Our official opening is Friday 3rd September, when Dunkirk will be screening at St George’s Garrison Church on Woolwich Common. Master of ceremonies will be festival stalwart Steve Hunnisett, joined by fellow historian Clive Harris, who will give a short talk preceding the film.
I say “official” opening as the crew at Shrewsbury House, Shooters Hill have snuck in a double-bill on the same day! Youngsters can enjoy 1994 kids’ classic A Bugs Life from 4pm while bigger kids can re-live their own childhoods watching Liz Taylor in National Velvet (doors from 6.30pm).
Saturday 4th sees the festival staying in SE18 with a return to the big screen at General Gordon Square. Untouched by the memories of playing Rocky Horror Picture Show but with no sound to an audience of 100+ on our opening night back in 2016 (and let’s not talk about Sister Act), outdoor cinema aficionado Jo Brodie will be realising her long-held dream of screening the utterly brilliant Paddington 2 at 5pm.
As you can imagine, Covid still casts a shadow over the festival and there remain a few gaps in the schedule as we look to confirm various other events.
But definitely happening on Wednesday 8th at St Lukes’ Church, Charlton Village is Half of a Yellow Sun, the 2013 drama based on the award-winning novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandiwe Newton.
St Lukes’ is a new venue for the festival, and we welcome another new venue on Thursday 9th when Silent Running, a 1972 sci-fi epic with an environmental theme, will be screening at the Maryon Park Community Garden.
As well as a range of films, we at the Festival are always keen to showcase documentaries and this year we’re pleased to confirm two so far, with Crip Camp and Running for Good both showing at Charlton House on Friday 10th and Saturday 11th respectively.
Crip Camp is a 2020 documentary looking back at the fight for disability civil rights in the time of Woodstock, and the event will also stream online. Running for Good will be screened in the gardens of Charlton House and follows extreme marathon runner Fiona Oakes as she attempts to compete in “the toughest foot race on earth” the Marathon Des Sables (a mere 250km though the Sahara desert).
If you’ve never attended the festival before, all our events are absolutely free and availability is on a first-come-first-served basis. Many venues have refreshments which can be purchased, although at open venues you are welcome to bring your own.
And finally, as mentioned, we’ll be confirming further events right up until the last minute, and this year, more than ever, ALL events are subject to change, so please do keep a very close eye on our social media channels (and share them with your friends). You can find us on Facebook and Twitter.
A convenience store could be coming to the Fairview New Homes’ development on Victoria Way, replacing planned ground-floor office space.
Fairview gained permission for 330 homes on the old Thorn Lighting site in January 2018, despite 125 objections from residents and local councillors, with concerns raised by Transport for London and the Greater London Authority about the 144 car parking spaces included on the site. Fairview was accused of “bullying tactics” by the chair of one residents’ group. The first residents moved into Bowen Drive last year.
Now three floors of planned office space could be cut to two, with a planning application to change the ground floor of the development’s northeasternmost building – the one closest to the existing terrace at the foot of Victoria Way – to a convenience store.
“However a convenience shop operator has expressed interest in the ground floor (218sqm) of the commercial unit at the above site. This use would contribute towards local employment opportunities and create an active frontage to the site whilst retaining two floors of B1 office floor space above,” Fairview says in its application to Greenwich Council.
The convenience store operator is not named. The Co-op and, to a lesser extent, Sainsbury’s have taken spaces in new developments in the area in recent years.
“It is anticipated that the convenience store will be used by local people and that trips will occur mainly by sustainable modes,” Fairview says, which may come as a surprise to anyone who has seen the number of cars stopping outside local corner shops.
“It is anticipated that any associated delivery and servicing movements will be infrequent and undertaken using smaller vehicles, such as cars, small vans and LGVs.”
Charlton has long had historical links with Greenwich
This weekend is your last chance to make sure that Charlton continues to share an MP with Greenwich & Woolwich, as a consultation into new constituencies comes to an end.
The Greenwich & Woolwich constituency – currently represented by Labour’s Matt Pennycook – has so far come out of a boundary review largely unscathed.
But neighbouring Eltham is due to expand to take in Chislehurst, something which has caused disquiet among Labour activists in the seat, who fear this would mean curtains for its local MP, Clive Efford.
A handful of streets in the south of SE7 already come under the Eltham seat, and The Charlton Champion understands that party activists are lobbying the Boundary Commission to change its plans so the seat includes the Charlton ward too – bumping up the Labour vote while separating this area from its neighbours.
This latest review is the third attempt in a decade to redraw the parliamentary map to take into account changing populations. While past reviews tried to cut the number of MPs, this one keeps the figure at 650 – meaning London gains two new seats. In addition, most seats must now have between 69,724 and 77,062 electors – a significant change from more flexible rules in the past.
Under the plans, Eltham would lose the strongly Labour Shooters Hill ward but gain two Bromley wards – the marginal Mottingham and Chislehurst North, which has two Tory councillors; and the staunchly Conservative Chislehurst ward. The seat would be renamed Eltham & Chislehurst and have 74,179 electors.
Greenwich & Woolwich, however, shrinks to take into account the area’s growing population, losing Glyndon ward, leaving it with 69,824 electors – just 100 more than the minimum. Glyndon goes to Erith & Thamesmead along with Shooters Hill, uniting most of Plumstead under that seat.
Charlton has few links with Eltham and its high street
Past reviews would have Greenwich & Woolwich split up altogether – with one proposal suggesting an “Eltham & Charlton” seat, separating Charlton ward from its two larger neighbours altogether.
“It’s understandable that people in Eltham are deeply unhappy about the proposals, but keeping Greenwich, Charlton and Woolwich together is for the best, as is uniting Plumstead in Erith & Thamesmead,” one Labour activist told The Charlton Champion.
“There are close historic and present links between Greenwich, Charlton and Woolwich which there simply aren’t with Eltham – it makes sense to keep the riverside communities together.”
There are no direct public transport links between the Charlton ward and Eltham, while links for shopping and leisure are with the Charlton retail parks, Woolwich and Blackheath rather than Eltham High Street. Commuter links are with the Greenwich-Woolwich rail line and North Greenwich tube rather than the Bexleyheath line which serves Eltham.
Historically, Charlton was always linked with Greenwich for local government, while much of its early development was connected to the barracks at Woolwich.
Furthermore, keeping Charlton linked with its two bigger neighbours opens up the likelihood that the streets currently marooned in the Eltham constituency (these streets are known as polling district KH1) would be returned to Greenwich & Woolwich in the future. This is a separate process from the review of council ward boundaries, which places most of the SE7 area in two wards.
If you live in Charlton ward and want to stay in Greenwich & Woolwich – or if you live in the streets that come under Eltham and want polling district KH1 to come under Greenwich & Woolwich instead – tell the Boundary Commission for England at www.bcereviews.org.ukby Monday.
Charlton Park is due to get an all-weather cricket pitch
Charlton Park is getting a new cricket pitch, and you’ll be able to find out more about the plans at the Friends of Charlton Park’s regular Zoom meeting this Tuesday.
Stephanie Turner from Greenwich Council will be outlining plans for the non-turf pitch at the western end of the park and answering any questions from users. To find out how to join, visit the Friends of Charlton Park website.
There are also limited places for a bat walk in Charlton Park at 8pm on Friday night led by bat expert Les Clark. More details are on the Friends website.
More than 20,000 people have had Covid-19 jabs at Charlton House
Charlton House needs £1.2 million to fix its leaking roof, the chief executive of the trust that runs the Jacobean mansion has told Greenwich councillors.
Tracy Stringfellow, the chief executive of the Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust, said that she would soon be launching a fundraising appeal to mend the roof, and that the issue had delayed wider plans for a £25 million refurbishment of the house.
She also told councillors that local groups would be able to use its summer house after the end of the current phase of refurbishment works.
While over 20,000 people have visited the house for coronavirus vaccines since the start of the year, some have spotted the damage caused by water getting into its old library, she said.
Councillors on the regeneration scrutiny panel were told last night that Historic England had funded a detailed survey of the roof to examine the damage.
“The assessment of complete and replacement works has come back at about £1.2 million,” Stringfellow said.
“We will be carrying out some work over the next few months to identify how we will raise the funds, and we will be launching an appeal with the Big Give campaign, giving local people the opportunity to support the roof works as well.
“There was some significant water ingress during the lockdown period which runs the risk of damaging some of the most significant spaces on the second floor.”
Charlton House’s summer house is being restored
Asked by Woolwich Common councillor David Gardner about the broader future of Charlton House, Stringfellow said that a plan had been produced in 2018 that envisaged a £25m million refurbishment of the Grade I-listed building.
Stringfellow said that the plan had been to approach the National Lottery Heritage Fund for money to begin work, beginning with the ground floor, but the pandemic had forced a rethink, as the fund had changed its priorities.
“We will be looking at that strategy again,” she said. “We now need to prioritise the roof repairs and the rooms on the second floor as urgent. Those of you who have had your jabs in the old library might have noticed damage to the ceiling because of the water ingress – I’ve had lots of emails from people asking about the hole in the roof.”
The second phase of works to restore the summer house was coming to an end, Stringfellow added, with some of the original panelling being restored, ahead of a final phase where the ceiling would be restored.
Stringellow said that the trust would be interested in community groups using the summer house for exhibitions or other uses before the final phase of works started.
“If there are any local organisations who might want to come and have a look at that – a commercial hire might be at a later stage but for exhibitions or programming, we would be open to approaches from the local community,” she said.
Charlton’s Big Red Bus Club has been busy branching out recently – its latest venture is into summer sessions to help 11 to 13-year-olds rebuild their confidence through music and fun after a shattering 16 months. The club’s ANNIE DREWRY explains more…
March 16, 2020 was, for many children, simply the day the music died. For those kids that didn’t already have instruments at home or access to private online lessons, music simply disappeared.
In Charlton, like the rest of the country, music education not only came to an abrupt halt. Not just the lessons ending, but the community music programmes such as the after-school drumming clubs or choirs that were as much about friendship as they were the performances that resulted from them.
For your average 11-year-old, the summer is full of music. It’s when you head down to Primark to pick up your outfit for your final primary school disco, or the nervous excitement waiting to find out if you’ve got a song in your final school play. It’s endless practising for your final year assemblies, and the sharing of playlists among friends – the friends that you will leave as a memory of your childhood as you move to secondary school and make the friends that will see you become an adult.
The Big Red Bus Club has always believed in the power of the arts to build our community in Charlton, whether it be two toddlers sharing finger-painting or the mums in our Baby Blues Choir raising awareness of maternal mental health through performance. We know friendships are built when we create together.
So this summer, we are putting on two free programmes for Charlton’s 11-13 year olds.
Pump it Up, a week-long series of music workshops culminating in kids creating their own track and recording it, and Power Up, a whole week of activities ranging from pottery to engineering activities specifically for girls.
Last year was hard. At the Big Red Bus Club we want to bring the music back into kids’ lives, help them make local friends and to hang out and just be kids again.
You can help by letting local kids know that we are here.
Pump It Up: Monday 26 to Friday 30 July, 11-4pm, music workshops including singing, percussion and composition with a whole range of local artists.
Power Up (girls only): Monday 2 to Friday 6 August, 10-3pm, wellbeing workshops including pottery, yoga, engineering and a day trip.
Aitch wants to build 188 homes close to the Thames Barrier
Greenwich’s chair of planning was ticked off by a former council leader on Tuesday night after he clashed with residents over what new buildings on the Charlton Riverside should look like.
Labour councillor Stephen Brain challenged members of local lobby groups who are insisting that a masterplan drawn up to redevelop the area, involving building thousands of homes but keeping tall buildings to a minimum, should be followed closely.
But Dave Picton, who led Greenwich Council for two years in the late 1980s, said he was “surprised” that Brain was not following a ruling made last year which defined 10 storeys as “high rise” for the area.
The exchanges took place as councillors on the planning board met to decide whether 188 homes in blocks of up to nine storeys should be built by the developer Aitch on land behind the derelict Victoria pub, close to the Thames Barrier.
Those same residents returned to the town hall last night to object to Aitch’s plans, which only include 40 affordable-rent homes and 10 for shared ownership – five percentage points short of the council’s target of 35 per cent “affordable” homes.
But in a meeting disrupted by Covid restrictions – the government has banned councils from holding their most important meetings online, despite the continuing pandemic – Brain and the residents started to fall out.
The masterplan suggests a maximum height of 10 storeys in the area to differentiate it from the Greenwich Peninsula and Woolwich’s Royal Arsenal, and to complement the low-rise nature of the wider Charlton area. But in the area where Aitch wants to build the new homes, the guidelines suggests three to six storeys. A further complication is that ground-floor housing is not allowed because of the risk of flooding around the Thames Barrier.
Roden Richardson, speaking for the Charlton Society, said that allowing a nine-storey block would be a “major departure” from the masterplan.
The “unacceptable heights” would set an “extremely worrying precedent” for the rest of the riverside area, he said, resulting in even denser development and the need for additional infrastructure.
The Aitch development site as it is now, viewed from Eastmoor Sreet
But Brain said: “What special character does the area have currently? From the Woolwich Road down to the river – in terms of scrapyards and people who will take your wheels off your car if you stand still for more than five minutes.
“I don’t think this development, in my experience, is high rise. Any definition in any architecture book would define high rise as being above 11 storeys.”
Richardson responded: “The character is Charlton as a whole, not just the riverside.”
“But the application is for the riverside,” Brain said.
An irritated-sounding Richardson said: “We’re going back a long way with the creation of the masterplan – one of the key points of the masterplan was the riverside’s integration with Charlton as a whole.”
Brain replied: “I don’t want to be argumentative, but I’m going to be because I’m the chair, but in that case you should be building three-bedroom Victorian houses. Or from what I was hearing last week, perhaps it should be an estate of bungalows? Or bungalows on stilts because they wouldn’t comply with the environmental safety regulation.”
He then cut Richardson off to move on to the next speaker.
David Gayther, from the Charlton Central Residents’ Association – which covers streets about half a mile from the proposed development – said he found Brain’s comments “disturbing”.
Denying that local lobby groups were looking for “three storey Victorian housing”, he said that the masterplan called for “reasonably high-density, mixed use, medium height development that promotes quite a different community … a blank canvas on which to build a new Charlton that avoids some of the mistakes of Woolwich”.
“I do understand masterplans,” Brain shot back at the end of Gayther’s contribution.
Aitch’s view from Westmoor Street looking south
Picton referred to a planning inspector’s findings when plans for 10-storey blocks off Anchor and Hope Lane were thrown out last year. “The inspector differentiated between Greenwich [Peninsula] and Woolwich, and Charlton riverside.
“He said explicitly that Charlton riverside was urban, it wasn’t metropolitan. In terms of height, he said very clearly that 10 storeys on Charlton riverside is high rise. That view was endorsed by the secretary of state and I’m surprised that you don’t seem to have picked that up.”
Contradicting his earlier remark, Brain said: “I thought mid-rise were defined as being between five and 12 storeys, and high-rises were 13 floors and above, and that’s my definition that I tend to work to.”
The levels of “affordable” housing also came under scrutiny, although one member of the planning board, Abbey Wood Labour councillor Clive Mardner, had to have London Affordable Rent levels explained to him – even though one of his other roles on the council is chairing the housing scrutiny panel.
London Affordable Rent is a policy of London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan. It sets levels at about half of market rent – higher than council or social rents offered to existing tenants, which are about 40 per cent of market rent – but are available to people on universal credit. The housing charity Shelter has questioned whether London Affordable Rent is set at a fair level, but it is usually the cheapest rent available.
When questioned why the development did not offer social rents, Greenwich’s principal planner Jillian Halford said that London Affordable Rent was “certainly affordable to borough residents”.
“We may disagree on that,” Mardner said. Greenwich Council itself uses London Affordable Rent for its new Greenwich Builds properties – schemes which Mardner has voted in favour of.
A view of the Aitch scheme looking east from Penhall Road
Asked by Glyndon councllor Sandra Bauer why “affordable” housing levels had dropped from 35 to 30 percent, Halford said that the cut had been made to keep the development viable after original plans for 10 storeys were dropped.
Brenda Taggart from Charlton Together, another lobby group, questioned the developer’s attitude to “affordable” housing after a series of upward and downward revisions, saying it “has more elasticity than my old grandma’s knickers”.
The planning meeting had to end after two hours because of Covid restrictions – the cramped 115-year-old Woolwich Town Hall chamber is he only meeting room fitted with cameras so meetings can be viewed remotely, and councillors can only meet for two hours with a 15-minute break to air the chamber.
The restrictions have played havoc with Greenwich’s planning meetings, which had been held online with only a few hitches until communities secretary Robert Jenrick and a court ruling stopped the practice for councils’ decision-making meetings.
Councillors will hear from the developer and resume their deliberations on 20 July.
The Charlton Champion 