Author: Darryl Chamberlain

Charlton and Woolwich Film Festival: Monty Python’s Life of Brian leads 2019 line-up

Darryl Chamberlain
Life of Brian is showing in the garden of the White Swan

Monty Python’s Life of Brian is among the movies coming to SE7 next month as part of the fourth Charlton and Woolwich Free Film Festival.

The cult comedy – banned for blasphemy in several UK towns when it was released 40 years ago – is one of three films to be shown at The White Swan in Charlton Village.

Organisers are screening films at a host of venues across Charlton, Woolwich and Shooters Hill between Friday 6th and Saturday 14th September.

Life of Brian, presented by south London slackers’ site Deserter.co.uk, will be screened in the garden at the Swan on Sunday 8th September. The following night sees the Japanese horror comedy One Cut of the Dead at the Swan, while the same pub plays host to war documentary They Shall Not Grow Old on Wednesday 11 September.

There’ll be a family screening of The Greatest Showman on Saturday 7 September at Charlton Manor School, along with a dog-friendly screening of the comedy drama Dean Spanley in the grounds of Charlton House on Friday 13th.

Charlton House is also playing host to Shooting Dogs, which explores the genocide in Rwanda, on Thursday 12 September. It will be preceded by a documentary, Faces of Genocide.

Hollywood classic The Night of the Hunter, starring Robert Mitchum, can be seen at St Thomas’ Church on Woodland Terrace on Monday 9 September, while Mars Attacks! is at the Starbucks on Woolwich Road on Thursday 12th.

The festival opens with two screenings at once on Friday 6th – Cinema Paradiso at Shrewsbury House, Shooters Hill and Black Panther, at Artillery Square in Woolwich’s Royal Arsenal.

Artillery Square also plays host to the festival’s final screening on Saturday 14th – First Man, the story of Neil Armstrong and the first manned mission to the Moon 50 years ago.

Other highlights include the classic war movie Bridge on the River Kwai, screening at St George’s Garrison Church on Woolwich Common on Sunday 8th, and a Friday 13th screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo! at Severndroog Castle.

The festival is one of a number across south London and is run by volunteers and donations, with support this year coming from Greenwich Council. To find out more about what’s on show, visit freefilmfestivals.org.

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Charlton Riverside: Stone Foundries site sold with 1,500 more homes planned

Darryl Chamberlain
Stone Foundries, Charlton
Stone Foundries was founded in Deptford in the 1830s

One of Charlton’s longest-established industrial concerns, Stone Foundries, is to close after a developer bought its land for a development of up to 1,500 new homes.

The sale of the Stone site to Staines-based developer Montreaux marks a key turning point in the slow transformation of Charlton’s riverside from an industrial into a residential area.

Montreaux recently won approval to turn an old margarine factory in Southall, west London, into a high-density development of 2,000 homes; while more locally it has also bought the old Lamorbey swimming baths in Sidcup for a mixed-use development.

Stone’s sale marks the end of nearly 190 of years of business in the local area. In 1831, founder Josiah Stone set up a business in Deptford casting copper nails for the shipbuilding industry. Part of the business moved to Charlton in 1917, where it continued to make castings for ships, and still produces fittings for the aerospace industry. The Deptford works closed in 1969. The firm was bought and merged into UK-based parts maker Aeromet last year.

An Aeromet spokesperson told The Charlton Champion yesterday that it was in the process of moving the former Stone operations to its sites in Rochester and Sittingbourne, both in Kent.

At its height, Stone even had extensive sports fields stretching out onto the Woolwich Road, now the site of the Stone Lake retail park.

Stone has outlasted many of its industrial neighbours by decades – the huge United Glass Works on Anchor & Hope Lane closed in 1968, Johnsen & Jorgensen’s glass works shut in 1981.

One challenge for any developer will be that some of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s Stone buildings – though unseen by most locals – are now locally listed, with the site covered by a conservation area. According to Greenwich Council’s heritage list: “The site qualifies on the grounds of historic interest mainly due to its high importance for the British Royal Navy during the C20, especially during WWI and WWII and as a notable site of employment heritage. The buildings described above are of architectural interest, especially the Offices, the Laboratory and Odeon Buildings, being substantially intact and evocative surviving examples of an engineering foundry that was of national and strategic importance. This suite of buildings is also notable for quality of materials and décor, given their construction date when so little was being built.”

The land sale means there are now five major redevelopment sites on the Charlton riverside, mostly adjacent to one another, and all at various stages in the planning process.

The other four schemes, from west to east, are:

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Free summer holiday meals for children at The Valley

Darryl Chamberlain
The Valley
Free meals will served at The Valley on Tuesday and Thursday evenings this month

Greenwich Council’s Holiday Meals scheme, which provides hot food for children and young people during school holidays, is opening up at The Valley on Tuesday and Thursday evenings until the end of the month.

The scheme enables children to get healthy meals for free and provides families with support outside term time. It is run by Greenwich Co-Operative Development Agency in association with the leisure provider GLL and the Charlton Athletic Community Trust.

Food will be served from a mobile kitchen at Valley Central, the youth hub next to the club shop on Harvey Gardens, on Tuesdays from 7.30pm to 8.30pm and Thursdays from 6.30pm to 7.30pm until 30 August.

The scheme also operates at other locations within Greenwich borough, including the Woolwich Adventure Playground and the Clockhouse Community Centre on the Woolwich Dockyard estate. See the Greenwich Council website for more details.

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Developer plans Domino’s Pizza and flats for Charlton’s derelict Victoria pub

Darryl Chamberlain
How developers say the Victoria would look. Not sure what that car is doing, mind

A Gillingham-based developer wants to convert the long-derelict Victoria pub on Woolwich Road into a Domino’s Pizza outlet and four flats, according to documents released by Greenwich Council this week.

Residents can have their say between now and 28 August on the proposals, which would retain the locally-listed building – notorious for its sloping floor but unused for over 20 years and damaged by fires, most recently in May – and build above and behind it to create a two-storey apartment block.

What’s there now: After May 2019’s fire

A previous application, in 2016, to demolish the building for flats was refused, while this application follows a withdrawn plan to build two large student flats behind the pub, which the council objected to on the grounds that student accommodation did not fit into the Charlton Riverside redevelopment programme.

Of converting the pub to a Domino’s pizza outlet, the developer says: “The ‘A5’ use would be a Domino’s pizza outlet. They deliver. Even in a Town Centre context 95% of orders are delivered. In a location such as this it would be a lot higher. The layout allows for moped or scooter parking. Staff would be encouraged to use the scooters or cycles to access work from home.”

Side view. Space for a mural on the blank wall, perhaps?

Some things that leap out at us.

  • Firstly, there have been six months of to-ing and fro-ing with council planners before this has emerged, so presumably they are broadly happy with it.
  • Secondly, that blank wall! Surely we can get a mural out of this. Get your thinking caps on, readers.
  • Thirdly, it doesn’t appear anyone has properly surveyed the inside of the pub, even though it is easy to get into – it is a favourite of our pal Paul Talling of Derelict London. Hopefully this isn’t a precursor of “oh no, it’s actually in a terrible state and we’ll have to knock it down anyway!”
Victoria pub interior
Inside the Victoria after the May 2019 fire. Sensitive readers: don’t look left

We took some photos of the pub last summer, a some months before the most recent fire.

The full set of planning documents is on the Greenwich Council planning website (or enter reference 19/734/F here), where you can also leave comments about the proposal.

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How would you spend £30,000 on improving Charlton station? Tell Thameslink quickly

Darryl Chamberlain1 Comment

Thameslink class 700 trains
Thameslink is spending money to help passengers at local stations

£30,000 is on offer to help passengers at Charlton station – but you’ll need to tell Thameslink by Wednesday how you’d like it spent.

As part of its apology for the botched introduction of May 2018’s timetable – which saw a chunk of Charlton’s services transferred to Thameslink, and then regularly cancelled, Thameslink has been told to set up a Passenger Benefit Fund worth £15 million to create improvements at stations where its services call.

As Charlton lost a chunk of its weekend services for a year, and even many of its weekday services for some months, the station has been allocated £30,000 from this fund. (Stations along the line are getting a share of the money, with Westcombe Park and Maze Hill getting £50,000 – see here for a list of who gets what.)

However, it’s been rather shy on telling SE Londoners about this – so you’ve only got until Wednesday to submit your suggestions. With no active group representing Charlton station users at present, you’ve got a free hit here – so send in your ideas!

Perhaps you think there should be more for Charlton Community Gardens to build upon their station garden on the north side of the station – some planters on the platforms? Maybe there could be something to improve safety and security at the rather grim southern entrance to the station. A new map of the area around the station that doesn’t show the area around Westcombe Park instead? History boards like the ones at Hither Green? Maybe Lionel Stanhope, the man behind the station murals at Hither Green, Lee and Catford, can be commissioned to work his magic on the bridge at Charlton Church Lane?

Or maybe just a water fountain on the platforms, to match the one bus passengers are getting on their side of the station.

Whatever you think – find out more about the fund, and tell Thameslink your ideas by Wednesday. Hurry!

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Team100 Charlton needs you: Get active and help your neighbours

Darryl Chamberlain
Team100 volunteers in the Cherry Orchard Estate

Want to get out and about and volunteer in your local community? Team100 Charlton helps local people in SE7 take part in healthy activities to benefit their neighbours. JAKE TULLETT explains more…

Team100 Charlton is a community-led volunteering based in Charlton, Greenwich and is designed to get more residents volunteering in community sport and physical activity. The project is working with several local partners to create new, accessible and flexible opportunities to encourage a new group of residents to make a difference in and around Charlton.

Charlton is home to an amazingly diverse offer of cycling, walking and sporting opportunities for young people that all need volunteer backing.

Greenwich BMX, based in Hornfair Park, need local people to support with coaching, equipment maintenance, marketing, admin and events.

Women on Wheels, also based in Hornfair Park, is a group of like-minded women who want to build up their cycling skills. Support needed to market the session and generally assist. Why not volunteer whilst you ride?

Travel Buddies – Working in partnership with Greenwich Parent Voice, we are looking for residents to become Travel Buddies and support young disabled people walk or cycle to school. Travel Buddies will be paired with a young person based on location, making it as easy as possible to have a massive impact on a young person’s life, on the way to work! All required training funded by Team100 Charlton.

Healthy Walks – Get local people active by joining Charlton Athletic Community Trust‘s healthy walks scheme, becoming a walk leader. You will meet lots of new people and even get active yourself! Based at Charlton House.

Team100 Charlton volunteers help out at the Hornfair Park BMX track

#ActiveCharlton – Once a year, we work with Charlton Manor, Cherry Orchard, Windrush Charlton and Charlton Triangle Homes to put on a week-long calendar of activity for children. In 2019, we held walking buses, fun-runs, closed roads outside of school, did yoga and held our very own Bike Bus! All the activities were supported by our amazing Team100 Charlton volunteers.

Team100 Charlton volunteers receive a personal training journey, where we support you to gain qualifications, take part in workshops and all vetting is also funded.

If you are interested in joining Team100 Charlton, please email team100[at]accesssport.co.uk or check us out on Facebook at Team100 Charlton.

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Late swimming at Charlton Lido for the heatwave

Darryl Chamberlain
Charlton Lido
Swim until 9pm this week

You may have noticed that it’s a little bit warm outside. Today, tomorrow and Thursday, Charlton Lido will be open until 9pm each evening to allow swimmers to cool off for longer during the hot spell. Or you could beat the crowds and go for an early-doors dip at 6.30am.

Whichever you prefer, you can book your swimming time on the GLL website.

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