Welcome back, Deptford Anchor

The best pic we've seen so far, by CircusFit on Twitter

We haven't written about the Deptford Anchor since 2013 when a campaign began soon after it was removed. A petition was launched in late 2015 by the Deptford Society, which we linked to in our sidebar – but without any help from us the petition attracted hundreds of signatures within a few months.

Another week has gone by since this pic was taken – the installation of a plaque is awaited before the fencing around the site can be removed. 

Campaigners are already planning a celebratory 'sea shanty' procession down the high street this coming Saturday 3rd February, assembling at 12 sharp at Villages Brewery in Resolution Way and setting off soon after noisily singing shanties (song sheets provided) to head down to the anchor for a spirited toast to everyone who helped bring it back. (See the Facebook event). Expect a "salty sea farin' knees-up, all inclusive, home-spun, raucous fun Deptford Shanty Crew celebration".... 

Meanwhile, there are two exhibitions about the anchor in Deptford Does Art at 28 Deptford High Street, close to the anchor site. On the ground floor Deptford Is Forever are showing a 'visual campaign archive', which reveal their links with local community initiatives The Lenox Project and Sayes Court. Both those projects grew out of a previous campaign by Deptford Is to get the massive legacy of the historic Deptford Dockyard recognised in the plans for Convoys Wharf by site owners Hutchison Whampoa – a campaign which this blog covered extensively in 2013 and up until the developer got planning permission from the Mayor of London in 2014. 

In the downstairs gallery at Deptford Does Art is the final year show of (now graduated) MA Landscape Architect student Max Barnes, who was inspired to make work about the Deptford Anchor by visiting tutors at Greenwich University, Bob Bagley & Roo Angel – the founders of Sayes Court. Barnes imagines the anchor being dragged from its storage place on Convoys Wharf back to the high street, gouging out the tarmac as it goes to create a fantastical new environment. The show closes on Sunday 4th Feb so catch it while you can. 

There are also two talks this weekend in the basement gallery where Barnes has created the context for a new take on the redevelopment of Convoys Wharf, aka Deptford Dockyard.
• Friday 3rd Feb at 7.30pm The Lenox Project
•  Saturday 4th at 3pm, Sayes Court.  

From what we can glean on the Deptford Is Forever website, various 'artistic' street interventions over the years helped publicise the petition till it reached over 4,000 in November 2016. Deptford Is Forever seem to be the naughty artistic wing of an otherwise respectable Deptford Society. But it seems the Council had started to take notice when the petition hit around 3,300. At least that's the figure mentioned in the Feasibility Study they saw fit to commission a few months after the petition had already hit that figure. 

We also note that the campaigners seemed to spend most of 2017 in delayed and protracted talks with the Council, because although the Mayor had agreed the anchor could return, the Deputy Mayor was very averse to it being installed in a position where it could actually be seen. A little bird tells us Cllr Alan Smith, who now seems to have quite a reputation for exaggerated and ill-founded expertise, also claimed it wasn't even a real anchor, and that the entire area was full of high power cables just waiting to explode on touch. It seems he expounded these fears on the basis that his wife once worked for UK Power Networks (and not because his own administration had a proper and authoritative conversation with the utility operator in question).

But all that is by-the-by now, as last week our bit of ol' iron was finally brought back and re-installed on a generous bed of cobbles – seemingly a bigger area than the visuals shown in the planning submission of July/August 2017. The old anchor (thought to originate in part from the 1860s) has been thoroughly cleaned up and the chain has been welded together, presumably for health and safety reasons. It can no longer be dragged out into the street by a passionately inebriated person as Ben Graville's pic shows here. 

©Ben Graville

There is no longer a plinth for the public to sit on, but it seems the campaigners acknowledged that the plinth could not be returned. The anchor was removed because of the anti-social behaviour of the street drinkers who congregated there in the latter days of its previous existence, so the Council were unlikely to allow it to happen again.

Meanwhile, 28 Deptford High Street is a Council-owned building that was originally part of the regeneration plans that saw the anchor removed in 2013, so it seems fitting that the anchor campaigners have found a temporary home there at the same time as the anchor returns. 

The 2013 street regeneration funding (from the Mayor of London's Outer London fund, not from Lewisham's own coffers) went to refurbishing the flats upstairs at no.28, but seemingly ran out when it came to doing up the shop, which had previously been a much-needed community Law Centre. The shop lay empty until money was found for refurbishment in 2016, then lay empty again until the Council put out a tender in 2017, having changed its planning use from A2 Financial to A1/A3 so that food and drink could be consumed in a retail environment. Unfortunately the refurbishment stopped short of providing a proper kitchen...

Deptford Does Art, who have been placing local artists' work in pubs and other venues in the area for a couple of years, fulfilled Lewisham's brief to provide a commercially viable community hub at No.28 DHS, but they weren't the first winners. Several groups applied, including a consortium of local community projects and activists headed up by the Deptford People Project (who have been providing free food to the homeless for some years). 

No one actually knows who won, but whoever they were, they pulled out, and Deptford Does Art were consequently invited to take on the premises, and do the best they could with a draconian lease, hardly any discount in rent or business rates, as well as no kitchen and no disabled access! They offer craft beers, wine, coffee and speciality teas, as well as vegan cakes and savoury bites, and are open Wed-Sun, 12-10.30pm. Local artists are queuing up to show their work.

Deptford Does Arts's rosta of artists is unlikely to include the kind of contemporary artist who used to show at Hales Gallery and Cafe, which older residents will remember with fondness, as the cafe had such a beautiful back garden; such lovely outdoor spaces are in limited supply both then and now. The gallery downstairs put on shows that Charles Saatchi was known to visit and buy from. 

Who can remember when Hales Gallery got too successful for Deptford? For some landlords on the high street, the continual promise of gentrification wasn't happening soon enough. Hales Gallery, for instance, needed to capitalise on the interest they had in the artists they represented and were desperate to be in a more fashionable location (and a larger space) to continue their ambitions in the international art market. Hales Gallery moved to Shoreditch in 2004.

They were not only ahead of the game, they had also benefitted from all the public funds going into the area. As a member of Shaftesbury Christian Centre (aka Bear Church), Hales owner Paul Maslin took advantage of grants and charity exemptions. Then he sold No.30 to Jennings the bookmaker who immediately sold it on to Corals, which precipitated a free-for-all for bookies wanting to take over the high street and a campaign we ran in 2011 against Betfred. Paul Maslin is one three Councillors for New Cross Ward (covering the area in question). 

Sign the petition to bring back the Deptford Anchor!

A campaign for the return of the 'Deptford Anchor' was launched on Saturday, and at the time of writing, has already garnered over 1500 signatures in just five days. Click here to sign.

Via 38 Degrees, the campaign is petitioning Lewisham's Mayor to re-instate the anchor to the south end of the high street where it had resided for 25 years until being removed during regeneration works two years ago, amidst much protest. It later became the focus of a local art project, who have now teamed up with the Deptford Society to launch the petition. They want the anchor returned without the plinth it once stood on.

Visualisation of the anchor without a plinth @Deptford Is Forever

Whilst the anchor served as a landmark for friends to meet up, its plinth had also become a seating area for street drinkers, so it seemed to many that the new high street paving had been an opportunity for the Council to remove the anchor and 'design out' anti-social behaviour.

©Ben Graville – http://www.bengraville.co.uk/bengraville/r.i.p_anchotor_photos.html#66

The drinkers soon found somewhere else to sit – on the benches in the newly paved Giffin Square, in front of the new Tidemill school and the library. We heard that parents of children at the school are now petitioning for the seating to be removed!

Meanwhile, utility companies have since dug up new paving stones and filled them with tarmac, and the new paving is already badly stained. The top of the high street still lacks the proud focal point it once enjoyed. Although the space is used by market traders on Saturdays, the rest of the week it remains empty – except when it is occupied by a Talk Talk or Sky sales team, who, with their habit of chasing shoppers down the street and hassling them to buy broadband phone deals, could be said to be more anti-social in their behaviour than the street drinkers ever were.

Talk Talk sales team hassling shoppers

The empty space is also sometimes used as quick and convenient parking for Asda shoppers. And to the distress of residents living above the shops, Asda itself has been loading and unloading here in the middle of the night.

Unmarked Asda truck parks up at 3am in the morning to noisily load and unload ©Ben Graville

Below is where the Deptford Anchor currently resides. It's being 'stored' in the Olympia warehouse building on Convoys Wharf 'for safe keeping'. Why is it still there, under the so-called 'protection' of a developer who gives not a jot for the maritime heritage of Deptford?

The anchor is stored in the Olympia building at Convoys Wharf @Deptford Is Forever

Convoys Wharf is owned by Asia's richest billionaire, Li Ka Shing, via Cheung Kong Property Holdings – one of his two recently reorganised and renamed Hong Kong-based global conglomerates (with limited liability in the Cayman Islands) – otherwise known to us as Hutchison Whampoa.

As the Deptford Dame noted in July, when travellers made it their home for awhile, the site was not even that safely secured. She also pointed out that in the (now) eight months since the Section 106 agreement with the GLA and Lewisham Council was signed and almost two years since HW received outline planning permission for the development from the Mayor of London (March 2014), not a single planning application (ie, worked up designs for the individual buildings and parcels of land) has been submitted to Lewisham's planning department.

So if the aim of both Lewisham Council and the developer was to re-situate the anchor within the development itself, it is likely to be at least another ten years before it is seen again. Time to bring it back! Sign the petition here.

Deptford X continues till Sunday...

Photo by George Avvakoumides

The Deptford X banner "Art Makes People Powerful", created by a flash mob of artists in Giffin Square last Saturday (see video) now hangs on the front of the LESOCO building on Deptford Broadway.

We wonder if Art Can help Make Powerful all the highly qualified staff who have been made redundant (at Southwark, at least, without any renumeration packages) as a result of the merger of Lewisham and Southwark colleges and education cuts in general.

Meanwhile, this weekend there are Open Studios and an Art Quiz at the Dog and Bell on Sunday as well as a multitude of gallery shows and shop takeovers. We like the installation at the new Vinyl cafe in Tanners Hill – called Soft Wax, it looks at music and culture of the Jamaican diaspora at the end of the 1950s. The new cafe is lovely, and there's a secondhand vinyl shop in the basement, along with the exhibition.

On Saturday at the Albany (10am-4pm), artist Bernadette Russell asks "Is it possible to change the world just by being kind?" in her interactive show 366 Days of Kindness. The idea is that members of the public can write a few words about how a kind act from a stranger touched their lives, on a ticket which is attached to a balloon. The balloons are then released at the end of the day.

There is still much for us to see, and too much to cover in detail, but we especially like Deptford Is Forever, who have given out paper bags to high street shopkeepers and market traders with a tattoo design printed on them that says "Give Us Back Our Bloomin' Anchor". The design is lovely, and to pay for the free bags the group has also had printed some T-shirts and cotton shoppers that locals seem to be snapping up. The T-shirt has the Deptford Is Forever logo on it (see below, the shirt being worn by Niaomh from the Deptford Community Cookbook team). You can pick up your T-shirt for £10 at Kids Love Ink, the tattoo parlour at 138 Deptford High Street.

The Waiting Room Coffee shop, Little Nan's bar on Deptford Broadway, and Ralph at High Street Flowers also have some cotton shoppers for sale apparently (£5), and the group commissioned High Street Flowers to make a "ghost anchor" to hang in the window.

Not only that but the group have organised a day of FREE tattooing (a little anchor of your choice) at Kids Love Ink. That's tomorrow and is apparently oversubscribed – those wanting to take up the offer had to book today, or else take a chance tomorrow. Participants will be asked for a donation to Deptford Reach, the project that looks after Deptford's street drinkers and anyone who's hit hard times, and Build The Lenox, the local project that wants to build a replica 17th century ship at Convoys Wharf.

The Deptford Is Forever "Anchor Fest" continues on the weekend with a musical procession along the high street at around midday-2pm which features a huge cardboard anchor made by Arthouse artist Laura X Carlé that was last spotted in the My Deptford show at the South Bank and seen by anyone attending London Open House at the Master Shipwright's House. The procession gathers at the Dog & Bell pub at 12 and aims to end up before 3pm at Lewisham Arthouse on Lewisham Way, where there's an exhibition and Open Studios all weekend.

We also hear that Little Nan's will be having a bit of a "Deptford Is Forever" night on Saturday, with nautically themed cocktails, some of which will feature Pusser's rum, the preferred drink of the Navy which used to be stored in Deptford Dockyard.

The group certainly seem to have run with the Deptford X theme Art Makes People Powerful, and have an informative website about the Anchor and the Deptford Dockyard (some of which has been taken from this blog). But whether the Deptford Anchor returns to the high street and its environs is another matter...

More info at www.deptfordisforever.net
Or like their Facebook page

www.deptfordx.org

Deptford X has started...on your doorstep

This "Flash Mob" event yesterday marked the beginning of Deptford X Visual Arts Festival, now in its 15th year. You may have got a sense that something was up since artists have been scurrying around for the past couple of days getting ready for this festival.

Deptford X 2013 opened on Friday and is open today, and next week from Thur 3rd-Sunday 6th October. Go to www.deptfordx.org to see what's going on – but there's so much to see, it might be best to just go out and look for people who seem to know where they're going! Here's some stuff we managed to see yesterday. Deptford High Street blog also has a round up of the goings on.

Noemi Lakmaier The Observer Effect at Gallop, 198 Deptford High Street

 The Bent Tin Shop (aka Robert Walker) gets a make-over from Artmongers. It's now called "el cheap 'ou"

Hollie Paxton Deptford Tin Street at El Cheapo (see above)
Hollie also has some
Deptford inspired jewellery in the window of Abermarle & Bond.

Harry Pye and friends Tintin in Deptford at Norfolk House, Brookmill Road

Spotted in gallery at Enclave on Resolution Way...

Deptford Is Forever have put printed bags with a message (Give Us Back Our Bloomin' Anchor) in lots of shops and market stalls for traders to put their customers' purchases in.

Odd little plaques by Debbie Sharp on benches around Deptford.

Lead artist Bob & Roberta Smith in front of his painting Art Makes People Powerful (which is the theme of this year's Deptford X) at Norfolk House on Brookmill Road.

Rebecca Beinart was in Sue Godfrey Nature Park showing the herbal remedies she has made from the plants growing in the park.

Deptford Anchor spotted, among other things...

This is where the Deptford Anchor is, and where it will probably stay.

It's in the Oympia Shed at Convoys Wharf, courtesy of Hutchison Whampoa. Covered in cobwebs and pigeon shit. Why?

The council officer in charge of regeneration of the high street told us over a month ago that it will probably end up being 'part of a new development' – so here it is, in the hands of the least likely people to care about the history and heritage of Deptford, but who have probably got the best security.

The anchor's safe here, that's for certain. This place is so secure that visitors to London Open House at Convoys Wharf on Saturday had to SIGN IN with an exact time, and stay within the bollards and not stray off-piste or else they'd get a severe telling off, and then SIGN OUT with an exact time when they left.

That was apparently due to Health & Safety, yet not every visitor was given the flyer that carried the disclaimer that Convoys Wharf Properties and Hutchison Whampoa had absolutely nothing to do with you breaking your leg crossing the massive blue electrical cable that crossed the bridge to the pier where you could buy coffee and tea (and not much else) off a sole trader for £2 a hit and imagine what it would all be like when built.

Probably not very nice, since the imaginary tall buildings behind you might triple the wind factor on the pier. Oddly, we tripped ungainly on the electrical cable cover, which was exactly where the outgoing and incoming Directors of Hutchison Whampoa Properties European Division (Messrs Benyon and Hayden) spent most of their time on site....both armed with cameras, taking pictures of each other to pass the time on their trip hazard watch.

The signing in and out for visitors was probably very useful for Hutchison & Whampoa to claim they had completed yet another public consultation and be able to give figures, whilst manipulating all the actual consultation they did.

For instance, they asked visitors what we would like to happen in the Olympia Shed as though they had no ideas of their own. They did have some ideas, but as we understand it, English Heritage have firmly suggested the fabric of the building cannot be interfered with too much, although this wasn't fully explained. This is almost the only bit of the site they are not allowed to build on (so far), but now they've been told they can't turn it into the glass palace they envisaged last time round.

They intend to make a profit out of it somehow, so God knows why they were asking Open House visitors, who may be less likely to offer up the sort of ideas that could come from others less interested in architecture, such as a duplication of the Millennium Dome (cinemas, music venues, restaurants). Open House visitors might have chosen more heritage-related ideas, but we shall never know, since even when you put your name down just to be updated, you never are.

Here's a grumpy Henry VIII looking to get arrested...

 

Bill came over from London Open House at the Master Shipwright's House to have a gander and frighten the developers. (For a report on Open House at the Master Shipwright's go to Deptford Is...). Bill was part of the original campaign against excessive redevelopment at Convoys that began as soon as the previous owner Rupert Murdoch began putting in plans, that culminated in 2005/6 with Murdoch selling the site to Hutchisons. Deptford Is... are continuing Bill's and others' work through the Build The Lenox and Sayes Court Garden projects.

Here's a NEW misleading model of Terry Farrell's masterplan for the redevelopment of the Royal Dockyard of Henry VIII that was on show at Convoys Wharf. Note the weird disappearing 48 storey building which for some reason is totally see-thru and almost invisible. Do they imagine we will not note its presence when it is built? 

The other two 38-storey buildings are about seven times the height of Crossfields. This is not about providing more much needed housing for London. These are luxury homes. Are there not plenty of them already?