Walking past the Montague Arms, on Queens Road

Now the Monatgue Arms is one of the places that does not loom large in my memory.

I would have passed it regularly enough, given that Lausanne Road where we lived  was on the route via Queens Road and Kender Street  to New Cross Library.

But we left Peckham when I was thirteen so the place was  just  a pub I passed and never went in.

All of which means it's story and its history belong to others.

That said I rather think my old friend Peter has captured it well.

Peter and I have worked on many projects including an eighty meter instalation, and I rather think we just have begun a new one.

After all there are some fine buildings with intriguing stories waiting to be recorded.

Painting; The Montague Arms, © 2011 Peter Topping

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Painting Peckham ............. baking a bun, and losing a pub The Bun House

Now there should be a competition for what to do with a redundant bakery in Peckham.

If this was 1896 the obvious answer would be to turn it into a pub and call it the Bun House, and when in the fullness of time the market for pubs dries up then there is always a chance a bookmaker will take it over.

Which I think pretty much tells the story of the Bun House on Peckham High Street.

I never went in there but I bet a lot of people did so perhaps Peter’s painting will set the stories rolling.

We shall see.

Location; Peckham, London

Painting; The Bun House Peckham High Street, © 2015 Peter Topping 

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Painting Peckham ............. standing in a pub with no beer ....... the Carlton Tavern on Culmore Road

Now it’s just one of those things that “there's nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer.”*

The Carlton Tavern 2015 from a photograph, 2008

Which I guess might well be the closing words for the Carlton Tavern.

It did the business of pulling and serving pints on Culmore Road from 1867 till sometime around 2011.

But like so many pubs around the country that fateful mix of cheap supermarket beer, changing life styles and the onward march of the bar culture have done for so many traditional drinking places.

So as part of Peter’s ongoing project to paint the pubs of Peckham here is his painting of the Carlton Tavern taken from a 2008 photograph on London Pubology that excellent site for all things to do with London pubs and from where I discovered a little of his history.**

The Carlton tavern, 2015

And by sheer coincidence just a few days earlier Adam Burgess sent me another photograph of the place which he tells me “is now a block of flats but  has still got the advertising for the world cup on the blackboards” and if you look closely there also is the old  sign standing outside.

But for all that it is still a pub with no beer which brings me back to that song which I must have first heard sometime in the late 1950s.

It was adapted by Gordon Parsons from Dan Sheehan’s poem "A Pub with No Beer"  and was made popular by fellow Australian country singer Slim Dusty.

Since then it has been covered by a shedful of singers and has settled so deep into our culture that I assumed it was an old Victorian music hall song.

And along the way it has become the anthem for any one whose pub has temporarily run out of beer which is why it was such a hit in Ontario in 1958 when a strike at of Canadian brewery workers stopped the flow of beer for 48 days.

Slim Dusty

But that like the song is for another time leaving me only to reflect that having spent the last hour listening to the songs of Dusty Slim I have become a fan.***

Not that I suspect I will win many converts in our house for his brand of Australian country music which like all good country music mixes simplicity with a dash of truth and humour.

All of which is a long way from Culmore Road and that pub with no beer.

Location; Peckham, London

Painting; The Carlton Tavern, © 2015 Peter Topping from a photograph, 2008 in London Pubolgy 

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Picture; The Carlton Tavern, 2015, courtesy of Adam Burgess and Slim Dusty reproduced from ABC News, 2003


*Slim Dusty sings a Pub with No Beer,  https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=Slim+Dusty+sings+a+Pub+with+No+Beer&fr=mcafee&fr2=p%3As%2Cv%3Av%2Cm%3Asb%2Crgn%3Atop&ei=UTF-8

** Carlton Tavern, 45 Culmore Road, Peckham SE15
http://pubshistory.com/LondonPubs/Camberwell/CarltonTavern.shtml

***State funeral planned for Slim Dusty, ABC News  http://www.abc.net.au/news/2003-09-19/slim-dusty-hangs-up-his-spurs/1481156

Painting Peckham ............ that Telephone Exchange

Now I recently used that well known phrase “you can take the boy out of Peckham but you can’t take Peckham out of the boy.”

It was during a conversation with my old friend Peter who reposted “you can take the boy out of Preston but you can’t take Preston out of the boy” which pretty much tells you where we were born.

All of which led to an exchange of banter about the merits of both places and at the end of it all I promised to write about Preston and Peter decided to paint Peckham.

I say paint Peckham but it would be more accurate to say he has set about painting some of those iconic buildings we all know and remember.

The series will run alongside “My Peckham” which reflects on some of the buildings and places which mean a lot to me.*

And in some cases Peter’s painting and my stories will replicate each other but then there will be plenty who say you can never get enough of Peckham.

He has already painted the Montague Arms, and the old New Cross Library which will appear later in the month.

And here because I like it and it struck such a resonance with everyone when I wrote about it the other day is the New Cross Telephone Exchange, which Peter painted from an original photograph by Stephen Craven.**

Painting; The New Cross Telephone Exchange © 2015 Peter Topping
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* My Peckham .............. nu 1 the New Cross Telephone Exchange St Mary’s Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/my-peckham-nu-1-new-cross-telephone.html 


** New Cross Telephone Exchange, © Copyright Stephen Craven and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence, http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/23315