December 1874. A freezing winter night of gas-lit alleyways, stone stairs, swirling smog and the distant sound of ships’ horns on the river.

Quietly slipping out of Greenwich Theatre stage door, young Polly Richards is in a pickle. As she heads home to her digs in Ashburnham Grove she knows she’s not going to be able to work again for a good few months. There aren’t too many roles for heavily pregnant ingenues on the Victorian stage, especially when the father happens to be the playboy son of the theatre manager – who’s engaged to someone else…

She’s not told anyone. Not the father, not his mother, certainly no one in the cast. This is her problem and she’s going to deal with it. She’ll hole up in Greenwich for the confinement, and with a bit of luck she’ll be able to rejoin the company, wherever they are, when it’s all over.

She’s been to Norway Court down at Wood Wharf to find a potential foster mother – she seems alright – a fish-porter’s wife – poor, respectable. She might have ten children in a four-roomed cottage, but there’s a fringed cloth on the table and plants in the parlour. Yes, she’ll do.

It’s not going to be like last time. Lord knows she tried – after touring the provinces in a ballet skirt with roses in her hair she did try to get respectable. Captain Richards, he was, a skipper on a merchant ship. Married her and everything. How could it be her fault that he died of some obscure malady at sea, leaving her penniless – and pregnant.

As soon as her daughter was born she’d gone back to the only work she knew – on the stage. She’s not daft She knows she’s no looker, neither tall nor slim – not even wildly talented, but she’s cheery and personable and she’s changed her name from dreary Mary Jane Blair to dashing Marie Richards, even though no one will call her that. To them she’ll always be happy, sweet ‘Polly’. It’s her sunny nature attracted the celebrated impressario Alice Marriott to her when they lodged next door to each other in Liverpool.

Alice had taken on Polly as a dresser and she gradually became in complete charge of the famous tragedienne’s entire wardrobe, an eye-popping collection of costumes that ranged from glamorous gowns as Lady Macbeth to the full doublet-and-hose for when Miss Marriott gave her notorious female Hamlet.

The critics were divided on that one. H. CHace Newton made ‘no hesitation in saying that this brilliant actress’s presentation of the part gradulally came out as one one of the very best I have ever seen”. Others were less charitable: “It would be untrue to assert that the Hamlet of Miss Marriott carried much sense of illusion,” wrote one critic, “but her rich, rolling voice and beautiful elocution almost compensated for the spectacle of a well-developed Dane in a black cloak and trunks.” To be honest the Victorian gents probably just came for a gawk at her legs, but it was a crowd pleaser and Alice would have made quite a nest-egg if her husband hadn’t been so keen on property speculation. He was good at the buying up the property bit; bad at selling it at any kind of profit.

They were good days. Polly got on instantly with Miss Marriott’s daughters, Grace and Adeline, and the three became inseperable. Less happily she also got on instantly with Alice Marriott’s son Richard – good-looking, charming and utterly irresponsible.

Richard was engaged to a pretty young actress from Dundee, but it didn’t stop him dallying with young Polly’s affections and, just as Alice was giving public blessing to Richard and pretty young Jenny from Dundee, Polly was sneaking out of the back door, pregnant and heart-broken, to work at Greenwich for as long as she could until she just got too big. Why would she ruin Jenny’s big day? It was hardly her fault…

Polly’s not even told her daughter, Joey, though she feels terrible about it. She’s already abandoned her once, to an orphanage, where she had to wear a sailor suit and eat gruel. One of the first things Miss Marriott did for Polly was bring Joey back. Now she’s had to leave her again – but what else was she to do? She’s got nothing, no one. Joey’s better off with with the theatre folk.

So here she is, in cheap lodgings in the Ashburnham Triangle. She’s been playing a few rep shows which seem to have been chosen for their painfully ironic titles – Let Us Never Despair, Sunshine Through the Clouds and The Double Marriage – but now, a few days before Christmas, she’s as big as the turkey.

She’s got it all worked out. She’ll take the child to a Catholic priest for baptism, and enter a name into the Parish registry that no one will be able to trace. She can’t resist, if it’s a boy, giving him his father’s name – Richard Horation EDGAR but she’ll make up a surname. The father will be ‘Walter WALLACE, comedian.’

The next day little Millie Freeman, the fish-porter’s girl will be sent to number 7, Ashburnham Grove, where Polly will have wrapped young Edgar in a white shawl and a basket cradle. Millie will carry him back to the little courtyard behind Bridge Street and Polly? Polly will pack her bags and go to join the rest of the company in Huddersfield. She won’t see her son for thirty years, and when she does he’ll disown her.

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…

Don’t know if you remember John Townsend – actor, radical, auctioneer, MP? We talked about him back in 2010 – a real Greenwich character.

We talked about him again later that year when a Canadian descendent of his, Bonnie Buxton, got in touch. She now tells me that she’s met another Canadian, a TV technician also seeking his family history (through the blog – how odd is that…) and that he’s been doing some research about what happened to Townsend after he’d emigrated to the land of Maples and Mooses.

He found some fabulous cuttings from papers of the day – including a call-out of the local fire brigade after the ‘fire effect’ proved to be a bit too realistic.

Scott presented Bonnie with a file of information gleaned about our Greenwich actor – including evidence that Sarah, his wife was locked up in Hamilton Insane Asylum in 1889 – probably for the heinous crime of suffering from Altzheimer’s. Townsend himself probably died a pauper.

Bonnie’s now met dozens of distant relatives and is all fired up to come to Britain to see John and Sarah Townsend’s old haunts. She says:

My husband and I are going to England in late May, and I would like to spend a few days soaking up the historic atmosphere of Greenwich.How do I get there from London? Where’s a good place to stay? What would have been there in 1850 when Old John had to resign from his seat? I know he was popular because he got the dock workers a raise. What can I see there now?

First things first. It’s pretty easy to get to Greenwich from the centre of town – from ancient to modern. The Docklands Light Railway runs from Bank or Tower Gateway to Greenwich Cutty Sark or mainline station (which Townsend would have known – it’s not changed much). John may have taken the train on his trips up to Westminster (trains from Cannon Street, London Bridge or Charing Cross; sometimes you have to change at London Bridge) but my wager is that he took the boat all the way there.

You still can – and unless the weather is a total mare, the boat is probably my favourite. Don’t get the tourist barges, get the Thames Clipper – a comfortable and clean trip and if it’s a nice day you can stand outside at the back. It’s probably the priciest option but you can at least use your Oyster card (most of the time they make you buy a ticket before you board, even with the Oyster, which seems ridiculous to me…) It will let you off at Greenwich Pier, pug-ugly but at least pretty much exactly where John Townsend would have trod.

The pretty little Victorian waiting room went a few years ago – you’ll have to go to St Kitts if you want to see it now. Deemed past it by Greenwich, the Caribbean island seems to have disagreed. Not sure if it’s out yet – would love to see a picture of it in use.

In fact there’s less around from John Townsend’s day than you might think. We have the very old stuff – the Observatory and the Old Royal Naval College, the Queen’s House and St Alfege Church, but early to mid Victorian buildings are a bit rarer. The Market would have been familiar to John – built in 1831/2 by Joseph kay, it would have been comparatively new.

There’s very little left of the original Greenwich Theatre of 1871 – it’s on the same site, but has been pretty much gutted and rebuilt after falling into disrepair, though if you go down Nevada street there is still something of what it might have looked like.

Townsend would have known Crooms Hill, Hyde Vale and the surrounding areas, such as Royal Hill, though the Royal Hill Lecture Hall, where he gave his swansong performance, is long gone. The art deco Borough Hall is now in its place if memory serves.

If you go up Greenwich High Road, you’ll come to the old Lovibonds brewery, now Davey’s wine bar. It still has the sloping floors so they could literally roll out the barrels. The Mitre pub, next door to St Alfege church, would also have been known to Townsend.

And there I begin to run out. So, folks. Early to mid Victorian buildings still extant in Greenwich, please…

Here are the two Joans, Joan Trathen and Joanie Valentine, civil servants from the Royal Naval College snapped in 1982. It’s pretty clear where they’re walking – but what do we call it?

The fabulously-monikered Townly Cooke is currently putting together a collection of his photographs of Greenwich from 1970 to 1212 but he finds himself with niggling questions about some of the locations.

For example, the Five Foot Walk. It’s clear where it runs – it’s five-foot wide and it’s a walk (save for the silly cyclists who insist on barging through when the best cycle lane in Greenwich is mere feet away from them the other side of the railings…) But what happens to it when it reaches either end and widens out? Do we still call it the Five Foot Walk, wonders Townly?

I guess so, though frankly if I was talking about one end I’d probably be talking about Bellot’s obelisk and the other the Trafalgar Tavern and not need to mention the walk. Anyone have a clue as to what to call it?

Townly also wonders if we “know the reason for the steps and ramp that feature in the photo and why they were demolished ? A friend said it may be to do with anti-flooding?”

I think your friend might be right, Townly – it’s not much cop as a wheelchair ramp as it appears to come to a sudden end with steps on it. Maybe it was just an awkwardly levelled piece of ground that needed a bit of brute force in the design? That bit of pier has been designed and redesigned many times over the years (the delightful little Victorian waiting room would still have been in use in 1982), perhaps the levels had started to reach silly proportions?

I assume they were demolished in the recent redesign as part of Progress.

“Sir, I thought it had been better.”

Sam Johnson’s characteristically honest reason for leaving the room when someone started reading his only play, Irene, at a country house party in 1780.

Today playwrights around the world can take comfort that their fabulous, darling manuscript, perfect in every respect in their own eyes, might not be the collossus they thought it was but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will not turn out to be an incredible writer. Perhaps all they need to do is switch genre…

If you’d nipped backstage at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane on the 6th February 1749, you might well have witnessed an aspiring playwright pacing backstage, nervously chewing his fingernails as he contemplated what the actors might do with his baby.

He didn’t have much of an opinion of their ability to do it justice. “Players, Sir? I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.”

Given that Irene was a tragedy, and a big old heavy tragedy at that – one that would have gone down an absolute storm with Shakespeare’s crowd, who loved blood and guts – the idea of ‘dancing dogs’ poking fun at his work, Johnson probably had a point. He was particularly bothered about his leading lady, Hannah Pritchard, who he described as ‘a vulgar idiot.’

Of course, he might have disliked the concept of actors, but that didn’t stop him being mates with them – one of his good friends was David Garrick, whom he’d taught and who now was taking quite a risk in putting on Johnson’s play – it had already been rejected by its 18th Century equivalent of beta-readers. Garrick had insisted on a few changes that would appeal to the lighter moods of modern theatre, that Johnson didn’t approve of, but had to suck up if he wanted his show to see the light of day.

I find myself wondering whether Johnson, as he stood in the wings, awkwardly trussed up in scarlet waistcoat, gold lace and and fancy hat specially acquired for his first night as a luvvie, was rather wishing he was still in Greenwich Park, looking out over the river, sucking the end of his quill, trying to find the exact right words for the big death scene at the end. Whether he rather longed for that special time when the work is in progress, when everything can be changed and all will be fabulous.

We’re not really sure where Johnson lived while he stayed at Greenwich. He says it was at the Golden Hart in Church Street. Julian Watson suggests it could have been in the delightful weatherboarded row on the front cover of his (excellent) book (available at the Visitor Centre, last time I looked)

These houses are long-gone, not least because of the remodelling of Garden Stairs when the foot tunnel was built, but I’m guessing they’d have been approximately opposite the Cutty Sark.

If only his play had been any good. I recently went to a lecture at Johnson’s House where they were re evaluating the work, but although they come to the conclusion that it was not the utter flop History tells us it is, even the ex-curator (whose name escapes me and which I can’t look up because they annoyingly keep their website up to date…) had to admit it wasn’t a play she either recommended reading or ever putting on again.

It just wasn’t what the modern play-going public wanted. Johnson’s prose was dated, his plot clunky and his action heavy. But the thing the audiences hated most was the very thing that 150 years ago they’d have actually queued up for.

Johnson had poor Mrs Pritchard ‘strangled’ on stage, in front of the audience. Instead of lapping up the violence, though, they started hissing whistling and making cat calls that went on so long that in subsequent performances she had to exit and be murdered offstage.

Thing is, the play didn’t do as badly as many modern scholars think it did. True, it only ran for 9 performances between 6th and 20th Feb (there weren’t any shows on Wednesdays, Fridays or Sundays) but that was about average for new plays in those days. There actually weren’t many new plays as everything had to be read and passed by the Lord Chamberlain, so most shows were old classics that actors played in repertory, with the odd modern play squeezed in.

And Johnson made money. The whole idea of putting on plays in those days was to attempt to put them on in batches of three. The first two nights the profits went to the promoter; if the show lasted to a third night it became a benefit performance to pay the author, and after that every third night was the author’s night – another reason to put on plays by dead playwrights.  Johnson made £236 after the house fee, which was pretty decent cash.

Nevertheless, Garrick still needed to tweak the show in order to keep the audiences coming, not least so his mate Sam could make a few more quid. Johnson’s tragedy lasted to the sixth night before Garrick slipped in a nice cheery farce at the end and there is mention of a ‘Scotch Dance’ that would have also been a splendid crowd-pleaser to get people to come so Johnson’s play limped to its ninth performance.

Nowadays Irene is often described as ‘a poem’ and it’s quite hard to come by. It’s not a classic (though some (who haven’t read it; I confess I haven’t either, so I rely on the ex-curator’s opinion) assume it must be because Johnson wrote it, but neither was it the total turkey that other scholars have claimed. And hell, it if is a total turkey, it’s our total turkey.

Today I find myself thinking, once again, about the Rev. Spurgeon and his photographs, not least because the encyclopaedically-minded Julian Watson has sent me a 1986 article written by the former Chief Librarian of Greenwich, David Leggatt, from the Transactions of the Greenwich and Lewisham Antiquarian Society, from which I plunder today.

It’s an account of two parts – firstly the story of Charles Spurgeon and his magic lantern shows (apparently it was a lifelong passion – in his famous father’s autobiography there is a photo of Charles and his twin brother posing with their mother – and a magic lantern they’ve just been given as a gift) and secondly how the photographs came to be in the collection – a patient waiting game on the part of Leggatt and a gradual decision to ‘do the right thing’ on the part of their by-then-owner, O J Morris, via, of all things, Bournemouth Railway Club…

After Spurgeon’s death his photos passed to another Baptist minister, Rev. Burley, who’d married one of Spurgeon’s daughters. He ended up preaching in Bournemouth, where he joined the Railway Club and met Owen Morris who was also crazy about trains. I suspect that Morris ended up with the Spurgeon collection more because of the transport photos in it – this was not Spurgeon’s only Magic Lantern show. I’m guessing some of the others were transport-oriented and it was these pictures, rather than Greenwich’s street cries that had the Baptist preacher and Welsh Roman Catholic slavering over them.

Burley died in 1953 and by 1954 the pictures were in Morris’s sweaty paws. He does sound like the classic bachelor-train-obsessive. He lived in Beulah Hill in Norwood and his house was ‘adapted’ to his purposes – he thought nothing of cutting right through doors and cutting ‘tunnels’ through furniture to accommodate his model railway layout, creating a standard lamp from a railway signal or replacing all the handles in the house with carriage door handles salvaged from old London, Brighton and South Coast Railway trains.

I have no idea what happened to any other Magic Lantern shows that Spurgeon created – perhaps they went to private buyers in America. Certainly that was to be the fate of at least one photograph, of a tram, that Morris brought to David Leggatt at the Borough Library in 1954, wanting to identify where it had been taken so that he could sell it and casually mentioning that it was from a whole bunch of old snaps.

Leggatt, presumably after having smelling salts administered, confirmed that the picture had been taken in Trafalgar Road. Morris refused to sell the photo to the library, but said he’d make a copy for him and show the rest of the pictures to Leggatt ‘if I was interested…’

I’m surprised that Leggatt managed to last two weeks before going over to Beaulah Hill to view them. Perhaps he was acting cool but he admits in his paper ‘I felt something of the impact which the reading of Chapman’s Homer had on Keats.‘ He asked, casually, about what Morris was planning to do with them, and was told that he liked the idea of a National Photographic Collection.

Once again, Leggatt tried to buy the collection from Morris for the Borough ‘but he was unmoved.‘ Leggatt tried a different tack, telling Morris that the photographs should at least be treated as a collection, rather than sold off piecemeal, which Morris agreed to, then also agreed to create a set of copies to the Borough for £50.

Morris comes across to me as a canny sort of guy. He spent a lot of time with a local architect, Percy Danatt (whose name is ringing huge bells; might look him up when I’ve done some actual work today) to identify all the locations before preparing the copies, and then, just before the sale, called the picture ed at The Times…

The Times article brought a flood of interested parties to Greenwich Borough Library – everyone from the V&A to a bunch of students from the LSE, from a director of Bryant & May to John Betjeman and the resulting interest led to a book deal for Morris – Grandfather’s London. Morris hated the title, btw (and I confess I’m not wild about it) but was firmly told that calling it ‘London’ instead of ‘Greenwich’ would sell more copies. Plus ca change.

Ultimately Morris did a most generous thing. He presented the original collection to the Borough, no strings attached, in recognition of Leggatt’s part in ‘rescuing the collection from oblivion.’

Got a goodun for you today, folks.

Stephen says:

“You could have blown me down with a feather when I saw mention of both the writing on the wall of my father’s studio in Point Hill and of their antique shop in Blackheath Road.”

Stephen is, of course, Stephen Schwarz, son of Hans and Lena, who owned the splendid house on the corner of King George Street with our most recent ‘Faded Greenwich’ sign on the adjacent coach house. More of that later.

Stephen’s been telling me about his parents’ shop, his father’s painting – and a rather intriguing little piece of paper. He tells me

“The shop was very much a parental joint effort. with Hans sourcing supplies from house sales in Somerset and very early morning forays to East End markets and Lena arranging the shop with great flare, and staffing it, with the able assistance of several part-time ladies.”

They started out in the 1960s with a little stall in Portabello Road

Stephen says “In both photos Staffordshire figures are prominent: I see no Spitalfields Life dogs, although I have one, and a pig, that Hans and Lena gave me at the time. You will observe that, when it came to the shop they changed to a more generic title.”

Thing is, antiques were only a part of Han’s life. He was also a painter – so when the couple moved to Greenwich in 1970, after four years in the country, he had to find somewhere that could be not just a family home but that also had some kind of coach-house to serve as a studio. In this scrap from his notebook, he reveals he was amazed to find the estate agent already had had such a place on his books for some time, though it was in a right old state – he admits that it would have been cheaper to rip the whole lot down and just build it again.

We owe Hans Schwarz the raise of a glass of Meantime Porter that he didn’t do that, as so many would have done (and did, elsewhere). Instead, he was delighted, as we still are, at the coal merchant’s faded sign, and just adapted the building so he could retain the sign. He painted the view from the window many times:

and from many angles:

though he didn’t stay in the house. The café in the Park was one of Hans and Lena’s (not to mention Stephen himself’s) favourite haunts and source of shepherd’s pie:

In the thirty years Hans and Lena lived there they became a part of the community.

Stephen has also sent me a drawing of Rajesh Patel and his family, who were (and perhaps someone can confirm for me, still are) the newsagents (and Han’s tobacconist…) at the Royal Hill/Point Hill junction

“This was painted for a People’s Portrait project (utterly fascinating – well worth a delve – TGP) for the millenium, the project’s paintings now at Girton College. Hans was very keen on the people’s portrait idea, and he also painted a Somerset blacksmith, but in addition had a project of his own in the little Bristol Channel port of Watchet, for which he painted many townspeople.

Sadly, Stephen’s father died in 2003 and Lena mother last October. Only last week he came across many of the items he’s sent me (thank you, thank you, thank you Stephen) and therefore has only just noticed on very intriguing thing. Take another look at that page from Han’s Journal:

Hang on – a Great Train Robber “kept his rollers in the coach house”? Which Great Train Robber? When? How? Why? And what the hell did he need rollers for? His beehive?

Sadly that’s all I have, folks. But clearly we only attract the best villains to West Greenwich…

It’s not often I find myself surprised by the solitary entry about Greenwich in a general publication about London.  However, I have to confess to being taken aback at a Christmas present last year. A friend had bought me Writing London, one of Herb Lester’s splendid ‘alternative’ maps where there’s a delightful schematic  plan on one side and ‘interesting stuff’ on the other.

I (obviously) turned straight to Greenwich. It only had one entry – George Eliot.

George Eliot? I always think of Cheyne Walk and Wandsworth when I think of the ‘scandalous’ author of Middlemarch, Adam Bede and The Mill of the Floss . I have never heard her name mentioned in connection with Greenwich before – not even in my book about The Trafalgar Tavern where, I have just discovered, she enjoyed a whitebait dinner in June 1861. I guess everyone is so delighted to talk about the rivalry between The Ship and the Tavern, to supply the two political sides of the Commons with annual dinners, and so overjoyed with ‘the Dickens connection’, to pay a nod to this extraordinary writer.

Female authors still use male names to sell books, using the old argument that women will read books by either gender but a large enough number of men will not read a book by a woman to make economic sense in changing their pen name to something more masculine. It’s only a relatively small number of writers these days, but in Victorian times, Mary Ann Evans figured that there would be even more prejudice against her – and, ultimately she was right.

Wanting to be taken on an equal footing with male authors, she became George Eliot so that it wouldn’t be assumed she could only write frothy little potboiler romances. Originally from the Midlands, she moved to London to write and wanted a quiet life, not least because she was living in daring sin with the married George Lewis whose wife was also having a relationship with someone else. Oh – just as a by-the-by, Lewis was educated at Greenwich himself, at Burney’s school…

Evans edited the left-wing journal The Westminster Review (quite an acheivement for a woman in those days – there were female writers but few with any ediotorial power)  and published a ‘Scene of Clerical Life’ in Blackwood’s Magazine whilst building up to Adam Bede, her first novel.

It wasn’t long before the pseudonym became a pretty open secret (Dickens declared he wasn’t fooled for a moment) – as was the author’s private life, which wasn’t helped when she married someone else after Lewis’s death who jumped from their hotel balcony on their honeymoon (though survived.)

Victorian society though, had notorious double-standards. Whilst queuing up to read her novels (Queen Victoria loved Adam Bede so much she commisioned an artist to paint scenes from it for her), no one wanted her to come to dinner or infect their women-folk with her loose morals. Tongues wagged and George found herself in the odd position of being both ostracised and lauded.

When her publisher John Blackwood held a dinner for her to celebrate the publication of Silas Marner, he took her downriver to the Trafalgar Tavern where, as we all know, Greenwich women were much more robust…

It was the fashionable place to eat whitebait and, despite sundry Phantom efforts to introduce a new ‘local delicacy’ remains the only true ‘Greenwich food.’ Eliot was the only female present. Men, of course, being much stronger of character than women, would be able to withstand the disgraceful way she lived without being tempted to emulate her.

By this point, though, she was used to it all. She had a marvellous time – John Blackwood declares ‘George Eliot was extremely delighted with the whole affair, which she caused others to enjoy so much.’

Why didn’t I know about this fleeting moment in literary history?

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.

Cliff tells me that the homeless lady known as Rose, well-known for sitting in the rose garden at Rangers House, often sitting on a park bench reading, has died. There are a few wreaths dotted around inside the garden in her memory.

Cliff says that he was at the garden talking to regular visitors a couple of days ago. Many seemed to know that she died recently but no one seems to have any idea what happened or how she died. He says:

All I know about her is that she was younger than I or a lot of people thought, only in her 40′s it would seem; and that she liked an egg mayonnaise sandwich from the tea hut on the heath.

I remember when we talked about her before, many people here knew her – or at least knew of her, and several people used to slip the odd tenner her way, either directly or to the tea hut. She seems to have been well-spoken and well-read and some mentioned that she went to Blackheath Station at night (though others said she slept during the days as it was safer.)

I would like to have known more about her – what made her ‘choose’ to live that life – if indeed ‘choice’ was any part of it. I would have liked to know what she used to read, and I would like to know that she was not alone or in pain at the end.

A sad story that puts one’s own concerns in perspective.

Stephen sent me a photo of her – he wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to post, but you know, I think it is charming – and as many remember her. May she rest in peace.