The Charlton Champion

Coronavirus in Charlton: Log on for Big Red Bus Club’s online storytelling sessions

March 19, 2020June 19, 2023Darryl Chamberlain

The Big Red Bus Club next to Charlton Park has had to close its doors because of the Covid-19 outbreak – ending its stay-and-play sessions for under-fives.

But yesterday it began storytelling sessions online, so you can keep the little ones entertained.

“Join the Big Red Bus team online at 1.30pm every week day for songs & stories and to share our best stay at home activities, as we experiment with going online.

“Our first story Peace at Last, read by Annie, follows poor old Daddy Bear and his nocturnal adventure trying to get some sleep in the noisest house in the world!”

Charlton’s flat-dwellers might be able to identify with that.

Daddy Bear’s adventures were yesterday’s story, so there’ll be something new today – head over to The Big Red Bus Club website to find out how to take part.

If you’re doing something special to help local communities get through the Covid-19 crisis, drop us an email and we’ll try to feature it on the site.

Coronavirus in Charlton: What are the churches doing?

March 19, 2020June 19, 2023Darryl Chamberlain

St Luke with Holy Trinity, Charlton — St Luke with Holy Trinity has had to stop regular services

The coronavirus pandemic means local churches have had to close their doors. The Rector of Charlton, REVD LIZ NEWMAN, updates us on what is happening at Charlton’s two Church of England churches, St Luke’s and St Thomas’s.

As the challenge of the coronavirus grips the world, and we are all being asked to rethink our lives, the Church needs to find new ways of doing what it’s always been called to do – to love and to serve.

Sadly, our public worship will have to stop until further notice. Our usual pattern of Sunday services and other gatherings must be put on hold. But this does not mean that we have shut up shop. Far from it.

Over the coming days we’ll be putting into place a plan to open our churches at set times for private prayer or contemplation.

We’ll be offering pastoral and spiritual support to anyone in Charlton who might need it in these painful times, through different channels.

We’ll be doing all we can to support the wonderful community efforts springing up all around us to give practical help to people who are self- isolating or remaining indoors.

We’ll be praying for all those who ask for our prayers, for our community, our government and nation, the world and especially for those who work in our health and emergency services. And we’ll be finding ways in which those who want to can worship together while remaining physically apart.

Please send us a message via our website www.charlton.church if there is anything your parish churches can do for you. It will be our privilege to serve.

If you’re doing something special to help local communities get through the Covid-19 crisis, drop us a line and we’ll try to feature it on the site.

Coronavirus in Charlton: Please tell us what you are doing to help your neighbours

March 15, 2020June 19, 2023Darryl Chamberlain10 Comments

The spread of the coronavirus means this is starting to become a worrying time for everybody. We want to know what you are doing to help your neighbours.

We know there are people preparing to help their neighbours – setting up informal groups to pick up essentials and and run errands.

Nearly half of over-75s aren’t online at all. Even a third of 65 to 74-year-olds do not use the internet, according to Ofcom. So local networks have a big role to play.

You may be setting something up already – maybe on Facebook or NextDoor. But not all of your neighbours will be on those groups – especially as social media’s not a fun place to be at present. You could be missing out on people who could help out.

So if you know of or are setting up a group in Charlton, or that covers Charlton, please leave a comment below with contact details, and they’ll be added to this story. Or feel free to email us. Hopefully we can get you some more volunteers.

Groups/ people trying to co-ordinate volunteers:

Greenwich borough-wide: Greenwich Council has started taking details of volunteers

Greenwich borough-wide: A mutual aid group has been started on Facebook, with links to smaller groups in different areas.

Charlton Central Residents Association: (Delafield Road, Inverine Road, Swallowfield Road, Priolo Road, Wellington Gardens, Elliscombe Road, Priolo Road, Fossdene Road, Calydon Road, Sundorne Road, Frank Burton Close, Gollogoly Terrace) WhatsApp group

Valley Hill Hub (Charlton Lane, Thorntree Road, Pound Park Road, Wolfe Crescent) see its Facebook group for more

Charlton Parkside Community Hub (Flamsteed Road, Heathwood Gardens, Kinveachy Gardens, Little Heath, McCall Crescent, Maryon Road, Park Drive and Woodland Terrace) includes street-specific WhatsApp groups – see its Facebook group for more

Blackheath Standard: WhatsApp group

Woolwich: WhatsApp group

If you’re able to do something as an individual, these Viral Kindness postcards from Becky Wass could be a good way to start.

If you can get a group going, please let us know and we’ll spread the word. Thank you.

White Swan: We’re committed to reopening Charlton Village pub, freeholder says

March 11, 2020June 19, 2023Darryl Chamberlain

The pub has been stripped of furniture and fittings

The property company that owns the White Swan pub in Charlton Village says it is committed to reopening the venue, which closed suddenly on Monday four years after being taken over by the landlord of the Pelton Arms in Greenwich.

Mendoza Limited, which bought the building in 2015, said it only learned about the pub’s closure yesterday. “The tenant was no longer responding to my clients’ agents’ requests for rental payments,” Hussein Aziz, of Glasshouse Management, representing Mendoza, told The Charlton Champion.

The company has put in several applications to develop land at the rear of the pub’s beer garden, the latest of which has yet to be determined by Greenwich Council. But the company insists it is committed to finding a new tenant to run both the pub and the beer garden.

“Mendoza is now going to commence the marketing of the premises as a public house in the name of retaining a pub at this address – all being well a more food-led public house, which is more suited to the area,” Aziz said.

“It will go about refurbishing and securing the premises first. To reconfirm for you and your readers – my client would like to rent the pub and the beer garden and find the correct tenants to make this into a lasting hub for the area.”

News of the pub’s closure was greeted with widespread dismay yesterday. It had become a favourite for Charlton Athletic fans, and the news came on top of the unravelling of the club’s recent takeover by East Street Investments.

The Charlton Athletic Museum confirmed last night that Addicks memorabilia that it had loaned to the Swan was safe after the pub’s fixtures and furniture had been stripped.

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Charlton’s White Swan pub closes down four years after rescue

March 10, 2020June 19, 2023Darryl Chamberlain

Last orders: The White Swan on Tuesday lunchtime

The White Swan pub has closed down suddenly, four-and-a-half years after it was taken over by the owner of Greenwich’s Pelton Arms.

One of two pubs in Charlton Village, the Swan’s future was threatened in 2015 after a property developer, Mendoza, bought the building from Punch Taverns for £900,000.

But landlord Geoff Keen took the closed pub on and re-opened it as a sister venue to the Pelton Arms, bringing live music, beer festivals and quiz nights to the once down-at-heel boozer.

However, the pub was closed on Monday and Tuesday night’s quiz has also been/ was also cancelled. The Charlton Champion understands the business has long struggled with the high rents charged by Mendoza, which has put in several planning applications to develop land behind the pub’s beer garden.

The pub had advertised a full programme of gigs and events for this month and next, but the bar had been stripped of much of its furniture on Tuesday afternoon. Nobody was answering the phone at the Swan, but the Pelton Arms confirmed its sister pub had closed down.

The stage area had also had furniture removed

While the Swan had become a well-regarded local pub – it regularly featured in the Deserter.co.uk World Cup of Pubs contest and staged events for the Charlton & Woolwich Free Film Festival – it had struggled to attract loyal custom away from gigs, quiz nights and Charlton match days, with its food and ale varying in quality over the years. However, it had been thought to have improved in recent months.

It offered Charlton season-ticket holders a discount on beer and had become a post-match favourite, while it also provided a home for Addicks memorabilia from the Charlton Athletic Museum. Today’s news will come as a further blow to Addicks fans on top of the club’s new management imploding last night amid a public row.

The news will also deepen fears for the future of Charlton Village, with the Swan adding to a lengthening list of closed-down businesses in an increasing tatty parade. There is no formal plan to turn around the village’s fortunes. The pub had been made an asset of community value after an application by The Charlton Society, but that designation has been allowed to lapse.

A closed-down pub will also make Mendoza’s redevelopment plans for the rear of the pub more viable. Its most recent planning application, to build a house behind the beer garden, featured plans to drive an access road through the side of the beer garden. Unlike its other applications, council officers have not thrown this one out and the plans are still awaiting a decision.

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Slow down: 20mph speed limit on way for Charlton Village

March 8, 2020June 19, 2023Darryl Chamberlain

Charlton Village has been blighted by speeding drivers for decades

Charlton Village is to get a 20 mph speed restriction under a new road safety scheme from Greenwich Council.

The Village has been blighted by speeding traffic for many years, with one driver recently managing to take out part of one of the raised flower beds.

Now there will be a 20mph restriction between the Springfield Estate and the junction with Fairfield Grove. Speed limits on the stretches of road towards Woolwich and Blackheath will remain unchanged – including the stretch of Hillreach where three teenagers died in a collision with an out-of-service bus in 2008.

Speed tables will also be constructed in Charlton Road, The Village and Charlton Church Lane, while there will be parking restrictions at the junctions of Victoria Way and Eastcombe Avenue with Charlton Road.

“Continuous footways” will be introduced along Charlton Road in an attempt to nudge people into driving more considerately in and out of Invicta Road, Sherington Road, Wyndcliff Road, Couthurst Road, Hassendean Road, Bramhope Lane, Mascalls Road, Cherry Orchard and Victoria Way.

Other south London boroughs, including Lewisham and Southwark, have introduced blanket 20mph zones across their areas, using these as a basis to target particular areas where speeding traffic is a problem, but Greenwich has been reluctant to follow suit in this approach.

No details have been placed online, but further details can be obtained from Greenwich Council’s traffic team at traffic.team[at]royalgreenwich.gov.uk quoting reference 02-20-CRC. Objections can be sent to the same address by 18 March.

A speed table will be placed here on Charlton Road

The 20mph traffic restriction was touched upon in a wide-ranging discussion about transport and infrastructure in the Charlton area held by a council scrutiny panel last month, which you can watch below. It is chaired by Charlton councillor Gary Parker and features his ward colleague Linda Perks, as well as the senior council officer in charge of transport, Graham Nash, who also presented a report to the panel.

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Maryon Wilson animal keeper’s house could become council home

March 4, 2020June 19, 2023Darryl Chamberlain

The house is awaiting a decision on its future

A house which used to be used by Maryon Wilson Park’s animal keeper is lying empty while Greenwich Council works out if it can use it as council housing, The Charlton Champion can reveal.

The house at 20 Thorntree Road, next to Maryon Park, used to be the home of the stocksman at Maryon Wilson animal park and was managed by the council’s parks department. When he retired, the parks department employed a property guardian company to put a short-term tenant in there.

However, the council has now taken on the site with an eye to turning it into council housing after the short-term tenant was evicted for rent arrears. The current animal keeper now lives some miles away from the park.

The property has been subjected to flytipping while its future is being decided. A legal agreement signed in 1922 – when the Maryon-Wilson family gave the land to the old London County Council – could get in the way.

An council spokesperson told The Charlton Champion: The situation with the covenant is currently unclear as the two paragraphs in the title deed appear to contradict one another with regards to restrictions on developing the land.

“We therefore need to refer back to the original 1922 deed of covenant to establish what was agreed; our legal team are working on this.”

She added: “A decision is expected in the coming weeks, depending on what is discovered with regards to the covenant.

“It is being discussed whether a feasibility study will be carried out to determine if the capital expenditure required to bring the property up to the Greenwich Homes Standard could incorporate measures that will make the house very-low or, even, zero carbon.”

The council recently launched its biggest home-building programme since the 1980s, and is aiming for its new homes to use as little energy as possible. A small number of new homes were recently unveiled off Harvey Gardens.

Last week, councillors approved cost-cutting plans that would mean other members of parks staff feeding Maryon Wilson Park’s animals at evenings and weekends. Gates to parks will also now be left unlocked at night to save money.