Now I am back with another of those excellent photographs of
Woolwich from the collection of Stephen Bardrick.
I don’t have a date but it can be no earlier than 1935 when
the Woolwich opened its grand new headquarters just here.
The cars will be the clue to fixing the time the picture was
taken and for me it is far more familiar a scene than the present one.
But that I suppose is the fate of the ex pat. You leave somewhere you grew up thinking that
the buildings and even the street patterns are parked and will just be where
you left them and then you come back and it is all different.
For me it started with the entrance old railway station
which looks nothing like the wooden building I remember moves on to the row of
shops on either side and ends opposite with that open space in front of the
1935 building.
At which point I am in danger of sounding like one of those
grumpy old uncles who comes for Sunday tea and can’t quite come to terms with
seeded granary sandwiches, the absence of carnation milk to pour on the equally
absent bowl of tinned fruit and yearns for fish paste and sliced ham.
Still I bet he would have been able to date the picture and
may just have been old enough to remember when the Woolwich had its headquarters
at 113 Powis Street and may like many of us disapproved when it ceased being an
organization owned by its members and became a bank in 1997.
I can’t remember what I did with my account but liked the
old TV ad “I’m with the Woolwich” and was pleased that for almost a decade they
sponsored Charlton but less pleased that they were bought up Barclay’s ending
what had been a proud independent history which stretched back to 1847.
Picture; Woolwich Equitable Building Society Offices, date
unknown, courtesy of Steve Bardrick
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