I confess today’s post is a bit shameful for me. Back in February we were discussing the Langton Way plaque and Richard asked me about a second, older memorial in the same lane. “It’s on wall where they’re currently building two new buildings, just opposite Angerstein Lane. It’s a sad tribute to a young girl called Francis Banks, with a Ben Johnson quotation – however I’ve not been able to find out the story behind the plaque,” he said.

‘Ah, yes, I’ll see what I can find out,’ I said, then promptly forgot all about it. I don’t have any real excuses – work – stuff, yada, yada.

Richard, clearly bored with waiting for me, then went off and found out for himself, but instead of having the hump with me, he’s shared the information, which I pass on to you today.

Frances was a 13 year old girl who was knocked down and killed by a car after getting off a bus in the 1980s. Richard thinks the accident happened by the cross roads at the top of the park by the Gibb Memorial on the heath just past the Dips but he’s not 100% sure. There’s also a white flowering cherry tree planted in her memory next to the plaque.

The developer of the two new buildings knocked down the wall Frances’s plaque was originally placed on, but at least moved the plaque. He also agreed not to cut down the cherry tree as he’d planned – makes sense to me – who wants to move into a new place knowing that a mature garden’s been completely displaced for it. A cherry tree’s roots won’t be any problem for foundations.

So young Frances’s plaque remains. Visit it some time, and if you do, make sure you walk along Angerstein Lane and see the Phantom’s Favourite Front Garden

Here’s one of those Greenwich oddities that gets my mouth watering. It was spotted by local author David Ramzan (it’s in his book ‘Royal Greenwich Through Time‘) but he knows nothing more about it and is wondering whether anyone here does.

It’s in the Thames Wall up by the power station and David says:

None of my friends or relations who know riverside Greenwich well, had any idea this inscription was on the riverside wall close to the old Power Station, and it would be interesting to find out if anyone knew any more about it. 

For example would this type of inscription have been commonly found along the riverside walls close to old historic landing places? Unfortunately like a lot of the historic Greenwich riverside architecture, these little curiosities are also gradually beginning to be lost to time. 

To me it looks like re-used stone, though from what and when it was built is a mystery. Perhaps it was built when the power station was built, between 1902 and 1910, but the stone could have come from anywhere.

It also looks as though they broke the stone – either in transport, during the build – or, how about this for a theory – actually at the stonemason’s yard, when the junior carver got a clip round the ear and a month’s wages docked for spelling ‘friends’ wrongly..? Perhaps the master mason decided to sell the stone off for scrap and it ended up here?

I wonder what the message was – all I can make out is

Neighbours and Freinds (sic) welcome ar (e?) XXXXwill strangers XXy XermiXX

Okay – let’s see who can fill in the gaps with the best phrase… (Scared of Chives, I still haven’t forgotten ‘…and gut your first octopus‘…)

In the meanwhile – does anyone know anything more about this – or, indeed, has anyone ever actually noticed this before? Do you know of any other places strange messages are carved into the river wall?

Lynsey saw this little plaque in Langton Way recently and asked if I know anything about it, which I don’t, so of course I’m asking you. I can find no reference to the Langton Way Association online – it’s clearly quite an exclusive club – I guess you don’t need a website when you can just call round next door for a cuppa and a war council.

My excuse is that Langton Way is a little off my manor – if you’re not quite sure where it is, it’s that delightful little road that runs parallel with the A2 across Blackheath behind the large heath-fronting ‘Captains’ Houses’ and it crosses the even more delightful Angerstein Lane, home to the Phantom’s Joint Number One Favourite Front Garden.

According to Neil Rhind’s excellent Blackheath & Environs II (more about Neil’s latest work v. soon, BTW) it’s named for Langton House, a 14-roomed place at number 132 Shooter’s Hill Road, built speculatively in 1863

It’s a fantastic, ‘secret’ little country lane, somewhere I always enjoy walking through, though I can begin to understand why it might need an association of its own. I can’t help thinking that it’s a classic victim/victor of the back-garden-conversion trend. It used to be a service lane for the big houses on the heath, and although it did have some commercial uses – by nurserymen and, slightly bizarrely, a stable for polo ponies, it was pretty quiet until the Great War, after which a lot of the big houses were converted into flats.

There are some cute old buildings there, converted coach houses and the like, but they’ve been gradually joined since the 1950s by some rather less cute modern ones and although the lane is still very lovely with the two sorts all jumbled together, as you can see from Joe’s photo below, I can understand why existing residents might not want to see any more back gardens converted.

Neil’s book tells me there was a scheme mooted just after WWII to develop Langton Way into a main, relief -road for the A2 and I am wondering whether the Michael Burton who’s remembered in this plaque may have been at least partially responsible for quashing the proposal. If someone saved Phantom Towers from being demolished for a trunk road, I think I’d probably give them a plaque too.

But in truth, I don’t know. Does anyone else?

Okay – here’s a charming, romantic little Greenwich tradition for St Valentine’s Day. Any ideas where it is? No?

How’s about I zoom out a bit from Graham’s photo…

Got it yet? Yeaaaaaah. I guess it doesn’t take too much working out to fathom that this small but growing collection of padlocks declaring undying amour for one’s true love is on the Meridian Line just outside the Observatory:

Graham, author of On the Line and whose excellent website is, frankly, everything you’ll ever need to know about The Greenwich Meridian (check out the fabulous-but-doomed Millennium Tree Line page, for example) has a whole collection of photos of the very spot over the years, but the padlocks are a relatively recent addition. Perhaps it’s teenage tourists, perhaps local lovers – perhaps a bit of both. Who can tell. Beats carving up trees, I say, both harmless and sweet.

For some  perverse reason they remind me a little of the Skateboard graveyard on Hungerford Bridge though I don’t know of a website where people leave electronic billets doux for the Greenwich Padlocks. Do let me know if there is one.

A few weeks ago, Graham was a bit worried because some workmen were doing ‘stuff’ to the railings and he thought the padlocks may have been removed. But I went up to check and it seems that Royal Parks are a romantic bunch. The locks are still there.

Ahhhh…

Happy Valentine’s Day folks.

Many of the places you might expect to have elaborate classical sculptures in the Old Royal Naval College tend to be rather forlorn – though when you do get a carved pediment, it’s usually a real humdinger.

Apart from the obvious, the other three buildings of the ORNC are plain but King Charles Building actually has several carved pediments. Thing is, I can find virtually nothing about them. Even the usually-highly-detailed John Bold doesn’t seem to mention the building of the King’s House very much at all, and I certainly haven’t found any explanation of these figures. Here’s the pediment on the east front of the building:

Okay. So the coat of arms doesn’t take much working out. It’s Charles II’s badge, including the garter, but with a couple of cornucopias instead of the Lion and the Unicorn.

I’m even cool with the guy on the right. I’m assuming, given the whole beardy-bloke-with-sea-monster deal, it’s Neptune – all very maritime.

But who’s the woman? And what the hell is she holding? A spike? Some kind of navigational instrument? An obelisk? Something Masonic?

Answers on a virtual postcard, please…

One of the first-ever posts I ever did on this blog was about the extraordinary, mysterious Foot & Mouth Memorial at what we know as Ballast Quay, but has not always, even in the last few years, been known as such.

It’s in a fabulous little garden, right at the edge of the Thames, about which I also knew nothing, housing the best shed in Greenwich, which I also didn’t know the story of. What puzzled me most was what a memorial to what was, for the most part, a rural tragedy, was doing in an urban setting like Greenwich.

Well, I have been enlightened and I’m looking forward to revealing all in the new occasional series of memories from Hilary Peters, who is responsible for the lot. Her story is incredible, but to tell it in chronological order seems so  - well, prosaic, so I’m going to start with one of the later incidents in the garden she built from scratch in the 1960s – the Foot & Mouth Memorial itself.

Hilary’s gardening experiences in Greenwich, she tells me, led her to help pioneer the city farming movement (I’ll come to that in another post – it’s a brilliant story…) This in its turn, saw her travelling round Britain visiting all the other city farms that had sprung from her own. “I stayed on farms too, and sometimes looked after them while their owners were away.”

“I learned that farmers lived embattled lives. Paperwork, red tape, regulations, pressures to intensify, computerise, and diversify were destroying traditional farming. Seen by a complete outsider, this did not look accidental. Farmers could only see the next form to fill in, the next hoop to jump through, but it looked very much like part of a plan to replace mixed farms with monoculture, replacing incidentally, kindness with profit. Britain is a small island and on the world map it was coloured in as ‘leisure’. The serious business of producing food happened far away where no one could hear the screams.”

When in February 2001 Foot & Mouth disease struck Britian, Hilary was looking after a farm in Suffolk.  Its owners came rushing back and Hilary drove across England as the country was closing down. I remember driving through the countryside myself in those dark days, passing piles of burning carcasses, the acrid, black smoke carrying an almost apocalyptic feel, and I felt pretty distressed at the sight. But being a City Phantom, my horror was nothing to that of people like Hilary. It’s clear that the anger she felt then is as strong today as ever. I leave the rest of today’s post to her:

“Suddenly, in what we had believed was a reasonably free country, you couldn’t walk in the country, you couldn’t move your animals to graze, you couldn’t intervene, or even talk to the press. If some official in Whitehall thought your animals should be killed, they were killed.

The epidemiological policy was based on computer modelling and computers can’t model without facts. There were no facts. In fact it was martial law. There were road blocks and behind them, the army were sent in to kill as many animals as they could. I was one of very few protesters.

We were protesting against the whole policy of stamping out infection rather than treating the cause.

We didn’t win.

We had a few minor victories, notably in the Forest of Dean. But Wales was a death camp. Yorkshire was a war zone. The Borders (Cumbria and the Scottish lowlands) were the worst of all. No one cared about animal suffering.

It was this feeling of horror and powerlessness that led to the Foot & Mouth memorial.

The sculpture is by Kevin Herlihy, who has an extraordinary talent for picking up bits of grot on the beach and making them into something so alive it hits you in the eye (there are some more pictures of his work here – TGP). He had made sculpture with the kids at Surrey Docks Farm. It is a goat because goats were my way into farming and a symbol of the wild. The goats at Surrey Docks have been giving local children a connection with the natural world for 40 years now.

The words are by me. I wish they were redundant. I’m all for forgetting as rule, but nothing has changed. If Foot & Mouth broke out again, the policy would be the same. The only difference is they’ve changed the law so we could not protest. That is why the memorial is still there.

IN MEMORY OF

THE UNCOUNTED MILLIONS OF ANIMALS

WHO DIED NOT OF FOOT AND MOUTH

BUT OF THE CURE FOR IT

I don’t now how many times I’ve walked down Lassell Street down near Bannig Street and I’d never noticed this before. It is, of course, a Victorian stink pipe and although not exactly rare, certainly something of our industrial past we just don’t tend to notice.

Not to put too fine a point on it, these pipes were (and still are) used to vent dangerous methane and other unpleasant gasses from the sewers under our feet – we really, really wouldn’t want them building up and causing an explosion, so stink/stench/soil (according to how euphemistic you want to get) pipes are built nice and tall to get rid of both the gas and the smell from billions of bacteria gobbling up poo.

According to this excellent Greenich Industrial History Society article, it’s a type 3 stink pipe – public and freestanding, which are “usually of cast iron, often ornamental, typically: 6 inch /150 mm diameter; 20-25 feet / 6-8 metres tall.”

Despite some rather nice iron work around the base, this isn’t the most ornate pipe in Greenwich. So far, the winner of that coveted prize loiters on Straightsmouth and is really rather a splendid fellow (if you read the piece, you will be saddened to know that the last time I passed Farting Lane, London’s last sewer lamp appeared to be in very sad condition – the entire lamp part had disappeared. I’m just hoping it was away for repairs…)

But now I’m thinking. Surely these two chaps can’t be the only stench pipes left in Greenwich? They are such anonymous customers it’s really easy to walk straight past them so now, I want your help.

Richard Buchanon in his article, mentions several stink pipes in the borough of Greenwich – but none in the actual town. Let’s see if we can compile a collection of them. Let me know if you know of one.

And, just to prove there’s a blog for everything, here is one dedicated to the stench pipes of London.

Jeremy asks:

“I wanted ask if you’ve heard about the person who seems to have set up home in the park’s rose garden?

Taking a picture is a bit insensitive, so here’s a wonky generic pic of Chesterfield House- I know you like a photo! (Oh, I do, I do – and don’t worry, I’ve squared it up for you Jeremy – cheers – TGP)

Has anyone else asked? I’ve seen the same pile of belongings and Coca-Cola parasol in the same spot for weeks. Winter will soon be here and I’m getting a tad worried.

The Phantom replies:

Rangers House rose garden does attract some curious, secret things – not least the mysterious bouquet tree which puzzled us in 2008 and continues to do so (it was certainly refreshed last time I saw it.)

I confess I haven’t been up that way for several weeks – since my bout of lurgy I’ve been catching up on Real Work and strolls around the park are a distant memory. No one else has mentioned this (to me, anyway) but I’d be quite impressed if this person is managing to sidestep the park staff and actually staying overnight.

To my shame I know nothing about provision for the homeless around here (and worse still, I hadn’t actually even thought about it until you asked; I tend to think of it as being an inner-London issue, which, naturally, is crazy), but if I were staying in a hostel, local or otherwise, I wouldn’t want to leave my chattels in there, even if I was allowed to, so perhaps the rose garden is just a good place to take personal stuff and hang out during the day – though I agree – things are getting nippier now, the days are getting shorter and the rose garden somewhat less of a vision of loveliness.

I’ll be surprised if this person has gone totally unnoticed by the park staff and I’d hope that they are keeping an eye on them, though of course probably more to move them on than for any other reason.

But it has got me thinking about Crisis, a charity I find myself thinking about this time of year, though of course, like dogs, is not just for Christmas. I can’t see they do specific projects locally, but it’s always worth knocking them a tenner anyway and, if you don’t mind (shudder) going west for an evening I notice there’s an evening with celebs like Paul Weller, Tim Minchin, Ross Noble, Jo Brand etc on 20th December at the Hammersmith Apollo to raise funds too.

I got a rather splendid item last week. I guess it was a pretty easy choice for me, given the whole anonymous thing but nevertheless Herb Lester’s quirky map of Clandestine London, showing 31 suggestions of places in London where, if you were a cold war spy, you could meet your associate without being overheard or noticed, is fascinating. They claim “hidden alcoves and easy exits, neglected restaurants, unreconstructed wine bars, ancient pubs and even natural isolation” where ‘discretion is assured.’

I enjoyed it a lot and decided to take their invitation that “it’s entirely up to you to decide how you make use of” their information to heart.

Herb Lester’s one big failing for a Phantom is that the map only covers central London – rubbish if you’re planning on passing state secrets in Greenwich.

So today, I am going to don my grubby Phantom mac, homburg tricorn and thick black 1970s glasses and start a list of places for Greenwich George Smileys who don’t want the bother of going all the way up to the Circus to find a place to ‘feed the ducks.’

1) Talking of ‘feeding the ducks’, the obvious place for a Russian double agent to look absolutely normal-nothing-to-see-here would be the lake up at the top of Greenwich Park. Plenty of paths leading to it, plenty of tree cover for slipping away should the moment require a quick exit, plenty of noise from local children and the fountain to mask any bugging devices, and plenty of benches for sitting on next to a bland-looking briefcase.

There are, of course, lots of duck ponds in the area – the boating lake across the heath is a possible choice, but the one in the park is least likely to have Neighbourhood Watch twitching the nets.

2) The chainlinked area by the deer park inside the flower garden would be a good choice for a sting. Initially promising, the unsuspecting double-agent will, on arrival, discover it’s far too closed-in, with not nearly enough exits for any kind of escape. The sniper installed in the deer hide will have a clear shot.

3) Davey’s Wine Vaults. The booths in Daveys are at once public and private. As long as the first person to arrive is seen ostentatiously swirling their glass of white Burgundy with a connoisseur’s frown of concentration, after that you’ll be left alone. Even better would be the extensive vaults themselves, underneath the main bar – loads of corners for discussing Top Secret Stuff. Shame they’re only open for functions and parties, though I guess if it was timed properly, that 21st birthday fancy-dress party would provide the perfect opportunity for two middle-aged spies to discuss a car bomb in Stalingrad dressed as bananas.

4) High Arctic. TBH I didn’t learn anything at all from the current exhibition down in the bowels of the new Sammy Ofer Wing but it’s monster fun. For starters it’s all dark and there are loads of Giants-Causeway-style white pillars, swirling projected lights and stuff to play with. But the piece de resistance is the ultra-violet torches they give you (well, actually, lend – you have to give ‘em back, chiz) which interact with the projections. Put all that together with the slightly odd soundtrack and it’s Espionage Heaven. You could get a whole nest of spies in there, sitting back to back on the benches, they could spill all sorts and no one would be any the wiser.

5) While we’re on the NMM, the recording of roaring waves as you enter would definitely create some interference for bugging devices. Trouble is you’d look a bit iffy meeting in the middle of the path. Not to mention the the excellent view in the crosshairs for the dastardly turncoat waiting across the road on the second floor of the King William Block. So my advice would be to suddenly develop a deep fascination for Admiral Hardy’s tomb. It’s close enough to the noise to mask any conversation and although virtually no one goes there, two ‘apiarists’ in full masked kit ‘inspecting the hives’ around a mausoleum would cause no raised eyebrows from even the most determined conspiracy theorist.

6) Depending on how long you’re going to be about it, the sheer secret-in-the-midst-of-madness-ness that sees the Bridge of Tiles span the railway between Greenwich High Road and Straightsmouth would be a good place to pass-by an associate, switch briefcases or even dispatch that sinister figure who’s been shadowing you since the pre-credit sequence (silencer on, please, residents are trying to sleep.) The body may be dumped over the wall onto the tracks for full opening-scene horror, or in the bushes by the side, next to the glamorous stink pipe for the shock ‘third body’ discovery at the end of Chapter Six.

7) The Thames Path is open and shut so often, it’s not a reliable place to make any long-term or regular arrangements for assignations but, when it is open, that Long Good Friday feel around the sundry closed factories, although much less scary than it was, being mainly flattened rubble these days, remains bloomin’ creepy.

Just up the way another good place to meet would be willows:

My suggestion would be for one of the agents to pose as a fisherman. Not both – anglers never talk to each other. When the other guy, a ‘rambler’, comes along, the code-phrase is  ’are the haddock biting today?’ ‘Actually thinking about it,  it’s a bit shallow there for fishing, so when the tide’s out, try the landing stage nearby. But the willows need not be a washout. Merely pose as an earnest urban landscape photographer and switch the phrase to ‘The light is reminiscent of Paris in September.’

8 ) Oliver’s Wine Bar. No explanation needed. You can meet anyone downstairs in this fabulous place, full of swirling iron, faded plush and dark corners and no one will bat an eyelid.

9) St Alfege Church. Make a great show of choosing which charity Christmas cards you’re going to purchase, then take a stroll to inspect the stained glass memorial to Gen. Wolfe. If the ‘vicar’ who sidles up and asks you to ‘make a donation to the East Front Restoration Fund’ does not have a beard, check his cassock for umbrellas.

10) Back to benches and the ones I’d recommend would be the Pledge Benches outside the Queen’s House. I would suggest the best bench in Greenwich but sit on that and you will be noticed. The pledge benches have the benefit of being somewhere you might genuinely want to sit and admire the view, but with plenty of other choices if the one at which you’d agreed to meet your counterpart happens to already have an old lady feeding the birds sitting on it. Ascertain that her bag of crumbs isn’t a cunningly-disguised camera (check by ‘accidentally’ knocking it out of her hand. It will please the pigeons for hours and she’ll be so distressed she’ll have to have a cup of tea in the Trafalgar Cafe, which, happily for her, will mean you don’t have to drug her after all. So actually, you’re doing her a favour.) If after all that your contact is late you can always amuse yourself by wondering how many cardigans for premature babies Sheila Trevithick has knitted by now.

11) The Old Royal Naval College Colonnades. I thought that one might be a bit cheesy, but since they did actually have a CIA baddie meet the boss of M15 in there in an episode of Spooks in 2007, I’ll buy it. And while we’re about it, I’m sure there’s some clever code-thing that could be arranged using the mirror-on-wheels in the Painted Hall.

12) Greenwich Book Place. A wonderful, labyrinthine second-hand bookshop full of dusty corners, dark shadows and shelving to peek through. An agent could discuss confidential missile blueprints with a mysterious soft-accented Soviet beauty and never actually see more than a pair of dark glasses, a giant furry hat and a wisp of honey-blonde fringe between surplus copies of Michael Palin’s Around the World in 80 Days in the foreign travel section.

So – here’s my first twelve to start the ball rolling. There would be more but I’d be writing this all day and I really have to do some actual work now. So – your turn. I want to know your top places for clandestine encounters. Remember, espials meeting at your chosen rendezvous mustn’t look too suspicious, can’t be overheard and should go for as much cliché as possible. Opportunity for silly disguises will be given extra points.

Actually – this all gives me a great idea for a flash mob. Everyone has to turn up to the places above dressed as cliché Cold-War era spies and have oblique conversations about the weather conditions in Vienna…

What kind of character has his nick-name carved above his own on his gravestone? I didn’t even want to know how B.J.N. Ketteringham, MMR, got his pet moniker, but I thought it was pretty clear that when he died, not five months before the end of World War I, his friends wanted the world to know the name he was known and loved by.

Well, that’s what I thought. I think a lot of things.

Sharmani first told me about the monument to Donkey Man some months ago, and I had originally imagined he might be a rakish old Greenwich pensioner about whom we could have some fun one day. But I when I actually sought it out, I found his simple grave in the South West-ish part of East Greenwich Pleasaunce deeply moving. He’s with several others from the first World War (not far from Anthony Sampayo) in a part of the cemetery that is very cosmopolitan indeed.

From sundry veterans’ forums I found Donkey Man’s whole name – Bertie John Nugent Ketteringham, 92723, was in the Mercantile Marine Reserve, and was Australian, from South Brisbane, son of William T. and Margaret M. Ketteringham, of Ferndale Rd, Annersley. He died of pneumonia, which is yet another pause for thought. I always tend to think of anyone who fell in the first World War as being a lion, charging out of the trenches on donkeys’ orders and being gunned down by the Hun, but this tells a completely different tale. One where, way out at sea somewhere god-knows-where, men are dying from disease, too.

And even that isn’t right. Nothing seems to be what it seems in this post. Donkey Man actually died at Greenwich Seaman’s Hospital, after being moved from Chatham, though where he contracted the pneumonia is anyone’s guess. He’d only signed up on 1st January that year.

HMS Eaglet is on the grave stone – but I found most about him on a completely different ship, HMS Teakol. HMS Teakol was sold to Eagle Oil, which might explain the name – but that wasn’t until 1920, so that couldn’t be right either.

HMS Eaglet itself is actually a training ship for reservists – which is probably what Ketteringham was doing on board, and possibly what it was doing in Greenwich. Today’s incarnation is not the same ship that served in the Great War, that version was destroyed in a fire in 1926 and there have been a couple of others since then. But our Eaglet (called HMS Eagle at the time; its name wasn’t actually changed until 1919, to mark it different from a new ship of the same name, which means that Ketteringham’s headstone wasn’t installed until at least a year after his death) was a frigate, mobilised in 1914 as part of the Royal Naval Division, and served at Gallipoli, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele and Cambrai.

At this point I guess I have to let you down. Donkey Man wasn’t a nickname, or not a personal one, anyway. It’s a generic term for the guy who looked after the engines on a ship. For a moment, when I discovered this, I was ever so slightly disappointed. But only for a moment. For me, it only opened up a whole bunch of other questions about B J N Ketteringham.

I find myself wondering what a 32/3 year-old Australian was doing signing up in 1918. I guess he couldn’t see that the end of the war was just months away, and he felt he needed to do his bit. He would have known about his countrymen’s fate over the past years, and he did it anyway. He travelled thousands of miles to serve. I think of what he must have thought as he set out. I think of Margaret and William, back in Ferndale Road, I think of what Bertram imagined he was getting into, and how it actually turned out. That it would appear he didn’t see one of the Big Battles in no way makes our own Greenwich Donkey Man any less worth remembering today.