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July 31 2019

Harris Academy (formerly: Kelsey Park Sports College; Kelsey Park School for Boys; Kelsey Park Secondary Modern School for Boys; Alexandra School for Boys.)

At the end of summer 1969 I began my secondary school education on this site.

The School had opened the year before transferring all the teachers and boys from Alexandra Secondary School based in Parish Lane Penge, to the grand location of Elgood Playing Fields in “posh” Beckenham and granted a name to suit.

Given that it has been fifty years since I enrolled here, and the fact that I hadn’t seen any of the buildings in over 45 years as the school is hidden behind houses and accessed by a secured driveway I decided to phone to see if I could enter the grounds to take a photo of the buildings. Here is the result.

Nothing accept the location and long access drive remain of the school I remember, but being there brought back memories of many of the names and faces of the teachers and boys I was schooled by and with.

Mr Lock, Lake, Rolinson, Howes, Duval, Mann, Davies….

The changes at the school should not surprise me – 50 years is a long time – but it I do regret the repeated changes of school name as it does break with the past. Indeed that is probably why the powers that be do it.

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May 3, 2019

Penge High Street taken from the Moon and Stars (old Odeon Cinema) and looking toward the Crooked Billet and Almshouses.

I think every single shop and building has changed use since I last went shopping in Penge High Street.

The Police Station is now residential accommodation. Dales and Sherricks menswear are long gone as are Woolworth (now Poundland), the Co-Op (now Salisbury’s). Kennedy’s, Stockwells, Burtons, Art Nash, Kingstons, Olby’s, Edgingtons are all gone …. in fact it’s easier to name what hasn’t changed: The Pawleyne Arms. That’s the only building I could see that hasn’t changed use.

I’m not moaning about change; in fact it’s only though developments with things like the tram that enable me to make the trip without driving. But when you go somewhere that you’ve not been to in a long time the changes hit you in a way that belies their incremental nature.

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April 29, 2019

Penge’s Free Watermen and Lightermen’s Almshouses

I’m 61 years old and today was the first time I have ever visited these Almshouses, but I must have walked past them thousands of times. They are small but magnificent.

They were all closed when I was young, with corrugated iron fencing around their perimeter hiding what’s inside. (Yet the bumph I have read today says that the last alms residents moved out in 1973). Of course they are all now privately owned rather than for the benefit of the “Aged and Decayed Members of the Watermen’s and Lightermen’s Company and their Widows”.

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