To this day I wonder what happened to the gas mask and the replica18th century cap gun we found on our adventures.
They weren’t found on the same day and now almost sixty years after the discoveries I have no clear idea of when we actually came across them.
We found the gas mask in a row of derelict houses on Queens Road up past the station.
I always thought that the block had been the victim of the Blitz, but it is more likely they were just awaiting demolition having done seventy or so years and were too tired to be saved.
And on what was a grey indifferent winter’s day with the light fading Jimmy, me and John Cox went exploring in the houses.
I remember they were still pretty much intact and somehow we got inside, wandered around and came across a pristine gas mask, still in its box.
It had that shinny look as if it had just come off the production line, with not a mark or scratch.
The filter I remember was white and there was a green painted strip around the black nozzle and I have no idea what happened to it.
It will have been the prize of the day but who took possession of it or what they did with it is lost.
I do know that the cap gun stayed with me for a while and may have lingered around the house till we moved out to Eltham.
It had been found on one of our regular walks through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, somewhere midway when the incline ends and you start to see the other end.
As adventures go it was always one of the good ones. Aged ten there was the slight thrill at being under the River with all that water above you, and more often than not you were almost on your own, making the place just that bit scary.
Added to which there were the echo of your voices and then the sound of strange footsteps which would take an age before you could identify the person they belonged to.
Sometimes that led to the guessing game. Grown up or kid, male or female, old or young? There were endless permutations and it lasted as long as it took for the mystery person to appear or how soon we bored with the game.
Finally there was the exit into that other place and having got there we felt obliged to stay in the small park and gaze out back across the river towards home.
But mindful that we were on someone else’s turf the stay was always short.
What I do find curious is that we never used the Woolwich Foot Tunnel, that had to wait until the family moved to Eltham, and with the counter attraction of the Ferry, walking under the Thames was never going to happen.
By which time my Peckham adventures were over.
But in rediscovering them I remembered one last find, which came from the old Gaumont on Peckham High Street. It wasn’t one I often went in preferring the ABC on the Old Kent Road but it was there that I found a shed load of those old film cuttings, which were small but when held up to light revealed an image.
The trouble of course was that there was little chance of ever re-sequencing them and in a matter of months they were thrown away. Just when I had come across them is also forgotten but I do know that the cinema closed on May 15th 1961, bowing out with Norman Wisdom in the “Bulldog Breed”and “The Final Dream”.
Such are the discoveries made on adventures.
Pictures; the foot tunnels, April 2017 from the collection of Neil Simpson, Looking down to the foot tunnel, 1977 from the collection of Jean Gammons, Andrew Simpson, circa 1959 and the Woolwich Foot Tunnel, 1978, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
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| Andrew Simpson, 1959 |
We found the gas mask in a row of derelict houses on Queens Road up past the station.
I always thought that the block had been the victim of the Blitz, but it is more likely they were just awaiting demolition having done seventy or so years and were too tired to be saved.
And on what was a grey indifferent winter’s day with the light fading Jimmy, me and John Cox went exploring in the houses.
I remember they were still pretty much intact and somehow we got inside, wandered around and came across a pristine gas mask, still in its box.
It had that shinny look as if it had just come off the production line, with not a mark or scratch.
The filter I remember was white and there was a green painted strip around the black nozzle and I have no idea what happened to it.
It will have been the prize of the day but who took possession of it or what they did with it is lost.
 |
| Walking the tunnel, 2017 |
It had been found on one of our regular walks through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, somewhere midway when the incline ends and you start to see the other end.
As adventures go it was always one of the good ones. Aged ten there was the slight thrill at being under the River with all that water above you, and more often than not you were almost on your own, making the place just that bit scary.
 |
| Looking down to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, 1977 |
Sometimes that led to the guessing game. Grown up or kid, male or female, old or young? There were endless permutations and it lasted as long as it took for the mystery person to appear or how soon we bored with the game.
Finally there was the exit into that other place and having got there we felt obliged to stay in the small park and gaze out back across the river towards home.
But mindful that we were on someone else’s turf the stay was always short.
 |
| The Woolwich Foot Tunnel, 1978 |
By which time my Peckham adventures were over.
But in rediscovering them I remembered one last find, which came from the old Gaumont on Peckham High Street. It wasn’t one I often went in preferring the ABC on the Old Kent Road but it was there that I found a shed load of those old film cuttings, which were small but when held up to light revealed an image.
The trouble of course was that there was little chance of ever re-sequencing them and in a matter of months they were thrown away. Just when I had come across them is also forgotten but I do know that the cinema closed on May 15th 1961, bowing out with Norman Wisdom in the “Bulldog Breed”and “The Final Dream”.
Such are the discoveries made on adventures.
Pictures; the foot tunnels, April 2017 from the collection of Neil Simpson, Looking down to the foot tunnel, 1977 from the collection of Jean Gammons, Andrew Simpson, circa 1959 and the Woolwich Foot Tunnel, 1978, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
Interesting to see that the Greenwich Foot tunnel looks the same as it was 60 years ago when it formed part of our school cross country run down through Greenwich Park , into the tunnel to emerge in Island Gardens where we had to make ourselves visible to our sports master watching from the Greenwich side. to make sure nobody cheated. He forbade us to use the lifts saying they were for old ladies and R.A.F. persons. He was ex Royal Marine and complained the the R.A.F. always went into battle sitting down.
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