Lordship lane shop gossip (lounged)

[Guest]

I think East Dulwich is a whole lot worse off for it's new found status as a kind of Islington south of the thames. In my view, the historic nature of Dulwich Village with it's high class eateries and loan Conservative party councillors for Southwark, has in it's own way been the official 'classy' area in this part of south London. East Dulwich on the other hand, has been the traditionally poorer neighbour, with a working class charm going back to the late victorian era following its transformation from Surrey rural farming community, to London suburb. It is now a place where the middle classes want to call home, and as they have done in most other gentrified locations in and around London, they think it is perfectly acceptable to force their more expensive and choosey ways onto the normal folk who have perhaps lived here for generations. Lordship Lane has lost many of its traditional working class pubs and turned them into lifeless middle class eateries which are overpriced and dull. The former Gateway stores owned by Somerfield, was also another good example of how the less expensive stores have been forced out and pushed away, so that these new people can buy the same products wrapped up in more expensive wrapping, so that they can think they are better than the people who shopped their before. All this talk of not letting high street brands get onto Lordship Lane is complete snobbery, and fully associated with people who have nothing better to worry about. When you are in a position of not being able to afford to buy expensive goods and not knowing whether your bills will be paid at the end of the month, issues like this are unimportant, and yet the middle classes still have to force this rubbish down our necks. Perhaps if you lived in winchester or horsham I could understand, but it's East Dulwich! I say let the likes of Primark and New Look come onto the streets of East Dulwich, it's not all about you people!

[Read the above message with a pinch of salt, see the message below in red]

[Guest]

I think all of you are out of line. What is it with England that everyone is so bloody class conscious?

I agree that an area should have a good mix of shops and facilities to suit all kinds of people, irrespective of

their class or background. However, this whole "battle" in East Dulwich seems to revolve around class: just read any forum

about East Dulwich and inevitable the class divide is raised, with ignorance being exhibited on both sides.

Maybe its just that I originally come from a country that generally speaking does not worry about class, but it

irritates the hell out of me that people here are so obsessed about it.

[Guest]

i spoke to the proprietor of Mon P'tit Choux the other day about the effect of Nero on his trade and he says it hasn't afected him badly - even done him a favour since now people who only want one coffee and to sit with a book for hours can go there. He is planning to expand his business, opening in the evening with a fab new pizza oven and a brilliant pizza chef he's found, so this could be great for the strip.

[Guest]

being one of the new influx of middle class families to the area I am really ashamed by chris earlier post. We moved to this area because we had been priced out of bloomsbury after living there for years. We chose ED precisely because it has a great mix of individual people and shops. I dont want to live in a purified neighbourhood or sit in bland cafe nero or shop in white stuff. There is something really special about this area. we ALL need to work together to keep it this way.

[Guest]

I too am disgusted by what Chris said. Just because you are affluent doesn't make you more intelligent or cultured than someone who shops in Iceland. I would also question whether boutiques selling baby clothes and designer teapots are evidence of "energy and culture". Peckham, which you ridicule (presumably because it lacks gastropubs), has a cutting edge art scene worthy of national attention. For an area to succeed it needs variety and people from all walks of life. I think East Dulwich is doing great, but I do hope it doesn't turn into Little Clapham. The mix of diverse people, rich and poor, families, young professionals, older people and different races all help to make it what it is.

[Guest]

Surely what Chris wrote was a joke? No-one could be that rude and snobbish? It's not possible

[Administrator]

OK, so the posting from "Chris Holmes" above uses the email address [email protected], send an email to it and it bounces back with the error message 'user unknown'. This is really annoying as we don't know if "Chris" has put in a accidentally incorrect email address or is telling lies. However someone with the same IP address (that's a kind of a computer's ID although not 100% accurate) has posted a few other messages which are suspicious.

We don't like to step in on the forum but we are going to temporarily ban this person's IP from posting on this website and put notes against their postings telling readers to read with a pinch of salt. We hope you understand. People like "Chris" who post dubious comments behind fake persona's are silly and probably have underlying issues that should be dealt with professionally, not on the East Dulwich Forum. By all means post your thoughts as it's an open forum but you must be able to accept responsibility for your post and not hide behind fake names (especially one's as dull as Chris, Gary, David and Lee).

Sorry to anyone who has posted comments in reply to this faker person but it's really good to know that there's strong feelings in East Dulwich about East Dulwich

Thank you for using the forum properly, now who has some juicy gossip about Lordship Lane...?

The Administrator

The East Dulwich Forum

This ban may effect some innocent users, if you are unable to post please contact us (link at the bottom of the page) and we'll try and work something out

[Quaywe]

There are some strange things going on in this post:

1) Whoever is posting as this estranged "phantom poster" has too much time on their hands, especially considering he/she is "batting for both teams" in their posts. Get a life and stop wasting our time.

2) The only class battle I'm reading here is by people that are posting saying they can't afford the supposed expensive shops that we "middle class" want in ED. The supposed "middle class" posters don't seem to be mentioning class. They're only really talking about the preferred look and type of the stores they would like to see in Lordship Lane, not the type of people they want to see in them. If you like Iceland for economic reasons then you'll voice your opinion, just as we have voiced ours, but do it without going into this class battle.

I think some people are being a bit prejudice about us "middle class". Personally I don't care what class of person lives in ED. I don't come from a class segregated country such as England. So long as people live within the spirit of the ED community as it is today, not how it was 10 years ago, then all are welcome in my book.

Variety is the spice of life! (this is also why I hate chain stores)

Regards

EDKiwi

[Quaywe]

Thanks for your opinion Joe. The cheap prices these chain stores sell at is because they've forced all of the cheap local stores out of business and taken over their stores. Now the only stores that can afford the rent in ED are either chain stores or high priced boutique local stores. If the chain stores weren't there you'd still have cheap prices, only it would be local stores competing with each other, not with chain stores. Think outside the square!

As for your last comment about me "suddenly" popping up; if you'd actually bothered to follow this post from the beginning (as clearly you haven't) you would have noticed that I've made 7 other posts to this thread.

[Administrator]

The message before Quaywe's last message has been removed for being spurious

The Administrator

[Guest]

The Gowlett Pub does very good pizza if anyone is looking for a carb & cheese fix.

The Tapas/Majorcan would be a great idea, but pls keep it simple & do it well.

[Guest]

as a young child i remember being told how the gowlett pub was very nearly hit by a bomb in 1940 whilst the pub was packed full of punters, i also recall mrs fenson used to play the piano in the pub right up until the early 1970s too, she was a real old fashioned cockney! if only she could see how much its changed selling pizzas and bottles of fancy continental beer and wine! how times change!

[Polly D]

Simple and done well it would be Tom! (Or at least I hope so). That's the whole lovely point of Majorcan food: fresh, simple and healthy ('tho lots of olive oil). If only there was an available place for rent/sale (sigh...). Might check out the possibility of a market stall in the meantime. The foodie stalls always seem to have the longest queues on Saturdays. Does anyone know how it works? I mean, getting a stall?

[Guest]

Does anyone know the history of North Cross road?

[Mikey]

I think Polly's idea of a Tapas type bar is a good one

[Huguenot]

History of North Cross Road?

I understand the Dulwich / ED area was originally various manors formed when church lands were handed back to the gentry/layworker social institutions after the dissolution of the monasteries by big Harry the Eighth (in this case it was Bermondsey Abbey that got plundered).

Lordship Lane was named after the boundary of two of these 'lordships' - Dulwich to the west and Camberwell Friern to the East. Camberwell Buckingham was to the north of East Dulwich Road (hence one could describe the roundabout at Goose Green as the centre of Camberwell, and not the 'mistake' of labelling that some locals attribute to the council sign that was once there).

Nutfield Road, delivering the first few yards of North Cross Road was the first housing development of the area in Georgian times, but further development was handicapped by richer residents who prevented the growth of public transport into the area to keep out the riff-raff,

The northern end of the Friern Manor (facing onto Goose Green) was developed in Georgian times into large upmarket houses with huge back gardens. The last of these can be seen standing opposite the Codfather at the north end of Oakhurst Grove. It's much reworked and hacked about.

The old manor house of Friern was at the location now occupied St. Clement's Church on Friern Road. The Manor House had been sometime home of Lord Henry Bolingbroke (of the Treaty of Utrecht fame), and later became a dairy farm of almost 200 cattle before being flogged to the British Land Company in 1865.

As unashamed property speculators, the BLC tried to ram as many house as possible onto the land they'd acquired over the next 15 years. The results were the extraordinary rectangular streets and densely packed houses of Fellbrigg and Ulverscroft etc. I understand the north end of this development was the south side of North Cross road. Hence these weren't originally developed as shops - and the areas immediately in front were the front gardens. This is why the walking area in front of ED, Anterior Trading etc. is part paved, part tarmacadam.

The buldings north of North Cross road were conversely built piece-meal by small time developers following the wobbly lines of the gardens they bought from the Georgian houses on Goose Green. They built 3-20 houses at a time. Hence the north side of North Cross Road is more haphazard and loads of curvy roads like Crawthew and Worlingham. The whole of Oakhurst Grove was built on one garden to the west and another to the east.

The whole ED area was struggling for decades with 25% vacant houses. Eventually the introduction of "workmen's" commuter-time rail tickets on the Southern Railway in 1904 made it a viable working class commuter belt, and it started to grow.

The prosperity was short-lived as the first of two world wars less than ten years later messed up the place again, and the small shops had only just started to function normally again post-World War II and post-rationing by the time the first supermarket opened in 1962. They once more trashed the local (chain) stores that had been struggling to endure since being built 70 years before.

If this is all true, one could make a pretty good case that North Cross Road and LL is just beginning to see its first ever period of sustained prosperity. The boutique shops are holding their own against the might of the supermarkets, and have a locality that is sufficiently densely populated to sustain them. It has certainly never had much of a 'heyday' to look back on!

Was that what you wanted to know?

[Guest]

i would love a japanese restaurant/take away to open. wouldn't even mind a wagamamas! would be good to see development towards the library end of LL. would also be good to see the plough restored back to a nice pub. most of all i would like the harvester to disappear forever! despite being burnt down years ago it came back with a vengence! given the close proximity of the park at that end of LL the whole area could really thrive.

[mockney piers]

@kk - you should try Buddha Jazz (terrible name I know) on Grove lane, other side of dog kennel hill by the george. It's an eastern fusion place with thai, vietnamese & japanese. very friendly and jolly nice. Yeah SE5, but not very far away.

[MrEd]

duh, just repeated the story about M&S and the police station. sorry!

[Guest]

Polly, you might try finding out what is happening to the empty shops on Lordship Lane and Landcroft Road, according to the Land Registry these were occupied by their freeholders which would suggest that something has happened to the occupants. I tried to get Southwark's Business Desk to take an interest but they wouldn't because the shops are private property. The empty office premises (no. 6) are owned by the Maudsley NHS Trust. I suggest that you talk to one of the estate agents on Lordship Lane to see if they know anything, and get a solicitor to find out who is responsible for these premises now. If they are vacant goods it will be HM Treasury Solicitor, if they are not it will be the heirs or possibly an administrative receiver.

[Polly D]

Hi Amelie

Thanks for that. I spoke to someone at Hindwoods Hunter Payne on the advice of a fellow East Dulwich Forumee but there are currently no properties available that would be suitable for my venture. They seem to be the agent in the know about commercial properties. She said she'd keep me posted! I will keep trying.

[Guest]

I would be against an M&S Simply Food opening - their prices are high and not what we need. The overhaul of Somerfield was great in terms of variety (it was pretty dire previously) but we have really paid for it through the prices they charge now. I shop at Iceland occasionally and I think it should stay - I volunteer for a charity that works with the elderly and its shocking the tiny state pension which some of them have as their sole income. The lower income part of society also needs to be considered in any community - some of these people are on low incomes through no fault of their own. I work in the City and earn a good salary, but the reason I moved to ED a few years back was the sense of community and the lovely open green spaces. Its great LL is smartening up and I think what needs to be aimed for is a good mix of shops etc that cater for everyone.

[Quaywe]

Polly,

Anyone wanting to secure commercial property on LL will have to pay through the nose for it. As you've probably noticed the prices are going through the roof as companies like Parkhill Properties grab anything they can, do it up and lease it at horrendous prices that only chain stores can afford (Caffe Nero pay circa ?60k p/a and the Walsh site is going for ?90k!, both owned by Parkhill).

I would love to see another local business owned and run in ED but I don't like your chances unless you have a big cheque book. Good luck anyway.

[Guest]

I agree with Gemma about the lack of pizza/italian restaurant- there used to be one where Green and Blue are but I never saw a single person in there. The Magdala on Lordship Lane does a pretty good stonebaked pizza though and a good 2 for 1 offer some weekday nights!

[Quaywe]

see my post in the "Italian Restaurant's (or lack of)" re: Mon petit chou starting italian in the evenings.