Terry Scales’s blogsite has recently been updated with a post on Ballast Quay. The post is illustrated with paintings from the areas industrial past and is located here; http://terryscales.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/ballast-quay.html . Terry also did a recording for the oral histories page of the Ballast Quay website here; http://www.ballastquay.com.
London and Middlesex Archaeological Society are advertising a conference on 19th November - Walking Through London's History. and are calling for suitable papers - info John Price j.price@gold.ac.uk or via Department of History Goldsmiths College.
Association for Industrial Archaeology are advertising their annual conference to be held this year in Telford (yawn). It runs from 9th September with a 'professional' seminar, then the conference proper on 10th and 11th and then visits every day until 14th. Info John McGuinness, johnmcguinness@btinternet.com
AIA also advertise 'Speaking up for Industrial Archaeoology' - this is about local decision making and the number of industrial museums closing as council budgets are cut - info secretary@industrial-archaeology.org.
The AIA's News is bit brighter than usual in that when you open it there is a wonderful photo of Greenwich Peninsula's 'Bullett from a Shooting Star' together with an article by Bob Carr on art works on development sites.'Why do developers and the like fund these apparently outrageous and no doubt costly projects??'. Copies of AIA News should be available although there is no indication how non-members can get copies. Try secretary@industrial-archaeology.org. and see how you get on
Lewisham Local History Society - future meetings
26th February - Tolls,trains and canals with Malcolm Bacchus
18th March: AGM plus interesting artifacts with Steve Grindlay
29th April Introduction to All Saints Cemetery, Nunhead with Jeff Hart
27th May Windmills of Kentish London with Robert Cumming
24th June The Rise and Fall of Robert Cocking with Anthony Cross
29th July Greenwich Peninsular Ecology Park with Joanne Smith
30 September The Downham Estate with Jean Hearn
16th December Christmas on the Home Front with Mike Brown
all held in the Methodist Hall, Albion Way 7.45 with tea, bix, and questions
The Prefab Museum's people write: we have applied to the Heritage Lottery Fund to develop the prefab archive and organise heritage events celebrating prefabs as 2016 marks 70 years of post-war prefabs! We have also been prefab travelling to prepare the organisation of events such as talks, archive tea parties, portable exhibitions with Avoncroft Museum, the Rural Life Centre in Farnham and The Museum of Power in Essex. We are also planning to have a 70th celebration at the Excalibur Estate on the 21st of May, with the help of St Mark's Church and hall. We'll send you the details as soon as we have them!
We have also been walking in South London, doing tours in Brockley and Nunhead where there used (and still are!) prefabs. The tours are very successful. The March ones are fully booked but there are still places for the April ones (on the 2nd and the 30th, more info here) if some of you are interested.
Angerstein Rail - we have a request for info about rail links to industries on the west side of the Peninsula. Were there links via the tram system and the Angerstein Line. We think this was very unlikely but any information from anyone who knows better would be great.
We are intrigued by a web site about Lucerne paddle steamers http://www.paddlesteamers.info/Rigi1848.htm This is about Rigi which is preserved in the museum at Lucerne and which there are plans to refurbish. They say she was built by Ditchburn and Mare in Greenwich in 1848 - but we don't know a Ditchburn and Mare site in Greenwich - over the river at Orchard Yard, yes - up the river at Dudman's Dock, yes - so any further information would be interesting. Her original engines were by Penns - and, yes, we know they were Greenwich.
(I am trying not to ask why if the Swiss can restore Greenwich ships and engines, why is it we ignore them, except for one Scottish built sailing ship hmmmmm)
More to come on all this. AND - The Enderby Group is definitely up to something.... watch out!!