 1977 she wrote Wuthering Heights on Wickham Road, on a piano bought from a second hand shop in Woolwich: 'I wrote in my flat, sitting at the upright piano one night in March at about midnight. There was a full moon and the curtains were open, and every time I looked up for ideas, I looked at the moon. Actually, it came quite easily. I couldn't seem to get out of the chorus - it had a really circular feel to it, which is why it repeats. I had originally written something more complicated, but I couldn't link it up, so I kept the first bit and repeated it. I was really pleased, because it was the first song I had written for a while, as I'd been busy rehearsing with the KT Band' (Kate Bush Club Newsletter, January 1979). (local photography blogger Danielle Waldman has recently made a pilgrimage to the house).

South London Smash Hits

I found some old music mags on a market stall on holiday in Dorset, and spotted these early 1980s transpontine beauties.

Kate Bush of Brockley (from Smash Hits, May 15 1980)



David Sylvian of Japan, and of Beckenham/Catford/Sydenham (from Smash Hits, February 4 1982).

Kate Bush 1979

Kate Bush's Brockley days have been covered at Transpontine before, living at 44 Wickham Road and playing at local pubs including the Rose of Lee (now Dirty South) and the Royal Albert. Recently a great 1979 documentary surfaced on Youtube all about Kate Bush preparing for her first big tour. The 'Convent girl from Bexley', as she is described, talks (at about 3:30)about her first singing appearance in public 'about two years ago in a pub in Lewisham, and I was so scared, I really was but once you're up there it's different you just forget all about it because they're there to see you and you have to give it to them... Considering it was a pub and we were totally unknown, they were very good, they were very respectful. It was good, yeah'

She is also seen rehearsing with her band at Wood Wharf Studios in Greenwich, with some great shots of the undeveloped riverfront (at 9:45): 'Every lunchtime after leaving her dancing practice physically drained she'd drive across the Thames to Greenwich to rehearse the music, at Wharf studios - the best available place with the right facilities for just running though the songs time and time and time again'.



Dire Straits also rehearsed at the same Greenwich studio in the late 1970s - this documentary also seems to have been filmed there:



Thanks to Clive Shaw for spotting this.

Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory

Space Station Sixty-Five in East Dulwich is hosting an interesting-sounding afternoon of informal discussions and readings to launch the book Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory by Deborah M. Withers. They say:

'Drawing on cutting edge feminist philosophy, critical theory and queer studies, Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory makes theory accessible to new audiences. Through analysis of the music, film, video and dance of Kate Bush, it breaks down boundaries between the academic and popular, showing that theory can be sordid, funny and relevant – despite what most people think...

Don’t miss the chance to discuss the philosophical possibilities of Kate Bush’s music with the author. The event is taking place on Sunday, March 21st from 2-5pm and you are invited to drop-in at anytime, readings and discussions will take place throughout the afternoon. To top this all off, there will be tea, cake and the odd YouTube clip as well'.

Space Station Sixty-Five is 'an artist-run space in south-east london' situated at 65 North Cross Road, London SE22 9ET (tel. 020 8299 5036).

As highlighted at Transpontine before, Kate Bush once lived at 44 Wickham Road in Brockley, and played gigs locally at the start of her career.

Kate Bush in Brockley

This house in Wickham Road (number 44) was the launchpad for the career of arguably England's greatest singer songwriter: Kate Bush.

She actually grew up in a farmhouse in the similarly named Wickham Lane in Welling, where she famously wrote some of her later hit songs while still a child. She went to St. Joseph's Convent Grammar School (later the St Joseph's Campus of Bexley College).

In her late teens, having already been signed by EMI, she moved to Brockley where she lived in the middle flat at no.44 Wickham Road, sandwiched between her two brothers' flats.

In 1977 she fronted the KT Bush Band in local pubs, particularly the Rose of Lee in Lewisham (now Dirty South), as well as the Royal Albert in New Cross Road (later the Paradise Bar, now back to being the Royal Albert). The following year she released her first album, The Kick Inside, with her first single (Wuthering Heights) going to number one. That was the end of her playing down the pub, and in fact after a tour in 1979 she pretty much gave up live gigs altogether apart from the occasional appearance. Later she lived for many years in Court Road, between Mottingham and Eltham.

Thanks to Fred Vermorel for confirming the address; there are some references elsewhere (e.g. on Wikipedia) to Kate Bush living in Tressillian Road in Brockley - I don't think this is right, unless somebody is clear that she lived there as well as Wickham Road - the latter is definitely correct. By the way, I have heard that another well known musician lived in the same flat after Kate Bush, but not sure who - anybody know?

See Also: Kate Bush - The Brockley Demos - yes, she wrote Wuthering Heights in Wickham Road