30 September - Greed and desecration
You soon won’t recognise the place, pubs are disappearing at an alarming rate as owners recognise
that Bexley Council’s primary interest is infrastructure levies and the council
tax base and not the overall wellbeing of the borough.
The Coach and Horses in North Cray Road looks likely to go the same way as
the
Charlotte in Crayford and Belvedere’s
Ye Olde Leather Bottle have over the past couple of months.
Meanwhile, down in Sidcup there is consternation at the prospect of a characterful Edwardian house being demolished.
I don’t think I can add anything to that.
Nearer home but just over the border with Greenwich another
monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend is to
join the blot on the landscape which is Sainsbury’s Abbey Wood.
Everything you need to know about this proposed dreadful edifice may be found on
The Murky Depths blog.
When I first moved to Lower Belvedere in 1987 and was more interested in technology than
I have time for now, I was struck by the fact that most people’s television
aerials from here to Erith were pointing at Bluebell Hill (Chatham) or in the
case of a few optimists, Sudbury (Suffolk), both the home of powerful
transmitters. Crystal Palace was blocked for most addresses by the surrounding
hills. Fortunately I could see the low powered Woolwich transmitter mast from my
front door but as it did not transmit Channel 5 I rigged a large aerial to drag
it in from Croydon, from which it came at the time.
Sainsbury’s put an end to that, the TV mast disappeared from view. I’d stopped
using it anyway, it only transmits a sub-set of the available Freeview channels
and in any case a DIY satellite dish provides a much better signal.
But for anyone in Belvedere or Erith still relying on terrestrial TV from
Woolwich, prepare to say goodbye to your favourite programmes.
Absolutely horrible isn’t it? 30 storeys of ugliness.