The gas mask and the pub sign without a pub ............ on Queens Road with one more half forgotten adventure

Me roundabout the time of the gas mask adventure

Now I know that 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.

But it will be 60 or so years since 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 but that was how adventures went back in the 1950s.

The London & Brighton Railway Hotel, 2008

Most never started out as adventures, just an aimless walk on a pretty ordinary day when you hoped it wouldn’t rain.

But sometimes the day was transformed and the memory of what you did stayed at the back of your mind to be brought out just occasionally.

So as you do I went looking for the site of that adventure.

It will have been somewhere along Queens Road just past the station but the search proved in vain.

On the corner of Asylum and Queens Road and the sign with no pub

Of course what replaced our row in 1960 may have been torn down but the walk was not entirely a waste of time because once again I was presented with that odd sight of a pub sign without a pub.

There on the corner with Asylum Road is a smart block of flats which went up last year and standing beside it was the pub sign for the old London and Brighton Hotel.

I don’t remember the pub and have fallen back on that excellent site London Pubology for this picture taken in 2008.*

The London and Brighton Railway Hotel opened in 1867 the same years as the railway station, and served its last pint in 2009 before being demolished in 2013.*

Nor is it the only local to be remembered by its pub sign.  Just over a month ago I came across the Railway Tavern on Gibbon Road and the Carlton on Culmore Road both now no longer offering up a night of beer and cheer but commemorated by their old signs.

It’s not something I have come across before but I like the idea and just wonder how many other old drinking haunts have their ghost sign.

It could even become a new set of adventures replicating those of 55 years ago and ably assisted by many of my new friends from Peckham and New Cross.

Leaving me only to reflect on the station opposite the old London & Brighton.  It is a place I haven’t used for half a century and yet I can vividly remember the long steps up to the wooden platforms some of which had gaps allowing you stare down.

All of which is a story for another adventure.

Pictures; in the spring of 1960, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, the London and Brighton Hotel, 2008 courtesy of London Pubology, the corner of Asylum and Queens Road, August 20015 courtesy of Adam Burgess and the Railway Tavern  with sign circa 1960 from the collection of Adrian Parfitt

*London Pubology, http://www.pubology.co.uk/pubs/13.html

Painting New Cross ..... my swimming baths

Now the other day I was telling Peter how I learnt to swim at Laurie Grove and how I still carry a small scar on my chin from the Boys Baths.  

That scar was the result of being too clever and attempting to come out of the water onto the side, which in my case was a failure as I fell back into the water catching my chin on the ridged stone slabs which were supposed to help you from slipping.

And with that tale firmly lodged in Peter’s stories to tell in the pub he also decided to paint a picture of the place.

So here in the series of Painting New Cross is Laurie Grove which I know will strike a chord with many and add to the comments which have come with other stories on the place.

Painting; Laurie Grove Swimming Baths, © 2015 Peter Topping from a photograph by ©  Dr Neil Clifton and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1786698

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

When the snow fell across New Cross and pretty much everywhere

It is odd what you remember especially on a wet and windy day looking out over Manchester.

The sun has vanished and the rain is falling like stair rods and I am thinking of the winter of 1962-63 and the “Great Freeze.”

The snow had begun falling on Boxing Day which almost qualified it as a White Christmas, stopped I think the following day and then began tumbling out of the sky on December 29th locking us into nearly four months of ice and snow with the thaw only beginning in March.

Now when you are thirteen you take such events in your stride and after snow ball fights became boring there was always the game of pulling a wooden bench up the hill at Pepys park and then descending down the slope.

All of which had the added thrill that we might get caught by the park keeper who probably had more sense and was keeping warm in his hut beside a paraffin stove.

Come to think of it I don’t recall ever being challenged by one of the keepers in their brown uniforms as we risked life and limb.

But nor do I remember visiting our local library because by 1962 libraries no longer featured as one of my places to visit and it would be another four years before they again tempted me in.


All of which is a lead into Peter’s painting of New Cross Library in the snow.

I had set him the challenge of painting the place using  a photograph kindly supplied by the Music Room London.

They now occupy the old library and offer a service "with 5 different rooms ideally suited for a wide array of creative applications."

Peter and I have collaborated on a series of books and projects including an 80 meter installation, so painting New Cross Library in the snow seemed the thing to do.

He told me he “was very pleased with the finished painting” and I have to agree.

So there you have it, just fifty six years after the snow fell across London here is a little bit of New Cross Road after another snow fall.

Location; New Cross, London

Painting; the old New Cross Library, now the Music Room London, , © 2015 Peter Topping
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

*Music Room London, http://www.musicroomlondon.com/

Painting New Cross ................ the Fire Station

Some things about Queen’s Road don’t seem to have changed in fifty years.

The Fire Station is still there and so is Edmund Waller School but much else has gone including that row of shops from Lausanne to Dennet’s Road.

But reading back copies of the BBC news I see that even the fire station was nearly lost when it was one of those slated for closure in 2013.*

And that would have been a shame.  It was built between 1893-4 and is an impressive building reminding me of a grand French Chateau rather than a work a day fire station.

So much so that Peter decided to paint it just in case.

Painting; New Cross Fire Station, © 2015 Peter Topping from a photograph of New Cross Fire Station, January 17 2007, © Danny Robinson licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license,.

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrom pictures 

*Two London fire stations win reprieve from closure plan, July 10 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-23263766

Down on New Cross Road with a ghost sign

Now what surprises me more than anything about ghosts signs is that so many of them have survived for so long.

For those who don’t know they are adverts for businesses and products which have long ago vanished.

Most will have been painted on the sides of buildings up to a century ago but despite no one looking after them they are still there.

Many have lost their original bright colour and are fading fast while others are quietly without fuss peeling away.

And so it is with this one captured by Adrian on the side of 102 New Cross Road.

I haven’t been able to date it but I am making a start.  Back in 1910 this was the premises of Edis Bertarm, tobacconist which gives me a century and a bit to play with.

And as you do I went looking for Mr Bertram who has proved elusive and instead I found John Cole Tyler and his wife Louisa Susanah who in the spring of 1911 were renting three rooms at 102.  He made a living from laying paving stones and they had been married for four years.

The census return offered no clue as to whether Mr Bertram was still there or if the shop had become a grocers.

Of course he may have lived elsewhere which is even more frustrating given that at 100 I know John Henry Clarke was still carrying on his boot making business.

But there was quite a bit of turnover in both occupants and traders between the end of 1909 and the middle of 1911 so I shouldn’t be surprised at my failure to find him.

It will just mean a painstaking search of the directories which at some point will turn up a grocery shop with a date for when it opened its doors till it closed.

That may take some time but then the ghost sign is still there.

Picture; ghost sign, 102 New Cross Road 2015, from the collection of Adam Burgess

Discovering what happened to our library on New Cross Road ............. a pretty neat story

The library in 1911

Now this is how I remember the library at New Cross.

It was an old fashioned style of library with neat solid reading tables, matched by sturdy bookshelves full of everything you might ever want to read and laid out in meticulous order.

And because it was an old fashioned library the rule of silence sat on the place so that even the most accidental noise was greeted with a fierce glare by the librarian.

Of course it was impossible to completely screen out all sound.   Across in the Reading Room there would be the rustling of paper as the pages of the Times and Manchester Guardian were turned and along with that came the thump of the date stamp and the occasional loud bang as someone dropped their pile of books.

I had almost forgotten about the place until I came across an old library copy of a James Joyce book which mother had borrowed and never returned .

Sometime in the 1920s

And as you do I went looking for the library with little hope that it would still be there but the building has survived, although it no longer deals in books but has become home to the Music Room London which offers “a unique building with 5 different rooms ideally suited for a wide array of creative applications. Full bands, practicing drummers and instrumentalists, dance groups, theatrical productions, Photographic and video shoot applications will all find our facility an amazing resource for rehearsals and other sessions."*

In time I will take up their invitation and visit them but in the meantime I am very pleased that they turned over a collection of old images of the place with the promise of more to come.

Back in the 1950s we didn’t take pictures of the buildings we visited, after all if you went there regularly why would you?

But now a full half century on I wish I had access to more photographs of where I grew up especially given  trying to locate them is made just that bit more difficult when you live 180 miles north of New Cross.

Part of the problem is that some of the official images are copyright while the thousands that might have been taken as snaps have been lost or thrown out which in turn means that it can be difficult to get the picture you want.

So with that in mind here courtesy of the Music Room London are a fine collection pictures of the place.

The first was taken when it was opened on July 24 1911 and the second sometime in the 1920's

It was built as a Carnegie Library with money from the steel magnate, Andrew Carnegie, and was one of 660 which he funded in Britain, 1,689 in the United States, 125 in Canada and more elsewhere between 1883 and 1929.

And a day when the snow fell

From humble beginnings Mr Carnegie had built up a huge steel business before selling out for an estimated $500 million in 1901 and devoting himself to philanthropist projects.

Even before he retired he had been spending money on all sorts of projects of which the establishment of public libraries was just one.

And because everyone loves a then and now image here is our building again, but just a century or so later on a day when the snow fell from the sky.

All of which just leaves me to return to the story later in the month with more reflections on, New Cross Library, the London Music Room and the Police Gazette

Pictures; New Cross Library, July 1911, circa 1920's and after it had become the Music Room London 2014, courtesy of the Music Room London.



*Music Room London, http://www.musicroomlondon.com/