Thursday 23 February 2023

On discovering Woolwich

I have very fond memories of Woolwich.

Washing prawns, 1979
It was a place that I was quite late in visiting  which is a bit daft since we had moved to Well Hall in the spring of 1964 and the 122 and 161 ran by our house.

But during the week I was going back to New Cross and Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern and the weekends were full with exploring Eltham.

So it will have been sometime in the summer of 1966 that I started going there.  At first it was to meetings in the evenings in the back room of a small pub at the bottom of the Woolwich New Road.  All very earnest political stuff, and then I just took in Woolwich on a regular basis, starting with the market, the Arsenal, and of course the river.
And later it was where I got the bus to to work at the bus stop facing the ferry.  I can't say it was always a comfortable place to stand at 6 in the morning but even on wet grey days the vew was one I liked.

But the busy sprawling market was always a draw.

And so here from 1978 or maybe 78 is the market on a busy day.  Sadly this is the only image to have survived umpteen moves and the odd disaster.

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 1979

No comments:

Post a Comment