Thamesmead has no **** parts cos it was all a total **** hole. It was build in stages and the stages were numbered ... and they wondered why there was a gang problem on there in the late 70s to late 80s. The lakes were filled with a variety of cars, bikes and vans which were normally set alight before being rolled down the slopes into the water! I lived there from 77 to 87 and my biggest memory was a bloke being stabbed on the balcony of the masonettes on Tawney Road and falling over the balcony onto the pavement 20 ft down. The old bill didn't charge the the stabbie ****er (horrible **** of a bloke) with murder as they couldn't figure out what killed him ... the stabbing, the fall or the landing! That, my footie friends, best sums Thamesmead up when I was 15 or 16 yrs old.
we used to walk past hector street with school on the way to play football when I was in primary school...was a spurs fan by then so used to try and fart as we walked past
I could post some old pictures of my old neck of the woods but you guys have done nothing to me to deserve the pain and torment you'd go through afterwards!
One of those cars was my Mate Tom's. We drove it down there smashed up the ignition to make it look like it had been wired and then pushed it into the lake down near Thamesmere leisure centre. What a ****ing ****hole that place was.
This pub was just down the road from where I grew up, pretty good local please log in to view this image
Ditto, we used to have a number 17 bus run through my town. It never came back but the sentiment was good.
My Gran and Grandad lived up the in the flats on Charlton park lane and their next door neighbour's grandson was the lad who lived down in Hector St, so I used to go round to his house and play football in the garden. We used to pretend that those old parts of the terrace were Highbury and go jumping into the imaginary crowd when we scored a goal. Looking back, we probably didn't realise what an amazing piece of footballing history that was down there, right in his back garden. I lost touch with him years ago, and I've got no idea if those parts of old terrace are still there. They probably should have a preservation order on them or something, but I know how much of Victorian London got ripped out and smashed up during the 80's and 90's.
Same with Minder and The Sweeney. Quite a lot of both were filmed in Southampton, just because it was so much cheaper than filming in London. They'd throw in a few 'landmark' shots of London for effect. Happens a lot in the movies too, where for example it is so prohibitively expensive to film in New York, that a lot of films set there are mostly filmed in New Jersey - with a few generic shots of Manhatten to maintain the illusion. Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen used to shoot exclusively in New York early in their careers - Spike Lee too - but that would be unthinkable now.
Me and my mates drove down St Mary's Road (near the Fire Station) one evening in the mid 80s and went straight through a film location with cameras and everything. We later found out that they were filming the opening for a new BBC "comedy" called Wilderness Road (a young Gary Olsen from 2 Point 4 Children was in it). Apparently it was about some seedy people set in a seedy pub in London and they had to come to Southampton to find a pub that fitted the part... Here it is... please log in to view this image
Used to be all Sikhs in that pub, as I recall? Well, except for the odd septugenarian brass or lost Norwegian sailor. Very strange pub, not often in the 80's you'd walk in a boozer and be almost the only white face in there.
Went to school with my Mum. That's the school I went to. Kenneth 'think it's all over' Wolstenholme a notable other.
It's still there at the junction where St Mary's Road meets Brintons Road (opposite the Fire Station) but it has been converted into some bedsits or flats I think.
I grew up in a picturesque village on the North Downs that had more listed buildings than council houses. Bit of a Midsomer Murders type place, there were a few of those growing up. Used to be a good place for a pub crawl as the next village on has Quaker Laws (no pubs allowed, ever) so we had twice as many as we should lol, went there with the school on a Geography trip in the early 80's, I think the theme was how it had become a ****-hole failure of what it was supposed to be.
We went on a school field trip to Shirley Towers estate in Southampton, and were encouraged to draw a plan of it as seen from the top floor of the tallest block. **** knows what that was all about. Something to do with town planning I suppose. Think it burnt down a few years ago. Obviously didn't have Grenfell style cladding though, so that's something I suppose.
Shirley Towers is still standing mate, there was a fire there a few years back where two firefighters died but it's still there.
Oh right, I knew something has happened, wasn't sure exactly what. Too expensive to pull it down and rehouse everyone I suppose, but who'd want to live in one of those blocks now? Especially in this ****ing heat, one whiff of chip fat and I'd be knocking on my neighbour's doors telling them to check the oven.
