@Curb_It We finally made it to Woolwich and went to the Equitable. Here's our write up:
http://deserter.co.uk/2014/12/woolwich-rides-again/Had a really interesting time. Could have written a great deal more about it than we did, but you have to stop somewhere. Had no probs outside the Equitable but that may be down to the pretty constant police presence in the square. Was stunned to hear a middle-aged woman be told 'spitting is an offence by a 'Town Centre Warden'.
But the Equitable was great, as was Blue Nile, Rose's and the brewery. It's still a bit sketchy and gets dragged down by a few lairy types, as you know, but it is definitely turning a corner.
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Good to see the old place is on the up, I'll have to go and have look around.
Knew Woolwich very well in mid-60s to mid-70s but not been back since.
And then I saw your next article, "Great Train Journeys: London Bridge to Charing Cross".........
Michael Portillo eat your heart out.
worked in Powis Street in the 70s
Made I laugh that did. Good read young man.
Must try Blue Nile.
Was the middle aged woman spitting? She wasnt the long red haired woman who's always drinking a can of beer holding on to a poor old dog ?
(Not a euphemism)
Yes, @Curb_It, the middle-aged woman was spitting - and she wasn't the only one. Greenwich have these wardens cracking down on spitting, littering and graffiti - environmental crime, they call it. Never seen that before. It wasn't a redhead, though
Glad to hear you get the newsletter - and are enjoying a night out in Woolwich. I haven't persuaded my wife to go yet, but she'll love the Blue Nile, I'm sure. Plus, she likes a scruffy boozer (some would say she married one.)
My grandparents both worked in the Arsenal and said it was always crawling with police, because it was so dangerous (I got the detall about the rubber-shoed horses from my dad, who was there as a kid). Now all the police are out in the town centre, along with the community police and wardens. It seems they are making a massive effort to assure people it's a safe place and let the lairy lot know they're around.
It was literally covered in hundreds of dead flies. Right above my drink. Put me right off returning.
Might have been a naked Eccles cake, but I don't think it was.
I recently moved to Woolwich. I've been coming to the town for nearly sixty years, but never actually lived in SE18 before.
In its present form the old place is certainly much changed from former days, many might not say for the better. However, things are as they are, and like many place Woolwich is having to re-invent itself, to find some way of putting the POW! back in Powis Street.
No doubt stealthy fortunes are already being made on the strength of Crossrail's 2018 opening. For now, though, it's enough just to see the town centre coming alive again, to see the streets full. I've heard it said that Woolwich was widely shunned after the tragic Lee Rigby incident - that seems inexplicable to me, because our status as a garrison town is nothing but a source of great pride which needs open expression. (There's no finer sight in the Borough than watching The King's Troop go by ....)
Woolwich has so much to offer. It would be sad indeed if that were a secret known only to strangers and visitors, and not to disenchanted locals who think only of a Woolwich that, like so much else, is gone for ever.
Btw - Vincenzo\; superb article and indeed the whole website is just excellent. Compulsive reading!
http://www.bluenilecafe.co.uk/
True story here, though:
One particularly quiet Wednesday night, back in about 1971, some scruff wandered into the Shakespeare and asked to speak to the landlord. When Mine Host appeared, the scruff asked if he wanted a band to do a gig in the hall that night. "Nah" said the gaffer. "We only do gigs on Friday nights. No business in it on Wednesday" The scruff replied that he had McCartney outside in the van. Would there be any interest in that..? To say that the landlord of the Shakespeare doubted his word would be putting it mildly, but he was persuaded to go with chummy to check it out.
When they got outside and the door to a rather manky looking van was opened, sitting inside, eating chips out of a bag was, indeed, Paul McCartney. Linda was also there and a motley collection of hairy individuals who it was presumed were the rest of the band took up the rest of the space.
This occurred about a year or so after the Beatles broke up and McCartney had decided to go back to his roots and was just bumming around the country, getting the odd gig here and there wherever he pitched up. Getting paid in plastic bags of 50 pence pieces from the take on the door and learning to play rock and roll, and how to work an audience all over again.
Of course, when he realised it was true, the landlord of the Shakespeare agreed and the show went ahead. Word got round the Poly dead quick and within the hour, the place was packed out. I wasn't there myself, I only heard about it the next day, but apparently it was "a good gig, man".
Ahhh, happy days though. Rock and roll lived and breathed back then.
Around that time I had a starstruck girlfriend who was crazy about Paul.
She'd found out where he lived in St Johns Wood and persuaded me to go with her.
We hung around his front gate for a while stroking his cat on the garden wall, before a white transit turned up - and out jumped Denny Laine, Paul McCartney and his shaggy Old English Sheepdog, Martha (subject of the song on the Beatles double white album).
Denny Laine went straight inside, but Paul hung around and chatted to us for about 10 minutes - amongst other things, telling us his plans for them randomly turning up at pubs and doing impromptu back to roots gigs.
Then he hugged my GF, gave her a peck on the cheek and went indoors.
Wonderful gesture to make time for a 16 year old fan - she was walking on air all the way back to Welling.
NB Rick Wakeman played with Alfie Boe last night at the O2.
Woolwich is certainly changing.
The Old arsenal site does seem cut off from the rest of the town but it also seems very clean, very quiet and maybe a little too tame.
And maybe the town is too far the other way.
Look at Hoxton, Peckham etc. Woolwich will be next
I saw The Buzzcocks, The Adverts and The Lurkers at the Poly back in the late 70's, some of my more hairy friends used to rave about Hawkwind all nighters down there, probably an acquired taste that one.