Another weekend, another London walk.
Last weekend Mr. H. and I walked from New Cross Gate to Thamesmead, and then walked a bit more. There had been the possibility of being joined by Dave the American, although in the event his presence took the form of a series of text messages.
I’m probably going to have quite a lot less to say here than in my previous trip report, since there are fewer associations for me south of the river than north.
A trip to Thamesmead had been on the cards for a while. At one point I had thought a good journey would be from Peckham to Thamesmead which, in TV terms, is from Only Fools and Horses to Misfits. That seemed like a bit of a stretch, though, which is why we started off in New Cross Gate instead.
I think I’ve only been to this part of London a couple of times before. I know about Goldsmiths College. And didn’t Christopher Marlowe get killed in a tavern somewhere around here? Mr H. has visited more often, on account of the local music venue.
We’d barely got started when we decided to stop for breakfast at the appropriately named Delicious Café. A few doors along from it was an office equipment company, equipping business for efficiency…
… and Damien Hirst for chairs.
We walked along. There were more shops. Here’s one, although this picture mainly serves to demonstrate that my camera has difficulty focusing since it got dropped on holiday and part of it fell off. This was my second attempt to take this picture, the first one being so fuzzy it just looked drunk. I won’t include any more blurry photos; just this one of Roger’s emporium of, er, stuff:
When walking through some parts of London, especially South London, you become sensitized to sudden shifts from one neighbourhood to another. Walking up Blackheath Hill, the houses became very noticeably grander.
At the top of the hill, we unexpectedly came out into open countryside. I have a number of photos, including one of some sort of manor house. However, all these photos were fuzzy, and I just promised I wouldn’t include any more fuzzy photos. So, instead, here’s a picture of a bus stop sign:
From the name I assume that there’s some historic connection between this area and the Peasant’s Revolt. I could look it up, I suppose. But, then again, so could you.
I did get an in-focus picture of a memorial plaque for a motorcyclist from Epsom who died in a crash in 2006 in his mid forties, but I’m not going to include it. I’m not sure why, but it just doesn’t seem right: it’s not quite like having a photo of a weather-beaten bouquet of flowers sellotaped to a lamp-post, but it’s going in that direction. The crash wasn’t in Blackheath, by the way: this was just somewhere he liked to visit.
The road we were walking along went past the top end of Greenwich Park. For reasons we never managed to fathom, there were large numbers of tour buses from the Czech Republic. I have absolutely no idea where the following picture was taken, other than that it is in sequence.
Mr. H. thought we should visit Maryon Park, which is where the part the 1966 film Blow-up was set. Ever seen that? You know that film with Mick Jagger in it? Well, it’s not that one. That would be Performance.
To get to Maryon Park we first walked through Hornfair Park, close to Charlton Lido…
… then Charlton Park, where one must beware of artillery horses…
… where I think we got a bit lost. We ended up in Charlton Village. Here there is a 17th century brick church where Spencer Percival, the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated, is buried. (Shot in the lobby of the House of Commons, his last words were “Oh, I have been murdered.”)
Here is a view of central London that you get from nearby:
We did get to Maryon Park eventually. It was a park, with, y’know, park-type things in it: grass, bushes, trees, tennis courts. I’ve not seen Blow-up so none of it was ever going to look familiar to me. I didn’t fancy the idea of taking a photo in the park, and discovering I’d accidentally captured a murder in the background, so here’s a picture of a park bench.
From Maryon Park we came to Woolwich. We’d been in this area before, visiting the Thames Barrier, but were only familiar with the big main road running parallel to the river.
I suppose I should have been able to figure this out before, but there is more to Woolwich than this: quite a lot more. Here, for instance, is the old town hall…
… and here is South London College, next to a giant telly with football pundits on it.
As I recall, there’s a giant public telly in the middle of Hull too. I don’t really understand how these things work. Wouldn’t the local council have to pay an astronomical TV licence? Or does the entire local population contrive to be out when the licence inspector comes around?
East from Woolwich is Plumstead, which I’d never even heard of before, but which is home to the rather fine (and CIU affiliated) Plumstead Radical Club.
Looking over the photos of the day, it looks like I’ve got a bit of a thing for very tall buildings seen from a distance. I’m not sure quite why that is. Perhaps it’s because of the marked contrast in seeing the City and Canary Wharf from places that seem a world away. Or perhaps the most exotic thing about London is that it has skyscrapers, looking like bits of America dropped here by aliens. Anyway, here’s a view, looking west, taken from somewhere roughly midway between Plumstead and Thamesmead. Canary Wharf is visible above the trees on the right-hand side.
We arrived at Southmere in Thamesmead more quickly than we’d expected. As I understand it, this area was used as a location for A Clockwork Orange, although I can’t say I recognize it from that. Perhaps I wouldn’t: I did only see it once, about twenty years ago (with Dutch subtitles, as I recall). Much more recently, it was the setting for Misfits, which was a very British twist on the idea of people finding out they had super powers. Roughly speaking, it was to Heroes what Blake’s Seven was to Star Trek, if that makes any sense.
It seems that in Thamesmead the more dog-eared blocks of flats are being demolished and replaced by new blocks of flats. You can see the rubble from one demolition at the bottom of this photo of a wind turbine, and one of the newer blocks to the left of the subsequent photo of the old library.
Oh, and here’s another picture of pigeons and distant skyscrapers.
Our destination was the community centre on the side of Southmere Lake, which was the focus of action in Misfits. Approaching it we saw what we took, from a distance, to be a large gang of kids; and we considered seeking an alternative route (what with discretion being the better part of valour, and cowardice being the better part of discretion). However, it turned out that they were tourists too: long distance cyclists, who were stopping off here for a break, and to take photos of the scenery. Although I did feel rather self-conscious taking photos here, it turns out there was a lot of it about.
Here’s the community centre, which very conveniently has a café in it, where we sat and watched boats on the lake.
It is strange going to places that you know from fiction. Some places seem to have their reality overwhelmed by their existence in works of imagination. You can’t go to Whitby, for example, without being conscious of its role in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and (to a lesser extent) its being in Hearbeat country. Whilst Thamesmead might be becoming a minor tourist attraction, I don’t think it’s risking that fate.
We had started off with the plan that we would walk back west from Thamesmead to Greenwich, but in the event we couldn’t be bothered, so we got the bus instead. The bus journey was dominated by a loud, unending argument between one of the other passengers and his girlfriend. Well, I say it was an argument between them, but to be honest she didn’t get much of a word in. At one point the bloke threatened to start a fight with another passenger who laughed at him, or looked at him wrong, or something. Cheap holidays in other people’s misery, as they say.
In Greenwich we took the foot tunnel under the river, to the Isle of Dogs, and then gradually made our way to Liverpool Street Station to catch the train home. I’ve just got a few more photos, which I’ll give without much comment.
Here’s The Shard, seen from the bank of the Thames at Greenwich.
Here’s JP Morgan’s London offices, and some surrounding stuff.
And finally, here’s a mural in Cable Street, celebrating the local community defending itself against Oswald Mosley’s Union of British Fascists.
None of the flats in Thamesmead have been demolished – the “new” ones you photographed are actually refurbished old ones. The massive pile of rubble used to be part of the Clockwork Orange backdrop and is more often celebrated as the setting for Beautiful Thing, or shown in pictures of the unique vision Thamesmead originally was. Right now, it’s uncertain what’s going to replace the rubble by the lake as the plans that were put in place when it was demolished are being re-assessed by the new owners, Peabody. The rubble next to the train station is set to be a Sainsburys, some flats and a hotel within the next couple of years.
Cheers for that.
I take it http://hawkida.net/thamesmead/ is you. I’ll have to have a closer look.
Hello rdn32, I’m a student at Goldsmiths. I’m writing an article about the office equipment shop that sold a chair to Damien Hirst. The article and audio interview with the assistant manager is to be published on http://www.londonmultimedianews.com. I wonder if you would mind me using your pictures – with a credit to you? Many thanks in advance. Chris
No problem. Thinking about it, I might as well put the whole lot under a Creative Commons licence. Cheers for your interest.