Copper thieves

Crossfields resident Yvonne has brought this to our attention...

On Tuesday she had a British Gas engineer round to do an annual service of her boiler. He pointed out to her that the copper overflow pipe on the outside wall had been sawn off. Along the landing, a neighbour's pipe had also been removed. I had a look at mine – still there hidden among the plants, but next door where the pipe was more easily accessed it had been cut off. There is also a huge crack in the wall.

Apparently, a kilo of copper can fetch £4 (and more in recent times). The engineer told Yvonne it was fetching around £12,000 a ton, and that there was no point in replacing the pipe since it would more than likely be cut again.

Hello and goodbye...

HELLO TO THE WAITING ROOM

Kids Love Ink, Deptford's own very stylish Tattoo parlour (and fabulous sign-writers!), have just opened a new coffee shop next door but one to their premises (which has also had a make-over) just north of the railway. The ever epicurial Deptford Dame has the initial low-down...

 

HELLO ALSO TO CREEKSIDE CAFE

Nearer home, a light and airy new cafe has opened at the front of Faircharm Trading Estate, offering coffee, tea, soups, sandwiches and paninis, cakes and...breakfast. Open Monday-Friday 8am-4pm and Saturdays 10am-4pm, it will serve the businesses in Faircharm, and, well, anyone else who finds themselves on Creekside in need of sustenance.

MEANWHILE, AT THE TRAIN CAFE...

The Deptford Project train cafe is undergoing some alterations both to its exterior (a living grass roof has been mooted) and its opening hours, which have been extended to 5.30pm. They will also be trying out table service next week, to combat the often overlong waits at busy times between ordering and getting your food and coffee. We look forward to seeing the new look and improved service at this highly popular venue (and to getting a new picture to replace this older one!).

AND DEPTFORD DELI...

If you didn't know already, the Deptford Deli has been opening in the evenings for dinner since early March. There are new opening hours (Wed-Fri 12-4pm and 6pm-10pm, Saturdays 10am-10pm, Sundays 12-5pm, and it is licensed. Over again to the Deptford Dame for more details...


BUT...GOODBYE TO EAST WEST SUPERMARKET

Thanks to new reader Simon for alerting us to the news that East West Supermarket on New Cross Road (opposite Addey & Stanhope school) has now closed, after what must be twenty years of service to the Deptford community supplying Eastern and Oriental food ingredients and kitchen accoutrements.We wish the family a happy retirement.

IT MAY ALSO BE GOODBYE TO SOCIAL CENTRE PLUS

....who are having to leave the old Job Centre offices next Tuesday 12th April...(unless they decide to put up a fight to stay)...Events and open days will continue until then...


FINALLY, A LESS ENTHUSIASTIC HELLO...

Less imaginative new businesses are currently preparing to open for business. Just a few doors down from Codfathers, it's goodbye to Balloons For London, and Hello ANOTHER WET FISH SHOP...

And two doors down from the old Job Centre, a refit has been going on for awhile. Rumour has it was going to be a Chinese Travel Agents, but latest speculation has it as a Chinese Money Shop...We had a look inside recently when the Chinese/Vietnamese builders were in – the floor has been beautifully tiled, the walls freshly painted, but suspicions were aroused by the large window at the back of the premises behind which was an office-like room – usually a sign of some sort of financial trading...

 

Postscript (12/4/11): A new sign has gone up, and this shop is going to be a Vietnamese & Chinese supermarket with Money Transfer facilities...

Deptford Station

It appears work is finally starting on Deptford station...Pop over to the Deptford Dame for this enormously welcome bit of news.

STOP PRESS - See also the Dame's update ...

Here's some pictures taken in 2003 – yes, 2003, before digital cameras. Those who have continued to use the station on their daily commute may remember a bit of a clean up and paint job in between then and now (personally I've refused to commute since well before that date). But only last week I could observe no change in the awful conditions Deptford commuters have had to tolerate for so long now...

 The ticket machine in 2003 often didn't work...

Praise the Lord! Rejoice! Hallelujah! (sound of trumpets and generally loud symphonic celebratory noise)...

Postscript: Volker Fitzpatrick told us at their (underpublicised) Open Day that SOUTH EASTERN RAILWAYS are responsible for the maintenance of the station. Since commuters will have to use the same entrance until November, perhaps someone could start a campaign to get them to CLEAN IT UP!

Deptford Community Bus Stop

WATCHING PAINT DRY

It's very rare that the Crosswhatfields editorial team (ahem!) get to meet up so we were able to make the most of the bus shelter opposite Wavelengths as a windbreak when we bumped into each other last Friday.  As luck would have it Church Street was closed to traffic so not only was the bus shelter much quieter than normal but we even got the opportunity to watch the road sign painters painting road signs.  We were highly impressed with the speed and craftsmanship needed to walk sideways while steadily pouring quick-dry paint into a bottomless tin and ending up with neat lettering. 

It was actually quite touching to see how many people stopped to warn us that the stop was out of service.  That big London does have its social side after all - first it was the workmen, then passers-by

LUST STOP...?

PUB STOP...?

Ah, RUST STOP....!

-0-

WATCHING PAINT FADE

 

I'd forgotten that there was an almost completely faded sign under the railway bridge.  I stopped to see if I could decipher the text but it was too far gone for me to get most of it.  Just odd words like ''industrial storage'' which must have been advertising arches to let in what was then Mechanics Path before they booted the mechanics out, stuck up a gate and upped the rents for tenants possessed of greater resolution .  It looks like there's a trace of an 0800 number lower down but that would mean that those numbers have been around far longer than seems likely.  Does anybody remember?

-0-

ARBORICIDE?

Ok, this is a wandering post, but to be fair, we've only wandered 50 yards at the very most.  Here's another bit of fadery, this time a weather-beaten, disintegrating paper sign on the railings next to Crossfields Street.  Does anybody know who's been killing or harming trees?  It looks like it's been up for a fair amount of time.

The full text was:

STOP

WE KNOW WHO

YOU ARE. THE 

POLICE WILL BE PHONED

IT IS ILLEGAL TO KILL/

HARM TREES. DECENT PEOPLE

WANT TO KEEP THIS PLACE

                  FOR THEIR DOGS

Oddenda: 

1)Despite the post saying it was posted by Sue, it wasn't, it was posted by Marmoset - I think the purposeless meandering style may already have given that away.

2)  Watching paint dry....It might seem odd but newly tarmacked roads give rise to grateful posts on cycling forums...

Convoy's Wharf demolition in progress

 Pictures taken by Sue from Deptford Adventure Playground

Despite Planning Permission not yet being granted, and serious concerns that this 16th century Royal Naval site has not been thoroughly surveyed nor is being properly protected, agents of Convoy's Wharf developer Li Ka-shing (Hutchison Whampoa to you) are presently demolishing everything on this site except the Grade II listed Olympia warehouse (the wavy roofed structure), another brick structure and some trees.

Much lies beneath the present concrete surface. More to come on this, but meanwhile see Crosswhatfields posts here. See also Deptford Dame, Shipwright's Palace, London's Lost Garden or do a google search – even Wikipedia has more information on this site than you'd ever get from the present vested interests of both council and developer.

There is another way, say local campaigners...that doesn't include 3500 residential riverside apartments in three towerblocks, retail outlets and parking for 2,300 cars that will never see their way out onto Creek Road.

The site is, in Lewisham's own planning guidance, designated for commercial use, so how did such high-density housing get into the mix? There are also debates around the use of the wharf as a protected marine area with the developers arguing that such protection takes it below economically viable levels if preserved.

Local visionaries see the area as the ideal location for a Marine Enterprise Zone, based on new advances in British industry in navigational equipment. Why not, while we're at it, create a working boatyard, training projects and other maritime and heritage-related facilities (an annex to the Maritime Museum for instance), use the river to its utmost, and enhance Deptford as a World Heritage Site – and not some dormitory for the City as it is fast becoming, or a short-term (thinking) holiday home for Olympic visitors.

It may seem at first an equally ghastly idea to turn the area into a tourist spot, but nevertheless there's a logical link with Greenwich's naval history to where it began, in the King's Yard, Deptford, the first of the Royal Dockyards, developed in 1513 by Henry VII to build vessels for the Royal Navy. It's a short walk from Greenwich (or would be if Greenwich council and the presently dormant Galliard Peninsula development co-operated, possibly a snag here).

Job creation in the Marine Enterprise Zone? It promises to be a lot more than the presently proposed cleaning, retail and waiting on tables.
No money in it? Maybe not as much as there could have been if some foresight had been shown some time ago to not only cash in on the Olympics, but allow Deptford to become Lewisham's flagship heritage area (ya boo sucks to Greenwich) instead of being its number one dumping ground for people it doesn't want in Lewisham and then, conversely, a dormitory for the City...But no money for Mr Murdoch and News International waiting for a percentage on the sale of those luxury flats if the present plan didn't go ahead, boo, hoo...Not so much money for a weak local authority, now suddenly attuned to new Tory rules on business rates but still looking at Council tax on 3500 new properties in three tower blocks....

Too late? Never too late for Real History, Ethics and Respect.
Lewisham Council's motto is Live, Work and Learn. But it long ago forgot how to Listen.

And that is no April Fool joke.