Author: Darryl Chamberlain

Help discover the history of the UK’s street murals at Charlton House

Darryl Chamberlain
Floyd Road mural
The Floyd Road mural was completed in 1976

You’re probably familiar with the work of Greenwich Mural Workshop – even if you’ve never heard of it before. It’s responsible for murals and mosaics across London, including the giant mural on Floyd Road, by The Valley, completed in 1976.

Now it is running a year-long National Lottery-backed project, For Walls With Tongues, to record the history of the artists who created the UK’s mural movement from the 1960s. As part of this, it’s looking for people to interview artists as part of an oral history project. These interviews will be archived by the British Library and on a dedicated website.

Project leader Carol Kenna says: “Our project aims to develop an art history to intrigue people who have not encountered mural painting before and provide a resource for students, researchers, critics, historians and the general public. For Walls With Tongues will ensure that the mural movement will be recognised as an important aspect of 20th century art history.”

If you want to develop your interview skills, For Walls With Tongues is hosting a one-day professional interviewing course at Charlton House on Friday 20 October. It’ll be led by Rib Davis, a specialist oral history tutor and author and is aimed at anyone interested in developing interview skills to a standard required by the British Library.

Participants can then become volunteer interviewers on the For Walls With Tongues project if they want to, although the course is open to all who want to sharpen their interview skills.

There’ll also be a seminar at Whitechapel Art Gallery on Wednesday 1 November where artists will discuss their work.

Places are limited, so if you want to take part in the interviewing course or attend the seminar, get in touch with Carol Kenna via Greenwich Mural Workshop.

Men in Sheds and Seniors Drop-in Cafe at Mycenae House

Darryl Chamberlain

Men in Sheds poster

Not been to Mycenae House recently? You should take a look – Greenwich borough’s most successful community centre has a wide range of events, from concerts to comedy clubs and scientific talks. And if you’re a man over 50, it can help you sharpen your woodworking skills (or gain some).

Age UK Bromley and Greenwich’s Men In Sheds has been running since 2010, putting the skills of older men to work for community projects in their local areas. If you’re used to working and you’ve ever found yourself not working, you’ll know it can be frustrating and depressing, to say the least. If you’ve retired and find yourself stuck at home all day, when you know you’ve still got lots in you to give, it can’t be good for you – or anyone who might also stuck at home with you.

Over the next couple of Wednesdays (4 and 11 October), Men In Sheds will have a “mobile shed” at Mycenae House between 12noon and 3pm. You don’t need to be an expert, you just need to have an interest. It’s better than watching Countdown…

Mycenae House is also running a weekly drop-in cafe for seniors each Thursday from 1-4pm – it’s open to all the family, and provides a welcoming and friendly environment to meet new people and get advice. Tea and cake are just £1.

The River Ale House: Have you been to Charlton’s new local micropub yet?

Darryl Chamberlain

The River Ale House

Okay, it’s actually in Greenwich, but we couldn’t resist giving a mention to The River Ale House, which opened a couple of weeks ago just down the Woolwich Road.

It’s in the former Under Cover Experience lingerie shop – the bottom fell out of the knickers market, and owner Trevor thought he’d try his hand at beer instead.

So far, The River Ale House is doing a good trade in the evenings – providing somewhere to go in a stretch of Woolwich Road that’s long lacked a decent pub.

There’s a rotating range of ales on, plus ciders, wines and spirits. It’s also very dog-friendly.

The River Ale House

It’s the eighth micropub to open in south-east London over the past few years, joining The Long Pond in Eltham, Door Hinge in Welling, Hopper’s Hut and Hackney Carriage in Sidcup, Broken Drum in Blacken, Penny Farthing in Crayford and One Inn The Wood in Petts Wood. Another one, The Kentish Belle, is due to open in Bexleyheath later this year.

If the River Ale House gives you a taste for the smaller boozer, here’s a micropub crawl of south-east London that’s been tried and tested by the Charlton Champion team.

The River Ale House is at 131 Woolwich Road SE10 0RJ and is open 12noon to 11pm every day. You can find out more on Twitter and Facebook.

Enjoy an Urban Harvest at Maryon Park Community Garden

Darryl Chamberlain

Maryon Park Community Garden

A message from Maryon Park Community Garden…

Community food growing gardens across the capital will be open throughout Saturday 16 September 2017, to welcome in visitors and volunteers to take part in free garden activities and workshops.

Get a taste of London’s edible gardens by dropping in to Maryon Park Community Garden in Charlton, one of Capital Growth’s flagship gardens, from 10.00 am to 4.00 pm. Capital Growth is London’s largest food growing network, with over 2,000 gardens throughout the city.

At the Maryon Park Community Organic Food Growing Garden’s Urban Harvest, activities include:

• Tours of the Garden and Forest School.
• Display of photos from the 1966 cult film ‘Blow Up’ that was shot in Maryon Park.
• Activities for children: Making lavender bags and bird feeders.
• Pizza Oven fired up from 12 noon, bring your own dough and toppings
• Refreshments: Organic teas & coffee, cake and herb teas
• Fundraising activities: Jam and Plant, Craft Sale

In the Community Garden Forest School area there will be a free Family Magic Show
by PJ the Magical Clown at 12 noon and Outdoor Art Workshops from 1pm.

Enter Maryon Park from the main entrance in Maryon Road, follow the path past the park lodge and find the Community Garden at the end of the park perimeter fence. Look out for the bunting.

New development by Thames Barrier: Public exhibition at The Valley

Darryl Chamberlain

Riverside development flyer

Developers behind plans for up to 500 new homes by the Thames Barrier at Charlton will be showing off their proposals at two public consultation events.

Komoto Group wants to build “affordable and family housing alongside new business, retail and community space” at Herringham Road, on land which is currently home to the Raceway go-kart track, Bunker 51 laser-tag centre, a church, and other firms. Komoto also promises “significant public realm improvement”.

Tall Ships, April 2017
Crowds watching April’s Tall Ships Regatta from in front of the development site

Earlier this year the firm submitted early proposals for a 25-storey tower and 570 homes – the new Charlton Riverside Masterplan, which was confirmed in the summer, envisages mostly low to medium-rise developments of up to 10 storeys, except where there is “adequate public transport”.

The consultation events are in the Keith Peacock Suite at The Valley on Thursday 14 September (4pm-8pm) and Saturday 16 September (10am-2pm) – enter through the main reception off Floyd Road.

For more information, call the project team on 020 3176 4161, or email info[at]herringhamroad.co.uk. A website has now been set up: herringhamroad.co.uk.

In December 2016, another developer, Rockwell, submitted plans to build towers of up to 28 storeys off Anchor and Hope Lane. No decision has yet been made on this scheme.

Anti-cold calling campaign gets council ward budget funding

Darryl Chamberlain
Inverine Road
Inverine Road is one of the streets covered by the scheme

A Charlton residents’ group is to launch an anti-cold calling campaign in its area after getting £740 from Greenwich Council’s ward budget scheme.

The Charlton Central Neighbourhood Watch plans to turn its area – 10 streets between Victoria Way and Charlton Church Lane, south of Charlton station – into a “no cold caller/rogue trader zone”, raising awareness among the 800 households who live in those roads.

“Every household will receive a door sticker to ward off unwelcome callers and signage will be put in the area to promote the campaign and to deter cold caller and rogue traders from operating in the area,” the council document outlining the scheme says.

Cold callers and scammers have long been a problem across the Charlton area. One Charlton Champion reader told us she was approached on her doorstep last week by a man falsely implying he was from consumer journalist Martin Lewis’s MoneySavingExpert.com – a website which never employs people to go door-knocking.

Other irritants have included charity cold callers, burglar alarm salespeople and scammers with sob stories about getting locked out of their homes.

You can download your own signs telling cold callers to clear off and get useful tips about dealing with all kinds of unsolicited sales calls at MoneySavingExpert.com.

The money for the campaign comes from the Charlton ward budget fund – get in touch with local councillors if you have an idea for a community scheme. (If you don’t know which ward you are in, check on the council website.)

The Charlton Society has also been given money from the fund – £1,620 to support its events programme. The society says it is hoping to attract more families to events and is “considering events which could increase the range of age within the membership”.

The Charlton Champion joins the Independent Community News Network

Darryl Chamberlain

ICNN logo

We’re proud to announce that The Charlton Champion has joined the new Independent Community News Network, which represents community news operators across the UK.

The Charlton Champion is one of over 400 community news operations in the UK, which range from printed newspapers to small-scale websites like this one. The ICNN, which is based at Cardiff University, aims to champion and support journalism at the local and hyperlocal level, where news coverage is most at risk of dying out.

This website first appeared nearly seven years ago. Since then, we’ve seen deep cuts and a lack of investment cause serious harm to traditional local news coverage not just in Charlton, but across Greenwich borough and south-east London in general.
It’s a story that’s being repeated across the country as news organisations grapple with a bust business model – or simply keep squeezing titles for profit.

Our membership of ICNN gives us access to the expertise built up by Cardiff’s Centre for Community Journalism as well as the experiences of our fellow members. It also enables us to feed into their discussions about how the sector should grow.

The ICNN opened for business in July with just one member – West Leeds Dispatch. Now there are 30, including Love Wapping and Inside Croydon, two sites which have done brilliant work in informing readers and holding their local representatives to account, and the excellent Walthamstow-based Waltham Forest Echo.

Without exception, all members of ICNN are committed to working within and adhering strictly to the guidelines of the Editors’ Code of Practice.

We recently gave the site its first revamp since 2010 – it should now be a lot easier to read on mobiles and tablets (and see how many places in the header you can recognise!). But we’ll keep on doing what we’ve always done – bringing you updates from community groups across Charlton, and keeping a watch on how council and planning decisions will affect SE7. The site is run in our spare time so we aren’t able to cover everything, but we’ll give it a good go. Got a story? Get in touch.

(And we’ve a new email address – charltonchampion.se7[at]gmail.com.)

You can support The Charlton Champion by following us on Twitter and Facebook and sharing our stories with friends and neighbours. For those who want to back the site with something more tangible, we’re looking at options for how readers can do that and we’ll hopefully have something for you soon.

We’re also always on the lookout for new contributors – drop us a line if you fancy joining the team and writing something.

Or you can support us simply by keep on reading. Thank you for clicking on The Charlton Champion. We hope to keep on doing this for a good few years to come.