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.

Never heard of it? No, nor had I – and if you were to go by any histories or old maps of Greenwich you wouldn’t be any the wiser either. I haven’t found a single map that actually shows Kirkland Place as such. Some have the road marked, none seem to name it. And yet at least one Phantophile not only knew it but lived there for many years as a child.

I was puzzled when John contacted me about Kirkland Place where his dad had a shop in the 1940s and 50s, though it all became a little easier to pinpoint when he sent me this photo, courtesy of Morden College Archives (Morden College, of course, owned – and still own – large swathes of Greenwich; you will be pleased to know they have archived their considerable  history. Even better, Hilary Peters who, if you remember, was responsible for the fabulous little corner garden and Foot & Mouth Memorial at Ballast Quay, tells me that it is open to all for research (by appointment) – last time she tried, admittedly many years ago, it wasn’t open to women…)

But I digress. Because of a sign on the side of the shop, we can at least pinpoint where Kirkland Place was – 300 yards from the Seawitch Pub. The Seawitch was on Seawitch Lane, now Morden Wharf Lane and we know where that is:

The pub sounds a sweet little place. Mary Mills says in her (sadly out of print) Greenwich Marsh – The 300 Years before the Dome that it was slightly set back from the riverside path, with a little garden set aside from the roadway. I can’t really tell from this picture where that would have been, but I do like the jolly jack tar enjoying a pint on the left (not sure where this picture’s from – I’m suspecting Greenwich Heritage Centre)

The hostelry was built by one Charles Holcombe, a wealthy industrialist who’d taken a lease out on a large swathe of land, roughly where the old, dead Amylum site is now.

Don’t know if you know the delightful Valentines Park in Ilford – for many years it was closed up and used as council offices, but has been restored and is now probably one of the few reasons to visit Ilford. The gardens are particularly impressive – if you walk around them you can see garden history from Henry VIII’s time through all the major phases of horticultural fashion right up to the 1950s – but the reason I’m talking about it today is that it was Charles Holcombe’s gaff back in the 1840s when Ilford was a hell of a lot posher than Greenwich. In fact it was very smart indeed. It might have just lost the gigantic Wanstead House* a couple of miles away (a great story of the ultimate Regency Rake, a misused heiress and an embarrassed Duke of Wellington…) but in the Victorian age we’re looking at Blackheath-level poshness.

But hey – I have no other reaason to mention Redbridge other than the fact that Holcombe lived there.

Anyway, Holcombe built the Sea Witch, presumably for workers (Mary Mills reckons it was probably named for a famous American tea clipper; others ‘on the internet’ assume that it’s got folklore traditions; I just think they thought it was a cool name…) and I have no reason not to think he was also responsible for Kirkland Place as somewhere for employees on his ‘brass foundry, tar and asfelt works’ to live.

By the time John was born in 1947, the Sea Witch had been dead for seven years, bombed in an air raid. He remembers peddling his little red car, from the shop, which was on the corner of Tunnel Avenue and Morden Wharf Lane, opposite where the old Dreadnought School (where he attended) still is now,  up to the bombsite and back,  trying to keep up with the Blue Circle cement lorries,  reach the Mechanic’s Arms, do a 3 point turn and peddle down the lane. It took many years to redevelop the area, but the glucose works labs, until very recently, sat roughly where the pub used to be.

When he was five years old John had to have an appendix op at St Alphages Hospital.  His family came to visit  just before he went down for the operation, then returned to the shop. As John’s 15 year-old brother Tony was coming round the corner of Tunnel Avenue on that night (around the time John was having the operation) he saw a shadowy figure on the flat roof of 10 Kirkland Place.  He ran up the stairs to the second floor,  lifted the roof door and walked out but saw nobody there. He’s never been able to explain what or who he saw. Could it have been young John, having an out-of-body experience? Who knows…

Thinking back to the Seawitch – don’t you think with all that development that we were promised wouldn’t happen and now is, that a proper, historic Thameside pub on the west side of the peninsula would be a lovely thing? Enderby House is empty…

*razed to the ground for building materials to pay off massive gambling debts, though much of the park and features – including the grotto, inside which, in truly Gothick fashion, said rake once locked said heiress. There are also two classical temple-style follies, but they’re on private property and you can’t see them. Not something you expect to find in a back garden in Ilford…

Seriously, though, Valentines is worth a visit.

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.

“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.

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?

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….

Paul has been promising to visit the Metropolitan Police Historical Society for ages and find out the full gen on the recently deceased Westcombe Park nick. He’s sent me a bunch of stuff that he’s found and I’ve Phantomised, not least because much of it comes from a book on local policing that Paul can’t remember the name of, I don’t know the other sources and while I want to share this with you I don’t want to be a Bad Phantom and end up in my nearest nick which is probably somewhat further away than Westcombe Park.

As you can see from the picture above, Paul ploughed through dusty files in the archives to find the photos – cheers, Paul, I owe you. The images appear to be from May 1908, a time when  the whole of that area would have been brand new and buzzing – a time when new houses meant a new library, new fire station, new school, new pub and new police headquarters – now that’s what I call infrastructure.

But that’s not where the story begins, according to my anonymous source. For that, we need to go back nearly 100 years earlier, to 1812, when presumably the local rowdies, highwaymen and tea-leaves were getting too much for the good burghers of Charlton.

Anyone whose income exceeded ten pounds a year, was expected to cough up for the newly-formed Charlton Guard. These sterling heavies were given a lantern, rattle and firearm each, paid 4 shillings a night and charged to keep watch over the area between 8.00pm and 5.00a.m.

Trouble was, no one was watching the watchers and the watchers knew. They simply stopped watching.

In 1827 the residents tried again, this time paying the watch only 2/6d but from the sound of things, giving them a smaller remit – Charlonites seem to have been much more worried about their dead relations than being murdered in their beds – the watch was instructed to keep guard over the churchyard and deter resurrectionists. I’m quite surprised that resurrectionists were pyling their trade that far out from London – the bodies would have been especially mouldy by the time they got to the medical schools. Perhaps there was some jiggery-pokery (mainly pokery; they would have been practising amputations etc, yerk…) going on in Greenwich Hospital infirmary, though more likely it was the fear of crime that really spooked residents.

By 1885 Greenwich had been bulging left, right and centre and the much more professional Victorian police force needed  somewhere in between Blackheath Road and East Greenwich (which I presume is the one that used to be at Park Row but it might actually have been the Charlton one. The term East Greenwich is one hell of a moveable feast.)

Land was bought from Mr John Pound for £950 and the new police station, called Westcombe Park to avoid confusion with East Greenwich in December 1983.

I recommend clicking on the next image to get it big enough to read – some of the crossed out bits of the ledger Paul’s taken a picture of for me are fascinating.

George Hocking was in charge – well, by 1891, anyway. He lived, with his family, just round the corner at 2 Farmdale Road – of course in those days there wasn’t a whopping great motorway to cross to get to work.

I particularly like the view above as it shows signs of the now-half-lost Westerdale Road, which I can’t go down without thinking of the splendid writer Christopher Fowler, whose memoir, Paperboy, talks of his days growing up in the road and failing to return library books…

During the first world war Westcombe Park Special Constables took it in turns to stand at the top of Severndroog Castle at the top of Shooters Hill with a pair of binoculars then pass any zepplin (and other) sightings to the many interested parties via the new-fangled telephone on top of the Central Observation Station at Spring Gardens.

It also appears that paranoid Charlton residents became convinced that some of their less patriotic neighbours were passing on information to the enemy in Belgium of Germany. I have no idea why they suddenly thought this – perhaps they spoke with ‘foriegn accents’ or something but nevertheless, on the 4th September 1914 constables were instructed to visit every pigeon loft in the area and release the birds to see which direction they flew off in…

During the Second World War (and presumably before the advent of the Mr Hodges of this world) it was up to the police to enforce the blackout regulations, which made them pretty unpopular. The entirety of Charlton Athletic Football Club became War Reservists, though they were based at an emergency Police Station in the basement of Charlton House during the really bad air raids. Apparently it was all a bit of a mess to start with – Harold White, the sergeant, turned up on his first day to find the basement still full of coal.

Westcombe Park Police Station might have managed to stay whole during the raids, but officers were used to returning from shift to find that not everyone had come back. They’d stay behind to find their friends – sometimes trapped, sometimes injured and, occasionally, sometimes kiled in the raids. Fourteen ‘R’ Division Officers died during air raids; a further twenty-three whilst serving in the RAF or Royal Navy.

I am not sure whether Westcombe Park had anything to do with the strange ‘riot training’ spat with Greenwich Council in the 1980s, but as far as I know it continued to live a quiet little life until near the end of the millennium

Station Office counter facilities were withdrawn from Westcombe Park in June 1999, and for me, that’s when it really ‘died.’ The place felt ‘closed’, even if there were squad cars out the back and sundry lights on upstairs. In November, the Millennium Policing Team moved into the Station to oversee the celebrations at the Dome and Greenwich Peninsula.

It died properly last year, with boarded up windows and a POA asking-price that I’m guessing is a bit more than £950.

Perhaps the ghost of a prisoner that hanged himself who supposedly haunts the cellar will come and give the developers a hard time, but frankly I’ll be grateful if they just keep the building. I can’t see the car park at the back staying like that. I miss the old lamp too, and wish they could have found a way to keep it -perhaps with clear glass or something. Sigh.

But Whiskey Papa?

Westcombe Park’s police call sign, of course.

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.

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.