Looking back at Blackheath and Greenwich in the 1960s

 Yesterday I posted a story from Sandra Harper about her dad who like me was born and grew up in southeast London.*

She also included a wonderful collection of photographs taken by her dad during the 1960s.

They will be familiar to many, more so because if you are of a certain age, you will recognise that they are old style made with smelly photography.

That now almost vanished process where the image had first to be converted into a negative, then printed on photographic paper.  

All a mile away from digital camera and mobile phones.

As a regular reader of the blog she got in touch commenting, “When your posts come up on my feed, it does bring back some good memories of where I grew up.

Sunday mornings at Greenwich Baths with one of my dad’s brothers and his wife. 

Blackheath Fair, donkey rides, boating lake and much more.

This is my dad standing in the back garden of no. 75 Maidstone Hill Greenwich SE10 where his sister Doreen lived until she died aged 82. 

She was the matriarch of our whole family where we would congregate. Dad and uncles to The Groom pub. 

Us 4 children and some cousins and mums enjoying family time. Those were the days".

He was Denis Lesley Roland Scales and He lived at 75 Maidstone Hill Greenwich but was born next door to the left I think that was 73”.

Like Sandra these images bring back so many memories of Peckham and New Cross where I spent m early years before we moved to Well Hall.

Here are the places like Greenwich Park where went as kids, the now very ancient looking cars, vans, and lorries.

And even down to those low walls outside the houses.  

Back then I took them for granted along with the rusty metal lumps sticking up at regular intervals, and only years later realized that they once had railings, taken up as war salvage sometime in the early 1940s.

So that is it, leaving all of you to conjure up your own memories from the pictures taken by Mr. Scales.

But I couldn’t close with out including a photograph of Sandra’s dad who sixty years ago recorded our bit of London.

Location, Blackheath and Greenwich

Pictures, of Blackheath and Greenwich, circa 1960s by Denis Lesley Roland Scales and courtesy of Sandra Harper

*Walking Greenwich and Blackheath in the 1960s ....... Sandra's story, 

https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2024/02/walking-greenwich-and-blackheath-in.html