Margaret Marchant’s garden is among those on the trail
Got green fingers? This month you can have a nose around some of Charlton’s best-kept gardens and pick up some ideas for your own back yard – and it’s all for a good cause.
The Open Gardens Festival 2022 raises money for the Greenwich & Bexley Community Hospice by opening up gardens in Charlton, Blackheath, Greenwich, Eltham and Lee over two weekends – with the first gardens on show this weekend, 11-12 June.
In Charlton, there’s a particular cluster of gorgeous gardens around Heathwood Terrace and Kinveachy Gardens, while others are on show in Hasted Road, Charlton Road and Wyndcliff Road.
And there are plenty further afield too, including chances to visit the Gloucester Circus Gardens in west Greenwich and the almost-secret Westcombe Woodlands off Maze Hill.
One of the local gardens featured is pictured above – it belongs to Margaret Marchant, whose garden will be open this Sunday. Where is it? You’ll just have to find out…
Open Gardens Festival 2022 runs from 11-12 and 25-26 June – to visit one garden costs £5, a whole weekend costs £14, and £20 gets you access for both weekends.
The 53 service is due to be cut back to Elephant & Castle
Government cuts mean bus route 53 is set to be cut back again so it no longer runs beyond Elephant & Castle, Transport for London has announced today.
The one-time trunk route from Plumstead, Woolwich, Charlton, Blackheath, west Greenwich and Deptford is one of a number of victims of a swathe of cuts which are planned to help solve TfL’s cash crisis, which has been caused by the scrapping of government funding and the effects of the pandemic.
Some of the capital’s best-known routes – including the 11 through the City and West End, the 12 serving Peckham and the 24, London’s oldest unchanged service from Pimlico to Hampstead Heath – are due to be scrapped altogether while others are set to be shorted or changed.
Now TfL plans to swing the axe again so the service would only run from Plumstead bus garage to Elephant & Castle, meaning passengers would have to switch to route 453 to reach central London. TfL, which is chaired by the Labour mayor Sadiq Khan, says there is less demand for buses in the area north of Elephant & Castle and that only 3 per cent of passengers would be affected.
The service would run at least every 12 minutes, TfL says. The N53 night service to Whitehall is not included in the package of cuts.
The 53 ran as far as Whitehall until two years ago
TfL’s financial problems began under the mayoralty of Boris Johnson, when he allowed George Osborne – then the Conservative chancellor and more recently the editor of the Evening Standard – to scrap its annual government grant of about £600 million.
This meant that TfL – unlike transport operators in other major cities – was left reliant on passenger fares for about half of its income.
But Johnson’s financial model began to unravel at the end of the 2010s when passenger numbers went into decline, and collapsed altogether when the pandemic forced people off the network.
Since then TfL’s future has been in question, with the organisation reliant on a number of short-term bailouts and the government – which has a policy of “levelling up” regions outside London – insisting on deep cuts. If a new deal is not agreed by June 24 then TfL will run out of money altogether.
Another service serving Greenwich borough, the 47 between Bellingham and Shoreditch, which runs along Creek Road in Deptford, would no longer run north of London Bridge under the proposals unveiled today.
Other cuts affecting SE London complete withdrawal of the 12 between Oxford Circus and Dulwich, serving a heavily bus-dependent corridor through Walworth, Camberwell and Peckham. Another route in Peckham, the 78 between Nunhead and Shoreditch, would also be axed. Other services would be altered to plug the gaps.
Sixteen day routes and five night buses would be axed under the proposals – routes 4, 11, 12, 14, 16, 24, 31, 45, 72, 74, 78, 242, 259, 521, C3, D7, N11, N16, N31, N72, and N74.
A disused shop unit in Charlton Village could become a coffee shop – if a developer is as good as their word.
The former ironmongers at 7a The Village, which has a two-storey flat on top, has been closed for seven years, but a developer wants to build an extension so it can accommodate two flats, and divide the downstairs unit so it can incorporate a coffee shop.
A planning document submitted to Greenwich Council reads: “At ground floor, the shop front will be restored and refurbished, with provisions made for future use as a coffee shop or similar. The area has struggled to compete with larger centres such as Woolwich and Blackheath, as well as with out-of-town retail parks of Charlton Riverside.
“This is a factor that may have led to the closure of several shops in The Village in recent years, according to the Charlton Village Conservation Area Character Appraisal.
“We hope that by restoring the shop it will provide much needed footfall to the local high street. There is also strong demand for coffee shops in the area, according to a local estate agent. At ground floor, behind the shopfront will include two offices for use to carry out general administrative tasks, plus a training/presentation room.”
It adds: “[The development will] e of great benefit to The Village high street and the Charlton Village Conservation Area. Restoring the disused and vacant shopfront is critical to enhancing the relevance of the high street in Charlton Village, which is currently falling away to become instead a through road to Woolwich and Greenwich. This refurbishment alone won’t solve the issues facing The Village high street, but it is a positive step in the right direction.”
Platinum Jubilee events will take over Charlton Park for two days in June
The House and Garage Orchestra will headline Greenwich Council’s free Together 22 festival in Charlton Park, which will kick off the four-day Platinum Jubilee weekend.
The South London-based act, who specialise in classical reimaginings of house and garage favourites, will close the festival, which will run from noon to 6pm on Thursday 2 June.
Other acts on stage will include the indie band Two Weeks in Nashville, Columbian-Italian singer/songwriter Desta French, all-female bhangra collective Eternal Taal, Tyber and Pete from the Dualers and YolanDa’s Band Jam from CBeebies.
There will also be a marketplace with food, drink and crafts, a kids’ zone, community groups and sporting activities, while the festival will celebrate 50 years since the first Britain’s first Pride celebrations with a dedicated Pride50 tent.
Two Weeks in Nashville will spend one afternoon in Charlton Park
The park will host two days of jubilee celebrations, with Platinum Picnic in the Park following on Friday 3 June, with “activities reflecting royalty across the globe” between noon and 4pm.
Charlton parkrun will not take place on Saturday 4 June because the festival stages will still be in place.
Slightly earlier in the week, there will also be a jubilee celebration in Cherry Orchard Estate from noon to 4pm on Wednesday 1 June, with a kings and queens procession, teddy bears’ picnic, live music and tea and cake.
Beacons will be lit up across the country at 9.30pm on Thursday 2 June to mark the jubilee. One will be lit on Blackheath, with choirs and a bugler, while another will be lit at the same time in General Gordon Square in Woolwich.
The sale is part of a wider community day that will also feature the Charlton Society, Charlton Toy Library, Charlton Community Gardens, Blackheath Flower Club and the Friends of Greenwich Park, with a discovery trail and crafts for children.
Inside Charlton House there will also be a World War I-themed day as part of its Meet the Collection series of events.
Proceeds from the plant sale will go towards the walled garden and the society’s other work as well as the Greenwich & Bexley Cottage Hospice.
The event runs from 11am to 3pm this Sunday.
Meanwhile, this evening Charlton Community Gardens will be hosting its own plant sale in front gardens in Inverine Road, Elliscombe Road, Sandtoft Road and Wyndcliff Road. See its website for more details.
The fate of The White Swan in Charlton Village will be up for discussion at the Charlton Society‘s regular monthly meeting this Saturday, together with a number of issues about improving the area.
The Swan closed suddenly in March 2020, just before the first lockdown, after a lengthy battle to pay the rent demanded by the Isle of Man-based property developer Mendoza, which bought the freehold from Punch Taverns for £900,000 in 2015.
The society has added the restoration of the Swan as a priority item to its Save Our Village Action Plan, which it will be discussing on Saturday.
Most of the (many) other items in the plan are to do with the public realm around the village, although it also includes the 20mph zone which was implemented two years ago, along with “continuous pavements” that were described as an “accident waiting to happen” on this website in March.
The meeting will be held at Charlton House at 2.30pm this Saturday; there is an admission fee of £3 for non-members and £2 for members.
Instead of running from Lewisham to the Belvedere industrial area, it will now run from North Greenwich to a new housing development at Erith Quarry.
The change will mean more buses to North Greenwich, but route 472 is being reduced in frequency at the same time and rerouted so it runs from North Greenwich to Abbey Wood. Morning rush-hour buses from Charlton station have also been scrapped.
Route 129, which runs from North Greenwich station to the Cutty Sark, has been extended to Lewisham as a partial replacement for the 180 beyond Greenwich, but at a reduced frequency of every 12 minutes.
Whereas both the 177 and 180 provided 12 buses per hour between Woolwich Road and Greenwich town centre, only the 177, with six buses an hour, will cover this section now. In the evening, the combined service drops from nine buses per hour to five.
The change was announced five years ago – when it was still believed that Crossrail would open in 2018 – but hopes of a rethink were dashed when the new 180 route started appearing on bus stops and journey planners at the end of last month.
Back in 2017, TfL, which is chaired by London mayor Sadiq Khan, said: “The 177 has sufficient capacity for the level of demand on this corridor. We will continue to keep this under review.”
The Charlton Champion 