Telegraph Hill 1856

Bill, a commenter at a previous post, has pointed me in the direction of an interesting 1856 map of London waterworks. As he notes, Telegraph Hill is clearly named as such on this map.

Immediately to the South West of Telegraph Hill, Nunhead Hill is shown - this is the area now partly covered by Nunhead cemetery.

Strange Sounds in Welling

A tale of strange noises in Welling - it's stretching it a bit to bring spaceships into this story!

A desperate couple are looking for clues to track down the source of a vibration which is making their lives a misery. The pulsating noise has kept Irene and Edward Funnell from a good night's sleep for 286 days and, despite attempts by a variety of authorities to find the cause, no-one knows where it is coming from. Mrs Funnell, 62, of Lovel Avenue, Welling, said: "Some people think we are mad, but we are just normal people."

The couple, who have lived in their home for 34 years, thought at first the low throbbing noise was the bass from someone's music. Then they thought it might be a lorry parked in the street with its engine running. But just before Christmas last year, 63-year-old Mr Funnell was woken up in the early hours by "an awful noise" coming from somewhere in the house. The couple got up and heard a hissing noi se as they searched for the source. They opened the back door and went outside.

Mrs Funnell said: "It was like a vibration in the head, but you could feel it in the air. My husband said he would not have been surprised to look up and see a spaceship. It was very frightening."

Almost the same spaceship comparison was used by Lord Philips of Sudbury last month to describe a mysterious hum which began in the Suffolk town in July and which has also not yet been traced. Mrs Funnell said: "We dread going to bed. We nod off but it is always broken sleep and we are awake by 3.30am. We get no peace and quiet any more."

The couple's landlord, housing association London and Quadrant, has been working to find the source of the vibration, taking apart the central heating system and checking the electrics and the drains...

(full story, 25 September 2008, here)

Misty Morning Southwark Bridge

Thanks to Juleigh Gordon-Orr for this picture taken early yesterday morning from the Millennium Bridge looking towards Southwark Bridge.

Eleanor Marx in Sydenham

Sydenham Town has a nice feature of this month's unveiling of a blue plaque commemorating Eleanor Marx (1855-1898) at 7 Jews Walk, Sydenham. Eleanor is best known as the daughter of Karl Marx, but was a prominent socialist in her own right - for instance she was involved in founding the Socialist League with William Morris and others. While living in Sydenham she wrote for the socialist paper Justice on the women's question and other issues.

The Sydenham Town feature includes film of the unveiling with Sydenham Society historian Steven Grindlay providing details of her time in the house from 1895 to 1898. Evidently she bought the house with money left to her by Friedrich Engels, and was partly taken by the house because of its address - she wrote to her sister that she was 'Jewishly proud of her house in Jews Walk' (she was part Jewish).

Her relationship with Edward Aveling was falling apart at this time, despite her nursing him after an illness during which she pushed him around Sydenham in a bath chair, and she apparently poisoned herself (Grindlay has even identified the location of the chemist in Kirkdale which supplied the poison). The plaque opening also featured architectural historian Gavin Stamp and The Strawberry Thieves socialist choir leading the singing of the Internationale.

Dulwich Wood House

I was about to make a delayed post about finding a pub with a decent garden in South East London, recommending a trip to The Dulwich Wood House at 39 Sydenham Hill. It is very close to the entrance to Sydenham Hill Woods on Crescent Wood Road and is therefore ideal for a drink after walking the dog in the woods, as we did a few weeks ago. I was going to say that the pub managed to combine being a nice traditional pub feel rooted in the local area (with old newspaper clippings about the Crystal Palace on the wall), while offering what looked like a decent menu (albeit it a bit pricey and I didn't actually try the food). I was going to sing the praises of the bucolic garden overlooked by a veranda.

But then checking the details at Beer in the Evening I found that it is actually closed for refurbishment, with rumours of the restaurant being extended (presumably farewell to the veranda), the bar modernised and dogs being banned! Well I guess we'll have to wait and see what its like when the works finished - it will still be a pub in a great location with a decent garden. But let's hope it doesn't lose its pub character entirely, and let's hope too that they at least allow dogs in the garden - do they want to lose the 'just walked the dog in the woods and need a pint and something to eat' market (actually they probably do).

Catford prefabs to be saved?

Interesting article in today Guardian today about the Excalibur estate in Catford:

'When Eddie O'Mahony, then a newly demobbed sergeant with a wife and two infant sons, moved into his prefab bungalow in June 1946 he was told the hastily assembled timber panel home would last no more than a decade... Now, in a testament to both the unexpected longevity and historical significance of the prefab, almost 160,000 of which were hurriedly thrown up following the second world war to combat a crippling housing shortage, O'Mahony's home is likely to receive official protection in the next few weeks. The culture minister, Margaret Hodge, is expected to announce that the entire estate of 185 prefabs in Catford, south-east London, along with its rare, tin-roofed "temporary" church, should be given a Grade II listing." (full article here)

Nail the Cross this weekend

This Saturday 27th September 2008, No Pain In Pop and Adventures in the Beetroot Field present... NAIL THE CROSS a day of music and art across multiple venues and galleries in the heart of New Cross. The deal is people pay £15 and get a wrist band with which they go in and out of venues including Goldsmiths Student Union, Amersham Arms, New Cross Inn, Goldsmiths Tavern and The Walpole. It starts at lunchtime and carries on to the next morning. There's a good and diverse line up including Clinic, These New Puritans, Benga, Archie Bronson Outfit, Afrikan Boy, Hatcham Social and many many more.

You can buy tickets online or at the Amersham Arms, and then go to The Hobgoblin on the day and swap them for a wristband. The Hobgoblin itself will be open all day with 'Kelvstock' presenting music from 12 noon until nine, with free admission (i.e. you won't need a wristband or ticket). Local acts playing there will include Redgress Colletive, Little Devils, The Teenage Men, Cordelia Fellowes, Vikki G and Brockley Ukulele Group (who will be on around 6 pm)

Welcome to students

Yes it's that time of year, a new crop of students from all over the country (and indeed the world) are coming to live in New Cross and the surrounding area, most going to Goldsmiths, some to Camberwell Art College, London College of Communications or the Laban. The 'student houses' in our street have new tenants and I've spotted a few groups excitedly exploring the area.

If any of you come across this site can I just say 'welcome to South East London'. Yes, you will meet some snotty folk who will resentfully blank you for being 'off the manor' and if you're very unlucky you might even encounter some scum who will try and part you from your wallet and mobile phone. But anyone with a spark of life must surely welcome the student population - OK like every other part of the community, they have their share of idiots - but lets face it New Cross would be socially poorer without students keeping the nightlife going, forming bands, and (in some cases) staying in the area after college and stopping the area stagnating.

When was Telegraph Hill invented?

In a previous post about Waller Road, I noted that the designation by some of the area South of New Cross Road and north of Brockley as the distinct area of 'Telegraph Hill' (rather than as part of New Cross) seems to be quite recent. It is not mentioned, other than as the name for the parks, in the memoirs of Eileen Elias, ‘On Sundays we wore white’ (London: WH Allen, 1978) which describe her childhood in the area from 1910 to 1920.

I was delighted to hear this week from Tony Robins, who grew up in the area in the 1930s and 1940s (his war time memoirs are available online here). Tony recalls: 'From 1930, the year I was born, to 1948 (National Service),we lived at 77 Kitto Road, on the corner of Erlanger Road. Nobody could live closer to both parks, and my sisters & I considered they were ours - I think nobody could possibly have spent more time playing in them than we did! We knew our address was 77 Kitto Road, New Cross, S.E.14., and always said we lived at New Cross, or New Cross Gate (or even just the Gate) - not at Telegraph Hill, even though the parks had that name. After the war, coming home by bus or tram either along the Old Kent Road or Queens Road, or the other way from Lewisham or Greenwich, when paying my fare I learned to tell the conductor simply "The Gate, please".

So when was Telegraph Hill invented? I believe that the Telegraph Hill Centre opened in 1968, and there was a community body called the Telegraph Hill Social Council around this time and into the 1970s. But I think these were conceived as serving the Telegraph Hill Ward, part of the Lewisham Council area that extends almost to Honor Oak. I think it was probably the designation of the Telegraph Hill conservation area in 1990 that created a sense of a more narrow boundary, defined by the housing built by the Haberdashers Company in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. This is the area focused on by the Telegraph Hill Society, rather than the more architecturally and socially mixed Telegraph Hill Ward.

None of this matters too much, names do shift and after all 'New Cross Gate' was a new name compared with Hatcham, the area's older moniker. But I do think when people make a point of saying they live in 'Telegraph Hill not New Cross' as opposed to 'Telegraph Hill in New Cross' they are kidding nobody but themselves. What worries me more is that the imagined geographic distancing easily slips into a social distancing, with some people perhaps believing that they are somehow superior because they live several metres higher above sea level than the folks down below.

This is what Tim Butler and Garry Robson found in their academic study 'London Calling: The Middle Classes and the Re-Making of Inner London' (Oxford: Berg, 2003), in which they describe ‘Telegraph Hill’ as a middle class ‘enclave’ marked by ‘an element of smugness that is somewhat off-putting’ and a ‘denial of the wider area (New Cross) in which Telegraph Hill is located’. This is something of a stereotype, but a recognisable one nevertheless.

Nunhead Arts Week

Nunhead Arts Week is on right now, highlights in the next week include:

Tuesday 23rd September: Writers’ Workshop - Southwark’s local historian Stephen Bourne, author of several successful Black History books, will be sharing his experience of writing for local and mainstream publishers.Venue: Nunhead Library Time: 7-9pm, free.

Thursday 25th September: Comedy night, with Radio 4’s Arthur Smith, Ben Butler and Emmi Ogle plus the regular ‘Pull The Other One’team. Venue: The Ivy House, 40 Stuart Road Time: 8.30pm. All Tickets £5 before 8.30pm.

Friday 26th September: Film Night, Dulwich Paradiso returns to Nunhead with the screening of mike Leigh’s “Happy-go-lucky”. Venue: upstairs at The Old Nun’s HeadTime: Doors 7.45pm. Film 8.30pm All Tickets £2 (inc membership).

Sunday 28th September: Nunhead Walk, local historian Ron Woollacott MBE will take you on a walk around historic Nunhead. Venue: Outside The Old Nun’s Head Time: 11.30am (Walk approx.1.5 hrs). Free.

Deptford 45s

"Deptford 45s are 7 x 3 min audio-visual remixes using audio & video recordings of sites identified as meaningful valuable to local residents. Trading as 'Deptford Tourist Board' through a market consultation stall local residents shared their insights into Deptford, which once recorded became the film's source material. The project captures Deptford through its current and expanding community's experiences of Deptford's everyday sites and sounds".

There is a free showing next Friday 26th September 2008, 6 - 9 pm, Deptford Arms, 52 Deptford High St, as part of Deptford X's 10th anniversary invited projects and the annual Artful Festival. Further details from the Deptford 45s website.

White Hart Lap Dancing Saga Continues

Kenneth Linwood, the landlord of the White Hart in New Cross, has lodged a legal appeal against Lewisham Council’s decision not to grant a licence for striptease, lap and pole dancing at the pub. The first hearing for the appeal will come before the Magistrates Court on 15th October 2008.

It seems that the 'for sale' sign outside the pub has been there for a while (details here), rather than being prompted by recent events as I suggested earlier.

I think it's a shame that Ken has gone into this bunker mentality - it would have been better if he'd accepted that it was a mistake to close the pub and open a strip joint instead. There was overwhelming local opposition to his plans and he really is digging himself into a hole by appealing - because the fact is he needs people to come into his pub and he is making himself and therefore the pub increasingly unpopular.

Having said that, opponents of the plans will need to get their act together, as Magistrates Courts can and do overrule licensing decisions made by Councils.

See previous posts for the background to this row.

Artful: New Cross/Deptford history, music and weirdness talks

Artful 2008 runs for all of October, with lots of music, art and other happenings in New Cross and Deptford. The programme is being finalised but it will include a couple of talks by friends of Transpontine.

On Tuesday 14th October, Neil Gordon-Orr will be giving a talk (with music and visuals) on 'Deptford Fun City: the musical history of New Cross and Deptford', covering everything from music hall through to punk, reggae, Britpop and beyond. It takes place in the Deptford Arms, Deptford High Street at 7:30 pm, and admmission is free.

Thursday 30th October sees Scott Wood leading The Dark Arts Walk, starting outside The Hobgoblin Pub, opposite New Cross Station, at 7pm. The walk will take in New Cross and Deptford's strange and ghostly folklore and history. Ghosts and ghost hunters, witchcraft and the devil, an exploding chip shop and boozers from beyond the grave.The walk will take approximately an hour and a half and will end with a pint at the Dog & Bell, Prince Street.

New Cross Pub News

There is a 'For Sale' sign up on the White Hart Inn in New Cross. The landlord has come in for a lot of local criticism after his ill-judged attempt to turn the place into a lap dancing club, but as we've said before it would be a great loss if there was no longer a pub in this key location on the junction of Queens Road and New Cross Road. Still with the Hatcham Liberal Club still unsold and falling into disrepair just round the corner, you wonder who's going to buy it. If I won the lottery I'd probably take them both and turn them into utopian palaces of drink, food, dancing and sociability, but that doesn't seem too likely.

Meanwhile there is a lot of building work going on at the former Earl of Derby in Dennetts Road, with an extension downstairs and a function room upstairs. The whole exterior of the building has been painted so somebody's making a real effort, which is great as I feared this was going to be another vanishing pub replaced with housing. Not sure exactly what's planned, but the owners are Remarkable Restaurants Ltd who refurbished the George and Dragon in Acton, which has had good reviews - so expect food as well as drink.

The Working Class Goes to Heaven

Some radical films at the Elephant and Castle this Friday night, with 'Workers leaving the Factory' by Harun Farocki followed by 'The Working Class Goes to Heaven' (La Classe Operaia va in Paradiso) by Elio Petri - a 1971 film about the struggles of an Italian factory worker.

Date: 19 September, 2008, 7.00pm for 7.30pm start at The Pullens Centre, Crampton St, SE17.

Walking New Cross (10): St James

St James is a small, quiet road in New Cross that is today entirely devoted to education and religion. Goldsmiths College occupies most of the former houses on the east side of the street, and one of its hall of residence (Loring Hall) is on the other side. St James Church of England Primary School has two sites – the main school and opposite it its nursery building.

A fine tree (False Acacia?) outside St James School

At the end of the street, the former St James Church building (built in 1853) still stands.

For some years it housed the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance before it departed to its new purpose-built dance building on Deptford Creekside. When Laban was in New Cross it was headed for some time by the US dancer Bonnie Bird, who invited the composer John Cage (her former accompanist) and Merce Cunninham to run workshops with students at Laban in July 1980; Cage and Cunningham performed in in the Great Hall at Goldsmiths (details in this list of Cage’s work). Among the graduates of Laban here was the choreographer Matthew Bourne, well known for his adaptions of Swan Lake and more recently Dorian Gray. Today the old Laban buildings seems to be used by the Creative Lewisham Agency.

Next to it is the new Church building, which dates from 1982:

On the side of the old Church is small garden of remembrance. There is a memorial to local people who died in the First World War and another for the 1939-45 dead ‘in Remembrance of all who died in this Parish through Enemy Action – called from World at War into his Kingdom of Peace’.

This is poignant, for at the other end of the road, on the corner of New Cross Road, the ‘temporary’ low rise buildings occupy the site of second world war bomb damage – directly opposite the Iceland store stands where on 25 November 1944 the Woolworth’s shop sustained a direct hit from a V2 rocket, killing 168 people – the worst attack of the war.

The quiet road of today has also seen less serious violence, from the religious riots of the 1870s outside the church, to the 1977 ‘Battle of Lewisham’ when anti-fascists gathered material from this road to throw at the National Front marchers.

Oh yes and there’s the cows! To encourage recycling, these bins have been decorated by Artmongers with a sign inviting people to ‘Feed the Cows’.

Oldest graffiti in South London?

Walking through the Cold Blow Lane railway tunnel yesterday I noticed that the graffiti I photographed earlier in the year has been obliterated. As I said at the time, this was a museum of graffiti going back at least 30 years, so it's a shame it has been thoughtlessly painted over.

Let's try and find the oldest graffiti in South London - make sure you photograph any contendors quickly because it might not be there for much longer. So far the Cold Blow Lane 'T.Rex' graffiti is the oldest confirmed, assuming it was contemporary with the band it must have been painted in 1977 at the latest (when the band's singer Marc Bolan was killed), and in all probability in the band's peak period of 1972-73 - making it 35 years old at the point it was painted over.

Walking New Cross (9): Goodwood Road to Sterling Gardens

Goodwood Road runs down to a dead end from New Cross Road, with the Rising Sun cafe (formerly Moonbow Jakes) and Shalom Rev Christian bookshop occupying the corners. It is a bit of an architectural hotchpotch - a 19th century terrace, industrial buildings of various dates in different states of disrepair, and more or less brand new student accommodation sharing buildings with the New Cross Dialysis Centre and the New Cross NHS Walk-in Centre (below). The latter is something everyone round here should know about it - it is open from 8 am to 8 pm, Monday to Saturday and can treat minor injuries and illnesses without an appointment.

On the telephone lines across the road there are a couple or pairs of trainers hanging in the air - an international phenomenon and the subject of urban folklore.

Auburn Close is a small estate squeezed in between Goodwood Road and the railway line, managed by Wandle Housing. Further down, an alleyway at the bottom of Goodwood road has a chalked anti-violence message on the wall (Right Peace, Wrong Piece).

It leads through to Southerngate Way, with lots of small cul-de-sacs running off it (Pear Close, Tarragon Close, Silver Close, Woodrush Close, Redstart Close, Sorrel Close). This is a residential area (early 1990s?) and if not as green as the names might suggest, it is surprisingly leafy with lots of bushes and trees at the front of people's houses. See, for instance, these palm trees in Pear Close:

Another alleyway at the north end of Tarragon Close brings you out in Sterling Gardens, fairly modern flats, now best known as the scene of the brutal murder of two French students earlier in the year. Wandering around this new housing, much of it quite anonymous and featureless, even bland, caused me to reflect on how places acquire a history. I guess even the most apparently soulless places get woven into personal histories as people are born, play, fall in love, grow old and die there. These interconnecting intimate memories weave together a local community sense of place, into which are woven too the recollections of more dramatic events - wars, crimes, riots, the achievements of those who lived there and went on to be writers, footballers, pop stars... So in New Cross, as everywhere else, every street has a story even if it can't immediately be read off the buildings like in places with more obviously 'historic' architecture.

On Southerngate Way (left) and Goodwood Road (right) there are surviving stink pipes, sewage ventilation pipes first put up in Victorian times to clear noxious gases from the sewer system. For years I thought these were just lamposts with the lights removed, now I know differently and keep spotting them everywhere.

Bill Alexander, an International Brigadier in Sydenham

Time Out London has started a series about London park benches and who they commemorate. This week's issue (11 September 2008) covers a bench in Mayow Park, Sydenham that is dedicated to 'Bill Alexander and Phil Jessamy, good friends of the park and active peace campaigners'. Apparently both were members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and with Bill's wife Lena formed a group in the early 1980s called Sydenham Against Cruise Missiles. Fellow member Hillary Jarrett recalled: 'Some amazing art work was produced, including a terrifying poster depicting the effect of "One cruise missile on Sydenham"'.

Bill Alexander (1910-2000, pictured) grew up in Hampshire and joined the Communist Party in 1932, taking part in the the anti-fascist 'Battle of Cable Street' and then joining the International Brigades on the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (at the time he was living in Southwark). In 1938 he took over for a while as commander of the British battalion in Spain, before being wounded and invalided back home. In the 1960s, Alexander moved to South London, working as a chemistry teacher at Sydenham Girls School. In retirement, he became secretary of the International Brigade Association, and published British Volunteers for Liberty, an account of the International Brigade in Spain. In 1996 he returned to Sapin with other surviving volunteers and was awarded honorary Spanish citizenship. He died on 11th July 2000, aged 90 years.

According to Graham Stevenson's Compendium of Communist Biography, Sydenham was 'a part of London that long boasted a Communist Party branch with the highest concentration of veteran and well-known leaders of the Party'. These included Ida Fisher who 'worked as a doctor in Sydenham for many years' and 'was personally closely associated with Robin Page Arnot and other veterans who were registered as her patients' (she died, aged 69, in 1986); and Alec Miller, a veteran of the 1930s unemployed and anti-fascist movements who was Chair of the Sydenham branch of the CP when died in 1986.

Bill Alexander was not the only Commander of the British Battalion in Spain with a South London connection; as we've mentioned here before Fred Copeman - later a Lewisham Labour Councillor - was also in this position for a while. Personally I am ambivalent about the International Brigades - in Spain, under instructions from Stalin, the Communist Party ruthlessly suppressed other left-wing and anarchist groups who were also fighting Franco. But I can see that many of those who volunteered to fight in Spain had noble motives in wanting to do something practical to halt the advance of fascism (see Bob from Brockley for lots of links to ongoing discussions about all this).

BUG Blog

Brockley Ukulele Group now has its own blog, declaring 'We play the ukulele. In Brockley. Loud.' BUG have a couple of gigs coming up in New Cross, playing at The Hobgoblin on Saturday 27th September (6 pm) and at The Montague Arms on Tuesday 30th September (8:30 pm).

Scott McQuire talk at Goldsmiths

Interesting talk coming up at Goldsmiths by Scott McQuire:

'In May 2007 global media giant Google launched ‘Street Views’, an application enabling users to access a digital archive of street level photographs taken across five cities in the United States. By mid-2008, the service covered over 50 US cities, and was also launched in Australia and Japan, with more countries in the pipeline. In this paper, I want to locate ‘Street View’ within a history of urban representation and metropolitan discourse. Beginning from the invention of photography which initiated new systems of ‘mapping’ urban space in the 19th century, I will trace the ways that the convergence of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) with distributed networks and mobile media initiates new struggles over public space'.

Scott McQuire is Associate Professor in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. His most recent book The Media City: Media, Architecture and Urban Space was published in the Theory, Culture and Society series by Sage in 2008.

The talk is on Tuesday October 21, 2008, 7:00pm - 9:00pm, in the cinema at Goldsmiths College, New Cross. Admission Free, All Welcome.

Rats, London and Folklore

This Thursday (11th September) at South East London Folklore Society, Paul Cowdell will be talking on 'Rats, London, and Folklore: 'You're *how* far from a rat?'. He says: 'I’ll talk about my research into urban beliefs about rats and previously-recorded folklore about rats as well as the natural history of rats and their environments. I’ll look at how rats are used to represent the Other, and how beliefs about rats change from rural to urban settings. What distinguishes London’s ratlore from that of other cities, and what it might tell us about Londoners’ attitude to their home.'

It happens at The Old King's Head, Kings Head Yard, 45-49, Borough High St, London, SE1 1NA. Nearest stations are London Bridge and Borough. It is just off Borough High Street , a map is here.Talks start at 8.00pm. £2.50 / £1.50 concessions. All Welcome.

Another SELFS-related event on 30th October sees Scott Wood leading The Dark Arts Walk. Join Scott outside The Hobgoblin Pub, opposite New Cross Station, at 7pm for a walk taking in New Cross and Deptford's strange and ghostly folklore and history. Ghosts and ghost hunters, witchcraft and the devil, an exploding chip shop and boozers from beyond the grave.

The walk will take approximately an hour and a half and will end with a pint at the Dog & Bell, Prince Street. This walk is part of the Artful festival and is in conjunction with "Stories from another London" magazine One Eye Grey.

Deptford in Vogue

The Standard reports that in the new Vogue magazine's "Don't Miss" list, 'The best café slot is dedicated to The Deptford Project, a traditional British café housed in a converted Sixties railway carriage. It sits in the old railway yard at Deptford Station and is the centrepiece of an attempt to brighten up the high street. It includes a lavatory in a shed done up as a shrine to Elvis and a weekend creative industries market.'

I haven't actually tracked down the original Vogue article yet, but will be scouring the magazine racks tomorrow.

Deptford X

'Deptford X presents Ghost Trade and the Spectre of Change, 26 September – 19 October 2008 (Thu – Sun), 4 weeks of contemporary visual art in SE8 celebrating 10 years of Deptford X. Marking a seminal time in Deptford’s history, curator Julia Alvarez draws out the different aspects of trade associated with Deptford and the marks and symbols these trades leave behind through an extensive programme of exhibitions and events in and around SE8.

Ghost Trade and the Spectre of Change includes one day projects from PILOT:, CollectingLiveArt, and Ding Dong Twist Club (featuring the launch of Deptford X’s anniversary book by Bob & Roberta Smith); plus on-going installations such as Sarah Baker’s new video work, Studs, a remake of The Stud, the screen adaptation of Jackie Collins’ best selling novel; a new setting of Yinka Shonibare’s White Flag at Half Mast, originally commissioned by the Hayward Gallery; a site-specific installation drawing on the legacy of the pawn brokers’ symbol from Fran Cottell; an upside-down harbour in Deptford Creek by Helen Barff; and Pavement Sonnets, Deptford Scars, an audio-walk made up of interviews, history, and site-specific sounds specially created for Deptford X by Ben Cummins.Most events are free, no need to book. Further details at http://www.deptfordx.org.'

In Bow as it is in Lewisham

The Star of the Sea, Joseph O'Connor's novel of the Irish famine and emigration, features an episode in the London criminal underworld where the following parody of the Lord's prayer is used:

Our old guv'nor,

which dosses in Lewisham

swelled by thy moniker

Thy racket be come;

thy crack-job be done,
in Bow as it is in Lewisham.
Scalp us this day our lump of lead

and let us be bailed for our dodges;
as we backslaps the pox-hounds and Berkshire Hunts

what dodges agin us. (The bumsuckers.)

And jemmy us not into lushery or lurks

but send us skedaddling from blaggery.
For thine is the manor, the flash and the bovver.

Till mother breaks out of the clink. Amen.

Not sure if this is an original nineteenth-century rhyme, or one of the author's many capable pastiches of 1840s literary forms. Does anyone know?

New (to me) blogs

A couple of blogs that have come across my radar recently

- Faded London celebrates the overlooked traces of the past - fading 'ghost' signs, manhole covers and obsolete street furniture, like cattle troughs. The focus is a bit more South West than South East London, but hey.

- Jam Circus, top Brockley watering point, has set up its own blog with news from the bar and other local bits and pieces.

Boozin' of the 5000: free punk festival

This weekend (Saturday the 6th and Sunday the 7th of September) sees the "The Boozin' Of The 5000", a punk festival taking place across 4 venues in New Cross and Deptford: The Birds Nest, The Deptford Arms, The Goldsmiths Tavern and The New Cross Inn. Around 60 bands will be playing everything from anarcho-punk to dub reggae, psychobilly to ska-core. More details at the festival myspace site

Dave Courtney and South London Raving

Raving Lunacy: Clubbed to death – adventures on the rave scene (2000) is by Dave Courtney - sometime East Dulwich resident, former Southwark Council dustman (at Grove Vale depot), and celebrity villain. Must admit I’m not big on the loveable gangster genre, violence isn’t glamorous - it’s brutal, bloody and leaves behind grieving children who are damaged for life. In this book, Courtney plays up to his image and some of the stories can no doubt be taken with a pinch of salt. Still, he does a service in documenting the early days of acid house and raving in late 80s/early 90s South London.

By his own account, Courtney went to some of the first 'acid house' events in London - Shoom in Thrale Street, Southwark and the parties held in old prison museum in Clink Street by London Bridge: 'The Clink was wicked... Very druggy and very housey place, full of proper hardcore havin'-it-larger's in there. And it was good cos it had all these individual cells so it was like having loads of little VIP lounges'.

Soon he started a club of his own: 'near the Elephant and Castle, I found a viaduct arch beneath the mainline railway track running over John Ruskin Street... The Arches was the first all-night, illegal rave in London... All the other clubs in London shut at about 2 am but mine was still banging at 8 o'clock in the morning! ... Under this great big curved, black and red railway arch roof there was the scaffolding gantry holding the DJ on the decks, massive speakers either side and the lights hanging above; and below that this heaving mass of lunatics just going completely mental, arms in the air, whistles and foghorns blowing... Steam and joint smoke hung like a fucking fog, people were dancing on speakers and scaffolding... we'd have a girl walking round in a Playboy Bunny outfit with an ice-cream tray round her neck full of ready-rolled spliffs for a quid each - Get yer Joints 'ere!' And big plastic dustbins filled to the top with ice and free apples and Ice-pops... we had a mad mixture of people: from hardcore ravers, professional clubbers, black geezers, white geezers, plenty of women, football hooligan nutters going all smiley, hardnuts softened by Ecstasy... I had names DJing there before they became superstar DJs like they are now - Danny Rampling, Carl Cox, Fabio & Grooverider, Brandon Block'.


The police at the nearby Carter Street station were not happy, and eventually it was raided by 'army of 150 police, with some fuckers called No 3 Area Territorial Support Group in flameproof overalls, bulletproof body armour and steel hel­mets with radio microphones, carrying an angle grinder, a hydraulic ram, sledgehammer'. 26 people were arrested and one person was apparently later jailed for five years for his part in running the club.

Later he was involved in putting on free open-air raves - 'I bought a massive removal van with a diesel generator ·and drove in on to fields or grasslands. Tooting Common was one. Peckham Rye was another... I'd open up the back of the lorry, set up the DJs decks and put these dirty big speakers outside. We'd get eight, nine hundred people up there really going [or it. Speakers booming it all out. And cos I didn't charge no one the law had a job Slopping me doing it. It just started attracting loads of gay blokes, which is something I hadn't counted on. But then it was the Common, the well known shag-spot for gay geezers doing some fresh air cruising, so I guess it made sense'.

He also ran a club for a while at the Fitness Centre in Southwark Park Road: 'It used to be the hottest place. It was this windowless basement space made for about 30 geezers to work out in; not two hundred people to get off their tits'.


Then he put on a club called 'Crazy Mondays', at Futures on Deptford Broadway, a club owned by Harry Haward (later as a 'retired gangster', the Chair of Deptford Action Group for the Elderly): 'It ran from 6 a.m. Monday morning till about 2 p.m. in the afternoon... there was villains, hardcore ravers, pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, lap dancers, strippers, drag queens, club owners, club promoters, club dancers, celebrities, sports stars (Nigel Benn and Gary Mason were there), doormen, bar staff, waitresses, croupiers, gamblers, cab drivers, sex club people - basically, mostly everyone that had· worked over the weekend in the nightclub trade watching other people having a good time, all came down to mine to have their own'.


Courtney was evidently in that generation of crooks who saw the money-making opportunities in the club scene but he is also obviously a true believer, extolling the wonders of ecstasy and raving in breaking down racism in London and challenging his own anti-gay prejudice.


Anyone remember any of these nights/places? Where exactly was Futures? There was apparently also a club night there called The Treasury. Memories/flyers of any South London clubs, parties and gigs always welcome

Mark Ronson at the Hatcham

The Hatcham social club in New Cross has been closed for over a year and still seems to be for sale, but I notice that the video for Mark Ronson's version of Oh My God (featuring Lily Allen) was filmed there. It's a cartoon Lily in the video, but Ronson was evidently really there, as were The Kaiser Chiefs, who did the song originally.

Mysterious Mitcham

Mitcham is undoubtedly in South London, but is a bit too far west for our usual Transpontine coverage. On the other hand it does have in James Clark a chronicler of the urban folklore and general weirdness that is right up our street. So take a look at Mysterious Mitcham for the full low down on Mitcham Fair and its grottoes, the Phantom Cyclist of Mitcham Common plus many other tales of ghosts, UFOs etc.

Stewart Home and Greenwich Park

Stewart Home's novel Memphis Underground features 'a stroll in Greenwich Park. I went up to the Observatory, where I'd participated in a Neoist Time Picnic in 1984. Somewhere I had a snap taken during the course of this do showing assorted retro-futurists, including myself, standing on the meridian line. A decade later I'd par­ticipated in a London Psychogeographical Association meet at this location... I'd been a regu­lar visitor to Greenwich Park over the previous twenty years, its dramatic rise and many curious features made it one of my favourite places in the whole of London. I took in the view across the Thames to the Isle of Dogs, then meandered past Queen Elizabeth's Oak and on to the gardens at the top of the park. After looking at the deer, and then the ducks in the pond, I sauntered along Charlton Way to Greenwich Point.

Pausing on the way to enjoy the open view to Blackheath, I wondered if I'd ever realise my long standing ambition to spend at leastt a few years living in this area. There would have been a time when it would have been easy enough for me to find a flat in East Greenwich with a rent I could afford, now even that was beyond me, and Blackheath? Well, I might as well forget about Blackheath, it had been expensive long before rising property prices made proletarian enclaves such as East Greenwich attractive to the upper-middle classes.

The view, or rather the lack of a view, from Green­wich Point was stunning. The City of London was wreathed in a miasma of smog. I could hardly make out the monumental architecture of the financial dis­trict. It was a shame I'd arranged to spend the evening in Stamford Hill, since the pollution that made my eyes sting and my throat smart also created spectacular sun­sets...'.

This comes from a section of the book where the author is apparently describing real events in his life as artist/writer/hustler/proletarian post-modernist, so I assume the Neoist picnic actually happened there. The London Psychogeographical Association interest in Greenwich is discussed more fully in an interview between Stewart Home and the Greenwich-raised writer Tom McCarthy.

The latter recalls 'The first time I met you [i.e. Stewart Home] was at seven minutes past two o'clock on the afternoon of the fifteenth of February, 1994, in Greenwich Park, South London. It was the hundredth anniversary of the death of Martial Bourdain, the French anarchist who'd blown himself up while carrying a bomb towards the Royal Observatory, and in so doing become the inspiration for Conrad's novel The Secret Agent. I wanted to do something to commemorate the event, and thought of phoning a bomb threat into the observatory, but chickened out and opted instead to create an organisation called the Society of the Black Glove whose members, i.e. myself and my girlfriend at the time, dressed up smart and went and threw down some flowers on the exact spot where Bourdain had died'.

Home replies that he was in the park on the same day for an event organised by his friend Richard Essex (who was the 'London Psychogeographical Association'): For a lot of reasons Greenwich became a focal point for a lot of what both of us were doing - partly because it was nice to go over there. A lot of that was destroyed in the build-up to the millennium, especially Greenwich as a centre for books, and the pie-and-mash shop Godards seems to have disappeared too more recently, which I've been going to for years; it is my favourite pie-and-mash shop in London. But Richard discovered this ley-line that went through Greenwich and across the river to the Isle of Dogs, and Canary Wharf Tower was a virtual pyramid and if you extended it down then the ley-line crossed the base of the pyramid' (in another of his novels, 'Come Before Christ and Murder Love', Home postulates a curved leyline between the imperial palaces at Greenwich and Richmond, linking Elizabeth I and her astrologer/magician John Dee).

All of this is a reminder that Greenwich Park is not simply a stage set for a heritage industry narrative of royalty and empire, but a place with a strong counter-history of unofficial encounters, subversions and feats of imagination. It seems to me that the unpopular proposal to use the Park in the 2012 Olympics for equestrian events (with a possible threat to trees) is tied in with this clash about what the Park represents. The Olympics proposal links in with Greenwich's history as a site for state pageantry and spectacles - horse events are very much tied in with royalty and the upper classes generally - whereas the opponents of this want to keep the park as a public space which people can use in many different ways.

Filming at the Rivoli

A discussion at SE23 Forum has alerted me to some recent filming at the Rivoli Ballroom in Crofton Park, apparently for Me and Orson Welles, a film due to be released next year starring Claire Danes.

The Rivoli also features in the recent film Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, as seen in the following scene:

N-Trance at the Albany

RAR! at Deptford Albany is a busy all ages night (well 14+) put on my NXPromotions. As such many of the people who go were probably not born when Saturday's headliners N-Trance were on Top of the Pops with their rave anthem Set You Free in 1993. It was released on the PWL label, based at 222-224 Borough High Street, London SE1 - the famous hit factory where Kylie Minogue and co. recorded early singles

Also on the bill are A1 Baseline, Excentral Tempest, Toy Toy (electro-pop grrrl-punk explosion) and Dogshow Disco. £5 Entry. Saturday 30th August 2008, show starts 7pm. Curfew 11pm. Venue: The Albany Theatre, Douglas Way, London SE8. Advance tickets from Kate&Tristan shop @ New Cross Inn, 1 Clifton Rise.

Arthur Rackham - Transpontine Cockney

Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) was an illustrator best known for his work on fairy tales and children's books. He was also rather proud of his South London origins, entitling a 1934 self-portrait 'A Transpontine Cockney'.

Rackham was born in 1867 at 210 South Lambeth Road, where he spent most of his childhood. His family moved a short distance to 27 Albert Square, Clapham Road in 1882 and to 3 St Ann’s Park Road, Wandsworth in 1885 (near Wimbledon Common). They regularly attended the Brixton Independent Church in Brixton Road and Rackham himself attended Lambeth School of Art (1884).


Source: Arthur Rackham: A Life with Illustration by James Hamilton (Pavilion, 1995)

The Angel of the Thames

I’ve got an interest in both visions, be they angels or dragons or aliens and south London. I’ve read an awful lot, and written a little, on the Angels of Mons case, where angels were sighted during the first engagement of the First World War and keep a collection of angel sightings to add to that.

I hadn’t heard of the Angel of the Thames, a supposed angel seen on the water from and around Jubilee Gardens on the South Bank. The most significant sighting was in 2006:

Student Jemima Waterhouse, 16, from Sheen, spotted the angel in May as she wandered down the South Bank to meet a friend.She said: "I felt a sense of calm spreading over me."It was comforting and familiar - a kind of peace that lasted for a while after."It is really hard to put into words, but I guess you could describe it as peace of mind."She quickly snapped the apparition (circled) hovering close to the Queen Mary floating restaurant on her camera phone but when she showed her friend the quality was poor.She added: "My friend remained unconvinced until we got the photo onto a computer that evening when the image became clearer and the outline of what could only be described as an angel became distinct."

This is from the (usually rather stoned*) South London Press, 15 September 2006, it also says:

“Eerily so far this year four people claim to have seen the angel near the London Eye and an internet cult is growing.”

“These sightings have prompted much online chat about the so-called Angel of the Thames.Already angel walks are being offered along the waterside and Angel T-shirts are available.One angel obsessive - who meets up with other people who have spotted the ghostly figure to share their experiences - thinks it must date back to the fire.”

There are three sites, Friends of the Angel of the Thames, Angel on the Thames and Thames Angel: A History of the Angle of Promise.

There’s claims of historical evidence and interaction on each site, the ‘Friends’ site claims folk have taken coach trips to see the angel since 1963 (though the 'Friends' of the Angel seem to be taking it all a little less seriously, there's a Pug dressed-up as an angel on their site).

Thames Angel gives a long chronology of sightings , from 1666 onwards, including five illustrations of the angel, eleven photographs (from Daguerreotype to digital) and one CCTV capture in 2089, presumably 2008.

No sources, journals, newspapers or chapbooks are cited for any of the illustrations or photographs, this angel very much has snow on it’s boots.

The one ‘engraving’ presented is there, among other places.

The angel has a suspicious white line all the way around it. I’ve not been able to find this angel in Gustav Davidson’s ‘Dictionary of Angels’ but I’m convinced I’ll be able to find it in a verifiably old picture that doesn’t feature a grim riverside view. And the ‘grim riverside view’ is, surely, available without an angel dropped onto the corner on a warehouse with a white line all around it.

There’s also this supposed photograph of Londoners watching the angel after the declaration of war in 1914.

Now, even I, a scruffy and regularly hung-over atheist, would be gazing in wonder at an angel on the Thames if I saw one. Why aren’t they all watching the angel hovering over the Thames? They seem to be looking everywhere but there.

(Oh, by the way, do please let me know if these links somehow break in the next few days.)

If only I lived with someone whose work desk in next to the Port of London Authorities’ archivist, who’ll have a vast amount of illustrations and records about life on the Thames through time.

Oh, hang on, I do.

Hopefully this is just the start of this. While I research, you may be interested in knowing that the web master of Thames Angel is giving a walk on 20th September, 6pm from Temple Station.
No price quoted. It may be interesting to pop along.

See also: Angel of the Thames Hoax and the Brockley Connection

*It was the South London Press who brought us Brixton squirrels on crack.

South London Pirates

Pirate radio is one of the often neglected benefits of living in London. There's far too much talk and not enough music on most of the official stations, and a narrow range of music. Outside of London there's even less choice. Over the years, pirate radio has led me to the odd party and turned me on to new music - I can vividly remember the first time I heard jungle, lying in Brockwell Park with my radio. Nowadays many of the pirates have websites where you can download podcasts of their programmes anywhere in the world, but you can't beat coming across something unexpected while fiddling around with the radio.

The pirates are still in a healthy state in South London. On Monday, driving between Sydenham and New Cross I picked up the following stations:

• Metrolove (92.2 fm) - soul, r'nb, hip hop, ragga - back on air despite being raided recently. According to this week's Mercury (13/8), it had been broadcasting from a garage behind the Jasmine House Estate , Wickham Rd in Brockley until Ofcom raided it on 7 August, taking away £5,000 of equipment including a sound system due for use at Notting Hill Carnival
• Unknown fm (90.6 fm) has been going for 10 years, with a diet of every kind of house music. And unlike some pirates which seem to exist mainly to promote events and club night, the focus really is on the music.
• Rinse fm (100.4 fm) has been broadcasting for 14 years and is one of the best places to keep up with the latest mutations in London dance music (grime, dubstep, funky etc.)
• Selectuk (99.4 fm) - more house and garage.
• Xtreme (101.8 fm) - soulful house.
• Freeze (92.7 fm).
• Live fm (101.5 fm) .

I also came across a non-pirate I hadn't heard before, South London Radio (107.3 fm). It proclaims itself as the station for 'Lewisham, Bromley, Croydon and the surrounding areas' . Lots of classic 80s and 90s soul/funk when I was listening (Loose Ends -Hangin' on a String, Incognito - Don't you worry about a thing), plus local news on the hour - they covered the White Hart lap dancing row.

Montague Arms 1989 - Shane MacGowan, Mark E Smith & Nick Cave

Prompted by a comment to an old post I have tracked down a legendary NME interview from 1989 (25th February) with Sean O'Hagan and James Brown interviewing Mark E Smith (The Fall), Shane MacGowan (The Pogues) and Nick Cave (The Birthday Party/Bad Seeds), conducted in the Montague Arms in New Cross. The whole article has been reproduced on The Quietus website

'A bottle's throw from Millwall FC, The Montague Arms, a mock Gothic fun pub for morbid tourists, plays host to a bizarre summit meeting. Amidst stuffed horses' heads, skeletons on bicycles and mocked up corpses, three of contemporary music's most infamous individuals are gathered at the NME's request. Shane MacGowan of the Pogues, Mark Smith of the Fall and Nick Cave all share an outsider's attitude that informs their respective musical output. Both championed and castigated for their obsessiveness and extremism, this unholy trio are dogged by reputations that precede them. That they agreed to such a meeting is surprising. What ensues is inspired and insane by turns. The fractured and, often fractious, conversation sprawls between the amiable and the aggressive- Presley to Nietzsche, songwriting to psychology, football to fanatics'.

It all ends up like this: 'Things fall apart. The unholy trinity climb on the pubstage. MacGowan on drums, Smith on guitar and Cave on the organ. A jam of sorts ensues- The Velvets meets Hammer Horror with a hint of Acid House. Totally wired. Summit mental'.

The interview is worth reading in full, never mind the New Cross connection, I can't imagine the current dumbed-down NME printing a verbatim account of musicians arguing about the relative merits of Brenday Behan and Nietzsche down the pub.

Thamesmead Big Cat?

Yet another SE London big cat story, from the Newshopper (11 August 2008)

A Beast of Bexley-type creature is believed to have been spotted in Thamesmead. The sighting happened at around 3am on Saturday morning (August 9) in Goldfinch Road when a man was woken up by something screeching. He looked out of his window and saw a small animal racing along the pathway followed by a larger one.

The man, who did not want to be named, said: "I saw a black animal rolling on the grass between two trees. I thought to myself, 'Bloody hell! That's the biggest moggy I've ever seen', and then thought, 'It must be a dog'. However, its head was cat-like and its tail was very long. It walked to the left to some bushes and I moved the other curtain but couldn't see it."

The sighting was reported to Neil Arnold, the founder of the Kent Big Cat Research group, which studies eyewitness reports of large exotic cats. He believes the creature, which has become known as the Beast of Bexley, is a black leopard. The Beast' has also been seen at Welling, Erith, Bexleyheath, Belvedere, Bromley, Abbey Wood and towards Dartford.

More Transpontine big cat stories

Deptford Mice

As somebody noted in a comment, my recent round up of Deptford stories left out The Deptford Mice Trilogy (and various spin-offs) by Robin Jarvis, a series of children's books.

The books include a number of Greenwich and Deptford locations, including St Nicholas Church, the old Deptford power station and the Cutty Sark. The friendly mice 'honour the green spirits of the land as Man once did and every spring they hold a celebration for the awakening year, calling to the Green Mouse to ripen the wheat and see them safe' (The Dark Portal), whilst their enemies the sewer rats perform dark sorcery on Blackheath for their evil god Jupiter (SPOILER ALERT - who turns out to be a cat!).

White Hart Lap Dancing Application Refused

Lewisham Council's Licensing Committee last night rejected the application from the landlord of the White Hart in New Cross for a license for lap dancing, pole dancing and stripping. Apparently the meeting was well attended, with nine objectors speaking. The committee retired for an hour and a half before announcing its decision (there are some report backs at the the Telegraph Hill Forum). There remains the possibility of an appeal against the decision, but I hope the landlord will think again.

Although I opposed the plan (see earlier posts) I do not wish to join any kind of witchhunt to force the landlord out of town. I really hope that the pub survives, in fact part of the reason why I objected to the lap dancing plans was that it would no longer really be a public house. I have had a couple of memorable drinks there myself and chatted to the landlord who was friendly enough to me. It could certainly do with brightening up a bit, but the place has plenty of potential, a good location and space for music and dancing.

The landlord is not without his supporters, but some of them are not really helping the future survival of his pub. Over at the Millwall fans forum House of Fun, there's been some discussion about this, basically suggesting that people should stop worrying about strippers when there's more important things to oppose like an Afghan Community Centre in the area and 'a dubious club a few doors up, looks like an Africans only place' (presumably a reference to Scenarios - get up to date lads, it's been closed for ages). The same guys regularly seem to spend more time on the forum spouting racist nonsense about everything under the sun than talking about football - though they do get pulled up on it by other Millwall fans who are definitely not all racists, contrary to popular prejudice and BNP/NF fantasies.

Someone posted some anonymous comments here last night too seemingly implying that the closure of local pubs was the result of some liberal lefty drive which was forcing 'common white people' to move to Bexleyheath. Well I've posted lots here against closing local pubs and about the history of 'common white people' (like me), but I also think 'common black people' are just as much part of our area. Why shouldn't there be an Afghan Community Centre in New Cross, there's plenty of English people in Aghanistan, most of them in uniform admittedly.

People who really care about pubs surviving should think about whether their behaviour is part of the problem. Because who really wants to take their kids or girlfriend/boyfriend to a pub that is dominated by racist pissheads giving off loads of attitude to people they judge as 'off the manor'.

(Comment welcome but racist comments will be deleted - if you don't like it start your own blog)

Nail The Cross

Nail The Cross is a one day music and arts festival taking place across a number of local venues - including The Amersham Arms and The New Cross Inn - on September 27, from 3pm to 5am.

Confirmed to take part so far are These New Puritans, Archie Bronson Outfit, Banjo or Freakout, Clinic, Heartbreak, Ox. Eagle. Lion. Man., S.C.U.M, The xx, and Wild Beasts. DJs will include Benga, Dan j. Spinney (AITBF), Casper C, Domino Records, Loefah (DMZ), Lost In Paris djs, Oneman, Matty White Heat, No Pain In Pop, Rough Trade Records djs, stopmakingme, Tiger (This Is Music), Tomb Crew, Vitamin Club and Young Turks.

Tickets for the event. organised by Domino Records, Adventures In The Beetroot Field and No Pain In Pop - are £15 from here. Official festival site with full bill and venue details here.

Sydenham Hill Woods Continued

Following the recent post about Sydenham Hill Woods, Michael has sent in this old photo of the bridge there. Not sure when this was taken, but clearly it was before the railway closed and was overgrown by woodland. The Crystal Palace to Nunhead Line apparently closed in 1954 - more details at Abandoned Stations including a map of the route, which included a stretch by the side of the Horniman gardens.

Artful Doings in Area 10

So I get an from a local wizard email telling me:

Psychological Art Circus are hosting 4 nights of live performance, music and installation. Please check www.psy.ac for program. doors open 8pm till late every night. £5 entrance

It's at Area 10 Project Space, Eagle Wharf Peckham Hill Street London SE15 5JT, starts today, 14th August until Sunday 18th August and the program lists theatrical and music performances that have peaked my curiosity.

'The Veil & the Husband's Tale' , 'Chicken, Egg, Laptop...' and 'Undercrown' all sound like intriguing theatrical pieces while there's a musical performance at then of each night, the quirky, jittery jazz of The London Snorkelling Team tickling me best in my more unorthodox places.

Most of the performances are repeated each night with a different musical ending, which seems a good idea. The whole event has the air of most art events I attend about it: I don't pretend to totally understand what's going on but it looks and sounds pretty good.

Montague Arms: Best Pub in the Country?

Big splash in tonight's London Paper with the headline 'The best pub in the country is in... New Cross'. The story goes:

'An eccentric local boozer in New Cross has been named best pub in Britain. The Montague Arms - whose bizarre decor includes a human skeleton perched on the bar and an embalmed zebra peering out from a horse-drawn carriage - tops the list in a new book, the Rough Pub Guide: A Celebration of the Great British Boozer.

Aiming to put the spotlight on the few genuine pubs that have not been shut down, replaced by theme bars or by Gordon Ramsay-style gastropubs, the tome pinpoints a total of ten London hangouts which it says we cannot afford to lose. The Montague has been run by landlord Peter Hoyle since 1967, when it was "full of gangsters" before he reinvented it as a community local with lots of live music. Even Sir Paul McCartney once played an impromptu gig there and New Year's Eve celebrations include live renditions of London classics like The Lambeth Walk... The Rough Pub Guide by Robin Turner and Paul Moody will be published by Orion on 16 October.'

Bankside hoardings and a mystery movie

The building work at Tate Modern on Bankside is surrounded by hoardings that have been decorated with large reproductions of newspaper clippings about the local area. There are some intriguing snippets, mostly undated fragments that leave you wanting the fully story. This section seems to refer to a number of film and TV locations. For instance there is a paragraph saying “A film that will show South Londoners as the warm-hearted, decent people they are, instead of third-rate gangsters and crooks, is being made. The film, being shot entirely in South London, starts at the King’s Arms, Walworth Road’. Does anybody have any idea what film this refers to?

Deptford Creek Giant

This sculpture of the 'Deptford Creek Giant' was made by children on a sculpture course at APT Gallery last week, part of the Creekside Summer College programme of activities involving APT, Laban, Creekside Education Trust and Trinity College of Music.

White Hart Lap Dancing Application - Licensing Committee

The papers have been published for the Lewisham Council Licensing Committee meeting on Thusday 14 August at 6:30 pm. The meeting will take place in Committee Room 4 of Lewisham Town Hall and will be open to the public.

The meeting will only be considering three applications, the most contentious of which is the application from the White Hart pub at 184 New Cross Road for strip tease and lap dancing. The application from landlord Kenneth Linwood makes it clear exactly what is proposed: 'I wish to provide entertainment, being striptease and lap dancing. I would like to have the dancers during the day and evening. Approximately 8 dancers at any one time' with facilities including 'dance floor, tables, a booth for private dancing and poles for pole dancing' (no mention of what the hotel rooms upstairs will be used for). Proposed opening times are given as 2:00 pm to 2:30 am, seven days a week.

A huge number of objections have been lodged to the application, as well as some statements of support. The landlord has collected eight pages of signatures on a petition in support of his application, and there are seventeen pages of signatures on a petition headed 'No to a Lap Dancing Club in New Cross Gate'. In terms of letters and emails, there is only one in support of the application, and 140 against. Those registering objections include local councillors, Joan Ruddock MP, the Metropolitan Police, local churches (All Saints and St Catherine's), the Queens Road GP Practice (near to the pub), Eaves Housing for Women, the Hair & Beauty Studio and Parkers Estate Agents. I am not normally to be found in such respectable company, but reading through the various letters has strengthened my opposition to this proposal.

A lot of people talk about the negative impact of the proposal on the immediate area. The fact is New Cross feels like a traffic corridor with little public space. Whatever people think about the progress of regeneration in New Cross, the plans for a new library and health centre, plus a pedestrianised area, at least offer the possibility of the 'Kender Triangle' being a public area where local people might feel safe and comfortable. Obviously having a lap dancing club in the middle of it makes a mockery of that vision. Unfortunately these objections might not carry much weight in their own right, as the Licensing Act 2003 allows a narrow range of reasons for license applications to be refused.

I was particularly struck by the views of women who will have no choice but to pass by the White Hart because of its proximity to the only road crossing at this end of New Cross Road and Queens Road - and who fear sexual harrassment from drunk punters standing outside for a smoke or coming out afterwards. One letter states: 'As three young women living locally, I can guarantee that our lives would be affected by such a club being allowed to open. I believe that permitting longer drinking hours in a venue where unfulfilled sexual titillation is at the core, is a recipe for disaster once customers leave the pub'. Another says: 'I already feel that I have to go out of my way to walk on the other side of the road when coming from or going to the bus stop, particularly at night, as I feel unsafe around that stretch of road. The club is likely to make matters much worse, attracting to the corner people who have not only drunk a lot, as now, but who are also excited and eager to exploit women. I assume that any of them who want to smoke will have to congregate outside anyway. If I, or any woman walk round that corner, we would either have to run the gauntlet of the gathering or step out into the very busy road'.

I would recommend that people attend the meeting of the Licensing Committee and be prepared to back up their written objections in person if needed. Further details of the meeting should be available from maria.mead@lewisham.gov.uk

One thing that has surprized me about this whole affair is how easy it can be for contentious applications to get through without anybody knowing about them. Many people only found out about the White Hart application at the last minute - through the South London Press, at this site, Brockley Central and emails from friends. When I first heard out about it I could find no details of the application on the Lewisham Council website, and reading through the officer's report on the application I can see why. It states 'The application was advertised in accordance with the regulations (premises and Loot 9 July 2008)'. Who reads Loot?! What about local papers and what about the Council website?

See also: result of application.

Sydenham Hill Woods

Took the dog for a walk today in one of my favourite local spots, Sydenham Hill Woods. In the woods there is what appears to be the ruins of a chapel - in fact it is a Victorian folly, built to look like a ruin in a garden which then covered part of the area.

At the other end of the wood there is this bridge. Today all that is underneath are burnt out stolen scooters, and the view is of woodland.

In 1871 Camille Pissarro stood on this bridge and painted the railway line heading down to Lordship Lane station - the course of the former is now the main track through the woods.

Nearby on Sydenham Hill there is an elaborate roadside memorial commemorating the death in a car accident of 30-year-old Michael Maloney in July 2007. Unusually the shrine includes an engraved stone as well as the more usual flowers and photographs.