When they took my railway station ...........

Now, as a rule I don’t object to change and even I could see the logic of building a new railway station yards from the old one and calling it Eltham.

That old familiar entrance, circa 1960s

In the great scheme of things the coming of the motorway and the loss of the bus terminus beside the station made perfect sense.

But a little of my youth vanished when Well Hall Railway Station was demolished.
More than that, no one told me.

I had left from that wooden platform in the September of 1969 for a new life in Manchester, and while I regularly returned home during the following two decades I was not prepared for the day I alighted from what I thought was the wrong station, with the wrong name, on the wrong side of the road.

The new bridge, 2013

I should of course have been warned by the conversation at the ticket office in Charing Cross when my  request for a single to Eltham Well Hall was met with a stony look and a sarcastic comment about not keeping up with news, which was a tad unfair given that my subscription to Railway News had lapsed the month before.

Only the intervention of the nice lady buying a season ticket for Welling saved the day.

Off on a jolly, 1966

Even now on those occasions I go home I never feel quite right walking through the brick and concrete building and yearn with a bit of silly nostalgia for the wooden railway station of my youth.

Location; Well Hall

Pictures; Eltham Well Hall Railway Station & the High Street circa 1960s courtesy of Steve Bardrick, the railway bridge over Well Hall Road, 2014, from the collection of Chrissie Rose and off from Well Hall, 1966, from the collection of Anne Davey

What they did to Well Hall while I was away ………..

Now I can still vividly remember the moment I discovered that they had done away with Well Hall Railway Station.

It started at Charing Cross when I tried to “buy a single for Well Hall”, and was met with that blank expression which either meant that a] I was from Planet Mars or b] the chap behind the counter had no detailed knowledge of the stations on Southern Region.

As it turned out of course it was I who got it wrong, because in my absence from home for some years, the station had been demolished, a new one built further east and to cap it all a huge busy motorway had consigned the bus terminus to oblivion.

Like all those who have been away for a long time, the loss of both the old Well Hall Railway Station and the bus terminus were a shock, and while it may sound daft, even after thirty five years I have never become reconciled to the new railway station.

I suppose that is like many expats, your memories are frozen in a moment of time, and on the occasions you get to think about home, your mind wanders over the things which you remember most vividly.

In the case of Eltham Well Hall it was that mix of crowded rush hour commutes, and the first site of the woods as the train took the curve and came into the station.

Now, we lived on Well Hall Road just down from those woods, so seeing them in the distance, especially on a warm summer’s day was perfect.

So that is it, ……. wistful, nostalgic rant over, leaving me just to thank Paul Watts who posted these three images on another Facebook site, and then gave me permission to use them.*

Simple lessons ……… never leave it too long between trips home, keep an eye on the planning applications, and above all try to remember that they are allowed to change things…… even if the changes mess with your memories.

Location; Well Hall

Pictures; Well Hall, circa 1984-1985 from the collection of Paul Watts

*I’M FROM SOUTH EAST LONDON

The lost Eltham & Woolwich pictures ...... no. 48 ..... our house

This is another of the pictures I took of Eltham and Woolwich in the mid ‘70’s.

Our house, 1974

They sat undisturbed in our cellar for a decade and a bit but all good things eventually come to light.

They were colour slides which have been transferred electronically.

The quality of the original lighting and the sharpness is sometimes iffy, but they are a record of a lost Eltham and Woolwich.

At which point I have to confess this one was taken by one of my sisters on one of those cameras which gave you a print straight away, but it will still date from the 1970s or at the latest sometime in the mid 1980s.

Looking at the house today little has changed.  The porch added by Dad in 1964 has gone, the front has been painted white, and the wall that ran alongside the pavement has been replaced by a wooden fence which was what would have been there back in 1915 when the property was built.

The same house, 2014

The great tree which stood almost in front of our house was long ago demolished but a new one has been planted.

But that is not quite the end of the story because for Christmas I got one of those scanners which can scan old negatives and I have a lot of old negatives of Eltham, Woolwich and beyond, so as they say, watch this space.

Location; Well Hall Road

Picture; our house,1974 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and our house in 2014, courtesy of Chrissie Rose