The Wonder of Woolworths
In the 70s the tune that was in everybody’s head certainly wasn’t Punk Rock, but the annoying television jingle ‘That’s the Wonder of Woolworths’ sung by end-of-the-pier celebrities of yesteryear.
Woolworths were a low-price shop with everything for everyone that dominated every High Street in the country and their famed Pick ‘n’ Mix sweet counter was a rite-of-passage for school child to practice, thieving!
At that time Beckenham, was safe and comfortable, inhabited by ex-army colonels and fur-coated old ladies who shopped in decaying shops unchanged from the 30s.
One day my mum came back from shopping in the High Street where she’d bumped into David Bowie in Woolworths who was buying himself some tights. Considered as a local eccentric struggling to make it big, she wasn’t really a fan, except when singing ‘Starman’ whilst ironing but, “you should see his hair, he’s gone bright red”.
So, I have him getting the Ziggy Stardust look together as he buys his tights in good ole Woolies. Dressed in his latest Freddie Buretti daywear he could indulge the Winfield range of Christmas glitter, buttons, thread or even a rip-off of his latest hit courtesy of Pickwick.
Though, he just might buy that jigsaw to take back to Haddon Hall, and whilst he slowly pieces together ‘Golden Hours’ he might get some inspiration for a new song!
“Run for the shadows…
Heaven and Hell
The Saturday Morning Pictures at the ABC Cinema was my heaven, especially the time when instead of showing a creaky old episode of Flash Gordon it was King Kong vs Godzilla; itself wildly out of date by today’s standards. The cinema, stilled called by some was in its unchanged 1930s glory with a ballroom upstairs and its own restaurant next door. Unfortunately, just along from it, in an unassuming semi was my hell, my dentist Mr Bradford. My sweet intake wasn’t high as my parents still rationed them as if it was WW2 but Mr Bradford always found an excuse for some work to be done, probably due to some form of money-making scam off the NHS. Once when going for a check-up he gave me an on-the-spot filling without an anaesthetic. That event changed my thoughts on dentists forever with my next appointment 32 years later!
The Man Who Wasn’t There
It would certainly be an underestimation to say I had a childhood interest in the supernatural. Anything from comics, books, models, cartoons TV programs; anything with a hint of a ghost of a monster, I was interested. From Scooby Doo to Doctor Who and anything in between it was my obsession until one day something happened. It was a normal afternoon in the early 1970s walking home from school, going up Bridge Road, and crossing over onto Blakeney Road. Suddenly I became aware of a man walking in front of me who just seemed really weird. This section of the road was bounded on one side by a 6ft high wall separating the pavement from the railway so my mind was really focused on this man. He was attired in an old style suit, wearing a trilby hat and holding a little case. What eventually struck me after following him for a few minutes was the colour; I’d only ever seen people dressed like that in black & white films that my father watched. Then in the blink of an eye he just wasn’t there, I was startled and looked all around but the street was totally empty. Feeling suddenly scared I ran all the way home to tell my mum I’d actually seen a ghost.
Smoke and Bangs
Hayne Court was a massive dilapidated Victorian mansion along the street from where we lived. Despite its size, at night it seemed to be lit by a single bare bulb in a side window, which made us think it must be haunted. The garden was an overgrown jungle and only ever visited by some naughty neighbours who let their pet gerbils run free! It was however inhabited by an eccentric gentleman called Russell-Kitchen who collected vintage cars that he kept in a massive garage at the side of the house. It was probably this which gave rise to my own collection on vintage cars… made by Airfix. Occasionally Mr Russell-Kitchen made it into the outside world on the road in one of his cars, seen through clouds of smoke, accompanied by the sound of loud bangs.
The Return of Aunty Vi
The shops nearest our home were those on the parade by Clock House station. What a strange decaying assortment they were too, featuring the Clachan Bakery where my mother got the same amount back in change from what she payed and the pet shop run by creepy Mrs Hook where be bought hay for the hamster and if I was lucky a ‘Made in Hong Kong’ toy.There was also Shannons newsagent where my Aiirfix magazine was on order and the ancient hair dresser, still lost in the 1930s. One day walking by Bourne House just opposite, an old Rover pulled up along side us. It was my long lost Aunty Vi, my fathers estranged elder sister, who let’s say, ‘liked the odd tipple’. Being a sort of deluded ‘Norma Desmond’, the car was driven by her husband Ken, playing the part of chauffeur, whist she sat in the back with her fur coat and pearls, pickled in gin and tonic.
The Last Days of Mr Griffiths
The legendary Mr Griffiths was the woodwork and craft teacher at my junior school; his infamy coming from his attitude towards the boys, whom he terrorised. I have never witnessed such extreme violence towards young children, and I’m surprised he was allowed to get away with it. Just the thought of him made me feel sick so once after a lesson where we had to make a tetrahedron, I took it home and burnt it in our garden in some sort of childish exorcism. Unfortunately, later he asked for it back to put in the end of term exhibition; scared of his possible anger I had to ask my dad to track down the peach-coloured cardboard to replicate it. Years later some friends practicing their newly found driving skills saw him, now retired sitting opposite the school on his old Honda Club moped; just watching.
End of Eden
The floods of September 1968 had been catastrophic for the town. By the time we had moved there in the early 70s, plans were afoot to make sure it didn’t happen again. It was about 1973 when the suburban countryside idyll started to go. Before this time the River Beck used to trickle down the end of our road, then along by Blakeney Road where mighty Elms lined the street. The first to go was the river, encased in concrete to stop any flooding. The temporary bridge over the construction, named Tower Bridge by my sister; some reference to the Keep Britain Tidy Campaign at the time fronted by David Cassidy who she had a crush on! I quite like the construction lights which looked like little Daleks, but they were not responsible for the extermination to follow; Dutch Elm Disease. One-by-one the avenue of trees that lined Blakeney Road fell to beetle and then eventually the saw.
This Town Wasn’t Big Enough For the Both of Us
I think it was 1974 when the playground was rife with rumours that the Los Angeles pop group Sparks had moved in nearby. This rumour was actually true, years later I read an article that Sparks had been put into digs down in Beckenham, but Russell and Ron Mael hated having to get the last train back from London as there were no night buses in those days! My picture places them on Southend Road opposite the back of Beckenham Junction Station where there used to be an intriguing collection of buildings for the coal yard, including Rutland Lodge a house with one bay window but two front doors. Ron and Russell look very out-of-place; lost in suburbia, probably thinking their last hit was very prophetic.
In Every Dream Home a Heartache
When walking to Beckenham Junction Station along Rectory Road in the early 1970s, I always looked through the railings at the old water tower, long since redundant by the demise of steam trains. Not that my 8-year-old mind was bothered by that, I wanted to move in and live there; away from my parents with the possibility of the biggest model train layout up in the water tank itself. Eventually it was swept away with my dreams and today no sign of it ever existing remains.
Black Snow
Still to this day between Beckenham Library and my old orthodontist there is an empty plot of land. It was once the site of the Beckenham Arts Centre, a corrugated iron roofed bungalow, looking like something from an Indian Tea Plantation. For 46 years the infamous Quintin Crisp commuted there from Clapham Junction to be the life model, all made famous in his book The Naked Civil Servant. He retired in 1978 and a few weeks later it burnt doen. One night my father woke us up to tell us that the Arts Centre was on fire, and we should be ready to evacuate. We could see the trees silhouetted against a glowing sky, which suddenly lit up as gas cylinders started to explode. The next day there was an eerie silence with an all-pervading smell of smoke and our back garden was covered in a strange snow consisting of tiny blacken pieces of canvas from lost art.
Bob’s Full House.
I always seem to forget birthdays the other day it was Bob Monkhouse or was it?
It was in my sister’s TV Times magazine that I read that Bob Monkhouse had ‘acquired’ all the old railway memorabilia from Beckenham Junction station, and being an eight-year-old train fanatic this really annoyed me. Bob was born in Beckenham and was well known for his obsessive collecting so there was some truth. Here I have him by a local landmark in the most suburban part of the area, The Park Langley Garage. This unique building was modelled on a Japanese Temple but commonly called the ‘Chinese Garage’. In my painting Bob doesn’t want to cause attraction, so he’s going via Kelsey Park to his mock Tudor abode in ‘Greenways’
Out of the Woods
It must be about 55 years since the Silurians first aired! Bounded by Beckenham High Street, The Drive and Church Crescent lies a secret little piece of woodland through which the River Beck runs. Who knows what lurks there, but in the early 1970s a classmate of mine used to live in a house which backed this spooky place where we played in the river when it still ran free, before it was later encased in concrete to stop flooding. Once when playing hide-and-seek there I chased him as he ran through the trees and over a garden wall. I followed only to find that the garden wall was directly against a shed and there was nowhere he could have gone. Then I heard him calling from behind me in the woods asking me where I was running to; it was all a bit weird. Composer Carey Blyton; Enid’s nephew had also once lived a house over on The Drive which backed onto these woods. He became famous for his ‘Bananas in Pyjamas’ but my interest was that he did the incidental music for Dr Who and the Silurians, using strange early English instruments.
Moonlight Dig.
We moved to Beckenham in early 1971, to a modern terraced house built on the site of two Victorian Villas, many pieces of which we dug up in the garden! This was the age when these behemoth houses were being demolished, but some still survived down the end of our street including the sublimely named Tespor with its next-door neighbour villa that featured an enormous verandah. To this house by the light of the moon my father and I went one night to rescue some hydrangeas for our garden when the house was being demolished. The 70s were here and the bricks and mortar of the Victorian age were redundant.
Dave and Angie shop at Safeway
Safeway may be long gone, but back in 1973 is was the modern American supermarket catering for sophisticated tastes; even the Bowies’ shopped there!
This picture is inspired when my mum saw his wife Angie at the cheese counter in the Beckenham branch, a step up from the local Sainsbury which still had Edwardian tiles and marble top counters. Here we see their paths crossed by a blind man oblivious to the up-and-coming ‘rock god’. It eludes to the fact that great minds of Beckenham would go on to demolish his house, Haddon Hall and gut the Three Tuns where the Arts Lab had been, only restoring the Bandstand of the Free Festival once he’d died.
Godzilla Attacks
As and eternal outsider I always stayed clear of any fads or fashion, but in 1974 after a holiday in Devon I returned with my Aurora ‘glow in the dark’ model kit of Godzilla. Under pressure from my boring teacher to do something for the show and tell lesson at school I duly took Godzilla along.
Unfortunately he was popular and after that everyone had an Aurora monster to show and tell, King Kong one week the next week the Hunchback etc. For me it wouldn’t end there, the Aurora Godzilla in my make believe world would gang up with ‘Humpy’ my pet tortoise, grow huge and destroy Beckenham… except for the School Lollipop Lady who was told not to shelter from the rain under the 13th century Lych Gate, she can survive! Sadly though the newsagent where I used to but Countdown Comic and chocolate shaped tools has been destroyed; it’s all out of control!
Gentleman take their suits to the dry cleaners.
It was during November that latter albums from the group Japan were released, though perhaps it was the time for gentlemen to take their suits to the dry cleaners!
In my last days of secondary school, a classmate mentioned that over the weekend he’d, ‘seen that bloke out of the band Japan in the dry cleaners’. Of course, it was very possible as lead singer David Sylvian had been born at Stone Park Hospital, Beckenham when his mum and dad were living close to Penge East station; later moving to faraway Catford where the band, Japan formed. I’m not sure which dry cleaner it was, but as David was a stickler for details, I’m sure he would have been worried about its aesthetics, so I have him running from this very picturesque one at the Penge Triangle near the childhood home.
Crab Hill Salvation
I’m sure the year was 1975 when my mother bought me some trousers for ‘special occasions’. They were navy blue flares, extremely wide and made of the most uncomfortable material on the planet. How I remember they had itched at Paignton Coach Station on our holiday in Devon. Luckily divine intervention ended my suffering. By the next year the parks were full of of children with their new ‘Stunt Kites’. One sunny day over on Crab Hill in Beckenham Place Park I was flying my elastic band powered model airplane, when a gust of wind caught it and took it up into a tree. Trying to retrieve it I fell off the picket fence and impaled the flares. Although I had the public humiliation of dangling from the fence, the dreaded trousers were destroyed.
Crossing at the Junction
Perhaps one of the most embarrassing thing for me as as child was my father talking about cricket and roaring with laughter with the ticket collector at Beckenham Junction Station. My father didn’t usually laugh and the ticket collector I think was called Dennis or was it Cassie, anyway all I wanted to do was become invisible and escape. Many years later on a winters night when in my early 20s, coming back from college, the same ticket collected stopped me, “I’ve had enough of you and your trouble making” he said and promptly pulled out a metal bar from his little kiosk to hit me with. Instinctively I grabbed it but the joke was, he’d left it all day on his radiator and it was red hot!
Now I knew; I was now grown up enough to know the jokes and laughter. A really lovely man but more than a bit barmy.
Enid goes to Mystery Mansion
At junior school I avidly read the ‘Famous Five’ stories of Enid Blyton, blissfully unaware she had lived in seven different houses around Beckenham for thirty years. For the “guardians’ of local history she is the thing I was supposed to be interested in rather than obscure shops from the 1970s, so I’ve reinvented her. She always reimagined the landscape for her books, so I have made Beckenham Place Park the setting of ‘Mystery Mansion’ where she sits by the enigmatic standing stones; long since gone and now replaced by the marker posts of the border between Lewisham and Beckenham over in the woods near Crab Hill. Deep in thought she dreams of more adventures whilst studiously ignoring her faithful but a bit too popular dog, ‘Bobs’
Sausage Rolls a Cut Above the Rest
22nd December 2007 was a sad day for south London as it was the last day of trading for Kennedy’s after 130 years. Kennedy’s were a chain of sausage and meat shops forever lost in time, locked in a 1930s splendour and only found south of the Thames. Everything was very particular to the shops, vitrite ceilings, opaline lights and sunburst windows, through which you could glimpse, breakfast sausage, fruit pies, coleslaw and other delights. Our local branch in Beckenham High Street sold my favourite sausage rolls and my mother always told me that the young man who worked there cut his own hair. For me he certainly did, I always thought he looked like Mr Spock from Star Trek.
Pocket Money Itch
Without doubt Beckenham Toys was my favourite childhood shop, a place which seemed to call me every Saturday to spend my pocket money. To this day I still recall the layout of this shop and what toys were where; but It was upstairs I really liked, because it had the model section. Airfix kits, Aurora monsters, Hornby trains, Scalextric it was all there in such a tiny space. It was here too you would usually find the owner, Mr. Davis, prematurely bald and always wearing tattershall shirt. He looked rather like the locally born character actor James Coussins, who had famously played the Hotel Inspector in Fawlty Towers. No madness in this establishment, only dreams and happiness.
Ernie’s, Creepiest Barber in the South
Originally I didn’t know the real name for the wildly out-of-date hair salon on Clock House Parade but my father always called it ‘Ernie’s’. Eventually many years later when painting this picture and researching by reading the Beckenham telephone directory from 1972, I found it was called Maison Carl. Here in the back room, I was taken for my haircut; on the single wooden barber’s chair on to which a plank was put across the arms to get me up to the right height. Like many things in Beckenham during the 1970s it was still in the 1930s, all was very dark and dingy looking especially the front ‘Ladies’ part. This was looked after by Ernie’s brother who presided over the ancient equipment including a permeant waves machine and looked just like Ron Mael, so this confirmed to me the playground rumour, that ‘Sparks’ really did live in Beckenham.
I Was Walking Down The High Street…
In 1973 my 9-year-old mind thought Bowie’s The Laughing Gnome was written about Dell’s gardening shop opposite the Police Station. It had gnomes, flowerpots, trellis etc. all outside on the pavement; the lyrics fitted perfectly. Everytime I heard the song, I could picture it all, walking down the high street by A. Dell Seedsman. Much later in life I learnt it was written before he moved to Beckenham, and an old unscrupulous record company had re-released his early attempt at chart success; my version is better!
Tun Up Kids
By the time I discovered the joys of drinking the heady day of the Thee Tuns were long over, along with it’s Arts Lab and memories of it’s famous founder. It was now gutted, open plan with hessian covered walls, for late 70s cool, the perfect place for school boy under age drinking. Perhaps the most embarrasing thing wasn’t just bumping into all your furtive classmates but also your teachers. There was though the equality of all drinking as many pints of terrible ‘Hofmeister’ as possible whilst listening to stories of new drivers ‘Doing the tun’ along the Mad Mile in a Ford Capri.
