LEWISHAM, SE13
London Archive Chronicles
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This is an image of a street in Lewisham. A street lined with houses and what appears to be a church spire on the right and scaffolding on the left of the opening of the street. A few cars are parked on the road and one is standing on the traffic lights. Most of the space is taken by blue sky, surrounded by colours of maroon, red, purple, burnt orange, pale and magnolia yellow. A long shadow of a person has leaked into the frame, next to a shadow cast by the pedestrian lights.
I took this image when returning from the Lewisham Hospital, which I photographed as a part of the Lockdown Trails. It was a beautiful and an odd day. We had been in lockdown for some weeks by then. Although I had adjusted to it rather well, I still felt the shock and novelty of it all from time to time. On that evening, there were people about on my walk from Greenwich to the hospital by River Ravensbourne (see Brookmill Park, an essay from the same trail). I remember thinking that they looked happy: they smiled, laughed and made pleasant small talk. Or perhaps, that is how I felt. The light was gentle yet colourful and the air was soft. Birds were singing. I remember seeing this tunnel of light coming through the crossroad but when I got closer, it was gone. I took this image from the middle of the road, my back against that glorious light. It is almost certain that the village of Lewisham was founded by a Saxon chieftain in the 6th century. Levesham, as it was recorded by the Saxons, meant ‘dwelling among the meadows’ which it very much was until the arrival of the railway line 1849 that connected Lewisham to London. Subsequently the heart of the village also moved north from its original nucleus, the Church of the St Mary the Virgin, towards the railway station and the Lewisham we know today began to take shape. The kernel of contemporary Lewisham is inarguably the shopping centre, built in 1977, and the market in front of it. DLR extended its line to Lewisham in 1999, connecting the area to Canary Wharf and further adding to its appeal. The neighbourhood has been regenerated since the 2010’s with high rise residential buildings close to the station as well as changing the highway layout from a roundabout to signalised junctions. Rivers Quaggy and Ravensbourne, both which were a defining force of the area prior to the railways and the commuter housing development that followed, had to be re-routed in the process. I mostly go through Lewisham; on foot across the market, change buses in front of the shopping centre or run from DLR to the National Rail train service. Although I have done the latter for years, I still get confused as to where the platforms are and am equally surprised about the direction of the arriving train. As this has been my experience of the area, I have thought Lewisham to only be a drab and yet annoyingly tumultuous place. Digging into the local history has, I am pleased to say, enlightened me; there is plenty to discover in Lewisham and the surrounding areas. There are knowledgeable and enthusiastic local historians in every part of London, and so it is for Lewisham. I have added a few links to local historians’ blogs to the source list of this text, including Running Past as well as a wonderful website of the lost 30 cinemas of the neighbourhood. There is an old clock tower, built in 1900, at the edge of the pedestrianised street that I often admire while waiting for a bus by the Lewisham shopping centre. It is not, aesthetically, in harmony with its environments – is harmony even possible in an environment surrounded by the kind advertisement of today that compete for our eyeballs and our clicks so ferociously? – but as such it is a monument to the constant change in London. I came across this video of Lewisham in the BBF archives. There is the very same clock tower, in the middle of the traffic of that era, now so nostalgic and wonderful to my eyes. So much has changed since this video but perhaps in the midst of that hustle and bustle there was also someone who found their surroundings irritatingly modern and soulless and looked wistfully at remnants of bygone eras. (Originally published 02.10.2022) |
© Carita Silander
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