a spark in your veins – Page 31 – Ye who have a spark in your veins of cockney spirit, smile or mourn acccording as you take things well or ill;— Bold Britons, we are now on Shooter's Hill!

14th November 2012

Health Matters

The proposed closure of the Accident and Emergency Department at Lewisham Hospital has provoked the most concern of the proposals in the 373 page draft document from the Office of the Trust Special Administrator (TSA). The document was supposed to address the budget problems of the South London Healthcare NHS Trust, which includes our local Queen Elizabeth Hospital, but has instead addressed the south east London health system as a whole. A campaign to save Lewisham A&E has been started and has held its first meetings; it is organising a “Link Hands Round Lewisham Hospital” protest event to be held on 24th November meeting at 2.00pm in Loampit Vale. A petition supporting Lewisham A&E and maternity services has been started by MP Heidi Alexander. It currently has over 12,000 signatures, and the number is increasing by hundreds every day.

The TSA proposals have been well covered by mainstream media such as BBC News, and local bloggers such as Transpontine, 853 and the Blackheath Bugle. The Bugle includes guidance on how to answer the sometimes leading and sometimes misleading questions in the TSA online response form. For example Question 13 doesn’t explicitly ask if you are in favour of the closure of Lewisham A&E, rather:

Q13. How far do you support or oppose the proposed plans for delivering urgent and emergency care in south east London? The following shows how urgent and emergency care would be delivered:
Emergency care for the most critically unwell – King’s College Hospital, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Princess Royal University Hospital, St Thomas’ Hospital
Urgent care – Guy’s Hospital, Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup, University Hospital Lewisham

I’ve tried to read the TSA report, but it’s very hard going, full of acronyms and terms that are meaningful to NHS insiders but not to others. It’s disappointing because as a numerate, reasonably well educated person I expect to be able to understand such documents. It’s also full of bean-counter management speak – I lost count of how many times the phrase “financial challenge” was used – and totally based on the concept that the NHS is a market with hospitals represented by a profit and loss account and expected to return a surplus of 1% of their budget each year. Why on earth would a hospital have a surplus – to give it back to George Osborne? And how can a hospital accumulate debt from year to year – the only way it can pay it back is by reducing its spending on treating patients. It’s the kind of approach Michael Sandel criticised in “What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets” – wider questions aren’t considered, and for a national institution like the NHS, which is part of some of our most painful and saddest and sometimes most joyful experiences, an analysis that considers the beans more than the humans is incomplete.

The data tables in the report contained a few facts that I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere:

The TSA is proposing cuts in the numbers of doctors and nurses in the South London Healthcare Trust hospitals – on page 51 it proposes cutting 140 out of 862 doctors and £14m out of the £98m budget for nurses pay. By my reckoning this equates to about 320 nurses losing their jobs, based on the headcount in the Trust’s latest accounts. The accounts also show that they had lost 144, or 6%, of their nursing staff between 2011 and 2012.
The health budget for south-east London seems to be decreasing in real terms over the next five years – at least that is my reading of the table at the bottom of page 37 – at the same time as the population is expected to grow by 6%. The annual increases on the £3 billion budget are less than 2% a year – less than the rate of inflation and with no allowance for population growth. This when the government has pledged to increase health spending by 1% a year above inflation.
The income that hospitals receive will decrease each year as a result of a government imposed nation-wide “tariff deflation” of about 1 to 1.5%. The tariff is the amount the hospitals receive for each admission or medical procedure and they are expected to improve efficiency each year to cope with this reduction in their money.
The justification for recommending Queen Elizabeth Hospital gets an extra £12.2 million a year towards its £33.7 million PFI costs seems to be that QEH spends 16% of its budget on PFI contracts compared to a national average of 10.3%. So the additional money brings the cost to the national average percentage.

I was slightly surprised that health budgets are decreasing – my understanding was that efficiencies are needed because health service inflation is higher than RPI inflation, but I thought that money saved from efficiencies would be used to compensate for this excess inflation. Apparently not – there seems to be less money each year for the next five years.

Another big surprise was the report’s findings about how closing Lewisham A&E would affect the time it would take patients to get to an alternative Accident and Emergency department. It says on page 68:

173. The proposals for emergency care outlined in this draft recommendation would increase the journey time to reach an A&E across south east London by an average of approximately 1 minute for those in an ambulance, 2 minutes for those using private transport and 3 minutes for those using public transport.

Three minutes extra using public transport – I just don’t believe it. Admittedly the report does hedge its bets on travel time – on page 69 it says that public transport travel time for Lewisham residents would be 40.8 minutes, whereas on page 25 of Appendix H it says the incremental travel time from Lewisham to Queen Elizabeth Hospital is 37 minutes by public transport with no traffic.

Overall the impression given by the report is that it is trying to justify its chosen option for the future of the health service in south-east London. The appointment of someone to manage the merger of Lewisham Hospital with Queen Elizabeth before the consultation has completed doesn’t give confidence that our comments will be listened to.

Snippet from A Junior Doctor’s Guide to the NHS

Ploughing through various turgid documents about NHS funding made me wonder how the £105.9 billion NHS budget is distributed to the different areas and hospitals – how is it decided that the NHS in south east London should have £3 billion to spend? Google wasn’t my friend, so I contacted Her Majesty’s Treasury, who replied within a couple of hours saying that I would need to contact the Department of Health for details of the method used to distribute the NHS budget, but pointing me to two documents that might help explain NHS funding.

The first document was A Junior Doctor’s Guide to the NHS, which included the diagram to the right. The DH is the Department of Health, SHA is Strategic Health Authority – in our case London SHA – and PCT is Primary Care Trust – for us this is Greenwich PCT, which controls the budget and commissions services from the NHS Trusts, such as the South London Healthcare NHS Trust that this whole thing is all about. I assume there should be a blue line showing money flowing to the NHS Trusts. I know this is a gross oversimplification, just from the list of different organisations in the TSA report, but it gives the broad flow of money to the hospitals.

Of course it’s already out-of-date because the PCTs will be replaced by GP-led CCGs – Clinical Commissioning Groups – under the current government’s NHS reorganisation.

The second document was the Department of Health Annual Report and Accounts 2011-12 – 230 pages of figures and bean-counter language. However it does include some information about how the NHS budget for different regions (and countries) in the UK is decided. It says on page 61:

A weighted capitation formula determines each PCT’s target share of available resources, to enable them to commission similar levels of health services for populations in similar need, and to reduce avoidable health inequalities. The formula calculates PCTs’ target shares of available resources based on PCT populations adjusted for their age distribution, additional need above that accounted for by age, and unavoidable geographical variations in the cost of providing services.

So broadly it’s based on the number of people who live in an area, how old they are and any special needs – this sounds very like the “health needs target index” mentioned in Appendix H of the TSA report (the Health and Equalities Impact Assessment – scoping report). But it doesn’t say how these factors are taken into account in the distribution, and it only goes to Strategic Health Authority level, i.e. it gives the budget for London but not south east London. Interestingly in 2010/11 the budget for each person in london was the highest in the country at £2163 per person per year.

I’m still waiting to hear from the Department of Health – they give themselves 18 working days to respond to any questions.

If you want to comment on the Trust Special Administrator’s proposals for health care in south east London you can do so using an online response form, by e-mail to tsaconsultation@ipsos-mori.com or by post to Freepost Plus RSHB-CGKA-RYHK, TSA Consultation, Ipsos MORI, Research Services House, Elmgrove Road, Harrow, HA1 2QG. The deadline for submitting comments is midnight on 13th December 2012. There are a series of consultation meetings before then, though the Royal Greenwich website lists more than the OTSA website. The nearest to us are:

Monday 19 November, 7pm to 9pm: Woolwich Town Hall, Wellington Street, London SE18 6PW
Wednesday, November 21, 2012 – 10:00 to 12:00 at Greenwich Forum, Trafalgar Road, London, SE10 9EQ
Monday 26 November, 7pm to 9pm: St Mary’s Community Centre, 180 Eltham High Street, London, SE9 1BJ
Monday, December 3, 2012 – 19:00 to 21:00 at Charlton Football Club, The Valley, Floyd Road, London’ SE7 8BL
Tuesday, November 13, 2012 – 19:00 to 21:00 at The Boathouse, Danson Park, Danson Road, Bexleyheath, Kent, DA6 8HL

9th November 2012

Survey of London 48: Woolwich – Talks and Exhibition

The launch of the Woolwich volume of English Heritage’s Survey of London will be marked by an exhibition at the Greenwich Heritage Centre and talks by Peter Guillery, Senior Historian at the Survey of London.

The free exhibition starts tomorrow and runs until 9th February, and there is a talk at the Heritage Centre tomorrow at 2pm – you need to book by phone (020 8854 2452) or e-mail (heritage.centre@greenwich.gov.uk) – and also a Greenwich Industrial History Society talk at 7.30pm on 20th November at the Age Exchange Bakehouse.

The book isn’t out yet, according to amazon it will be released on 26th November, but the draft version on the English Heritage website shows that it will be an essential source of detailed information for anyone interested in the history and development of the area. I’ve found lots of fascinating background information there already. The draft version doesn’t include any graphics, but we’re promised that the final version “will be a fully illustrated book, with around 100 new drawings, a similar number of new photographs, and altogether more than 400 illustrations.” My only (slight) disappointment is that it doesn’t quite cover Shooters Hill, just the parish of Woolwich (and that it’s an expensive book – maybe Woolwich Library will get a few copies).

I’m looking forward to hearing how the historians researched the huge amount of detailed information in the Survey.

Front cover of Survey of London volume 48 Woolwich on amazon.co.uk

8th November 2012

Shooters Hill Poets

The Lord Clyde - Wordsworth's Local? — The Lord Clyde – Wordsworth’s Local?

“Slowly, Moore punting along on his stick, pausing to point out the cottage where Wordsworth stayed, we made the ascent of the old coaching road of Shooters Hill.”: an intriguing aside in a Diary meditation on the Olympics by Iain Sinclair set me off on another quest. Where did the Lake Poet William Wordsworth stay in Shooters Hill, and what other poets have hilly associations? Google didn’t reveal very much – just a non-committal mention in Chapter 10 of the Survey of London explaining the name of a block of flats near Woolwich Common. Neither did a scan through several biographies of Wordsworth in the British Library provide any illumination.

In the Woolwich Library W.T. Vincent gave me an answer in a chapter entitled Genius in his Records of the Woolwich District:

William Wordsworth the poet dwelt for a while in Nightingale Vale, Woolwich, just by the boundary line which divides Woolwich and Plumstead. The house in which he resided is now No 3, Nightingale Place, and stands facing Brook Hill Road looking north. The adjoining houses, opposite the Lord Clyde, have been rebuilt but this remains undisturbed, the easternmost of the old buildings.

The snippet from Alan Godfrey Maps‘ reprint of the 1866 Ordnance Survey map of Woolwich below shows the Lord Clyde and the row of cottages opposite – you may need to click to enlarge the map to see them. I assume the easternmost of the row of cottages in the centre of the red circle is the one Vincent was referring to: unfortunately it has since been replaced by a block of flats. The map also shows Brookhill Park, just across the road from No 3, Nightingale Place, behind the Lord Clyde – also now covered with housing.

Snippet from 1866 Ordnance Survey Map of Woolwich

Vincent reports that Wordsworth stayed in Nightingale Place in about 1835 with his close friend, and future son-in-law, Edward Quillinan who was himself a poet. Both Quillinan and Wordsworth wrote poems about Nightingales, and they appear in many of Wordsworth’s poems. for example “The Nightingale“, “O Nightingale! Thou Surely Art“, “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale“, “To The Skylark” and one of his best known poems, “The Solitary Reaper“. Vincent implies that Wordsworth was inspired by the many Nightingales that sang in Brookhill Park and quotes from “The Nightingale”:

So many Nightingales: and far and near
In wood and thicket over the wide grove
They answer and provoke each other’s songs –
With skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical and swift jug jug
And one low piping sound more sweet than all –
Stirring the air with such an harmony,
That should you close your eyes, you might almost
Forget it was not day!

However it seems a little unlikely that Wordsworth’s poem was inspired by our local Nightingales: “The Nightingale” was written in 1798 and Vincent’s source Sir Edward Perrott says he met Wordsworth in Nightingale Place in 1835.

William Wordsworth and Shooters Hill make an appearance in a poem by a modern Greenwich-based poet, Fraser Southey, in “On Westminster Bridge (I had that Wordsworth in my cab this morning)” – imagining the irate reactions of Wordsworth’s cab driver when William stops the cab in busy traffic on Westminster Bridge to compose the famous poem, “Upon Westminster Bridge“, before being driven back to Shooters Hill. Local locales – Eltham, Lee Green and especially Blackheath – appear regularly in Fraser’s poetry.

W.T. Vincent’s article about Genius also mentions Woolwich-born cavalier poet Richard Lovelace from the 17th century and Robert Bloomfield who married a Woolwich girl and Vincent says lived near Nightingale Vale. Lovelace’s best known poem, “To Althea, from Prison” was written when he was held in Gatehouse Prison in 1641 for presenting a pro-royalist petition to the House of Commons, and includes the famous lines “:

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.

To Althea, from Prison was set to a delicate melody by Dave Swarbrick and appeared on Fairport Convention’s 1973 album “Nine”. It provides the soundtrack to the YouTube video below.

I haven’t been able to confirm that Robert Bloomfield lived in the vicinity of Nightingale vale, but he was clearly very familiar with Shooters Hill , which was the title of one of his poems. It includes this verse about Sevendroog Castle:

This far-seen monumental tower
Records th’ achievements of the brave,
And Angria’s subjugated power,
Who plunder’d on the eastern wave.
I would not that such turrets rise
To point out where my bones are laid;
Save that some wandering bard might prize
The comforts of its broad cool shade.

Angria, also known as Tology Angrier, was the name of the cruel pirate king that Sir William James defeated at Suvarnadurg.

Shooters Hill has appeared in the title of poems by modern poets too. For example “walking over / Shooters Hill” by M Lewis Redford, who grew up in the area and also wrote a poem called “46 Eglinton Hill“. Another is “When I lived on Shooters Hill…“, a video performance of part of a poem by David Marshall.

But my favourite current poem related to Shooters Hill is Suzanna Fitzpatrick’s intimately observed and vividly expressed poem Lamb 001 inspired by her lambing experience at Woodlands Farm. Lamb 001 was commended in the Poetry London Poetry Competition 2012.

It’s time. Nudged by some internal clock
the first ewe shifts, distracted suddenly;
eyes on the middle distance, focussing
on something coming nearer. She avoids

the others, huddles up against a wall,
paws at the straw to make herself a nest
but can’t get comfortable; lies down, gets up,
lies down again. She lifts her nose

as if the sky has just occurred to her;
top lip curling in an effortful sneer,
stargazing. Below her tail, a globe
of amber liquid grows like a balloon

with life’s imperative: two hooves, a head,
eyes tightly sealed against the rapid slide
from womb to straw. Her birth trance snapped, she turns
and licks him; murmuring, oblivious

of the flock, which gathers as if magnetised
into a semicircle; each head bowed
in concentration, waiting for that first
uncertain, commanding bleat.

1st November 2012

Winter Open Studios at Second Floor Studios & Arts

Second Floor Studios & Arts are holding another open studio weekend on Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th November. Their last open studios in May was engrossing – such a variety of different artists and craftspeople – but I only managed to visit a fraction of the 200 or so studios, and of course the excellent Canteen. Nichole Herbert e-mailed details of the event:

Our opening night is Thursday 15th November and we are open all weekend (17th and 18th).

– It’s a perfect opportunity for you to discover unique gifts for those hard to buy for people.
– We now have 230 artists, craftspeople and designer makers on site, there is no other single site in the UK with so many practitioners.
– no format will open on the same night with the Thames Barrier Print Studio’s inaugural show – Freedom of the Press – a group show celebrating the art of print.
– We are introducing an art trail this year to keep the little people busy and to make navigation of our ever expanding site more fun.
– We have a number of demonstrations running over open studios both by our practitioners and at the Thames Barrier Print Studio.
– Our CANTEEN, will of course be open during open studios serving a hearty Irish stew, coffee, tea, homemade cakes and mulled wine.

Please bring your friends and family and enjoy time by the river being inspired by creativity.

SFSA is located near the river in the Mellish Industrial Estate, Harrington Way, (off Warspite Road), SE18 5NR. I had no problem parking there in May.

31st October 2012

Closing the Woolwich (Free) Ferry – New Consultation

Transport for London have started a new round of public consultations about River Thames crossings in the east of London – in particular proposals to build a new tunnel between the Greenwich Peninsula and Silvertown and a new, Gallions Reach, ferry from Thamesmead to Beckton. If the new ferry is approved it would potentially mean closing the Woolwich Free Ferry. The consultation questionnaire also includes questions about the option of a new Woolwich Ferry and about building a new bridge at Gallions Reach.

The new crossings would be funded by charging a toll (about £2 for cars) for the new Silvertown tunnel and also for the existing Blackwall tunnel. The consultation documents don’t say whether any new ferry would be free.

The results of the previous consultation, last February, showed support for a Gallions Reach ferry, but not overwhelming support as the report says:

There was also support for the Gallions Ferry, with over 60% of online respondents supporting or strongly supporting the scheme, but a sizable proportion (14%) neither supported nor opposed it, and 20% opposed it.

Responses to question 8: To what extent do you support the proposal to replace the Woolwich ferry with a new, purpose-built ferry at Gallions Reach?

I wrote about my own concerns about the proposals in February. Apart from the loss of a piece of our history, I don’t think the issue of traffic flow to the new Gallions Reach ferry has been adequately considered. The consultation documents don’t present any data on this, such as traffic modelling, and seems to think that any crossing at Gallions Reach would mainly cater for local traffic. In discussing the proposal for a bridge instead of a ferry it says:

The proposed tunnel at Silvertown would provide a new alternative to the Blackwall tunnel, improving both the capacity and reliability of crossings in that part of London and catering for traffic travelling along the A2. Therefore, any new tunnel or bridge at Gallions Reach would be likely to be used mostly by local traffic. This, and the presence of alternative crossings to the west, mean that the scale of a bridge or tunnel here could be minimised, and we believe that two lanes in each direction would be enough. However, traffic volumes would be higher than with a ferry option, so careful traffic management would be needed to avoid increased delays around the crossing.

However there’s nothing to back up this view, and no consideration of the risk of increased traffic on local roads through Shooters Hill, Plumstead and East Wickham as motorists attempt to cut through to the new crossing, not to mention future threats to Oxleas Wood, Woodlands Farm and Plumstead driven by demands for improved roads to the new crossing.

Comments on the proposals can be made using an online survey with just 14 questions, or by e-mail to rivercrossings@tfl.gov.uk. TfL are holding a series of consultation roadshows about the proposals, including one at Woolwich Library on Saturday 15th December between 10.00am and 4.00pm.

We have until 1st February to submit any comments.

Ernest Bevin and John Burns' Daily Dance — Ernest Bevin and John Burns’ Daily Dance

27th October 2012

Black cat looking for a home

Can you give this black cat a loving home?

Do you remember me from the 9th of October?

I found myself lost in Linda’s garden and an intensive and wide search to find my owners has sadly been unsuccessful. I am a healthy, well mannered, very affectionate female cat about seven years old, and I am now looking for a loving home. I am a real love so please, please contact Linda on 07717 248636 who will be happy to tell you all about me and about all the love and affection I could bring to a loving home.

19th October 2012

Out of Eltham?

Thamesmead and Plumstead BC — Proposed new Thamesmead and Plumstead Constituency Boundaries

Shooters Hill ward will move out of the Eltham parliamentary constituency into a new Thamesmead and Plumstead constituency if the latest Boundary Commission for England proposals are implemented. The map above shows which wards would be in the new constituency, and there is also an excellent visualisation of the changes on the Guardian web site – snippets of the old and new constituencies are included at the end of this post.

The Boundary Commission proposal aims to reduce the number of constituencies – hence the number of MPs – and balance the number of voters per consituency. New constituencies will have populations of no fewer than 72,810 and no larger than 80,473 people, apart from Isle of Wight. The Boundary Commission also took into account:

• special geographical considerations, including in particular the size, shape and accessibility of a constituency;
• local government boundaries as they existed on 6 May 2010 (see paragraph 16 above);
• boundaries of existing constituencies; and
• any local ties that would be broken by changes in constituencies.

The new boundaries are different to those originally proposed, and the Boundary Commission have documented the reasons for any changes. In the Commission’s original proposals the Eltham constituency, including Shooters Hill ward, was to have been extended into Bexley, but this crossing of borough boundaries “provoked considerable opposition from local residents on both sides of the boundary” – i.e both Greenwich and Bexley. In addition:

The Labour Party expressed strong objections, and Clive Efford MP highlighted the strength of the existing constituency boundary (reflecting not only borough boundaries but also the former division between London and Kent), the limited number of cross?borough access routes, and the division of residential areas on either side of the boundary.

The rationale behind the new Thamesmead and Plumstead constituency is based on strong local ties between different wards, even though this new constituency is split between Greenwich and Bexley. In particular the strong link between the Thamesmead and Thamesmead Moorings wards was seen to be important. The ties between the different Plumstead wards was also a factor:

Some respondents highlighted the ties between Glyndon ward and Thamesmead. Many local residents urged us to recognise the links between Plumstead and Glyndon wards, and, to a lesser extent, Shooters Hill ward. The Royal Borough of Greenwich, among others, suggested that these three wards make up the area commonly regarded as Plumstead, and their shared interests would be best served by their being together in one constituency.

What would this mean politically? The ward-by-ward breakdown of votes in the election for London Mayor shows that the wards in the new Thamesmead and Plumstead constituency voted 56.5% for Ken with Boris on 29.7%, then Lawrence James Webb the Fresh Choice for London candidate just beating Green Jenny Jones into third place by 2 votes and Brian Paddick in sixth behind the BNP.

If you want to comment on the new proposal you have until the 10th December, and you can do it via the Boundary Commission’s web site.

Of course this is all academic given that Nick Clegg has said that the Lib Dems won’t support the boundary changes, unless he changes his mind ….

Guardian Datastore: Proposed constituency boundary changes mapped – how would the alterations affect you? Current Boundaries

Guardian Datastore: Proposed constituency boundary changes mapped – how would the alterations affect you? Proposed Boundaries

18th October 2012

Shrewsbury House Social

Mike, our friendly, local Very Green Grocer has organised a social get-together at Shrewsbury House on Saturday afternoon, starting at 2.30pm. His invitation reads:

The Very Green Grocer invites all its customers, friends and local residents to Shrewsbury House for a social get together.
The aim is for the local community to be aware of the gifted and generous people who live amongst us and also how Shrewsbury House can bring us together on a more regular basis.

Entertainment on the day will be provided by local professional artists:
Jo Quail International Cellist,
Acoustic Chairs – Shrewsbury Park Estate based Duo. “The Woolwich Community Choir”. A local choir looking for new recruits and sponsorship.
Also:
Richard Watson’s Model Train display
Seed and plant swap
Playdoh table
Complimentary Cheese & Wine, first come first served, Donated Cakes, Scones etc.
You do not have to bring something to share but let’s see what happens on the day.

I hear also that Shrewsbury House are looking for vounteers to help staff the community centre, so if you have a couple of hours spare to help at the desk, in the garden or in the office, your help would be appreciated.

14th October 2012

The Woolwich

There’s been some good news about the regeneration of Woolwich recently, and some not so good news. Good that planning permission has been given to a development which will preserve the art deco Co-op building on Powis Street, not so good that there will be yet another betting shop in Woolwich, and that permission has been refused for The Woolwich, a new, potentially transformational pub that pub chain Antic want to open in Equitable House.

The 853 blog covers the story about The Woolwich pub very thoroughly. Suffice to say that Antic seem to have a reputation for creating good, up-market pubs and they express sensible ideas about making General Gordon Square into a great public space that is used by people at all times of the day and evening – something we caught a brief glimpse of during the Olympics and paralympics – rather than mainly a pedestrian thoroughfare. They plan to reapply for a licence for The Woolwich, hopefully dealing with the council’s concerns about limiting noise impact from music events and possible problems from being in a “saturation area” where there are a number of other licenced premises.

111-113 Powis Street, former HQ of The Woolwich

“The Woolwich” building society was an important part of Woolwich life for over a century, and a key part, with the RACS, of the growth of mutualism in the area. I think it would be highly appropriate if its name could be preserved somewhere in the town, and nowhere better than in the former building society’s headquarters, Equitable House. Commemorating “The Woolwich” as a pub is also quite apt as it could be argued that the Society started in a pub. According to Collin Brooks’ book “The First Hundred Years of the Woolwich Equitable Building Society” the Castle Inn in Woolwich was the venue in 1842 for the predecessor to the Woolwich – a terminating building society chaired by the pub proprietor, Mr Thunder. Terminating building societies were set up to build houses for all their members, after which they terminated. It was five years later, in September 1847 that a breakaway faction from this society formed the “permanent” Woolwich Equitable Benefit Building and Investment Association. However they moved away from the Inn, to what was then 145 Powis Street (later renumbered 131), and their first patron was a Dr John Carlile, Pastor of the Congregationalist Salem Chapel. They also had as president William Stuart, who was Surgeon to the Police, Surgeon to the Marine Society’s ship Warspite and also Public Vaccinator for Woolwich.

The Society was located at a couple of addresses in Powis Street, including offices they had built at 111-113, before the construction of Equitable House in 1934-5. Collin Brooks is very enthusiastic about the building of which he says “no photograph can do justice to so well-designed a structure”, but he reserves his greatest praise for the interior:

Its interior is remarkable for two qualities – spaciousness and quietude. Its executive rooms are lofty, dignified and well lighted. They are panelled in English oak, and their carved adornments are adequate but restrained. The furniture and appointments of its rooms are of the same handsome but unostentatious quality.

The tone of the interior is, indeed, set by the entrance hall. One mounts the stairs from the street to an oblong plateau, very lofty, and very quiet, for here, as everywhere, a quarter inch rubber flooring muffles all sound. The row of cashiers’ grills which confront one, and the two sets of writing desks, right and left, facing them, are identical with those which one would meet in a great New York banking house. High above the plateau runs a balcony of polished stone. No matter how much business is in process of transaction there is an air of quiet efficiency, an absence of fuss, an absence of confusion. The waiting client or inquirer on either of the two great twin walnut settles receives the impression of tremendous solidity, of skilled smoothness, of good taste – if a building can be said to be embodied courtesy this (he must think) is such a building. This plateau is known as the Banking Hall, and it was here, under the picturesque glass and metal roof, in the marble walls, between the silver grilles and the great walnut screen which divides the hall from the vestibule that the ceremonial opening of the building took place on Tuesday 14 May 1935. It was a ceremony honoured with the presence of no fewer than three of His Majesty’s ministers – the Viscount Hailsham, Secretary of State for War, the Rt. Hon. J.H. Thomas, Secretary of State for the Dominions, and the Rt. Hon. Sir Kingsley Wood, the Postmaster General.

The Banking Hall is the proposed location for The Woolwich pub. I wonder if it still has the Hopton Wood stone walls and coursed and polished Derbyshire fossil skirting mentioned in the British Listed Buildings description.

Equitable House was a technological pioneer for its time, with all departments linked by telephone and a pneumatic chute for transporting pass books around the building. Its accounting department boasted thirty-nine book-keeping machines, developed in collaboration with the Burroughs Adding Machine Company, plus twenty-six calculating machines, forty-seven listing machines and four machines for cashiers to record cheques and cash. But what most interested visitors was the innovative way of notifying one of the twelve principals when they were wanted on the phone if they were not at their desk – their number would be illuminated on each of the 46 electric clocks in the building. A method that only worked as long as there were just 12 directors.

There is an online petition asking the Royal Borough of Greenwich Council to grant Antic a licence for “The Woolwich” here.

If ... Architecture's picture of the renovated art-deco Co-op building — If … Architecture’s picture of the renovated art-deco Co-op building

The Council’s decision to approve Dagmar Ventures Limited’s application to convert the Co-op building in Powis Street into 73 flats above ground floor retail space looks like very good news. The neglected art-deco building had been threatened with demolition, and even though the Woolwich Master Plan said that it “should be converted to high specification residential development” there wasn’t an approved, funded plan to achieve this. Some compromises have been made; the horizontal window layers will be turned into balconies for the flats, and the building will be extended upwards by three storeys, though in such a way as to minimise the impact on the building’s tower. I was glad to see that the planning meeting stressed that “in particular that steps be taken to restore and replace the tiles of the external building in keeping with the geographical history of the environment”; one of the conditions of approval is that the Planning Authority has to approve the materials for the repair work to the outside of the building before work starts. Also plans showing how the staircase will be retained and incorporated into the development must be submitted and approved by the Council. The regeneration of the West end of Powis Street is starting to look optimistic; next step is to get the Granada Cinema restored as an entertainment venue!

Woolwich already has seven betting shops, and it now looks like there will be an eighth – there’s a notice in the window of the former Pizza Hut restaurant, next to Holland and Barrett saying that a licence for another Betfred betting shop has been applied for. That will make two Betfreds, two Corals, two Jenningsbets, a Ladbrokes and a Paddy Power in Woolwich town centre. According to a tweet by local councillor John Fahy there is little chance of stopping the increasing number of betting shops without a change in the law. This seems to be a problem affecting many town centres – for example the Deptford Dame blog documents the long battles of Deptford residents to prevent more betting shops being set up in their town centre. Not being a betting person I find it difficult to understand how so many betting shops in such a small area manage to make money. According to a Guardian article it is through so-called fixed odds bettting terminals (fobts), which allow punters to bet up to £100 every 30 seconds and which make an estimated £297 million a year from problem gamblers. No more than four fobts are allowed in any betting shop, but they seem to be so lucrative that it’s worth opening another betting shop near 7 others in order to get another four fobts. The Deptford Dame includes a link to another online petition asking Eric Pickles to give local councils control over the number of betting shops in their area.

Although it’s not all good news I’m optimistic about the regeneration of Woolwich town centre, maybe because the Co-op decision is a sign that the Master Plan might be feasible. If you have views about the town centre’s development, Councillor Fahy has arranged a “Support the Woolwich Town Centre” public meeting at the Grand Theatre in Wellington Street at 6pm on the 23rd of October. And if you find the idea of a meeting about the town centre too frightening you could always book up for the Grand’s Halloween showing of the original Dracula film, Nosferatu, with a live piano accompaniment courtesy of James Buckham, followed by a little ghost tour of the building.

10th October 2012

Sloe Season at Woodlands Farm – Bring Gin

Maureen from Woodlands Farm sent me details of their 2012 Hedgerow Liqueurs and Wild Wines event on Saturday 20th October:

Saturday 20th October 2012
1.00pm-4.30pm
£10 (£8 for Woodlands Farm Trust members)
Over-18s only
Join us for a tramp around the hedgerows, followed by sloe gin making.
Bring your own gin or spirit of choice together with at least a one litre, wide neck (>2.5cm) container.
Book early via the Farm Office, numbers limited.
Please dress appropriately for outdoor activities.

To whet your appetite for sloe gin there’s a reminder of how it is made in this previous post.

While there you might like to drop in on their latest arrival – a little white bull born to Ennis, one of the farm’s Irish Moiled cows, yesterday evening. I hear there might be a competition to name the bull at the Woodlands Farm Apple Day on Sunday. Meanwhile here are some photos of Ennis and her calf…

Ennis the Irsh Moiled Cow and her new calf