Lewisham Back Then
In 1770, when the above engraving of Lewisham Mill was done, the community was largely rural with buildings clustered around what became the A21. The town was then in Kent, only later swallowed by the greedy maul of greater London. But it grew ...
... and gained a significant set of tram routes.
An excellent review of these environmentally green electric vehicles can be obtained from the Middleton Press ...
... whilst a Mike Harris map shows trams and buses running in 1936 when route numbers were standardised under the newly created London Transport.
The roads with trams have a purple centre to them!
Then, post WW2, trams were out of favour and buses dominated the town.
A key focus came when the clock tower was completed in 1906 ...
... and, if you look carefully you can still see it today, but now very much dwarfed by bigger retail premises!
The road network in Lewisham has changed substantially over the years; here is an older street map showing most of the town centre.
Compare the above with today's version.
Lewisham Now!
Loampit Vale no longer goes straight on after the railway bridge ...
... as that bit of road is now pedestrians only. The new town centre "by pass" (Molesworth Street, surely NOT named after ...
... the famous fictional schoolboy?) now has a broader link through to the High Street via a much rebuilt Rennell Street. Part of the High Street is now a pedestrian precinct also used for market stalls ...
... with the clock tower at its northern end.
The railway station is largely unchanged, being a bit of a back street job, somewhat divorced from the town centre and even more divorced from the huge new shopping centre which dominates any map.
Whilst not far from the northern end of the High Street, the station is well hidden ...
... but not ON Station Road these days. The National Rail buildings are well hidden by one of the Docklands Railway entrances.
A Google Earth view may pull all this together. Here we see the DLR entrances with their bright blue roof structures ...
... the National Rail station in the "V" of the junction upper left, and, far left what looks very much like a bus station.
To give it context, the railway station is up on the embankment and there is a line of chevron "bays" at the foot of the slope.
But it is not a conventional bus station. Actually it is a station for buses but NOT for passengers! It is just a layover area where buses can sleep peacefully between trips.
If it were a bus station, it might have been used by the BL1 and that would have made fbb's task almost easy! Sadly buses are far from easy at Lewisham and the BL1 is one of the worst; as we shall see in tomorrow's blog. Remember this map again!
The other thought, which might exercise our readers' grey cells, is to speculate where the Bakerloo line Underground station might fit, if it were ever to be built!
More tomorrow.
Also tomorrow, the first set of answers to last Sunday's quiz.
Next Leisham Loopy Loop blog : Thurs 16 Oct
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