We’re used to seeing murals round here – mainly created by Greenwich Mural Workshop and dating back at most to the 1980s. This one isn’t by GMW and it’s much older. The other awkward thing is that it isn’t actually in Greenwich. It’s not actually even in England. But it does give me one more reason why I want to visit the Orkney Islands.

It’s by a chap called Albert Ryecraft ‘Splinter’ Woods, born in Gravesend in 1877, died in Deptford in 1950 and for much of his life – and both World Wars – Piermaster at Tower Pier, for the PLA.

So what the hell was he doing painting a mural in the mess hall of a WWII gun battery in Orkney? That’s the question Andrew, who leads tours round the extraordinary-looking Ness Battery at Stromness, would like to know.

A job like Woods’s wouldn’t have seen him being called up but he was a part-time Territorial in WWI, manning machine guns on a roof in Deptford Market. In his fifties by the time WWII broke out, he became a Sergeant in the Home Guard, but always working on the Thames. Here’s a picture of him and his dog Peter:

In 1942 Woods wrote a book about his experiences in both wars – I Guarded the Waterfront – and was a minor celebrity at the time, even broadcasting on the wireless – but ask anyone round here now about him and you’ll get blank looks. In Orkney, though, he’s an intriguing man of mystery that many know about and have been searching for.

Andrew tells me the book makes no mention of his time in Orkney, and there is no record of his ever having been there other than his signature on the mural itself, which is one of the highlights of a visit to this most odd of 20th Century monuments (How odd? Well wouldn’t YOU want to visit a place that looked like this?)

Andrew wonders if Woods came to Orkney with equipment requisitioned for use by the Navy, such as floating cranes, barges and the like, which we know came from the PLA – in fact, the remnants of one of the floating cranes is still being scrapped as we speak. His experience in the Merchant Navy and as a small boat-man on the Thames may have made him a useful volunteer to escort those small craft up here. Speculative, but possible…

Research has come to a bit of a grinding halt though. The PLA lost a lot of records in the war and know little beyond the fact that Woods retired in 1947. The house where he died at Amersham Vale in New Cross has long gone for a health centre. Woods had children but Andrew can’t find any living descendents who might be able to shed light on why he went to Orkney and how long he spent there (must have been some time – that mural’s pretty big…)

So he’s trying a long shot and asking whether there are any Phantophiles out there who might have anything on this intriguing gentleman and his acrobatic dog.

I guess it’s worth an ask. Stephen? Mary? Anyone?

Sounds like an old music hall act, doesn’t it. But it’s actually two ships at Canary Wharf this weekend. This chap is arriving for a fancy dress party on MS Stubnitz on Saturday, when Mike snapped him (at least I hope it was fancy dress, I know the embarrassment of turning up in a stupid outfit only to find it’s just a straight party…)

While he was there, Mike noticed that HMS Lancaster, moored opposite Stubnitz, was going to be open yesterday – so he went to have a look:

The Queen is supposed to be visiting tomorrow. I’m guessing she’ll be taking a raincheck given where she is today…

Cheers Mike.

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…

Today possibly wasn’t the very best day to experience London’s newest tourist attraction, but it was the first one (official, anyway, apparently there were a bunch of the usual rent-a-crowd celebrities up there last night) and The Phantom Webmaster and myself managed to be some of the first proper punters to see it.

Actually, that’s not quite true, for we were there because I’d won a competition* – a very, very rare occurrence for me. It was a challenge to suggest a place that you can see from the Shard but most people would miss. The ten winners have had their suggestions included in the groovy digital telescope things at the top, and here’s my (winning, tee hee) entry, already programmed into the viewfinder:

Not that you could see even the vague area in which Severndroog Castle might be spotted today – the rain was lashing down and the black clouds seemed to completely surround Shooters Hill. You couldn’t even see Greenwich, though I’m told that you can at least see the Old Royal Naval College, Observatory and Power Station on a good day.

It’s a fun experience, and on that mythical ‘good day’ I am sure you can see far into the distance. As it was I still had fun, staring down and spotting fun stuff like the little shelter from the old London Bridge that sits in Guys Hospital, and the Globe Pub which, you can see from above, really was built around to create the new lines out of London Bridge station.

But it does have to be that ‘good day’ if you want to do anything beyond enjoying St Paul’s Cathedral and a charmingly model-like Tower of London.

It costs £24.95 for an adult (though at the tills they all said £29.95; I don’t know where they get that figure from,) or £100 if you want to go up there and then so to get your money’s worth, it will be worth waiting for better weather (they tell me it’s pretty much fully booked anyway until April) and then watch the weather forecast and book accordingly.

I can see this becoming one of those ‘things you have to do’ when you come to London, but those prices are squeakingly high for everyday folk, and that’s before you even hit the gift shop where they must be thanking the marketing gods for ‘Romeo,’ the fox who lived up the Shard for two weeks while it was being built and thus giving them a cute animal as the tower’s first resident to rurn into cuddly toys (not literally, of course…) to go with the rest of what I have to admit are generally pretty un-tacky souvenirs.

So – the Phantom likes – but make sure you get the weather right…

*if you’re wondering how I managed to get in without being spotted, I have to thank Will, the guy who organised the completely anonymous tickets – cheers Will – I was the short, fat, tall, skinny one in the red/green/black/blue cloak and tricorn…

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.

Okay – I have the slimmest of reasons to feature this – it features Jane Gifford who painted the mural on Creek Road (the one opposite Greenwich Book Place in St Peter’s school yard, if memory serves). But it’s an utterly charming docco about the people who make London murals and the people who preserve them. Makes me wonder if it’s about time we applied for some Heritage Lottery cash for the (surviving) Greenwich, Charlton and Woolwich murals and mosaics…

A couple of weeks ago we were talking about a school in Surrey that was briefly owned by Greenwich Council and we were discussing other places the council owned outside the borough. Rob at greenwich.co.uk mentioned a hotel by the seaside and Sven told me about this:

In fact it’s still called the Greenwich Hotel and it’s on Sea road at Westgate on Sea, though I don’t know if where I’ve put the arrow is where the hotel actually is as I haven’t been there (yet – looks like a jolly Phantom Day Out to me…)

I’m guessing this picture was taken in the 1950s or 60s. It’s now a residential home for, I believe, people with special needs. It doesn’t have a website and I can find precious little else out about it (aw, c’mon – you try googling ‘Greenwich’ and ‘Hotel’ and see what you come up with…) so I’ll just have to go and see it for myself. Westgate is, from the maps, just up the road from Margate, so next time I need a Mad-Hatter’s-tearoom-and-creepy-shell-grotto fix I’ll make a detour to view the Greenwich Hotel. It’s certainly the weather for a trip to the seaside. Shame about it being a Monday…

Fantastic. I have looooong wanted to talk about St Anne’s Church in Limehouse, – mainly because, in the churchyard, lies it my favourite piece of Grade II-listed builders’ rubble. It seems to have been shoehorned into every leyline in London and there are all sorts of psycho-geographical theories about it but ultimately it’s no one’s grave, didn’t come from Outer Space and, as far as I know, there’s nothing sinister buried under it. It’s just a roof decoration that never got used.

That doesn’t stop it being a wonderfully creepy thing, even in brilliant sunshine, and c’mon – it’s a pyramid. And it was left by Nicholas Hawksmoor. Yeah, okay, stick it in those ley-lines after all.

But I digress. I couldn’t include St Anne’s because, apart from the obvious Hawskmoor thing, I couldn’t find any link direct enough with Greenwich to justify it. It’s the kind of lovely quirky thing for which I occasionally envy London bloggers who haven’t set themselves such narrow parameters.

I can’t even remember what I was googling yesterday when I came across St Anne’s Wikipedia page and read this:

There is a link to Greenwich time at the top of the tower: a weight falls when a signal comes from Greenwich (line of sight).

Yay! An excuse…

You can just about see the golden ball at the top of the tower in the picture above. Apparently St Anne’s has close connections with the Royal Navy – the rector is Honorary Chaplain to the Navy.  It was granted the right to carry the White Ensign as a landmark (and so the ships’ captains could record any births, marriages or deaths). Most places permitted to fly the White Ensign can only do so on special occasions, but St Anne’s is allowed to carry it at all times.

The clock is the highest church clock in London, built for the shipping on the Thames. It used to chime every quarter of the hour, but is now just hourly. I still can’t tell whether the ball was just a marker for ships, or whether, like the Timeball at Greenwich, it drops. The Wikipedia entry suggests this, but there’s no mention of balls dropping (oh, honestly…) on the official St Anne’s site.

The Wikipedia site mentions ‘line of sight’ – which implies that the curate would have had to climb to the top of the tower with a telescope once a day to watch for the Greenwich signal. A very inaccurate line I’ve drawn on this old map reveals it’s a good job that BBC pips and automatic clocks were invented; it goes straight through Canary Wharf these days:

Okay folks, I have a request to make.

Not for me (for once) but for Matt, who works for (Royal) Greenwich Council and who has been tasked with installing a new water feature at Hornfair Park, at the rose garden above.

He’d really like to re-create the original feature. Normal budget restrictions do apply so he confesses this could be a tall order but what makes it an even taller order is that he has no idea what it actually looked like. Despite searching Heritage archives and park management files he says he’s had no joy in finding a picture that includes the old fountain.

So now he’s asking us if anyone has any photos, or even memories, of what this feature looked like. It was still around in the 80s or 90s, so maybe, just maybe someone has a picture of themselves as a kid playing there with the fountain in the background or can remember being dunked in it or something. I get the feeling Matt would be grateful for any pointers at all as to what he should be putting there and short of looking at other parks of Hornfair’s age, he’s a bit stuck…

Regular readers will remember the strange situation the delightful little film studios just down the road in Rotherhithe found themselves in a few months ago, when the landlord of the 19th Century warehouse containing the studios, costume ateliers and picture library, not to mention Olivier’s little screening room where he shares unusual movies for free to all comers every Tuesday, decided to turn the whole lot into luxury flats and a supermarket.

Olivier took the brave decision to try to buy the building’s freehold so that this thriving local business could survive, and set about raising the money via individual shares through the government’s Enterprise Investment Scheme. Originally he thought that it would just be major investors and City boys buying the shares, but he was both surprised and delighted when he realised that it was local folk and people who actually used the studios – actors, producers, directors – who invested.

He deliberately pitched the shares at low-ish minimum investment so that it was available to as many people as possible, made it easy to invest without brokers and held open days throughout the summer where he took anyone interested round the extraordinary building, showing them what he and his team do – the tiny studios, sound-stages and workshops – and then explained the deal over a cup of tea and cake that he’d made himself.

I was entranced, but I shared Olivier’s worry that the landlord knew damn well that he had Sands over a barrel – that they wanted to buy the freehold and he could charge whatever he liked. They always feared that they’d get enough money then the landlord would demand more – in Olivier’s own words – they lived with ‘the ghost of a price increase’ or that he might just refuse to sell and go for the flats/supermarket option after all. I suspect this may have put off potential investors, though frankly the worst that would have happened is that Olivier would have had to give all the money back.

But I’m delighted to announce that the landlord has accepted the purchase offer. Olivier tells me “we have a contract, we have certainty over the price of the property and therefore the feasibility of the whole scheme.”

Now all they have to do is raise the rest of the cash they need before the completion date – 2nd April, 2012. Of course that will mean that City people will be interested as it will be somewhere they can offload tax liability before the end of the financial year, but Olivier is still keen to get ordinary people who have a love of film, but not multi-millions to spend because this is a labour of love, not a dull make-cash-quick-and-sod-anyone-else deal.

Ever-tireless, Olivier and his gang are once again inviting potential investors to visit the studio and ask all the questions they need to about the EIS scheme and the Sands Films business. Those informal events are great for the him too: giving him the chance to meet with investors and understand them better.

This is a genuine, local business, employing local people, often across generations and it is IMHO A Good Thing.

If you’ve never seen the inside of this extraordinary place, I suggest you hop on a 177, visit a fabulous historic warehouse full of amazing things, meet Olivier, drink tea, eat his home-made pear and almond cake, watch a film that has strong associations with the studio and think about this deal. It’s obligation-free – but if you’re not charmed by the passion of – and the work done by – Olivier and his team, I’ll be surprised.

He’ll be opening his doors every Saturday from 17th Jan – if memory serves, at 4.00pm (though I’m sure he’ll put me right if I’m wrong.) And though I shouldn’t say it, even if you’re not planning to invest you really should go along anyway and see this building /business. It is unique.