Don’t know if you’ll remember the terribly sad story a couple of years ago when London’s Saddest Statue was stolen by metal thieves. The theft was at Rotherhithe, where Dr Alfred Salter lived and worked – but he was actually born in Greenwich in 1873 – there’s a red plaque to him in South Street.

Darryl tells me there is now a campaign up and running to raise funds for a replacement for ‘Dr Salter’s Daydream’, which will also include a statue of his wife Ada, who was a well-loved local deed-doer in her own right (their little daughter Joyce and her pet cat’s statues were apparently unnoticed by the ignoramuses who pinched the sculpture – if the the selfish tea-leaves had done even a tiny bit of research they could have increased their haul…)

It doesn’t say on the website whether they’re hoping to replace like with like or whether they’re planning something made of some kind of cheapo base metal made to look like bronze, but they need £100,000 so I’m guessing the bronze. Hope they’re also planning on sending 50,000 volts through it to deter any future light-fingered ‘admirers’.

I’m told the campaign has been doing pretty well in the three months it’s been going and Southwark Council have promised to match any fund raised. Not really sure where Southwark Council will find fifty grand in these cash-strapped times but hey…if you’d like to watch Bermondsey councillors fishing down the back of the town hall sofa in the name of a Greenwich Boy you can donate to the campaign here. It will be moving to see this saddest of statues back…

Keith Russell, Mark Smith, Graeme McAlpine and Martin Lee

First it was the missing T-Rex tapes, now it’s one of the world’s greatest comic-artists. It seems that Greenwich Cablevision was absolutely groundbreaking in practically every respect – except in archiving its own work.

Greenwich Cablevision (when I wrote about this I hadn’t heard of it before so my words are rubbish but the comments are great…)was the first pay-TV channel, back in the 1970s – a time when you could choose between BBC1, BBC2 ITV and, er, that’s it. It seems to have featured just about everyone from Hale & Pace to Georgie Fame.

I’ve had an intriguing email from Rob who’s researching a reference book about the history and publications issued by the British division of Marvel Comics. Whilst delving about, he was raking about in a Stan Lee archive in the States and found in one of the many storage boxes a videotape marked ‘Roundhouse 1975′. Although parts of the archive have been accessed by US researchers for other Marvel projects no one had touched the British stuff. He says:

It turns out that Stan Lee’s first visit to the Roundhouse in October 1975 was captured on video by the team from Greenwich Cablevision. They’d previously interviewed Alan Murray (who headed up the art studio at High Holborn where the comics were assembled) when Neil Tennant (yes, THAT Neil Tennant!) had declined their invitation to appear on their ‘Fridaynite’ programme. It was Alan who then later suggested that they film Stan’s appearance at the Roundhouse as a memento for Stan (who thought it might come in handy for a future documentary, although as he kept it all these years it seems unlikely that it was ever shown Stateside).

The event saw Stan appear alongside Ted Polhemus from the ICA (where an exhibition had preceded this event), Ray Wergan from Transworld UK Ltd. (where Marvel had their offices) and US guest artist Herb Trimpe.

Rob is presently trying to arrange a transfer of the tape onto DVD, but it’s not going to be cheap as it’s taken them almost a year to find a machine over there that it can be played on. 20th and 21st century history is being lost not, as in previous years, because no one bothered to record it but because no one can keep up with the formats. Celluloid is corroding (or burning), shellac snapping, vinyl scratching, tape stretching, analogue dating, floppy discs rusting three-inch floppies corrupting – and everything else being simply unplayable because the players don’t exist any more.

The pictures on today’s post were sent to Rob by Alan – pictures that Peter Danpure took of the team – Keith Russell, Mark Smith, Graeme McAlpine and Martin Lee, though sadly Stan himself isn’t in them. Rob would love to talk with the chaps from the crew – or anyone who was part of the recordings.

I would be interested to know if anything at all was saved from the great years of Greenwich Cablevision. Judging from my postbag, people loved – and still love – its short, firework-burst of energy back in the dark days.

Oh heavens – Michael has found us one hell of a time-drain. I’d heard of the London Screen Archive, but had assumed it was the usual grainy cine films of horse-drawn trams going over London Bridge from 1900 – which of course I love, but of which by now have seen quite a few.

But the films on this archive are much more modern – though still old enough to be utterly fascinating and nostalgic in a rather melancholy way for me. I’m going to include a couple here but really – you need to get on there and search ‘Greenwich’ to find a good fifteen or so videos – promos for the council (and otherwise) from the 1980s and 90s, little documentaries and odd information films. They are really interesting given we now know what actually happened after some of the ones that are ‘consultations’.

They seem to be adding videos on a very regular basis, so it’s worth checking every so often, though of course only when you have a good chunk of time to spare.

Wanna save yourself thirty quid? Watch Mike’s video, taken a couple of hours after I was up the Shard, when there was actual sun and actual view beyond a mile or so.

He videoed the whole experience – from the queue (it will be interesting to see if people are still queueing in a couple of months – certainly they do for the Empire State building – but is the Shard our Empire State? I suspect not…) through the annoying compulsory photo (just walk straight through if you don’t want yours taken, don’t let them bully you. Do they really charge £50 for a print?) to the lifts, to the view, to the top floor…

Chris asks:

I am trying to trace the exact location of a Victorian photographic studio called R L Sims and Co, in King Street, Greenwich.

Can you help, and would you know the whereabouts of any collections of photographs taken by this studio?

The Phantom replies:

It took me a while to work out why this name was ringing a bell in the Phantom brain. At first I thought it was something to do with the Victorian publisher Henry Richardson or maybe I’d seen a photo for sale somewhere but then I realised that I’d seen it elsewhere.

Mr Sims was (possibly) part of a trio of photographers, led by the Rev. Spurgeon, who created a groundbreaking photography project in the latter part of the 19th Century to record ‘real’ Greenwich street life. The photos are world famous and often find themselves in books about general London/Victorian history. You know the sort of thing:

Of course with the sort of exposure time needed, these pictures would have been rather more posed than they first appear but even so, they are seminal in the history of photography and a very important collection.

Originally created in half-plate, the negatives and slides are now lost, but the proof prints survived, and were passed down from Mr Spurgeon via his son in law to Mr O J Morris, the third in the little trio of photo journalists. He presented them to Greenwich Libraries, so my best guess is that they are now held at the splendid Greenwich Heritage Centre.

I don’t know of any collections just by Mr Sims’s studio, though it’s likely the Heritage Centre will know more than me. I’m no photographic (or otherwise) historian.

But King Street? That one had me puzzled for a while, and I went of on a long wild goose chase trying to find it and, if you read an earlier version of this post you will have seen me place it in Deptford. But thanks to Joe, I can now place it where King William Walk is now:

…which makes a hell of a lot more sense than what is now Watergate Street in Deptford….

Today I bring you a rather unusual postcard from the Phantom Collection. It was sent from Stockwell to West Norwood on the 6th November, 1907, and I suspect that the design is not much older than that. There’s something about the background behind the multi-scene that just feels so Edwardian, so early-cinematic – and very ‘Greenwich,’ acknowledging the astronomical side to the town’s appeal.

I am particularly fond of this card for that, and a couple of other reasons. I find it rather charming that if you look at the corner photos, they are labelled but they’re so bloomin’ bland that they could be anywhere – perhaps that’s why they gave it the jazzy background, so people wouldn’t look too closely.

I also love that bottom centre picture – I’ll try blowing it up a little.

There. Is there any part of that scene still in existence? Perhaps the very centre building is the Rose & Crown, the one next to it the theatre, but frankly I can’t tell. I really need to get a ‘Then and Now’ picture of this, with the ever-growing university buildings on the left, Cafe Rouge on the right.

But the reason I love this postcard so much is the message on the back:

In case you can’t quite make it out, it reads:

From the most disagreeable girl in the world. Don’t forget the grease.

We’ve talked about the Charlton Park Reminsicence Project a few times now – an ongoing project begun by Carol Kenna and Greenwich Mural Workshop (if you recall, Carol & Co. were responsible for many of the giant, rather-faded-by-now murals and mosaics around here, including the extraordinary Rathmore Benches) – often when they’ve been holding one of their periodic open days and exhibitions where they actively searched out new memories to add to the archive.

The project, as it might sound, mainly focuses on things within living memory – everything from people remembering playing in the park as a child, visiting the animals in the zoo and watching the jobsworth parkie refusing permission for David Hemmings to bring his Rolls Royce into Maryon Park during the filming of Blow Up to more recent sporting events and protests at the proposed closure of the petting zoo.

The project continues, but they have reached a bit of a milestone – a booklet of memories, photos and information – which will be available free from libraries, Greenwich Heritage Centre and Charlton House from the end of this month.

That doesn’t mean they’re not looking to add to the labyrinthine archives (don’t miss the photos and if you have some good memories of Charlton, they would still love to hear from you. There’s a form you can fill in on the website, or you can just find it here.

It’s been some time since we had a peek into Gerald Dodd’s wonderful photo album from the 1960s, when he was a porter at Dreadnought Hospital and carried his camera everywhere he went.

Today, though, I want to look at something a little different – another pride-and-joy of Gerald’s, his movie camera. Gerald dickered with Super 8 throughout his time at the hospital and though it’s a bit fuzzy by today’s standards, I still find these tiny, fleeting slices of ordinary life fascinating.

We’ll start with our old friend Harry Glassblower:

Harry’s also in this one, as are Gerald’s knees at one point, and Gerald himself, if you don’t blink…

I wonder if anyone has stood at the gates of the Old Royal Naval College and just taken film of the traffic since Gerald did. It was very ordinary for him – but for us, who haven’t seen an open-backed Routemaster for years around Greenwich’s one-way system, it’s a little glimpse into the past. The couple of seconds footage of Blackheath show that some things don’t change, of course…

This is one of my favourites – a little of Docklands, a little of the river, Dreadnought, the area around – and some views from the roof of the Nurses Home (now Devonport House…)

Finally a film of two halves – the first half being the view from Devonport House again, including some spooky shots of the Cutty Sark and St Alfege, and then, from 1.33, shots of Gerald, Harry and his mates messing around – with Gerald’s bike, with a bottle, with a car, with each other. I love it.

Thank you Gerald – and thanks too, to your son-in-law who digitised them. It’s a joy to see these films.

I would be even more delighted for local cartoonist Banx if I knew what a ‘pocket cartoonist’ actually was (I’m assuming really small…) but hooray anyway for his being awarded the honour for a second time by the Cartoon Art Trust.

Of course anyone who doens’t know that he also designs the annual Christmas cards for Meridian Primary School must be living on another planet – I’ve never known a publicity machine like it – but hey – it’s all for a good cause and this year they have a Paralympic theme.

In case you’re zooming in from Planet Tharg, and you don’t already have yours, they’re available Posted in Art | Comments Off