All Charlton residents and friends are warmly welcome to the Annual Meeting of The Charlton Society on Saturday 20 October in Charlton House at 2.30pm. You do not need to be a member, though be great if you could join.
We are very pleased to welcome our MP Nick Raynsford and the Deputy Mayor of Royal Greenwich, Cllr. Angela Cornforth and many local councillors.
But we can also celebrate a good year for Charlton, not just the football club being promoted, but the adoption of the Charlton Riverside Masterplan, a commitment to downgrade Woolwich Road, the 200th anniversary of PM Spencer Perceval’s assassination, the reopening of a heated Charlton Lido, the new Maryon Wilson Animal Centre Trust and the Charlton Village Conservation Area review and Charlton House Trust on the near horizon.
Altogether, there is so much happening in Charlton and so much potential. And some great coming together across Charlton whether for our parks and green spaces, heritage buildings, places of worship, the station and for particular roads and neighbourhoods.
Be great to see you on 20th and so stop for refreshments afterwards.
Greenwich Council is currently consulting on plans to make some changes to part of the Charlton stretch of Woolwich Road – between Felltram Way and Charlton Church Lane – following a number of accidents over the years.
They also take into account changes that’ll need to be made for the proposed new Sainsbury’s/M&S store is built on the corner of Gallions Road.
Well, I say it’s consulting, but there’s nothing on its website and there’s no mention of this in Greenwich Time. Indeed, only a handful of households, either on or immediately adjacent to Woolwich Road, have been invited to take part.
However, the Charlton Champion has been passed the documents, so you too can see what’s planned and respond. See if you can spot the glaring error in one of them.
The council’s desire to involve as few people as possible in its decisions aside, what’s planned includes:
– A central refuge on the Victoria Way zebra crossing
– Installing a pedestrian refuge near to Ramac Way
– Widening the markings in the middle of the road to separate traffic flows
– Renewing anti-skid surfaces
– Moving the zebra crossing and bus stop at Victoria Way (part of the Sainsbury’s scheme)
Of course, the biggest thing that could be done on that stretch of road would be to reduce the amount of traffic, particularly HGVs, on the Woolwich Road. This would require Woolwich-bound traffic at the Blackwall Tunnel to be funnelled towards Bugsby’s Way, rather than the A206 as now. Unfortunately, there’s nothing in that document proposing this quick win, neither is there a proposal to deal with the “dance of death” at the foot of Charlton Church Lane.
But there’s nothing stopping you suggesting those, or anything else. As ever with these consultations, there isn’t long to respond, and it’s by post only, to get to the council by 5 October – that’s a week on Friday. Tell ’em we sent you.
The lights were burning into the night yesterday as Charlton Lido prepared for its reopening. After two years of closure, the lido will be back open for business at 9.30am today for the summer, ahead of further work on refurbishing the pool which will begin in the autumn.
Two gripes – inconveniently, GLL has made it cheaper to buy tickets in advance online rather than just turning up with cash, a slightly strange way of operating a community facility surrounded by thousands of potential visitors in walking distance.
The opening hours seem a little restrictive, too – no chance of a pre-work dip, as the pool will open at 9.30am on weekdays and 8.30am at weekends. If GLL wants to establish Charlton Lido alongside the likes of the pool at Brockwell Park, it’s going to have to open earlier than that.
But at least the pool is back. If you get a chance to visit, please let us know how the water was for you.
Sixty years ago today, in the early hours of the morning, London’s last tram pulled into New Cross depot from Woolwich. Once a much-loved part of the capital’s transport system, the rattly old trams were deemed uneconomic to replace after the Second World War, and were replaced with buses. So while today in 1952 also saw the end of tram route 40 along the Woolwich Road, yesterday saw the 60th birthday of the 177 bus route, which, until the 1980s, used to follow the old tram route to the City.
Little bits of tram infrastructure survive here and there – New Cross depot remains as a bus garage, the power station in Greenwich originally served the trams, there’s the odd manhole cover around, and there was an old electrical cabinet next to the Blackwall Tunnel’s old tram terminal until a few years ago. Most famously, the old tram subway survives under the Kingsway, with part of it kept in use as the Strand Underpass.
But there’s two sites in Charlton that are key to London tram history. The first is the repair depot, which was, naturally, in Felltram Way, right at the western edge of SE7. Opened in the days of horse trams, the Central Repair Depot served all the capital’s fleet and remained open until the end. Later, it became a factory making Airfix models. Before it was demolished in the early 1990s – landing the next door Asda with a rat problem for a while – the tram tracks and cobbles were still there.
Here’s the site in 1991…
Here’s what it looks like now.
There’s one other, more notorious site – but it could be one where the tram tracks live on. The old trams were scrapped at a yard in Penhall Road, close to where the Thames Barrier is now. A couple of years ago, Dutch tram enthusiast Arie den Dulk sent me some pictures of Penhall Road in 1987. (He also sent me the shots of Felltram Way in 1991, for which I’m also very grateful.) He’d been hunting around, and found the old tram tracks…
Are they still there now? It’s hard to tell. While part of Penhall Road was swallowed up when Woolwich Road was turned into a dual carriageway, the building that sat on the site remains. Until fairly recently, it was the first home of the Meantime Brewery. But the yard was never used, and it now remains overgrown and fenced off. There’s nothing to see but foilage.
There’s long-term plans to see all this land developed as housing, but for now the secrets of Charlton’s role in London transport history may well remain buried beneath foilage next to an empty warehouse. When the bulldozers return, if there’s something to left to preserve, hopefully it can be kept for posterity.
It launched last month, and if you fancy a plot there – get in touch with the Friends of Maryon and Maryon Wilson Parks, or visit the site on Saturday 7 July at 12 noon (enter the park by the park keepers’ lodge, keep left by the flower beds and the site is sharp left at the end of the long fence).
The CCRA helped avert a cut in Charlton's Olympic train service
Charlton Rail Users Group co-convenor David Gardner has some words for you:
Come to the Charlton Rail Users’ Group Open Forum with Southeastern, Network Rail and Greenwich Council next Tuesday 3 July at Charlton Liberal Club, 59 Charlton Church Lane SE7 at 7pm for 7.30 pm.
We have begun to make a big impact but much remains to be done. Come to have your say on a new entrance, a station community garden, what train service we want from the next franchise and getting improved bus links.
And anything else you want to raise, including trains stooping up the platform.
Hope to see you there. It’s our station and rail service. Together, we can make our voice heard.
Only a month to go until the Olympic Games land on our doorstep – here’s a few things you should know about trying to get around the area…
1) Kidbrooke with Hornfair councillor Hayley Fletcher has been in touch to say…
On Monday 25th, works will begin on Charlton Park Lane to remove the road humps in preparation for July 25 when the Olympic Route Network (ORN) gets up and running. Works will be done in off peak time and should be completed by the following Saturday.
As an interim measure to stop speeding and calm traffic in the area, some signs displaying the 30mph limit will be put up. The humps will be replaced after the Paralympics. This is not a permanent measure.
There should be further works in the next couple of weeks in the area and I will update you as soon as I know any further details.
Thanks to Hayley for that, and she’s happy for people to email her with questions. I wonder how many local motorists will wish the humps’ removal were permanent?
2) If you haven’t already, stick your postcode into www.2012gamesparkingpermits.com – if you’re in SE7, you’ll need a parking permit if you don’t have one already, and existing parking zones will be enforced into the evenings and weekends (and extended into streets where permits aren’t needed). More details here.
There are also Get Ahead of the Games roadshows over the next couple of weeks. Stops include: Sat 30 June, General Gordon Square, Woolwich (10am-6pm); Sun 1 July, Blackheath Farmers’ Market (in station car park – 10am-2pm); Sun 8 July, Cutty Sark Gardens, Greenwich (10am-4pm); Thurs 12 July, Cutty Sark DLR station, Greenwich (12noon-7pm). More details here, click on “transport changes in London boroughs”.
The Charlton Champion 