Issue 1 of The Lewisham Ledger

Blythe spirit

A FREE NEWSPAPER FOR LEWISHAM

The Lewisham Ledger I S S U E 1 | J U N E /J U LY 2 0 1 8

Legendary landlord celebrates 30 years PA G E S 32 , 33

Ace of clubs

Reviving a Grove Park gem PAG E S 14, 1 5

Borough beats

How Lewisham became a jazz hotspot PA G E S 2 2 , 2 3

The Catford man photographing every London station

The world is his Oyster PAGES 24, 25

TH E LE WI S H A M L E DG E R

NEWS

J U N E /J U LY 2 0 18

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PAUL STAFFORD

Welcome to issue one of The Lewisham Ledger, a free local newspaper for the borough of Lewisham. he paper has been created by the team behind two other southeast London newspapers: The Peckham Peculiar, which launched in January 2014 and The Dulwich Diverter, which started in May 2016.

Thanks to more than 100 incredibly generous people who backed our crowdfunding campaign, we’ve been able to design, write, print and distribute our first issue. Numerous local businesses and organisations have also supported us through advertising.

We’d like to thank the talented team who made the paper happen, including Andy Keys and Marta Pérez Sainero for their design skills and Lima Charlie and John Yabrifa for their standout photography. There were many others whose involvement has been invaluable – including our brilliant writing team – and their names are listed below.

So, what are we all about? The Lewisham Ledger is a free local paper edited by two Lewisham residents who have lived in south-east London for a combined total of 20 years. It will cover the whole of Lewisham borough and will be published every other month. Copies will be available to pick up in more than 100 local places.

Each edition will feature borough-wide news and views and will also have a dedicated section focusing on one particular part of Lewisham, beginning with Catford.

Community is at the heart of what we do and we believe that local publications should truly reflect the areas they represent. Our editorial will be made up of unique stories about Lewisham and its people rather than generic content driven by press releases. We’d love to hear your story ideas, so please drop us a line at lewishamledger@gmail.com if there’s someone or somewhere that you’d like us to feature.

Thanks to our backers we have enough cash to get the paper off the ground, but after that we will rely solely on advertising to fund our costs.

If you’re a business who is interested in placing an ad, please get in touch.

As you can see from this edition, you will be in very good company.

We hope you enjoy the issue!

T

Mark McGinlay and Kate White

THE LEWISHAM LEDGER

Editors Mark McGinlay, Kate White Creative directors Andy Keys, Marta Pérez Sainero Type designers a2-type.co.uk londontype.co.uk Photographer Lima Charlie Features editor Emma Finamore Sub-editor Jack Aston Limited edition cover Jake Tilson

Get our train service back on track, say campaigners Campaigners lobbying for better train services on the Catford loop have vowed to “keep on fighting for the service our area deserves” after a timetable change by operator Govia Thameslink caused chaos for commuters.

The Crofton Park Transport Users’ Group (CPTUG) last month won their battle to double the number of off-peak trains running through Nunhead, Crofton Park, Catford, Bellingham, Beckenham Hill and Ravensbourne – a stretch of track dubbed the “Cinderella Line” by campaigners – from two to four trains per hour.

But Thameslink was forced to apologise when, following the introduction of a new timetable across the whole of its network in May, which included the new Catford loop services, a string of cancellations and short trains left commuters struggling to get to work.

Thameslink CEO Charles Horton said: “May’s new timetable was part of the biggest change to services for decades, introducing 400 extra services and providing longer trains to address the doubling of passengers on our network in just 16 years.

“We always said that it would be challenging – but we are very sorry for the significant disruption being experienced by passengers and apologise sincerely.”

He said that “delayed approval of the timetable led to an unexpected need to substantially adjust our plans and resources in an unexpectedly short timeframe”, adding that Thameslink would be working to bring “greater consistency” to the service in June.

The Cinderella Line campaign began in early 2016 after a group of fedup commuters from Crofton Park decided enough was enough. “The service was getting progressively worse and more and more overcrowded,” said the group’s Michael Woodhead (pictured above with other campaigners).

“There was a four-year period where we had a 35% increase in usage on the trains but there wasn’t any provision for extra train services. It was at that point when we thought we needed to do something to drive things forward and campaign for more trains.”

After studying old timetables, the group found there were more trains running on the line in the 1950s than there are today – a situation Michael described as “ridiculous”.

They successfully campaigned for some direct services to Victoria from Crofton Park and Bellingham in 2016 before managing to double numbers of off-peak trains on the Catford loop.

The extra services mean trains must now stop at all stations and there are no longer any fast trains from Catford to Peckham Rye, but Michael said this was necessary to increase capacity. He also called for people from other stations on the line to join the campaign and share their views.

As well as lobbying Thameslink to improve current services, the Cinderella Line campaigners will continue to push for morning and evening trains to go at least as far as St Pancras and for more direct trains to Victoria. Ultimately they would like to see local train services devolved to Transport for London.

Contributors Rosario Blue, Rob Clayton, Rinku Dutt, Tina Edwards, Seamus Hasson, Jessica Kendrew, Joe Magowan, Peter Rhodes, Colin Richardson, Paul Stafford, Alice Troy-Donovan, Luke G Williams, John Yabrifa

Editorial and advertising lewishamledger@gmail.com

Marketing and social media Mark McGinlay

lewishamledger.tumblr.com

Follow us @lewishamledger @lewishamledger @lewishamledger

TH E LE WI S H A M L E DG E R

NEWS

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Pub's colourful history told through tapestry The group behind the Fellowship Inn refurbishment in Bellingham are calling for local people to get involved in a tapestry project connected to the restoration of the famous pub and entertainment venue.

Phoenix Community Housing has joined forces with arts and education charity Stitches in Time to combine ancient and modern tapestry techniques to create a unique community tapestry that will tell the story of the building’s rich history.

The final tapestry will be displayed once the restoration is complete later this year. Phoenix are keen to recruit as many volunteers as possible to help with the project, and no previous experience in tapestry or sewing is needed.

Locals willing to share their memories of the Fellowship and the surrounding area are also being encouraged to attend regular tapestry sessions at the Green Man community building on Bromley Road.

The Fellowship was built on Randlesdown Road in the 1920s and was the first-ever British pub to be located on a housing estate, in this case London County Council’s Bellingham Estate.

As well as being a pub, the Fellowship also contained a popular performance venue, which played host over the years to numerous musical acts, including Fleetwood Mac and Eric Clapton.

Famously, the pub also acted as the home and training base for legendary British boxer Henry Cooper, as he pre-

Mystery of the missing memorial A tenacious amateur historian is appealing for help in her quest to trace the whereabouts of a “roll of honour” memorial to residents of the parish of St Luke’s in Deptford who fought in World War One. Jackie Sellars, who works in IT and lives in Swindon, was researching her family history when she visited the grave of her great-great uncle James William Mealings, a rifleman who died in 1915 fighting in France.

She subsequently discovered that Mealings was one of 1,532 soldiers whose service to their country had been commemorated on a large wallmounted roll of honour in St Luke’s church on Evelyn Street in Deptford.

“I wanted to visit but was told that the St Luke’s church building wasn’t in use at the moment and that the roll of honour was no longer in there,” Jackie said. “Ever since I’ve been trying to find out what happened to it and where it is now.”

The memorial was the result of an impressive organisational effort spearheaded by the Reverend E Bernard Rae in 1917, which saw every house in the parish visited by church wardens in an effort to make a definitive record of all the local residents who had fought in the war and what regiments they served in.

It originally consisted of 11 panels mounted on a dark polished oak framework, which measured 13 feet

pared for his iconic 1963 showdown with Muhammad Ali (or Cassius Clay as he was then known).

The connection between the Fellowship and Cooper is set to be commemorated by the creation and erection of a bronze alloy cast statue of the famous boxer, which will be located at the corwide by almost eight feet tall. Unveiled on October 12, 1917 by the then mayor of Deptford, Sir William Wayland, two extra panels were added in 1921 on either side of the framework recording further names.

“A subscription effort paid for the roll of honour,” Jackie explained. “It cost about £40. It must have been a magnificent memorial. When it was unveiled in 1917 the church was absolutely packed, with about 1,300 people inside and several hundred more outside.

“In the late-1970s and mid-1980s, St Luke’s was reordered and had some work done on it. The memorial was most likely moved when that work was done.

Unfortunately, now it’s all missing, apart from five of the panels, which were found in storage.

“We have only found one photograph of the memorial, and the quality isn’t good enough to read all the names on it. Nevertheless, we have identified 756 of the 1,532 names. We would love to identify them all eventually, so if anybody has any photos of the roll of honour or any information at all they can share, I would love it if they got in touch.”

If you have any information about the St Luke’s roll of honour, please contact Jackie Sellars via email at jackie@tommoco49.plus.com

Pictured: the missing roll of honour from St Luke's church in Deptford

ner of Randlesdown and Bromley roads.

The statue project is being overseen by the London Ex-Boxers Association.

By the 2010s, much of the Fellowship was no longer in use or had fallen into disrepair. Phoenix Community Housing bought the building in 2013, the same year that it was given grade-II-listed sta-

Pictured above: The Fellowship Inn, which is expected to reopen later this year

tus for being a “remarkably complete example of an interwar public house”.

In December 2014, Phoenix were awarded a grant of £3.8million by the Heritage Lottery Fund to restore the building – an ambitious project that will reach its conclusion later this year.

The restoration will include a new cinema, music, theatre and comedy venue, café, pub, microbrewery and a music hub and rehearsal space.

Jim Ripley, Phoenix’s chief executive, told The Lewisham Ledger: “The Fellowship was built for the whole community, and our plans – the cinema, café, performance space as well as the pub – mean that it will once again have a huge range of things going on. It has the potential to be a landmark building and thriving venue that will put Bellingham on the map. We’re so excited about what it is going to become.”

Raising a glass

Elderly people can sign up to a new shopping service

Volunteers needed for new shopping service

A charity is calling for volunteers to assist with a new shopping service that aims to help elderly people in Lewisham live “more healthy, independent and dignified lives”.

Age UK Lewisham and Southwark, the charity behind the service, said Lewisham has more older people living alone than the London average.

Those who sign up to Food2You will fill in a shopping list and will have their shopping delivered and unpacked by volunteers on a day of their choice.

Users will pay a £4 delivery charge by cash or cheque and shopping can be delivered weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or on a short-term or ad-hoc basis.

The charity’s Caroline Hughes said: “We are currently recruiting volunteers to the service, particularly those interested in driving vans or delivering the food.”

To volunteer with Food2You, email Caroline.Hughes@ageuklands.org.uk

A Lewisham brewery is celebrating after hundreds of people helped it crowdfund over £24,000 to open a new taproom in Sydenham.

Ignition is a brewery and social enterprise that is staffed by local residents with learning disabilities, all of whom are paid the London living wage.

Co-founder and volunteer director Will Evans said: “About 95% of people with a learning disability are unemployed, which is a staggering statistic. Furthermore, the majority of jobs those 5% of people do have are often not very meaningful or inclusive.

“We decided to try and do something about that. We needed a business that was replicable, something that was labour intensive and had a tangible product we could sell with a high consumption rate, high volume, decent margin and ideally in a growth market.

Beer was the answer.”

Ignition moved into the Lewisham Council-owned Sydenham Centre on Sydenham Road last year, with its first “proper brew” taking place in August.

“All our staff had to pass their health and safety, food hygiene and beer sommelier qualifications. There was also a serious level of refurbishment needed at the Sydenham Centre,” Will said.

“Now it’s our home and we brew, bottle and label every product by hand.

So far all of the stockists we’ve had have put in a second order.”

He said that following the launch in September, “people will be able to come in, sit down and drink the beer and meet the guys who work there”, adding that the space will also be available for community uses. He said: “If you want to run a dance night, or host an event of some sort, come and use the taproom.”

6

N EWS

Space to flourish The Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust has launched an affordable co-working space in Deptford that is aimed at small businesses, start-ups and entrepreneurs.

Your Space is a work hub that aims to “empower those who seek to build the world of tomorrow”. It is located in the Stephen Lawrence Centre on Brookmill Road and has a capacity of 78.

A variety of flexible desk spaces are available along with a lounge and studio,

where the trust hopes that businesses and businesspeople will be able to develop their ideas and establish support networks.

Sonia Watson, chief executive of the Trust, said: “Deptford has been lauded as a budding creative destination, with the area’s history and culture enticing more and more entrepreneurs and vibrant businesses.

“While the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust has been inspiring and enabling young people to succeed in their careers of choice for 20 years, Your Space is the significant next step in nurturing and supporting local startups and businesses through providing a welcoming and accessible hub for ideas and ambitions to prosper. We hope the

The Your Space co-working hub in Deptford has been designed to encourage creativity and collaboration

New arts centre to boost economy The director of a new contemporary arts space opening in New Cross has said the facility will become an “important centre” for arts activity throughout the borough of Lewisham, in addition to providing a boost to the local economy.

The Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art (Goldsmiths CCA) will bring a programme of “world class” exhibitions to the area when it opens to the public on September 8.

Director Sarah McCrory said: “Alongside free exhibitions that will give peo-

ple from Lewisham the chance to see the very best international artists, we will be hosting a series of talks, events and performances open to the community.

“We hope that in time the Goldsmiths CCA will become an important centre for arts activity all around the Lewisham area, building on Goldsmiths’ existing outreach initiatives to ensure local schools, community groups and businesses all benefit from an exciting new gallery opening up on their doorstep.”

Goldsmiths CCA is a major part of the redeveloped grade-II-listed Laurie Grove baths, in the heart of Goldsmiths’ New Cross campus.

Beer we go A new bottle shop specialising in beer, cider, small-batch spirits and natural and classic wines – as well as hot sauce – is opening in a Deptford railway arch at the end of June.

It’s the second shop from Hop Burns & Black, which is based on the East Dulwich and Peckham border and is named after the drinks, hot sauce and vinyl records on sale. It will be located in Deptford Market Yard, directly outside the station.

Pictured left: How the arts centre will look Above: 3 of Life by Kris Lemsalu

The baths opened in 1898 and have seen various uses over the years, including incarnations as a dance hall, swimming baths and a washhouse. Goldsmiths acquired the baths in 1999 and turned them into studios and teaching rooms for students.

Now the Goldsmiths CCA gallery has been constructed from a series of steel water tanks that supplied the old pools.

There will be eight galleries in all, which will utilise existing spaces in the tanks and basement, as well as some newly built gallery spaces.

Four major exhibitions are planned for the gallery’s first year, including work by the late photographer Alexis

“HB&B Deptford will be just like our first shop in Peckham, except it will be on a smaller scale,” said co-owner Jen Ferguson, who founded the original shop with her partner Glenn Williams after they moved to London from New Zealand.

“We’re cramming a world-class bottle shop into a funny little odd-shaped railway arch. There will be hundreds of amazing beers, natural and classic wines, beautiful British cider, carefully selected small-batch spirits, and of course our famous wall of hot sauce.”

Customers will be able to browse the shelves and fridges, or click and collect via the online shop, as well as

Hunter, contemporary artist Kris Lemsalu, and the first major UK exhibition in nearly 40 years by 1960s pioneers The Chicago Imagists.

Meanwhile, the debut show, which runs from September 8 until November 4, will see Argentine video artist Mika Rottenberg present a mixture of her new and existing work; and the gallery is also planning a series of events and visits for schools.

Goldsmiths CCA is expected to provide a significant boost to the local economy, by attracting an estimated 15,000 visitors in its first year and providing businesses with a windfall of around £100,000.

enjoy a drink in the sun at the Deptford branch’s small outside seating area.

Jen and Glenn will be maintaining the local vibe they’ve fostered in their original shop: customers in the Deptford branch will be served by “the same friendly faces our customers know and love from our Peckham branch”, according to Jen. A dedicated south-east London section will showcase HB&B’s favourite breweries, including Deptford locals Brick and Villages. “We love celebrating local producers,” Jen said.

“We’re also looking forward to supporting our suppliers who have stalls in the Saturday food and drink market,

Hop Burns & Black owners Jen Ferguson and Glenn Williams

revitalised workspace will inspire, connect and help local entrepreneurs to flourish.”

Officially launched on May 15, Your Space was designed by award-winning architecture practice Gensler, whose aim was to develop an interior that would encourage creativity and collaboration.

Companies and contractors donated their time and expertise pro bono to help transform the space, while others gave materials and furnishings.

All funds raised by Your Space will be reinvested into the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust, helping it to continue providing mentoring, training and financial support to disadvantaged young people.

Council keeping tabs Lewisham Council has defended its decision not to publish public comments on planning applications on its website.

Each application listed on the council’s planning pages has a “public comments” tab, suggesting that any objections made through the website will appear in the comments section and will be available for anyone to view.

However, comments that are made through the website do not appear under the public comments tab but instead are sent direct to planning officers, who take them into account when making a decision.

It means that to the casual observer, controversial planning applications will appear to have received no objections from the public in the run-up to a decision being made, even though this may not be the case.

By contrast, the neighbouring borough of Southwark allows public comments on its planning applications, as do other London boroughs including Wandsworth, Westminster, Camden and Kensington and Chelsea.

A Lewisham Council spokesperson said: “We have never published comments so nothing has been removed from the website. The comment tab is a standard part of the software but not something we have ever used due to data protection and the need to redact all personal information.

“We deal with thousands of applications each year which themselves generate many thousands of letters. Every letter received is read by the allocated case officer and an overview of all comments is included in all reports.

“Anyone can request a copy of objections which we would redact and provide to them direct.” such as Greenwich hot sauce maker extraordinaire Baj of Baj’s Blazin’ and the good folk of Natural Born Wines.”

Asked why they chose Deptford for their second site, Jen said: “We love Deptford – it feels quite similar to what attracted us to Peckham when we first moved there years ago.

There’s a strong sense of community as well as great support for independent businesses.

“Over the years we’ve had a lot of customers ask us to consider opening a branch here. The reception we’ve had from Deptford residents since announcing our new shop has been amazing – we can’t wait to move in.”

TH E LE WI S H A M L E DG E R

BYELECTION S PECIAL

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Polling power The residents of Lewisham East will go to the polls on June 14 to elect their new MP. We take a look at the 14 candidates battling it out to win Heidi Alexander’s former seat WORDS BY KATE WHITE

Sydenham resident Ross Archer has been involved in politics in Lewisham for more than a decade. He has stood for council election twice and once at a byelection, and also ran for mayor in the 2018 local elections.

“I’ve lived in Lewisham for over 22 years and feel passionately about the area,” he said. “People need an MP who is going to be in there fighting for the constituency. I’m a local lad and I know the issues.

“Lewisham is currently a one-party state – Labour have full control of the council, every council seat and all the MPs. There needs to be a change and a challenge to them, because they’re failing local residents.

“We’re the challengers to Labour, so if you want to send a message to Labour that things need to improve, that you’re not happy with the one-party state that exists in Lewisham, you’ve only got one choice and that is to vote Conservative.”

Ross said his number one priority if he were to be elected would be education. “We have some of the worst secondary schools in inner London in Lewisham,” he said, “and there’s no excuse for it.

“Southwark has some of the best secondary schools and Lewisham has some of the worst – they’re both very similar boroughs and they’re both working with the same government, so it’s not the government’s fault. There are local failures there.

“People need an MP who’s going to work with all the different stakeholders, work with the Department for Education to turn that around and improve it.

What could be more important than our young people and the next generation’s future?”

Crime is also top of his agenda. “The mayor has closed Catford police station and I don’t think he takes responsibility for tackling crime,” he said. “I will be a challenge to the mayor and hold him to account so that local policing is a priority.”

Ross is also campaigning to reclassify zone four train stations Grove Park and Beckenham Hill to zone three/four – a move that could save people buying monthly or annual season tickets into London just over £400 a year.

“If you compare Lewisham to Islington, which is a similar borough north of the river, they have no zone four stations – they’re all zone three or less,” he said. “I feel a lot of people in the south of Lewisham East are getting a raw deal and I’ll be campaigning to change that.”

SARAH STIRK

Ross Archer Conservative

Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, Green

Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah Green

Ross Archer, Conservative

Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah was a secondary school teacher and head of sixth form before her daughter, who suffered from a severe and rare form of asthma, tragically passed away in 2013 aged nine.

This led her to set up the Ella Roberta Family Foundation, which raises awareness of asthma in schools and the community. As part of this, she runs fundraising events including the annual Wellmeadow Road summer street party.

Rosamund is also a clean air campaigner and is part of Clean Air for Catford and the Clean Air Parents’ Network, as well as the Healthy London Partnership – an organisation which aims to make London the healthiest global city in the world.

The Hither Green resident, who has been based in the area since 2001, is focusing on three key issues in her election campaign: clean air, education and mental health.

“If I had my chance to go into parliament right now, I would introduce a clean air act bill before we exit the EU,

so the government will be held accountable over the environment,” she said.

“Last year I submitted some evidence to parliament and they set up an enquiry to look at pollution and what’s being done about it. I went to parliament, but when I got there it wasn’t what I was expecting. I didn’t think they were taking it seriously enough – I was a bit disappointed actually.

“The environmental laws in this country, at the moment they come from Europe. If we exit [the EU] in March 2019, who will hold the government accountable? Right now there is nothing that is going to hold them accountable and it is a very, very serious matter.”

Rosamund would also allocate more funding for young people’s mental health support and would implement a holistic approach to the issue that would help young people manage their conditions and give them the confidence to flourish.

Improving local secondary schools is also a priority. “Education in Lewisham has been failing for a long time,” she said. “Because I was a teacher for so many years, I have been on the other side and I will be able to help.

“There’s a report that is written [on education]. One of the first things I would do is read that report and look at the recommendations and make sure the council are held to account to make sure these things are put in place. It’s very simple.”

Janet Daby Labour Janet Daby has been a councillor for the Whitefoot ward in Lewisham East since 2010 and joined the mayor of Lewisham’s cabinet in 2012. She led on community safety among other things, which saw her work with the police to cut crime and tackle domestic violence.

Janet has also been part of the Local Government Association as a board member on safer communities since 2013. As a lead member on community cohesion across the country, she has sat on parliamentary committees and attended senior police briefings.

She’s also founder and chair of the Whitefoot and Downham Community Food Plus Project, which won a national award in 2014 for being the most innovative project in the country to tangibly alleviate poverty. The scheme supports up to 80 people each week.

“Lewisham East is where I live, I love Lewisham East and I have a passion to improve the area, to improve people’s life circumstances,” she said. “I see myContinued over page

10 BY E L EC T I ON S PECI A L

Janet Daby, Labour Continued from page 9 self as very much a keen activist and campaigner.

“I’ve been a union rep in the past at work. I’ve held a picket line, I’ve been on marches and I’ve supported workers’ rights wherever I can. I believe that I’ve got a strong voice and that I will be able to have a local and national presence for the people of Lewisham East.”

Asked what her top priorities are for the area, Janet said: “Number one is to protect our NHS service and I’ll keep on speaking out about that, to ensure that we’ve got a hospital and an A&E that’s fit for purpose.”

She said she will campaign for better train services for commuters and will continue to push for the Bakerloo line extension to Lewisham, improve green spaces and lower emissions, especially around schools.

On the housing crisis, she said: “We need more social homes. We have a high waiting list in Lewisham East and a lot of people living in bed and breakfast accommodation. We also need more affordable homes as well.”

On crime, she said she would keep “being a voice to ensure that the Tory government invests properly in young people’s services but also making sure we have a police service that combats crime but works well with communities.”

When asked what she would do to improve education in the constituency, she said: “Lewisham’s primary schools are good and outstanding, but our secondary schools are not at the same level as our primary schools.

“When I’m knocking on the door, this is a huge concern for residents, but it’s also a concern for me personally, because my children are at primary school in Lewisham East and the plan is for them to obviously go to secondary school in Lewisham East.”

She said the “Tory government need to invest more money in our schools” but added: “I do think that the council needs to also strengthen their relationship with schools so they can work together more effectively to improve the performance of our young people.”

Asked why secondary schools in neighbouring boroughs such as Southwark and Greenwich routinely outperform those in Lewisham, she said: “What needs to happen is that Lewisham needs to learn from what’s going on in the neighbouring boroughs.

Lucy Salek, Liberal Democrats, with party leader Vince Cable She said the new mayor of Lewisham wants to work with schools to develop a teacher’s charter and that he has dedicated one cabinet member to focus on improving school performance.

She added: “But I will have a voice, I will be holding the council to account on this issue and I will be raising it and I will be looking to see what is happening and how things are improving.”

Asked for her thoughts on the ongoing uncertainty around Millwall football club’s future in the borough, she said: “They [the council] recognise the benefits of Millwall without a doubt because they do so much good work locally as well as with local schools.”

Asked if the club should stay in Lewisham, she said: “They’re very much valued and they should remain and I hope they do remain”, adding: “I have spoken to the mayor about this as well, so I’m very aware of it, but yes, of course Millwall should stay.”

Lucy Salek Liberal Democrats

Turnout in Lewisham East in the 2017 general election was almost 70%

Lucy Salek got involved in politics a few years ago after feeling “frustrated” by events both national and local. “My political background is that I’m not a career politican,” she said. “I feel it’s a real opportunity to make a difference and I’m enjoying it immensely.”

The Lewisham resident said Brexit was her first reason for standing in the election. “You’ve got the Conservatives going for a hard Brexit, you’ve got the Labour party pretending they’re not but voting it all the way through, and then we have a constituency here that is 70% remain.

“This byelection is a chance for people to say, ‘If we vote for the Liberal Democrats, we’re sending a message to Labour that their attitude towards Brexit, the way they’re supporting the government on Brexit is not acceptable for those who didn’t vote for it.’

“The second reason is because of the Labour monopoly in Lewisham. Where is the pressure to make them do better?

Nearly every conversation I have on the doorstep is people saying that Labour have really let them down, and as a local resident I feel that too.”

Lucy is pledging to tackle violent crime and the “appalling state of our secondary schools”. “Something like

40% of parents in Lewisham are sending their kids out of the borough for secondary school,” she said.

“Every time we tackle the Labour one-party state on this, they turn around and blame austerity. But if you look over the border to Bromley, Greenwich or Southwark, they have the same challenges but they’re not having these kinds of problems.”

Speaking of the situation at Millwall, she described the council’s dealings “with a club that does fantastic services for the community” as a “debacle” and slammed the lack of “affordable” housing (just 12% of the proposed 2,400 homes) in the original scheme.

Liberal Democrats leader Vince Cable, who has joined Lucy on the campaign trail several times, told The Lewisham Ledger that the byelection is a chance for the voters of Lewisham East to send a message to Labour.

“I think that’s the crucial point and it was the point that was made by the people at Millwall,” he said. “They’re not party political but they’re obviously worried about their future; they’re confronted with this proposal which to be frank, stinks to high heaven.

“The compulsory purchase order should have been killed off some time ago but it hasn’t been, and the reason is that there is nobody really challenging the Labour party. They have a complete one-party state and that is very unhealthy and very undemocratic and we are here to break that open.”

David Kurten, Ukip

David Kurten Ukip Former chemistry teacher David Kurten joined Ukip in 2012 and is the party’s education spokesman. He stood in Camberwell and Peckham in the 2015 general election and a year later he was elected onto the London Assembly, where he has two more years on his term.

The Bexley resident said that one of his top priorities if he wins the Lewisham East byelection will be to tackle crime. “The rise in crime is something that everyone is really concerned about,” he said.

“London is now more dangerous for violent crime than New York – it’s the first time ever in history that has happened. You have Sadiq Khan saying he’s done nothing wrong, but he’s not really doing much about the problem.

“He’s closing police stations, he wants to merge the borough commands of Lewisham, Greenwich and Bexley, but with the surge in violent crime, you need community policing, you need preventative policing, and that’s just not happening.

“We’ve lost 20,000 police officers all across the country since 2010. Ukip’s policy is to increase the police by 20,000 as quickly as we can. We’ve got to protect our kids – that’s what I care about, having been a teacher for a long time.”

Brexit is also high on his agenda. “For the people of the constituency who voted for Brexit, you’ve got a Labour candidate who wants to stay in the single market and the customs union and you’ve got the Conservatives who are completely split down the middle on the issue and they’re not going to deliver a full Brexit. Both the Conservatives and Labour are betraying people who voted for Brexit.”

On immigration, he said: “UKIP has never been against immigration per se, but we are against uncontrolled immigration and illegal immigration”, adding: “You need to make sure immigration is balanced for the benefit of people who are in this country.”

Education is another key focus.

“Lewisham has got the worst secondary schools in inner London according to the ratings. Certainly we would like grammar schools in every local Continued over page

12 BY E L EC T I ON S PECI A L Continued from page 10 education authority; we’d like technical schools in every local education authority.

“For the children who have those aptitudes, they will be able to develop those skills at a rate and a pace that suits them and really thrive and run ahead if they’ve got the skills they want to develop.”

Former police officer and chaplain Massimo DiMambro represented Ukip in the local elections in Downham in 2014 and in the Lewisham/Deptford ward in the 2015 general election.

The Hither Green resident is now standing on behalf of the Democrats and Veterans, a new party formed in February this year that promotes “direct democracy” and aims to “truly democratise Westminster, freeing the people from the agendas of corrupt politicians”.

“The mainstream parties have failed people for too long,” Massimo said.

“They promise so much, they talk a lot, but they achieve very little. We think the voice of the people has been ignored for too long and we really want to put the ball back in their court.”

His policies include greater support and protection for householders who are victims of crime, following the recent incident in Hither Green. “It led to a lot of anxiety in the area and local tensions,” he said. “People want the right to have a greater police presence on their streets and they want to feel the police are there for them.”

Massimo has also pledged to improve quality of life by tackling dog attacks in parks and other antisocial behaviour.

Alan “Howling Laud" Hope Official Monster Raving Loony Party

Alan "Howling Laud" Hope, Official Monster Raving Loony Party we might even save our deposit. We’ve never done that.”

Thomas Hall Young People’s Party “A vote for the Young People’s Party is a single-issue vote to show the people who run our government that high house prices and low disposable income is the biggest single issue for them,” said Thomas Hall, who represented the party in Epping Forest in last year’s general election.

“Our central policy is the reevaluation of council tax to make it much more progressive and iron out the distortions where someone in Lewisham will be paying more council tax in a two up, two down than someone in a £10 million apartment in Hyde Park.”

The party, which was formed six years ago, isn’t just for young people, he said. “I think our oldest member is in his 90s actually. The Young People’s Party is a party for people who are worried about the lack of opportunity for young people in this country.

“A parliamentary election is a mini referendum. If high house prices – or rather, extremely high house prices – low wages and job security are the most important issues in your life, then a vote for the Young People’s Party is a vote that will be heard by those sitting in government.”

Renaming Oyster cards “Sardine” cards to better reflect the experience of travelling on public transport, redeveloping playgrounds in Lewisham for all age groups, reducing binge drinking by allowing pubs to open 36 hours a day and relocating Lewisham to the countryside so that its residents can enjoy fresher air are just some of the policies that make up the Official Monster Raving Loony Party’s colourful manifesto.

Party leader Alan “Howling Laud” Patrick Gray Hope has led the party since 1999 and has been a member since 1982. He was The Radical Party elected to Fleet town council on a Loony ticket, where he’s chairman of high- Former Labour party member Patrick ways and transport and vice chairman Gray was a councillor for 11 years in a of planning. This will be his 25th time multicultural ward in Oxford, while running for parliament. “I’ve probahis professional career has focused bly got more experience than on developing programmes all the other candidates to reduce unemployment standing put together,” in inner cities. He was he said. awarded an OBE for “From what I can work to reduce the gather from the risk of the spread others who are of nuclear weapons standing, there and been involved doesn’t seem to be in tackling climate many illustrious change. people there, does He currently there? I’m down in chairs the commitHampshire and I’m tee for The Co-opgetting comments erative Energy – the Thomas Hall, down here like, ‘Well, UK’s largest consumerYoung People's you stand a good chance owned energy provider – Party there mate.’ and his wife is a doctor with “We are the party that’s on evea “lifelong commitment” to the rybody’s side – no matter what your po- NHS. They have two daughters, one of litical persuasion may be. And what we whom is a teacher at Goldsmiths and want Lewisham to do is get themselves lives in Lewisham. in The Guinness Book of Records and “The party is very much concerned

CHRISTOPHER L PROCTOR

Massimo DiMambro Democrats and Veterans

Mandu Reid, Women's Equality Party

with tackling issues of inequality by empowering people,” he said. “The Tories told a great lie, which was that we had to have austerity because there wasn’t an alternative. The alternative is raising taxes.

“We have almost uniquely low taxes.

We have one of the lowest levels of corporation tax in the advanced world and that would be a major source of revenue, not to mention direct taxes, which we also feel need to be raised.”

Patrick called for a “clean break with the flirtation with US-style capitalism that Mrs Thatcher began and Blair continued” and a more equal society. “[Pre1979] we made a huge contribution to the social welfare model of society and our society was much more equal.”

Maureen Martin Christian People’s Alliance Maureen Martin has always been an “ardent, passionate and responsible voter”, but three years ago she decided to take things up a level. Before she knew it, she was representing the Christian People’s Alliance (CPA) in Lewisham East in the 2015 general election.

“It was a baptism of fire, but it was excellent experience and took me out of my comfort zone, which was great – I really enjoyed it,” she said. “Since then I’ve been representing the CPA in all the local and general elections in my constituency of Lewisham East.

“One of the reasons I got involved [in politics] is that I saw a distinct lack of engagement from people of colour in the political system. I want to try and encourage my own community to vote and to have a say.”

The CPA have “common sense policies” that address the issues that local residents are concerned about, she said.

“Knife crime is top of the list. The waste of young lives is concerning lots of people. We have a holistic approach to deal with that.”

Maureen would insist on 50 per cent affordable housing in new developments and would “stop the hostile immigration environment” by assessing cases “individually and fairly”. She would also reverse the benefit cuts with a turnover tax on corporations like Google and Facebook.

Mandu Reid Women's Equality Party Former Labour party member and Lewisham resident Mandu Reid stood for the Women’s Equality Party in the 2018 local elections in Lewisham Central

ward and is now representing the party in their first parliamentary byelection.

Mandu works for the mayor of London, where she’s responsible for investing funding into community and grassroots sport; and also runs her own charity, The Cup Effect, which raises awareness about menstrual cups and period poverty.

“In Lewisham we’ve got a peculiar situation where all 54 council seats are held by Labour, there’s a Labour mayor and a full package of Labour MPs,” she said. “It creates a scenario where they’re marking their own homework, and you never bring out the best in anybody when there isn’t challenge.”

Mandu said her party’s instinct is “to look at the most vulnerable and make sure provision is put in place for them”.

Two of her top priorities if she were to be elected would be tackling domestic violence and addressing social care.

“Not many people know this, but Lewisham has among the highest rates of domestic violence in the country. It baffles me that none of the other parties have made any reference to this.

“There’s also a crisis looming in Lewisham with regard to social care for elderly people. We’re going to need 48% more social care places in Lewisham by 2022 – the second highest projected in the whole country.

“We would definitely make sure both of these issues are on the agenda and taken care of.”

Sean Finch Libertarian Party

Maureen Martin, Christian People's Alliance

Patrick Gray, The Radical Party

Firefighter Sean Finch got involved in politics to reverse what he believes is an erosion of freedom of speech by an increasingly “authoritarian” government, and has pledged to “repeal hate speech laws” if he enters parliament.

“I would be for a freedom of speech act personally, and just encouraging people to speak their minds,” he said.

“You need to be able to speak your mind and you need to be able to scrutinise ideas.

“People go, ‘What about Abu Hamza and people like that?’ I say, ‘Let him say what he wants. Let him speak.’ Are his words really bothering you? Really? It’s just words. Let me debate him.”

He would also tackle crime with a “merit-based, broken window policy” inspired by former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani; eliminate stamp duty and also the help to buy scheme, which he argues is “not really feasible” due to homeowners having to take on debt.

His policies to alleviate the housing crisis include allowing people to develop their homes and build new ones without the need for planning permission. “If it’s your property, do what you want with it, be rewarded for it,” he said.

Anne Marie Waters For Britain Former Labour party member turned For Britain candidate Anne Marie Waters has promised to “prioritise police resources to make our streets much safer”; and “lower taxes for everybody and support local business”.

She will also “fight for a better, quicker Brexit deal”; “protect our hospitals and schools”, “tackle Islamic extremism in Lewisham” and “significantly reduce immigration – deporting those here illegally while protecting hardworking legal migrants”.

Charles Carey, independent, was unavailable for comment.

TH E LE WI S H A M L E DG E R

BACK ERS 13

J U N E /J U LY 2 0 18

Our brilliant backers We, or rather you, did it! The crowdfunding campaign to launch The Lewisham Ledger, a free community newspaper for the borough of Lewisham, began on January 1 this year and received a great response.

The campaign was backed by well over 100 residents, businesses and organisations from Lewisham, other parts of south-east London and beyond. They pledged a combined total of £6,500 to help us fund our initial start-up costs and make the paper happen.

Their names are listed on this page and we’d like to say a huge thank you to each and every one of them. After all, if it wasn’t for their generosity, we wouldn’t be in print today.

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Thank you

14 C OM M U N I T Y

WORDS BY ALICE TROY-DONOVAN

PHOTOS BY ROB CLAYTON

is in the

Grove heart Grove Park Youth Club was the beating heart of the community before it was closed in 2013 and threatened with demolition. As the campaign to reopen it took a major step forward, people who visited the club share their memories of the space

racy Strudwick was 12 when she started religiously attending the Monday night discos at Grove Park Youth Club. “This was the mid-1970s and I remember lots of glam rock,” she says.

“They were almost always fancy dress and they did special themed ones like Halloween.”

The club’s main hall hosted two discos on the same night for “juniors” and “seniors”. They drew in kids from the neighbouring Chinbrook Estate and from areas further afield, including Mottingham, Downham and Eltham. “It was a real focus for the community,” Tracy says. “I was a quiet person and it did me the world of good mixing with all sorts of people.”

The club hosted its first dance on July 30, 1966 and was formally opened five months later by the Right Hon Angus Ogilvy – cousin of Queen Elizabeth and then chairman of the National Association of Youth Clubs.

Tracy’s mother Ann Strudwick got a cleaning job at the club in 1968, when the building still felt new and her daughter wasn’t old enough to hit the parquet dance floor. “I polished that floor every Monday,” she recalls. “They rented out the hall for weddings and parties at the weekend, so it had to be cleaned each week.”

Tracy has since moved away, but the Strudwick family – including Ann, her husband George, who coached the Grove Park Youth Club football team for two years, and their daughter Sandra – still live in Merryfield House, one of the Chinbrook Estate’s attractive medium-rise blocks about 50 yards from the club.

Aside from disco night, Tracy spent three less structured evenings at the club every week, enjoying the “general social atmosphere”. “It was just a good place to meet rather than hanging out in the street,” she says.

Jill Austen was a frequent attendee at the club in the six months after it opened and met her future husband, Morris, at a Saturday night dance. She

t

Pictured above: Jill Austen, who met her husband Morris at a Saturday night dance at the club

I was a quiet person and it did me the world of good mixing with all sorts of people

remembers the initial excitement of a purpose-built youth club hosting grown-up dances.

“It was such a nice place to be – everything looked so very modern and bright,” she says. “It made you think, ‘Is this really for me?’ There were other ballrooms around, like the Black Cat in Woolwich and one in Welling called the Embassy. But [as a teenager] you felt slightly out of place in those.

Grove Park Youth Club was highly unusual – it was built for young people but it felt a bit sophisticated.”

Spread over two storeys with inward-facing windows to contain the noise of late-night socials, the youth club was the final addition to the Chinbrook Estate, which is situated in the south-east corner of Grove Park.

The estate was planned from 1961 and finished by London County Council (LCC) in 1965. The youth club’s architect, Leo Hallissey, was one of a world-renowned team working for the LCC’s education department, and says he drew inspiration from the Bauhaus movement and midcentury modernist architecture for the building’s design. “[The LCC’s] was the largest architectural practice in the world and the mid-1960s was an exciting time to

be part of it,” he says. “We had visitors from around the world interested in so-called ‘state architects’: France, Germany and Holland, even Japan. We were quite proud of what we did and wanted to show it off.”

From the initial 1961 plans, the Chinbrook Estate was to include facilities for all ages in the community,

including an old people’s club room and a purpose-built youth club. The youth club itself was designed to accommodate up to 100 people and comprised a main hall, coffee bar, “girls’ room”, leader’s office and a series of lock-up garages.

“It was planned with every care and attention to detail,” says John

TH E LE WI S H A M L E DG E R

COMMUNITY 1 5

J U N E /J U LY 2 0 18 Pictured clockwise from left: Garfield Clarke and his sons; Stephen Kenny; Tommy McNally and his daughter Belle

Boughton, a social historian whose blog Municipal Dreams profiled Chinbrook and the youth club last year. “For me, the whole estate exemplifies the quest for community in council housing that emerged in the post-1945 period.”

Compared to the bleak interwar estates criticised by sociologists and residents for their lack of communal facilities, Chinbrook exemplified a collective desire for reform. John says the estate was one of the post-war rehousing programme’s “practical dreams”, implemented by a progressive council with the support of a government determined to rebuild a better country. “‘Placemaking’ is a contemporary term,” he says, “but that’s exactly what they were doing.”

In 2013, the club was closed by Lewisham Council, who stated that it was no longer financially sustainable.

Prior to this, it had served the Chinbrook Estate and the wider south Lewisham community for almost 50 years – from casual table tennis sessions to keep-fit classes for adults.

A computer room materialised in the latter years where a hairdressing salon had been, but Michael Beale, who attended from 1986 to 1996, remembers football and uni hock

in the main hall as well. He played football there with older boys before later embarking on a professional career in the sport.

He says a large number of young families moved into the estate in the 1960s, “with hundreds of kids within a five-year age group”.

“My nan lived just adjacent to the club, and my aunt and uncle had gone there in years past,” he says. “An old lady working there at the time knew three generations of my family.”

The old people’s club room was demolished and replaced by flats in 1999. When similar plans for the youth club were proposed by Lewisham Council, a volunteer youth worker, Tommy McNally, went to the press with the story.

“I had been coaching football to a variety of ages there for the past six months, and I knew how important it was to those kids,” says Tommy, who now lives in Orpington with his family and volunteers at a youth club there.

Around that time a 14-year-old boy who was stabbed outside a youth club in Ladywell was found by a youth worker, who saved his life. The incident prompted Tommy to take action. “I knew it was the only safe place for [kids] to go in the area,” he

I was a football coach at the club – I knew how important it was to those kids

says. “My mum used to run a youth club, so I knew how important it was – not only as a safe place, but as somewhere with a positive influence.”

But it wasn’t until 2015, when local mother of five Farrah Thomas contacted her local councillors and MP about the lack of local youth provision, that the Save Grove Park Youth Club campaign was launched.

“There’s this idea that the club was nothing more than table tennis and kids hanging out,”says Rob Clayton, a local resident, father of two teenage daughters, and chair of the youth club’s Building Preservation Trust.

“But, in a way, spaces for young people to hang out is still what’s most required, so they can congregate and make things happen.”

The trust was set up by Rob and Stephen Kenny – who grew up in Grove Park and moved back in recent years – in 2016 as a campaigning body aiming to protect the building as a local heritage asset and reopen it for the community.

The group are now working with Lewisham Council and are in negotiations with a variety of organisations to take over the dayto-day running of the club, as well as putting in funding bids.

Just last month, in a major step forward for the campaign, it was announced that a major refurbishment of the building by Willmott Dixon Interiors will begin in August. It will involve a training programme for local young people who are not in education or employment.

“Though the club may not open immediately, we’re keen to get local young people involved in the construction works,” Rob said. “It’s their building and we want them to start to take ownership even at this stage.”

An increasingly critical level of young victims of knife crime has brought the campaign into broader conversations about young people’s safety. In March, Stephen was interviewed by BBC London News outside the club alongside the Green Party’s Sian Berry, who has been lobbying Sadiq Khan to invest in provision for young people since 2016. Garfield Clarke, a local resident, also appeared in the feature speaking about how some of his five sons used to use the club.

Roc’Kye Halladeen-Brown, 14, attended the club for three years before it closed and remembers horse-riding outings, snooker games and graffiti art sessions. His mother, Latoya, hopes he and his four younger siblings will be able to use the facility again. “The youth club provided a safe and secure way for them to be doing something productive, especially during the summer holidays,” she says.

“I would love for my children to be part of that again.”

“The club was built because, at the time, it was felt that young people needed a safe place to socialise, learn and play,” says Stephen. “And that is still what’s needed.”

Six years before the club was opened, the Albemarle Report was published, which formed the basis of statutory youth provision in Britain.

“It’s so striking that Albemarle recommends a generous and imaginative building programme as essential to rehabilitate the youth service and enable its expansion,” says John Boughton, who sees a strong link between the report and Grove Park Youth Club’s construction.

Around 14 youth clubs were built in London between 1964 and 1966 by the LCC’s education department. Stephen suspects Grove Park Youth Club is one of the few remaining, and perhaps the only one with original features still intact. But, as the Strudwicks recall, the club was always a hub for the whole community and not just its young people. During the day it was used for adult education, including sewing classes, ballroom dancing lessons and a choir. War games were held monthly on a Friday, and there were wedding receptions and engagement parties at the weekends.

Rob and Stephen hope the new youth club will offer job opportunities for young adults and a place for the community to congregate. First and foremost, however, it will exist to serve local youth.

“Youth clubs do have a bit of an old-fashioned label to them,” says Rob. “However, they’ve been denigrated and closed and knocked down and people have forgotten what youth clubs can be. When you speak to people over 30, up to the age of maybe 60, there are many people with great memories of how much they meant to them.”

TH E LE WI S H A M L E DG E R

A LETTER TO LEWIS HAM 17

J U N E /J U LY 2 0 18

Pictured left: Rhona Brewster and Lisa Lye

y sister has Down’s syndrome. When Tessa was born, my parents looked around for an institution to put her in – it’s what you did in those days. But they almost immediately relented and we all grew up together, my sister, my brother and I, in our Lewisham home.

When she was little, Tess needed a fair bit of care and attention. She was slow to walk and talk, but once she got the knack, there was no stopping her.

We all pitched in to help, when she’d let us. I remember the nightly battles I had with her to get her to clean her teeth, get her into and out of the bath, into her pyjamas and then to bed.

Tessa was a happy wee soul; by far the happiest of all of us. She went to what my mother called, in an uncharacteristic outburst of tweeness, a “special school for special people” in Forest Hill. Every morning, Tessa bounced merrily onto the coach that came to collect her; every afternoon, when it dropped her back home, she waved it off with great ceremony.

After leaving school at 16, she went to the Mulberry day centre in Deptford, took some courses at Lewisham College and had several short-lived (because she lost patience and walked out) part-time jobs.

When our parents separated, she lived with our mother. Then, when Mum died, Tessa lived for a while with my father and stepmother. Finally, she moved out and into a “supported living” house. “Supported living” means living as independently as possible, usually in a house or flat shared with others, but with support staff on duty at all times.

Tessa has lived this way for 25 years, in houses in Bromley and Grove Park and, now, in a flat in Sydenham. And she has flourished, learning new skills and becoming an even more outgoing and assertive (not to say, bossy) woman. The care she has received has been exemplary.

But two years ago, everything changed. Tessa broke her hip, and when hip replacement surgery failed she was left unable to climb stairs or walk unsupported. She developed epilepsy and is now in the early stages of dementia. Her care needs have correspondingly and dramatically increased.

Tess now needs help with washing, dressing, and toileting. She relies on a wheelchair to get about. Increasingly, she has to be fed at mealtimes. She is a completely different woman from the chatty, active person, determined to do things her own way, who she so recently was.

Why am I telling you this? Because the social care system in this country is in crisis and I fear for my sister’s future. Local authorities, which provide most social care services, have had savage cuts in government funding imposed on them. By 2020, Lewisham Council, which funds Tessa’s care, will have had its support from government cut by almost twothirds (63%) since 2010.

The government announced extra funding for social care in last year’s budget and councils are now allowed to increase council tax by 3% to raise money for social care. But these are mere sticking plasters; they do not represent a long-term plan. And all the time, demand for services is rising.

There are an estimated 1,120 adults with a learning disability

have become like members of our extended family. I have never failed to be impressed by their dedication and professionalism; and I never fail to be outraged by the way that we, as a society, undervalue them.

My sister’s care is paid for by Lewisham Council and provided by Three Cs, a charity based in Deptford.

Angela Woodley, Three Cs’ director of services, agrees that carers are undervalued. “A person can earn the same on the checkout in Lidl as supporting a person in every way, including wiping their bum”, she says.

Rhona Brewster, my sister’s key worker, concurs. “I don’t think people realise what we actually do, supporting service users,” she says. “There aren’t enough staff and the pay is low.”

Rhona works in my sister’s flat and the one next door. She helps to look after five people, sometimes with only one other staff member. Her duties might include the aforementioned bum-wiping, as well as ensuring service users are washed, dressed, given their medication and fed.

There are activities to plan, meals to prepare, outings to supervise, records to be updated, medical appointments to attend, relatives to meet. Rhona regularly does 24-hour shifts, sleeping

m

time To CARE WORDS BY COLIN RICHARDSON

PHOTO BY JOE MAGOWAN

Sweeping cuts to council budgets in recent years have plunged social care services in Lewisham and beyond into crisis.

One local man says it’s time the government stopped relying on carers’ goodwill and gave them the support they deserve

aged between 18 and 64 living in Lewisham, a figure projected to rise to 1,190 in 2020. Currently, 690 adults with a learning disability receive services funded by Lewisham Council, along with several hundred children.

When I was a child, my brother and I were told that my sister wouldn’t live much beyond the age of 20. She is now in her mid-50s. The life expectancy for people with learning disabilities has more than doubled in the past 30 years, largely as a result of better care and treatment.

For most people, as they get older, there will be children and younger relatives to help out. For people with learning disabilities, the situation is the reverse. Typically, the main family carers are older relatives, usually parents and siblings. The upshot is that people with learning disabilities tend to need to rely on social care support sooner than the rest of us.

So who provides that support?

Lewisham Council, like most local authorities, contracts out the provision of social care to a mix of local and national charities and private companies. The council requires those contractors to pay their staff at least the London Living Wage – currently £10.20 an hour – and most get that, but no more. In recent years, many care providers have had to withdraw higher rates of pay for working weekend or night shifts – in effect, a pay cut.

The Care Quality Commission, which is the independent regulator of health and care services in England, said in its annual report last year that greater demand and unfilled vacancies means health and care staff are working “ever harder” under “huge pressure”. It added: “However, there is a limit to their resilience.”

And that is my greatest fear. I have already seen good people leave the profession in despair. I have seen carers driven to the brink, made ill by the stresses and strains of the job. Across the board, the social care system is finding it hard to retain and recruit staff. It’s a national disgrace.

A number of my sister’s carers

The social care system in this country is in crisis and I fear for my sister’s future overnight in the staff room in the flat.

And that’s only the half of it.

“She deserves a medal,” says Lisa Lye, a service user who lives in the flat next door. Lisa, 46, is bright, articulate and has what she herself describes as “a good sense of humour”. Though she has restricted mobility, she is very independent and often goes out alone or with one of my Tessa’s flatmates, who have become good friends.

Lisa moved in nine months ago.

Until then, she lived with her parents in Downham. “But,” she says, “I realised Mum and Dad were getting older, so I decided to get in touch with the social worker and sort it out.

“It was a bit strange at first; I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for.

But I keep these guys on their toes.

These poor ladies,” she adds, referring to Rhona and her colleague Michelle Allen, “are run off their feet. They need more staff here.”

Rhona has worked with people with learning disabilities for over 30 years, starting out as a nurse in Grove Park Hospital. She clearly loves what she does, but the job has got tougher, she acknowledges. She’ll stick with it, though; she’s that kind of person.

She routinely goes above and beyond the call of duty, and I, like Lisa, Tessa and their flatmates, am enormously grateful for what she does.

I only wish that those in government stopped relying on the goodwill of people like Rhona and instead gave them the support and recognition they deserve.

18 LEWI S H AM I N PI CT U R E S

WORDS BY LUKE G WILLIAMS

PHOTOS BY JOHN GOTO

Pictured this page and opposite: portraits from the Lovers’ Rock series by John Goto, including Lani Minto (above)

the

go-to

ewisham in the late 1970s was a microcosm of the emerging tensions, cultural and political, sweeping through the United Kingdom.

As London was fast developing into a rich and diverse multi-ethnic melting pot, the forces of philistinism were resisting – often violently.

On August 13, 1977, 500 members of the National Front set out on a march from New Cross to Lewisham, with the far-right political party’s national organiser Martin Webster declaring: “We believe that the multiracial society is wrong, is evil and we want to destroy it.”

The NF were met by a series of counter-demonstrations by community groups, many of them Lewisham-based. Violent clashes

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followed, resulting in many injuries and 214 arrests.

It was against this turbulent backdrop that photographic artist John Goto, then teaching a regular evening class at Lewisham Youth Centre, embarked on a project to create photographic portraits of a series of British African-Caribbean youngsters.

Taken during popular and regular dance nights hosted at the centre, the images are timeless in their humanity and intimacy, while also displaying a series of striking fashions – flares, pointed collars and turtlenecks – which unmistakably scream 1970s.

For 36 years, John’s photos lay unpublished in his archive until one of his former students, Dave Lewis, by then a photographer himself, told publishers Autograph ABP about them. Forty-five of John’s images were

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Pictured right: Joan Lee (née Douglas) and Tyrone Briscoe Below: Langford Grant

collected and published in a striking 120-page volume in 2013, and were displayed in the acclaimed exhibition, 1977: Lewisham and Belleville.

John named the series of images “Lovers’ Rock”, a reference to a particular sub-genre of reggae popular in south London when they were originally taken. Recognised by many as the first “home-grown” AfricanCaribbean musical form, Lovers’ Rock was characterised by sweet sounds and a romantic emphasis.

It’s an appropriately tender name for a series of images that, without exception, emphasise the overwhelming humanity of their sitters. John later recalled that his subjects were “such nice kids, without pretensions”.

Startling in their intimacy and warmth, it is hard to reconcile these

photos with the violence that raged on the streets of London in summer 1977.

But that is – in many ways – the point.

In the 1970s black British citizens were routinely subjected to crass and offensive racial stereotypes, whether it be in everyday life, or through the prism of popular culture and “entertainments” such as The Black and White Minstrel Show or the sitcom Love Thy Neighbour.

As cultural historian Mark Sealy argued, John’s portraits offered “an important counter narrative to the dominant image of black youth in south London during the mid 1970s, which constantly framed them as wildly delinquent”.

Today, in post-Brexit Britain, as we stumble through the Windrush scandal and the demonisation of immigrants continues to be a fixation

among certain areas of the national press, John’s photographs are more relevant than ever in offering us a vital reminder of the common humanity that all Londoners share.

The Lewisham Ledger is delighted to feature these timeless and tender works in this, our debut issue.

John Goto is collaborating with Story Matters as part of its Made in Lewisham initiative. They plan to hold an exhibition later this year featuring the Lovers’ Rock portraits alongside photos of young people from Lewisham today. If you or someone you know featured in the original Lovers’ Rock series, please email madeinlewisham@gmail.com.

To buy a copy of John Goto: Lovers’ Rock, visit shop.autograph-abp. co.uk/lovers-rock

20 S PORT

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oxing is traditionally seen as an effective antidote to a misspent or wayward youth – but in the case of Lewisham light-heavyweight prospect Dan Azeez, it was the firm hand of a strong mother who believed in the power of education that pushed him in the right direction, rather than the discipline engendered by the “sweet science”.

“I was born and bred in Lewisham and I’ve lived in the area all of my life,” says the engaging 28-year-old when we meet.

“I’m one of six children brought up by a single mum. I’ve got another three younger brothers too, so it’s been tough for her. But she’s a real strong woman and mother to have raised four boys and keep us in check.

“Growing up I was often in a bit of trouble here and there. Academically I was quite a bright kid though, so I got my GCSEs and A-levels, but at random times I was mixing with the wrong people in the area and was getting into trouble and whatnot.

“After I finished my A-levels I didn’t want to go to university. I just wanted to stay on the streets. My mum wouldn’t have it though, so she drove me up to Essex University, where I’d been accepted to study accounting and finance. She was adamant that I went. She’d worked hard for us all and she wanted to bring me up right so I could go to university.

“I didn’t necessarily have a passion for the subject but I did want my mum to be proud of me. I’d put her through quite a lot growing up, and thought there wasn’t a better way to thank her than getting my degree and finishing uni.”

Dan didn’t only finish university, he positively excelled, subsequently staying on beyond his original threeyear degree course to successfully complete a master’s. It was also at university that he was bitten by the boxing bug.

“Growing up I’d often had fights on the streets or at school, but I’d never found a boxing club,” he explains. “I tried once when I was 14 or 15, but the gym was full up and I never went back. The next time I tried to go to a gym was in Colchester while I was at university.

“I’m quite an eager person, I wanted to get in there and spar and fight straightaway, but I soon learned you have to take your time. You can’t run before you can walk. So I learned the basics, had one fight, which I lost and then my university opened up a boxing club, so I joined that and I had about 60 or 70 fights.

“When I did my master’s, I got a bit of sports funding and by then I was representing the university at national level. I liked being up in Colchester as it kept me away from any of the bad stuff in south London. It kept me out of trouble.”

As his interest in the sport grew, two iconic pugilists provided Dan with particular inspiration – the great American Roy Jones Jr and fellow south Londoner David Haye.

“I remember I came across some Jones and Haye highlight reels,” he recalls. “I watched them and was like, ‘Wow! Who are these guys?’ The way they threw punches together made a combat sport look like an art. Boxing isn’t just crash bang wallop, there’s an art to it.”

Although his academic credentials would have opened the door to

D LOofther ring Dan Azeez caught the boxing bug while at university and turned professional last year. The Lewisham man, who shares a management company with legendary fighters Tyson Fury and Carl Frampton, is a star on the rise WORDS BY LUKE G WILLIAMS n PHOTO BY LIMA CHARLIE

numerous employment opportunities, Dan’s fast-developing boxing talents persuaded him to turn professional in 2017. “As an amateur, I was always getting to finals of the nationals and so on, and would lose by a small margin, which was frustrating,” he recalls. “A lot of people would come up to me and say, ‘Your style would suit the professional game much more.’

“I’d never thought about going professional, but then I also sparred with some really top-class professionals and did well and I thought, ‘You know what, maybe I should give it a go.’ Lots of people were telling me I could go far.”

Dan made his professional debut in December and has won all three of his bouts so far, two by knockout. Unlike

many prospects, who are wrapped in cotton wool early in their careers, he admirably states his intention to stay as active as possible, and as dedicated as he can to developing his craft.

“This is my first year as a pro,” he says. “And I want to advance as quickly as possible. My first few fights are about learning, not earning.

After that I can focus on earning and preparing for the big stages.

“By the end of the year I’m looking to have had eight fights in total. A lot of prospects aren’t fighting enough.

I’ve got to get out there and build my support.

“The day I stop learning is when I’ll call it quits. I want to work on my boxing IQ, being a bit more aware in the ring. That’s what separates good

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fighters from the greats. I’m quite heavy-handed – it might not look that way from the outside, but if you’re in there with me you soon realise how hard I hit.”

While superstars such as Anthony Joshua may earn millions of pounds per fight, many people don’t realise that fighters at the beginning of their careers often have to make do on small purses that are reliant on the number of tickets they sell for the events at which they appear.

Dan admits this is the toughest aspect of his day-to-day life as a pro boxer. “Right now, that’s the hardest thing,” he says. “Particularly if you’re not on a big platform or stage.

“You can’t be half-hearted. It’s not just about training, you also have to sell a certain amount of tickets just to pay for your opponent and get your name out there. That in itself is challenging. I have to persuade people to invest in me, to buy tickets and whatnot.”

Sponsorship would aid Dan immensely and as an articulate and educated

Pictured: Lewisham boxer Dan Azeez is one to watch

It’s important that I conduct myself in a way that young people can look up to young man who possesses a winning smile, it’s clear to see that he would be a great ambassador for any local businesses wanting to take the plunge into the professional sporting arena.

“Of course, I’m looking for sponsorship to help support and develop my career,” he confirms. “I’m still in the embryonic stages – I’m not on the big stages yet – but if I carry on developing my career as I am at the moment, I hopefully will be in the future.

“I’ve regularly appeared on iFL TV’s YouTube channel, and they’re one of the biggest boxing channels in the country with something like 300,000 subscribers. So if anyone’s looking to sponsor me I can definitely bring some light on to their names on platforms like that. My following is growing all the time.”

As Dan builds his career, he will be aided by the fact that he is guided by the prominent boxing management company MTK Global.

“MTK manage some really highprofile fighters such as Tyson Fury, Carl Frampton and so on,” he explains.

“They’ve got a good platform and great links with Frank Warren, one of the top promoters in the UK. So I’m hoping their platform will help me get my name out there even more.”

His financial background also looks set to place him in good stead. “To be fair, right now I’m not earning enough to have issues with what to do with my money,” he laughs.

“But I know in the future my accountancy and finance studies will come in useful because money is an area where a lot of boxers come unstuck, going bankrupt or what have you because they can’t handle their finances.

“That financial background I can use to my advantage when I hopefully advance my career in the future.”

Hearteningly, Dan is also determined to present himself in a restrained, respectful and professional manner and not indulge in the sort of “trash-talking” histrionics that sometimes blight boxing.

“It’s definitely important how I represent myself to the public and that I conduct myself in a way that young people can look up to,” he says. “I want to put myself and boxing in a good light. I’m quite old-school like that.

“The people I admire are boxers like Anthony Joshua, he’s a great ambassador for the sport and you don’t see him out there acting the fool.

If he can get to where he is without trash-talking, then why can’t I?” To buy tickets for Dan’s fights, contact him via Facebook or drop him a line on Twitter or Instagram @dan_azeez

22 MU S I C ewisham is the epicentre of a jazz movement and its shocks are being felt globally. US publications Billboard, Rolling Stone and DownBeat are championing London’s genre-breaking artists who are playing on festival stages everywhere from Croatia to Brazil.

London artists are being namechecked for developing a new era for jazz; one that’s focused on dancing, losing inhibitions and tearing up the rule books. And an overwhelming number of the musicians at the forefront of this hot new movement are based right here in Lewisham.

So recent and impactful is this new wave of music that labels and journalists are yet to come up with a name for it that has stuck; what the likes of Moses Boyd, Theon Cross and Rosie Turton are developing is truly unique. Various terms have been thrown around but are yet to be embraced – understandable, given that the scene thrives off the evaporation of sonic parameters.

While trained in jazz, notably at Trinity music college in Greenwich, the local artists making a global impact take their jazz training and use it as a tool to create something fresh and new. Broken beat, grime, soca, Caribbean folk, afrobeat and dub are all ingredients of this deconstructed jazz gumbo.

Theon Cross, who began this year by touring with his band Sons of Kemet, is a tuba player from Lewisham. His mosh-inducing style has seen him become one of the most sought-after musicians in UK jazz.

“What’s been described as a scene is just a bunch of my friends”, Theon

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SOME LIKE IT HOT A host of young musicians from Lewisham have put the area on the map as a hotspot for jazz. We met some of the artists at the forefront of this exciting new movement, including one who already has two Mobo awards to his name WORDS BY TINA EDWARDS

PHOTOS BY NADIRA AMRANI, PIERRICK GUIDOU AND JOE MAGOWAN

Pictured: Theon Cross (left) with his band Sons of Kemet

laughs. “I’ve known Moses [Boyd] for ages, Nubya [Garcia] and the Nérija girls for ages, United Vibrations – everyone. Maybe that’s why it’s a scene – because everyone knows each other and supports each other.”

Theon met drummer Moses Boyd through playing basketball together as kids. As a multi-award winning artist, Moses is one half of drum and sax duo Binker and Moses, and is also leader of his own Exodus project.

“Socially a lot of creatives I was around are from the Lewisham borough”, says Moses. “People like Yussef Dayes, Kwake Bass, [brothers]

Nathaniel and Theon Cross, Luke Newman, Cktrl and countless others.

“I think we’ve all got something to say that’s unique. Having that much creativity in one place makes your export culture really impactful, which is what we’re seeing now.”

Trombonist Rosie Turton is one of seven musicians who make up Nérija, an instrumental group who released their self-titled debut EP in 2016. After a short stint in Greenwich, Rosie is now back in Lewisham, where she previously lived in a house-share with producer Maxwell Owin and Maisha drummer Jake Long.

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“We decided to start doing these jams; we did them like once every other month and we just opened up our house to all of our friends and musicians from the area,” she says.

“We’d have people come and knock on the door saying, ‘We’ve heard this music, can we come in?’ and we’d be like, ‘Yeah, come through!’ and we’d just play until five in the morning.”

It’s jam sessions like these that created the glue between so many Lewisham artists. Take Steez, for example, a jam-heavy event that is run by an influential behind-the-scenes promoter, Luke Newman.

Musicians, poets and artists are invited to Steez events at the Fox and Firkin on Lewisham High Street, with regulars including Poppy Ajudha and Oscar Jerome now celebrated by the likes of BBC Radio and i-D magazine.

Although less frequent now, the impact of Steez still resonates.

“It’s a big community of musicians who perform at this night across different venues – it’s such a vibe,” says Theon. “That’s where I played one of my early gigs with the trio.”

He’s referring to the Theon Cross Trio, completed by Moses Boyd and saxophonist Nubya Garcia. Moses describes Steez as “a strong creative hub for all of us to come together, where you could hear poetry, dub, sound installations and jazz mixed with live artwork and DJs all in one event.”

We started doing these jams; opening up our house to friends and local musicians

Pictured top: Rosie Turton (front row, third from left) and Nérija Above: Moses Boyd

Theon also nods to Good Evening Arts, which is run by Tom Sankey, who programmes jazz and folk, both traditional and contemporary in spots including the Royal Albert pub on New Cross Road.

Moses, Theon, Rosie and their peers in Lewisham and across London have made an imprint on the scene that equates to – or perhaps even surpasses, thanks to the internet – the impact felt in the 1990s by the acid jazz movement.

Theon is responsible for having broadened the appeal of brass for a new, young audience. As part of Kano’s Glastonbury performance he played the sousaphone – an American instrument similar to a tuba.

What Kano probably wasn’t anticipating was for Theon to steal Kano’s thunder in the eyes of BBC Music – Theon’s own performance landed him on their “top 10 best moments of Glasto” list.

Meanwhile, for Rosie’s band Nérija, their popular self-titled EP is reinforced further by the positive influences they promote both consciously and indirectly towards female jazz instrumentalists – Nérija is comprised of six women and one man.

Moses, who follows in the footsteps of Flying Lotus with his club-friendly electronica releases and his own imprint, is the recipient of two Mobo awards for best jazz act in 2015 and 2017.

However, this is no time to get retrospective. From here we can look to Theon’s highly anticipated followup to his Aspirations EP, Moses’ continued foray into club-friendly jazz (the links between jazz and club culture in the UK are deserving of a whole other exploration) and the debut album from Nérija who this year signed with indie heavyweight label XL Recordings.

Despite touring the world, these musicians are still proud to call Lewisham home. “I love the people; the diversity of culture and food”, says Moses. “If I stand still long enough I’ll bump into someone who knows me or my family – I think that’s important. I feel you need to be connected to your community and I get all of that here.”

I ask Rosie to chew over the facts; that Lewisham is spearheading a new era for jazz, one that is recognised and admired internationally. Does it hit her sometimes that Lewisham is at the forefront of a global jazz movement?

“It’s quite funny because I feel with us, people are always looking to do new stuff so it feels like it’s constantly moving,” she reflects. “We don’t really have a chance to sit down and be like, ‘Ah right – this is massive!’

“Sometimes, at one of Tom Sankey’s nights, there are moments where I’ll be chatting [about the UK jazz movement] with someone and we just kind of realise, ‘Oh, right, Lewisham is kind of where a lot of it all started.’”

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Catford-based photographer Luke Agbaimoni is on a mission to capture all 630 of London’s train and Tube stations on camera. The resulting images offer beautiful and fresh perspectives on the capital’s familiar transport network

STATIONMASTER WORDS BY EMMA FINAMORE

any Londoners can make a familiar journey – a daily commute, the route to friends and family, the way home from town – with their eyes closed. Sometimes people in this city get to work and can barely remember changing Tube lines; travel can become like muscle memory.

One Catford-based photographer is taking the opposite approach though, by stopping and examining our Underground system, then celebrating its unique beauty in a series of striking images. Luke Agbaimoni has been working on his Tube Mapper photography project since 2016, but he’s been taking shots of the city far longer than that.

In the early 2000s, during lunch breaks on a job in Greenwich, which involved photographing products, he would walk around the docklands taking snaps with the camera from work.

He entered one of the images into a local competition – a shot of a DLR train in the winter, snow on the tracks backed by a dramatic sunset – and he won. The first prize was a quality camera.

A self-described “hobbyist” – he also runs a poetry collective inspired by the character limitations of Twitter posts, among other pastimes – Luke began taking photos of London at night. “I was taking a snippet, a memory, of something we always look at but don’t really register,” he says.

“A London that people don’t normally stop to look at.”

As his life got busier with the arrival of his first child, he found he was less able to get out and shoot at night.

But the one place he found himself all the time – with a similar vibe to his usual nightscapes, where people just pass through and (tourists aside) don’t stop to take in detail or photos – was the London transport network; its stations, walkways, escalators and entrances.

The resulting project is Tube Mapper, Luke’s station images laid out on a website that references the iconic Tube map design by Harry

M

Beck. Luke describes the venture as “attempting to capture beautiful, arty or interesting shots near or at every London Underground, Overground and DLR Station”.

He aims to photograph every single station in London, of which there are about 630. So far he has made good progress. He’s taken photos of an estimated 180 to 200 stations: the platforms, the train carriages, the escalators, the occasional passenger, even cats and pigeons.

The series isn’t really about people, but for Luke the network has a sort of life of its own, linked with those who use it every day. “The London Underground is like the heartbeat of the city,” he says. “It’s like the spinal cord of the town, and of a person – every Londoner has a bit of it in them.”

When asked if he has a favourite image from the Tube Mapper series, he says it’s not an easy question. “The short answer is that I don’t really have one,” he says. “My favourite shot is usually the one I took last, or that’s in my head and I’m about to take.

“But I’d say the most iconic pictures would be from the Waiting for Trains gallery. I’m proud of these as I created a series of photos that challenged me technically.”

This group of images within the Tube Mapper series started by accident while Luke was playing with shutter speeds. He slowly perfected a technique of capturing moving trains and static people, handheld.

“The results surprised me,” he says.

“And I loved how the images conveyed the beauty of a fleeting moment in time that we can all relate to.”

Of this series, it’s two images – Mum & Daughter at Sloane Square and Sitting and Waiting at Liverpool Street – which Luke thinks stand out the most.

Looking at them, it’s easy to see what he means about being technically challenging: both feature crisp, stationary figures in focus in the foreground (we view them from the back, as they look expectantly at the platform), contrasted against the blurred white, red and blue

Pictured clockwise from above: In the Spotlight at Baker Street; Luke Agbaimoni; Sitting and Waiting at Liverpool Street; Postman Pat and the Catford Cat

of speeding Tube trains in the background.

Not only is it impressive that Luke manages to capture both subjects at the same time but the effect is also unusual – they almost don’t look real – and they give the viewer a true sense of the transient, time-standing-still nature of Underground stations.

Luke says that in making this work he’s learned a lot about the Underground and those who use it.

“We all use these stations to navigate our lives, so it’s no surprise that each station holds memories and feelings.

“The Tube Mapper project captures snippets of these emotions, evoking recognition, making us stop and think about the surroundings we ignore during our commutes.

“I’ve learned that Londoners don’t actually mind talking on the Tube, and I’ve had many interesting conversations with people who’ve approached me when I’m photographing. I’ve met many inspirational people along the way, with great projects of their own.”

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And Luke’s project has garnered plenty of attention, not just from locals in Lewisham, photographers, or train enthusiasts: in March this year the Evening Standard ran a piece on Tube Mapper, calling the images “incredible”; while BBC London News filmed a television interview with Luke, asking him about the project, what he’s learned from it and his favourite stations.

Luke’s extremely familiar with the network he’s photographing: he’s a born and raised Londoner. Growing up in Surrey Quays, he then went to Camberwell to do a foundation in art, before studying graphic design at the University of East London.

He moved to Catford about 10 years ago – “We just needed somewhere we could afford, it wasn’t on the ‘hit list’ of places to move to like it is now,” he says – and is enthusiastic about the creative community that’s started to flourish in this part of Lewisham.

Take the Catford Arts Trail, for example: two weekends of events, open studios and houses of local

creatives, as well as art displays in public spaces. Last year, more than 100 artists, designer-makers, photographers and aerosol painters took part.

Not only has it presented Luke with an opportunity to show his work (Tube Mapper images and otherwise) in real life rather than online, it has also helped him connect with other local creatives.

“It’s good because it showed me there’s a community of artists here, who can come together,” he says. This is set to continue in the area, with the team behind the Catford Arts Trail planning other ventures like group shows and a Catford Gallery.

Community is a big part of life in Catford, according to Luke. As well as local people working together on creative endeavours, the Corbett Estate area, for example, fosters an old-fashioned, village-like, community atmosphere.

“There’s an active Facebook group, they share and sell stuff, and help each other out,” he says. “Let’s say

The images convey the beauty of a fleeting moment in time

you needed something, you could post it on the Corbett Estate forum and pretty soon someone would reply saying, ‘I’ve got it, come over to my house and collect it.’”

While he enjoys this aspect of life in his local area, Luke has some reservations about the changes it has seen in recent years. “Gentrification can sometimes bring up the area without bringing up all the people with it,” he says.

“Ultimately all areas of London will become the same, until a proper rent scheme is developed. Catford will just fill up with people, and then it’ll be another area.”

This appreciation of all parts of London, not just the polished, shiny side, feeds into his work too. Luke likes to take photos of more “lookeddown-upon” sights in the city, including one famous local landmark: the Catford Cat. He laughs: “I’ve probably taken more pictures of that cat than anyone, ever. London’s full of what I call ‘lesser known landmarks’, like the Elephant

statue at Elephant and Castle, and the dinosaurs at Crystal Palace.

“You have these landmarks that all locals know about but no one else does. At my Catford Arts Trail show I’ve got a whole separate section for the Catford Cat – people love it. They like supporting local artists and to have a piece of the neighbourhood – like the Catford Cat.” As for what is next for his Tube Mapper project, Luke has big ambitions. “It’s funny – I know what I’m doing and I don’t know what I’m doing,” he muses. “A lot of these things end up being organic. It could be a gallery, it could be a book, or it could be both.

“I’d love to do a book, but maybe

by Tube line – the Bakerloo Line, the Piccadilly Line, the Jubilee Line… I would love to do a series of books, I think it would be really sweet.”

As we wrap up our conversation, Luke is off on another trip to shoot yet another station. One thing’s for sure – it’s definitely not the end of the line yet for this intrepid Catford artist.

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Pictured: Keith Arnold, founder of Catford Film, at the Catford Constitutional Club

Catford Film hosts regular sell-out film nights, workshops for budding producers and even a free film festival. Founder Keith Arnold tells us how the community-led club has reconnected SE6 to the silver screen

Keeping

itREEL

WORDS BY EMMA FINAMORE

ust over 100 years ago, a prominent Italian film distributor called the Marquis Serra launched Catford Studios on the corner of Bromley Road and Whitefoot Lane, where it was based from 1914-21.

Home to the Windsor Film Company, it produced a number of films during the First World War, including silent movie Tom Brown’s School Days and an adaptation of Edgar Wallace’s novel The Man Who Bought London, both released in 1916.

Another of its productions in 1919, Not Guilty and Fettered, was described by one film historian as a “sophisticated melodrama with a leaning towards sex and sensation”.

Catford residents of the time could watch films locally at the Electric Picture Palace, which opened at 8 Sangley Road (now a block of flats) in 1909 and welcomed audiences for the next five years.

Its owner, James Watt, also launched the Central Hall Picture House in 1913 on the corner of Sangley and Bromley roads. Renamed the Plaza Cinema in 1932, it was taken over by Union Cinemas and then Associated British Cinemas (ABC) in 1937.

Over the years it screened all the box office hits of the day, including Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1961 and Superman II 20 years later, before closing in the early 2000s. The building is now home to Christian church and charity UCKG. Just down the road at 135-137 Rushey Green, the Lewisham Hippodrome was converted into a cinema in 1927 before reverting back into a music hall. It became the Eros Cinema in 1952, but screened its last film, Demons of the Swamp, in 1959.

Next door, rival screen The Gaumont, known as the Queen’s Hall Cinema when it opened in 1913, closed its doors on the same day. Today the site is occupied by brutalist grade-IIlisted tower block Eros House.

With so many cinematic gems consigned to the history books, it seemed like SE6 might never play host to the silver screen again. But today the area’s relationship with film is flourishing once more, thanks to Catford Film.

Founded by local resident Keith Arnold in October 2015, the volunteerrun film club has gone from putting on low-key screenings to organising sold-out shows, festivals, workshops and even helping budding filmmakers take their first steps in the industry.

It all began with a screening of 1988 Italian drama, Cinema Paradiso, at local pub the Catford Constitutional Club. Keith, who has a long professional background in film, says: “I had a goal – I wanted to create the perception that Catford is a place for film.”

That one-off screening at the Constitutional turned into five more, and soon Keith put on an ambitious outdoor screening on Culverley Green: a singalong showing of the rock ’n’ roll classic musical Grease.

It aired complete with food and drinks stands, on-screen lyrics for the audience and a proper sound system, helped along by a cash injection from the Catford South Local Assembly fund.

Since then, thanks to Keith and a small but dedicated team of local film-loving volunteers, Catford Film has gone from strength to strength and has screened a healthy mix of mainstream movies and independent features.

“The first screening was upstairs at the Constitutional,” says Keith. “That held about 40 people. Now we get 250 people coming to films.”

The month we meet, the group are showing Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (a moving and darkly comic drama from 2017) and Keith reels off some of the other memorable films they’ve shown recently.

They include The Death of Stalin, Hidden Figures, I, Daniel Blake and He Named Me Malala – a documentary about Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who became the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

A recent highlight Keith recalls was a screening of They Will Have to Kill Us First, a documentary about Islamic jihadists’ ban on music in most of Mali. The screening was accompanied by a Q&A with the film’s director, Johanna Schwartz.

“I just got in touch with her on Twitter,” says Keith. “She said yes, then all I had to do was pay for a cab across town.”

This grassroots, communal approach is what Catford Film is all about. “It all works really well,” says Keith. “There are no big egos – it’s very organic.”

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J U N E /J U LY 2 0 18 It seems very natural for Keith to be involved in a project like this too, given his professional history, which saw him work for 15 years as an independent film producer.

The films were “low budget, but good enough to go out to film festivals”, he says – and were screened at places like London Film Festival and Cannes.

As well as producing and directing independent films, Keith has worked on documentaries (and spoof documentaries), horror shorts, music videos and even did special effects on the 1999 James Bond film, The World is Not Enough.

“When I started Catford Film I wanted to make it a place for film,” he says. “I knew I wanted it to lead up to a film festival, and we managed it in the first nine months.”

The inaugural Catford Free Film Festival – from the team behind Catford Film – took place in September 2016 and even in its first incarnation, it was an ambitious event. There were daily screenings at different Catford venues, filmmaking workshops, children’s activities and a “shorts night” with independent short films, Q&As and live music.

“The first night of the festival I managed to persuade Catford Broadway to give us the venue for free,” says Keith. “The NHS Choir came down on the same night too. It was amazing really – I had to get up and introduce the film, and actually it was my birthday, so the choir dedicated a song to me.”

It seems fitting that the festival opened on a personal note for Keith: he’s lived in the area since moving to Catford from Forest Hill 25 years

Catford Film is independent and we are doing our own thing

ago, and wanted to give something back to his community. “I really like the vibe now,” he says. “For a long time it needed some life – it needed something going on. And now there is, and it feels like Catford Film is part of that. Bars, restaurants, arts events – we’ve connected to everyone.”

Keith is proud of what the club has done for the area. “In September Catford becomes a real cultural hub, and we’re a big part of that,” he says.

“We’ve done so much – two years of filmmaking workshops, editing, creating, scriptwriting, acting – and it’s all free. You have to book a ticket but it’s free, it’s all open to everyone.”

One popular event is the festival’s annual film challenge. Entrants of all ages are given details such as title and genre – sci-fi, musical, comedy, for example – and have to make a film within a set time frame.

For the last two years it has been 72 hours, but this year Keith plans to reduce that to just 48. The event gives local people a chance to make films in an exciting, challenging way. For some it’s a bit of fun, while for others it’s opening doors to new careers.

“The person who made the winning film last year is now producing his second film,” says Keith. “While he was taking part in the challenge, the Catford regeneration team started documenting his work. Now they’re supporting him in making a second.”

The team have a busy summer ahead, which will see Catford Film continuing to put on screenings and fun events across the area.

“We do loads of ad hoc screenings on Catford Broadway, like La La Land – we got Electric Pedals [which powers events with electricity

generated by stationary bikes] and the audience powered the whole thing.”

In June there will also be a shorts night as part of the first ever Catford Fringe Festival, which will feature two hours of short films, with a mix of comedy, drama and sci-fi.

There will be African dance workshops, youth theatre, the London Gypsy Orchestra will perform and visitors can also look forward to a set from hip-hop turntablist, DJ Yoda.

It speaks to something that Keith feels he and his group have been a part of: that Catford is the home of a burgeoning, and exciting, creative scene. They are now working on the third Catford Free Film Festival, which takes place in September.

Keith says the planning might be a bit more of a challenge this time round, as the grant the group used to bid for is no longer match-funded, so they need to find more cash and are looking for local sponsorship.

But he says the group’s Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts have taken off quite a bit in the last year, which is useful for getting the word out, and he’s sure they’ll pull the cat out of the bag – they’ve managed to with everything else.

Keith’s confidence and pride in Catford Film comes from a real love of film. In addition to showing crowdpleasers (albeit high quality ones) he and the team are mindful to bring audiences an array of genres.

Keith sees what they do very much through the lens of someone who has always worked in independent film.

“I’m very protective of our industry and of our group,” he says. “We are independent and we are doing our own thing.”

28 C AT F ORD S P EC I A L

WORDS BY SEAMUS HASSON n PHOTOS BY JOHN YABRIFA

utcher David Oakman is telling me about the trials and tribulations of running a small independent business, while boiling the kettle at the back of his shop on Muirkirk Road.

“Along this parade, there used to be two butchers, two bakers and a greengrocers,” he says. “It’s just dwindled down and now I’m the last remaining bastion.”

We meet a few days before FA Cup final weekend. The royal wedding will be televised across the nation and Saturday is predicted to be a scorcher.

With barbecues planned throughout Catford and beyond, David and his colleague Mick – who is holding the fort out front – are expecting things to get busy.

David’s introduction to the butchery trade came at 13 years old, when he got a Saturday job with a butcher called John Curling in Sidcup. While the shop no longer exists, for David it was an invaluable learning curve.

“As a Saturday boy you got all the dirty jobs,” he laughs. “Cleaning out the hand boiler and all the old liver tubs, which used to stink.”

Despite that early baptism of fire, David was not put off. “As soon as I turned 16, I applied for a vacancy at the shop and went on the old Youth Training Scheme, which paid you £27 a week in those days.

“The bloke who taught me [John Curling] was obviously a traditional English butcher and as well as working in the shop and getting hands-on experience, I spent two days a week at Smithfield College.

b

chops

Top of the

Catford-based butcher David Oakman is one of those longstanding local shops you feel lucky to have on the doorstep.

Owner David Oakman tells us how he came to run it

“Mick also did the same apprenticeship at Smithfield. It gave us an advantage on most people, in that we learnt the cuts and just how to cut properly. Unfortunately the college isn’t there anymore.”

David left the Sidcup butchers when he was 25 years old and came to work in the Catford shop which he now owns. That was 25 years ago and he has owned the business for the past 12 years.

“When I first came here the shop was owned by a gentleman called John Wrake and was called John Wrake & Sons,” he says. “When John retired I

thought, ‘What am I going to do?’ so I decided to dive in and get the finance to buy it off him.”

As well as supplying local residents with a wide selection of meat, from beef mince to pork chops and everything in between, David also has a number of outside contracts.

“We supply Bromley High School, a number of old people’s homes and various pubs,” he says.

The variety of the work is something he enjoys. “One of the things I love about the business is that it changes from day to day,” he says. “Tonight for example, I’ll finish work and I’ll do a

little meat run up in Biggin Hill.

“About three or four pubs will phone me up in the day, I’ll get the bags of meat ready and deliver it all to them. Tomorrow night, I’ll do West Ruislip. You find yourself going a bit further afield and it takes up more of your time, but if we didn’t do that we wouldn’t be here.”

David is refreshingly candid about the difficulties faced when running a business. “I’d say in the last two, three years I’ve nearly closed twice, but I managed to hang in there,” he tells me.

“The thing is, I invested a lot of my money into the business, so if it did

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Pictured far left: David Oakman This page: the butcher does a brisk Friday morning trade

fail, it’s not very good for me. Also it’s the only thing I know; it’s all I’ve done all my life so I can’t see myself doing anything else.”

He says that running an independent butcher undoubtedly has its challenges. “Twenty years ago there were 60,000 independent butcher shops in this country and now there’s 4,500 – that’s a massive decline.

“As well as the large supermarkets, you’ve now got the emergence of online shopping. Meat prices are our big problem. Lamb prices have increased by 30% in a year. We export most of our lamb from this country

so there’s not enough to go around to satisfy our demand.

“This week chicken fillets have gone up from £3.60 to £4 – in a week,” he emphasises. “There’s no rhyme or reason. As a result our margins are getting squeezed. The shop can absorb a little bit of that, but you end up not making what you need to make.”

Like all quality butchers, David is meticulous about the standard of his meat and says that 95% of his produce is sourced from the UK. “You still cannot beat our produce. Our livestock, especially the beef is pretty much the best in the world,” he says.

“We keep to free range, the best quality you can buy. It’s always been my principle that I won’t sell meat to a customer that I won’t eat myself.”

David gets most of his meat from Smithfield Market delivered fresh to the shop every day before 8am.

Luckily Mick lives near the market and David says he is always on hand to “pick up my bits and bobs, whatever I need for the day really”.

In more recent times, to meet new challenges, the shop has diversified and now sells fish and bread products.

David says he has never really had a “very big steak trade” and says that sausages are his best seller.

Goat meat is also popular with customers. “We’ve got a big African and Caribbean community around here so we do a lot of goat meat and mutton, chicken as well,” he says.

David makes all his own sausages and burgers and has about 12 different varieties of sausages available at any one time. “Our biggest seller is a plain or herby pork sausage,” he

We keep to free range meat – the best quality you can buy

says. “We do a lamb merguez, it’s like an Algerian, French influence type sausage. We do a Kentish hop sausage that is very popular, a firm in Kent provides me with the seasoning. It’s a very herby, pungent sausage and also very nice.

“Increasingly people want to know where their meat has been sourced – traceability is important. With all of our products you can follow it back to the farm it was bred on. Each cow has got a passport these days, believe it or not, so you can trace it all back. If people have got confidence in what they’re buying then that’s half the battle.”

In spite of the well-documented challenges that small retailers face, David is confident about the future in Catford. He credits the Corbett Residents Association with “bringing about positive changes” to the area.

He is also encouraged by future plans to re-route the south circular.

“Things are changing and I think it’s definitely for the better,” he says. “It’s just a shame these changes didn’t happen 10 years ago; there would be more shops open today.”

As for the future of his shop, so far neither of his two boys have expressed an interest in going into the trade.

“One plans to join the Royal Marines and the other does corporate stuff up in London,” David says, adding: “Still, I don’t plan to retire for a long time.”

Words that his customers in Catford will no doubt be very pleased to hear.

Anyone who brings a copy of issue one of The Lewisham Ledger into David Oakman will receive 10% off their shopping

30 C AT F ORD S P EC I A L

PRIDEANDJOY

Joy’s Health Sanctuary has been spreading goodness in the Catford community and beyond since it opened in February last year. We met owner Joy Thompson and her two daughters at their healthy food hub WORDS BY ROSARIO BLUE

estled snugly between La Ciabatta and The AfterSchool Club on Catford’s Rushey Green, you could miss Joy’s Health Sanctuary if you weren’t looking.

Arriving at the small but perfectly formed shop, I am met with a warm, welcoming energy and smiles from a team of glowing and busy women, who are hard at work serving a queue of appreciative customers.

Joy’s Health Sanctuary is run by three enterprising women, all from the

N

PHOTO BY LIMA CHARLIE

same family and each with a shared goal: to promote and nurture healthy living. Joy Thompson is the owner and her daughter Karlene Davis is her business partner (she cooks, too). Joy’s older daughter Katrina Thompson is a nutritional therapist.

What turned into Joy’s Health Sanctuary began while Joy was working for the NHS. “I used to bring in all my fresh juices, my cakes,” she explains. “I used to hand it all to my friends and they really enjoyed it.

“People got to hear about it and

then friends and colleagues were putting in their orders. Every Monday I would bring their orders in, run around to different departments and hand out my cakes and my juices.

From there I thought, ‘I could do this as a business.’ So I started looking for somewhere.”

Her first “somewhere” was Elephant and Castle Market. “On the market it was good,” says Joy, “but it wasn’t easy to work there during the winter months.” As a result she decided to find herself a shop. “The reason I

Pictured: Joy’s Health Sanctuary duo Joy Thompson and Karlene Davis in their shop

chose Catford was my three daughters – they all live in Catford,” she says.

“I found this little shop. It wasn’t the size I really wanted but you know what, sometimes the universe gives you things you can handle. The only downfall is that we have grown out of the space.”

Katrina teaches nutrition, offering various programmes designed to suit a range of people and keep them engaged.

“You have to work at their pace,” she says of her customers. “Because a lot of times they know they need extra help, but there can be resistance. You know, ‘I have to give up this, I have to give up that.’”

Katrina says that encouraging customers to improve their health is all about baby steps – and a positive attitude.

“I’ll say, ‘Don’t focus on what you’re giving up. Focus on what you’re going to have now and what you can enjoy, and think of these foods as being healing.’

“You just start with something where they can go away and feel like, ‘Yeah, I can do that’ and then they can make that into a habit and move on to the next thing, rather than giving them so many things they’ve got to do so they become overwhelmed and don’t do anything.”

Joy’s offers a range of juice cleanses, where customers receive a pre- and post-cleanse support guide, five cold-pressed juices and aloe vera shots, a juice plan, juice recipes and a consultation.

With three, five and seven day options available, the cleanses promise to boost energy, regulate blood sugar levels and bolster the immune system.

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All the juices can be collected from the shop, making the process as easy and convenient as possible.

Every Thursday or Friday, Karlene makes healthy vegan ready meals that customers can pick up pre-cooked for lunch or a lazy but super-healthy dinner. She is also working on her own hair care range.

“Karlene, she does the food and she does a brilliant curry – organic brown basmati rice with butter bean, sweet potato and spinach,” says Joy. “It’s all vegan, it’s all healthy and it’s all organic.”

There’s even vegan cake on offer, with no sugar, dairy or gluten but with a taste as sweet and soft as an average waist-attacking cake. Favourites include a pineapple variety made with spelt flour and coconut oil.

In addition, the shop sells healthy fruit juice, dairy smoothies and protein shakes. The smoothies are blessed by the gods. They come in an array of mixed fruit and natural herb flavours, with various health benefits to match.

The Joy’s Green Special option, for example, is made with fresh coconut water, kale, cucumber, celery, kiwi, moringa, lime and mixed greens such as chlorella, barley grass, wheatgrass and spirulina.

The incredibly tasty callaloo patty, meanwhile, is not just a show of talent; it is also evidence that meat-free doesn’t have to mean fun-free. It is proof that anyone struggling to live the meat- and dairy-free life could do it with ease and enjoy themselves

while doing so. What’s so great about Joy’s Health Sanctuary is that it helps to promote healthy living in a way that doesn’t feel like doom and gloom. Joy and her daughters are happy to talk in detail about their products but also encourage all their customers to do their own research first.

“We’ll get customers come; I say the first thing they need to do is have a good cleanse,” Joy explains.

“I don’t say, ‘OK, buy this, buy that off the shelf’; I say, ‘Do your research, have a good cleanse and then come back and then, you know, if anything, I will link them up with Katrina to help them on that healthy path.”

As we chat, there is rarely a moment for Joy, Katrina and Karlene to pause for breath – the shop is a hive of activity and all hands are truly on deck.

Customers are never left aimlessly searching the shelves; they are immediately attended to. If they weren’t, there would quite easily be a queue leading out the door, given the number of people passing through the shop as we chat.

Since the business has clearly proven a hit since it opened last year, has Joy thought about expanding?

“That’s been my dream since day one,” she says. “When I got the shop, my girls were saying to me, ‘Oh Mum, it’s too small, it’s too small’.

“They said it was too small for what I wanted it for, because initially I always wanted to have a space where customers could actually come and sit

down, relax and have a nice healthy meal.”

Joy’s vision for the business includes a wellbeing centre fronted by Katrina.

“I also want space for Katrina to have her office, because she’s a nutritionist.

Customers could come in and have their consultation with her.

“There could also be a treatment room where they could have a nice massage or a facial. Then they could go upstairs, order a nice healthy meal and a juice and sit down and just chill out.

That’s my dream.”

If the business were to expand, there’s no doubt that Joy and her daughters would have plenty of support from their customers, who include both Catford residents and workers and others from further afield.

A quick glance at the shop’s reviews online reveals a multitude of happy shoppers, including Maya Matanah, who said: “Thank you all at Joy’s Health Sanctuary for sharing such love as you provide goodness in the community.”

Another fan, Sabena Malik, said: “Joy makes her juices with only the best organic ingredients. I’ve always been a bit sceptical about vegetable juice but Joy made me her special and I absolutely loved it.

“I got so many tips on juicing and inner health too. Joy also sells organic health food from all over the world.

I travelled 1.5 hours to get to Joy’s Health Sanctuary [and it was] so worth the trip. Love a family business with a personal touch.”

Expanding the business has been my dream since day one

A third, Dorothy Norris, added: “I love this place – I love the atmosphere, the warmth, the laughter, the shared knowledge, the smoothies – and I love that anything you buy here is healthy.”

Johnson Olaniyan described the shop as “a blessing for the Catford community of Lewisham borough”; while Joanne Marrtin said: “The knowledge Joy is happy to share is amazing. Please support this store, it’s a gem we benefit from having in our community.”

Having built up such a loyal clientele, there’s no doubt that Joy’s Health Sanctuary is heading for continued success. They are promoting a lifestyle that is so desperately needed right now; and they are making a difference to people’s lives.

“We have had customers who have come in and bought products from us to help them with whatever issue they have, and they have then come back into the shop like a month or so later to say it has actually worked,” Karlene says.

“For instance, we have a lot of elderly people who are coming in and saying, ‘I’ve got high blood pressure, how can you help me?’

“We recommend the product, tell them to do their research; they’ll buy whichever products that we may recommend and then they’ll go away and come back and say, ‘Oh, I’ve come back for some more. It’s really, really worked.’ So obviously that makes us happy.”

32 LEWI S H AM L EG E N D n a city that sometimes feels overrun with trendy cocktail bars and Prets, finding a decent local boozer can be tricky.

Luckily for me I live a stone’s throw from one of south London’s best – the Blythe Hill Tavern on Stanstead Road.

Spread over three separate rooms, the Blythe is traditional, welcoming, quirky and authentic. Even if you aren’t fortunate enough to live nearby, there’s plenty to attract you through its doors.

For starters, it has an exquisite selection of ales and ciders that are guaranteed to be served up with courtesy and good conversation.

Then once a month on a Wednesday there are open mic poetry nights, and on Thursday nights it hosts traditional Irish sessions where musicians show up with a plethora of instruments and entertain the patrons.

“We had a girl turn up here with a harp last Thursday,” landlord Con Riordan tells me. “She’s a student at Goldsmiths; she had to carry it all the way on the bus. Unbelievable.”

Despite moving from Limerick to London in 1974, Con’s southern Irish accent is still wonderfully intact. He is warm and engaging company and has an endearing habit of finishing sentences with “unbelievable”, or “incredible”.

Like so many of the Irish community who moved to London at that time, Con originally settled north of the river in Kilburn.

“I just came over here on spec and worked in the building trade and different things. Nowadays it’s very trendy to be Irish,” he laughs, “but back then there were a lot of bombs going off, it was a difficult era.

“I actually managed a bar for Whitbread in Streatham for 10 years called The John Company, which no longer exists. I had been working in bars part-time when the opportunity came up [to take over the Blythe].

Someone said, ‘Why don’t you have a pop at it yourself?’ so we took on the lease.”

As well as the pub in Streatham, Con also ran pubs in north London including one in Finsbury Park.

“Pubs seemed to be much more of a community thing in those days,” he says. “There’s still a big community spirit in this pub, but every pub in London seemed to have it at that time.

“Beer was much cheaper, accommodation was cheaper, people had less money but I think they had a better standard of life.

“People didn’t realise it at that time, but back then everything happened in the pub. You got your work in the pub, you got paid in the pub, you got sacked in the pub. It was just a different ball game.”

In a previous incarnation, around the turn of the 20th century, the pub was a hotel called the Blythe Hill

I

The Blythe Hill Tavern on the Forest Hill and Catford border is one of London’s best boozers.

Our reporter popped in for a pint with landlord Con Riordan, who has run the much-loved pub for 30 years WORDS BY SEAMUS HASSON PHOTOS BY LIMA CHARLIE

CON’S stance is

NOBLE Hotel. Con says that changed some time around the 1940s, but upstairs is still used as accommodation, mainly for staff and people visiting the area.

Thirty years on from taking over the pub, Con’s enthusiasm for the place hasn’t waned. He has a clear knack for what makes it successful and works hard to ensure it continues, regularly putting in 80-hour weeks.

“It’s all down to the staff and the personal touch we offer,” he says. “It’s a team effort, that’s what makes this house. I think a lot of the new pubs, the yuppie pubs, they’ve sort of lost the run of themselves a bit; they seem to be a bit too clinical, too cold.”

It really is the little things that make this pub great. For example, the staff dress traditionally, wearing a shirt and tie. One of them, a gentleman called John Craven from County Down whom Con describes as “the smartest man in the house” is in his 80s and still works regular shifts.

Many of the Blythe’s customers have been coming into the pub for decades. “One of our oldest customers is a Dublin man called Mr Peter Cully.

He’s 90-odd and he’s been using the pub for nearly 60 years – incredible,” Con tells me.

Mr Wilton Brown is another longtime regular. “He actually came over

in the Windrush, he’s 90-odd and he still pops in now and then – not as much these days, but he used to be five nights a week. He used to come in to play cards. Playing cards was a big thing in here with the West Indian community.”

Away from the pub, Con met his wife – who is also Irish, from County Meath – in London and the couple have four grown-up children. An avid Arsenal supporter, he has been going to their matches since he came to London.

“We used to go to a pub called the White Horse on the Liverpool Road after games and it wasn’t unusual for some of the Arsenal team to come in and have a pint that night,” he says.

“They weren’t superstars as they are now and they all lived locally.”

One of the things that has always struck me about the Blythe is the fantastic mixture of young and old it attracts. Millennials mingle effortlessly with older generations and the banter is as free-flowing as the Guinness.

While the bar has obvious Irish connections, the clientele are diverse, reflecting the area’s multiculturalism.

Sport is a big thing in the Blythe, with TVs dotted around the place showing the Premiership, horse racing or whatever event is currently capturing the nation. “They do like a bit of sport in here,” Con says.

“We have Sky and we show a lot of the Irish games, GAA football and hurling. Rugby’s our main sport in here; the European club matches as well as the Six Nations of course.”

One of the most charming aspects of the Blythe is its layout. Spread over three rooms, the front room is small and snug with its own bar. The back room is larger and typically livelier, especially when there’s a match on.

The walls are tastefully decorated with quirky Irish keepsakes and

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It’s all down to the staff.

It’s a team effort – that’s what makes this house sporting memorabilia. It has recently been included in Camra’s (Campaign for Real Ale) latest edition of Britain’s Best Real Heritage Pubs, recognised for its original interior features.

The pub has also won plaudits for its excellent selection of real ales and ciders. “We just won the south-east London Camra pub of the year award, for the fourth time,” Con says. “We’ve also won the south-east London Camra cider pub of the year this year.”

In fact the awards seem to just keep piling up for the Blythe. In 2015 it was named “best in London” by the Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood. Earlier this year, the Independent praised it for having London’s best pint of Guinness.

“We’re well known for our real ales and we’ve also got 15 different ciders on tap at the moment,” Con says.

“The real ales are our best-selling drinks, followed by Guinness. Dark Star Hophead is the best seller; Harvey’s Sussex Bitter is another very good seller. We do a range of guest ales such as Brockley Pale Ale. We try

to use the local breweries as much as we can. There are some very good ales produced around here.”

The quality of available ales is clearly something Con takes a lot of pride in. He shuns some of the more hackneyed lagers, which he calls “mass produced plonk – I mean just absolute garbage”.

Although the Blythe doesn’t do food, hungry punters are catered for by Van Dough – a wood-fired sourdough vintage pizza van, which pulls up on Friday evenings. In the summer, the Blythe’s family-friendly beer garden hosts regular barbecues.

Despite its Forest Hill postcode, the back wall of the beer garden is dominated by a rather splendid mosaic welcoming customers to Catford.

“We allowed a developer the use of our garden to build a couple of houses behind us here,” Con explains. “That actually backs onto Catford and he had the artwork commissioned for us to say thank you.”

Chatting to Con, our conversation effortlessly drifts into sport, American history and his love of literature.

He makes for interesting and easy company. You could say he epitomises the establishment that he has run for three decades – warm, engaging and friendly.

Before I leave I ask why, at a time when so many local pubs are said to be closing down, does the Blythe continue to thrive?

“You have to work at it,” he says. “If you like what you’re doing, 80 or 90 hour weeks are not a bother. I think that when it becomes a chore, that’s when it’s time to knock it on the head.

“A bit like Arsène Wenger,” he says with a grin.

34 LEWI S H AM L E I SU R E

SOMETHING TO EAT Golden chicken bhajias

Serve with creamy cucumber raita or tamarind sauce for a tasty summer snack ILLUSTRATION BY JESSICA KENDREW

Ingredients (serves 4) 6 boneless and skinless chicken thighs, thinly sliced 1 tsp cumin seeds 1 red onion finely sliced 3 cloves grated garlic 1 tsp grated ginger 2 handfuls finely chopped coriander 2 tsp dried fenugreek leaves 2 tbsp fresh lime juice 1 tsp chilli powder or chilli flakes 2 tsp garam masala 1 tbsp natural yoghurt 1 tsp salt 3 tbsp gram flour (chickpea flour) Rapeseed oil ¼ tsp black salt (optional for garnishing)

Method In a medium-sized bowl, place all the ingredients apart from the chickpea flour and rapeseed oil and mix

CROSSWORD NO. 1 ACROSS

DOWN

1, 3 and 8 RADICAL CHORUS TOUR (anagram) (5, 8, 4) 9 Safekeeping (10) 10 Horse's feeding device (7) 12 Small brown bird (7) 15 Opera's script (8) 17 Sauce (6) 20 Rural (6) 23 Voting age (8) 25 Amusingly (7) 26 Diplomatic (7) 29 No longer in contact (3, 2, 5) 31 Edible crustacean (4) 32 Quiche ____, French dish (8) 33 Javelin (5)

1 Lawn's watering device (9) 2 Russian mountain range (5) 4 Chemical element, symbol Fe (4) 5 Snooker stick (3) 6 Word-for-word (7) 7 Anarchic, unruly (7) 9 Pragmatic, down-to- earth (9) 11 Go astray (3) 13 Section of text (9) 14 Pugilist (5) 16 Public transport vehicle (3) 18 Wrath (3) 19 Type of moustache (9) 21 Strange (7) 22 Indian clay oven (7) 24 Small drink (3) 27 Compel (5) 28 Rotate (4) 30 Hot beverage (3)

SOLUTION

well. Marinate in the fridge for 1 hour. Take out of the fridge, sieve the chickpea flour into the bowl and stir in gently so no lumps

of flour remain. This should now look like a thick batter that has coated the chicken pieces. Add a splash of water if needed.

Heat a karahi (a wok will also do) of oil on a medium flame, with enough oil to deep fry the chicken bhajias.

Check the oil is heated to the right temperature by dropping a small amount of the batter into the oil. If it rises and bubbles then the temperature is reached.

Once the oil is ready, carefully with a spoon, take a scoop of the mixture and drop into the oil.

Take care not to put too many scoops into the karahi at the same time – this leaves space and air for each one to cook properly.

Allow the chicken bhajias to turn golden brown and crunchy before removing from the oil. Place a kitchen towel on a plate and put the bhajias on top, allowing any excess oil to soak up.

Place on a sharing platter with some wedges of lime and a creamy cucumber raita or tamarind sauce.

If you like, sprinkle some black salt over the bhajias just before serving.

BY ALDHELM

A central feature of Catford is given at 1 Across, 3 Across and 8 Across but you'll have to solve the big anagram. The other clues are all normal.

LEWISHAM HISTORY THE GOTHIC COTTAGE The land around 110 Rushey Green in Catford was once part of the estate of Richard Hollier of Greenwich.

It was built up as 1-6 Gothic Cottages by George Corbett of Lewisham circa 1833.

Three years earlier, the Beerhouse Act of 1830 became law. It enabled any ratepayer to brew and sell beer on payment of a licence costing two guineas.

The intention was to increase competition between brewers to bring down prices and

encourage people to drink beer instead of strong spirits.

Number 1 Gothic Cottages became a beerhouse called The Gothic Cottage, while number 3 was a shop.

George Corbett went bankrupt in 1841 and The Gothic Cottage passed to Day, Noakes & Son in 1875. This photo from Lewisham Local History and Archives Centre shows the exterior in 1903.

Today 110 Rushey Green is occupied by Argos.

A lewisham LOCAL LOUIS THEROUX Documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux was born in Singapore and grew up in Catford.

After starting out as a journalist on an alternative free weekly newspaper in California, he later moved into documentaries.

For his Baftawinning series Weird Weekends, which first aired in 1998, the broadcaster – known for his affable yet direct style – explored the worlds of marginal, mostly American subcultures, from shopping channels to swingers.

In When Louis Met..., which scooped him a second Bafta, he spent time with a range of

BY PETER RHODES

Catford resident Rinku Dutt moved to Kolkata in 2009 for work and on her return to the UK three years later, happy memories of the Indian city inspired her to set up a family-run street food business called Raastawala.

Here’s her recipe for golden chicken bhajias (AKA Indian chicken nuggets).

famous (and notorious) British public figures as they went about their day-to-day lives.

American prisons, child psychiatry, Scientology and plastic surgery are just a handful of the other topics he has explored.

ACROSS: 1 South, 3 Circular, 8 Road, 9 Protection, 10 Nosebag, 12 Sparrow, 15 Libretto, 17 Relish, 20 Rustic, 23 Eighteen, 25 Funnily, 26 Tactful, 29 Out of touch, 31 Crab, 32 Lorraine, 33 Spear.

DOWN: 1 Sprinkler, 2 Urals, 4 Iron, 5 Cue, 6 Literal, 7 Riotous, 9 Practical, 11 Err, 13 Paragraph, 14 Boxer, 16 Bus, 18 Ire, 19 Handlebar, 21 Unusual, 22 Tandoor, 24 Tot, 27 Force, 28 Turn, 30 Tea.