Deptford: no place for the faint-hearted

Deptford Park


The Laban Centre


Bear Cafe & art gallery


The Deptford Project


St Paul's Church

Deptford X 2009

Start planning now for Deptford X 2009, which will be held between 25 September to 4 October.

The schedule for submissions is as follows:
8 June: Guidelines & application forms available
19 June: Deadline for applications
3 July: Projects selected

More information is available on the website or you can send an email to matthew at deptfordx.org (replace 'at' with @ of course).

Need a reminder about last year's events? See here and here.

Deptford in the news again

The Daily Mail has followed up the story by the New York Times with a typically balanced article about 'Scruffy Deptford', the 'crime-plagued UK district'.

It seems the photographer timed a visit for a Saturday afternoon at about 6pm, when the market stalls had gone but the dustbin lorries had not yet arrived, and the reporter picked quotes from locals who don't enjoy living here. I also suspect that Heidi said a lot more than she is quoted with, and that they only picked out something that could be described as vaguely negative.

This kind of lazy reporting doesn't really surprise me from the Daily Mail - and to be honest, the more they dissuade their readers from coming here, the better!

*Later Monday evening
Hmm, the comments on the Daily Mail story have now been disabled and the headline changed to remove the reference to 'Scruffy' Deptford. It will be sad if my comment ('You're right, it's a terrible place. I recommend all Daily Mail readers to steer well clear of it.) never sees the light of day.

Don't worry - if you would like to respond to the Daily Mail about this story I recommend you do so here.

*Tuesday morning
Gosh, the story has been rewritten yet again! Those online staff must be short of work. Comments are back on. And as Caroline points out in the comments, the photo of the high street was nicked from Flickr with no credit for the photographer Celie.

*Even later on Tuesday
Watch out for further media coverage. I just saw a film crew in Giffin Square. Sigh.

Wavelengths pool: access analysis

As a regular swimmer at the Wavelengths training pool, I am often frustrated by the restrictions placed on access to the pool. These range from the late weekday opening hours to the fact that the pool is often unavailable because it is being used by school groups, or that public users have to share it with swimming clubs or lessons.

When the pool first opened it was difficult to get hold of details of these restrictions, but requests to the management team resulted in the timetable shown above being made available on the Parkwood Leisure site as a pdf (or you can click on the picture for a bigger and more legible version).

As a matter of curiosity, I decided to do some analysis of the hours available to swimmers in the borough, and came up with some interesting results.

The first thing to notice from the timetable is how complicated it is and how many different sessions there are, some of which seem indistinguishable from others.

For instance, what is the difference between 'private hire', 'club hire' and 'Saxon Crown'? To the public swimmer they mean the same thing: 'not you'.

Why the need for so many sessions that exclude others? I'm talking about 'ladies only', 'men only', 'adults only', '50+ swim'.

And from a purely personal viewpoint, why so few hours for anyone who lives in the area but does not work in the area?

I have created a pie chart showing the division between public use of the pool and private use of the pool (including school hours). [For each one-hour session that is shared between for example Saxon Crown and 'lane swimming', I have assumed that half the pool is given over to each, and have allocated half an hour to each. This may not be totally accurate; I don't know if this is the case in all shared sessions, but it is the case in my experience.] Restricted hours refer to public sessions such as 'ladies only', 'men only' which may be available to you depending on your sex/age etc.



So what is available to those of us who live in the borough, contribute to council tax, but work elsewhere?

Assuming that you work a standard 9am - 5.30pm day, and hence have to leave before 8am to get to work and don't get home until about 6.30pm (trains willing), what swimming opportunities do you have?

Here we see a division of the sexes; in this case, women come off better than men! 'Ladies only' is a very generous three-hour session on a Tuesday night, while 'men only' is squeezed into one and a half hours on Sunday lunchtime.

To give a fair illustration I've made up these pie charts based on the hours available to this particular user group - 29.5 hours in total.

This shows that as a sector of the community we are very poorly served indeed, being able to use the pool for just HALF the time it is available to us outside of our working and travel hours (and assuming that we are happy to swim during the 'casual swim' on Saturday morning, which I am guessing means 'no lanes').




A few things for consideration - please feel free to offer any response or add your own opinions in the comments box:

- we were promised that the council was looking into earlier opening hours to address just this problem and to try to attract new members. There seems to have been no progress on this as yet, for reasons that have not been explained.

- 'training pool' is a bit of a misnomer; 'fitness pool' would be better. We are not all Olympic hopefuls; some of us just use swimming as our main form of exercise and need the opportunity to swim up and down the pool at our own speed for half an hour or so without interruption, two or three times a week. We'd like to be able to slot this around our work and home lives with as much flexibility as possible.

- why so many restricted sessions? And why the need for 'casual swimming' sessions? Isn't that what the Leisure Pool is for?

- club hire undoubtedly brings in valuable revenue, but it severely restricts the hours available to potential (paying) members too. I do not bother to take out membership since the hours available for me to use the training pool are so few.

Famous around the world

Thanks to Caroline for pointing me to this article about Deptford in the New York Times.

I can't believe the only shop they thought worthy of a mention on the high street was Goddard's!

And as for the photo....

Ha'penny Hatch artists

It's worth taking a walk down to the Ha'penny Hatch footbridge not only for the view of the Creek and the chance to sneak up on a heron paddling in the shallow waters, but also to see the latest offerings in the arches. For too long these white-painted spaces have attracted nothing but ugly spray-painted tags and the scrawlings of illiterates.

It's a delight to see that they are now adorned by something worth of the graceful curve of the bricks and the inviting whiteness of the paint.


Panic on the streets of Deptford by Suffoca


Fuzon groan'd on the tree (inspired by William Blake's mythology) by Riccardo Attanasio (Matlakas)


And a second one by Matlakas, my personal favourite. The marine and nautical references are perfect for the location.

New bike shop on Creek Road

The long-awaited opening of a new branch of Cycles UK in Deptford has been confirmed for Saturday 4 April.

The Dame first mentioned this way back in October; it has taken till now for the shop to finally start getting fitted out.

I'll be reporting back with a full review once it is open - cycle supplies/repairs being a central part of the Dame's commuting life - until then you can see what is happening by checking out the shop's blog.

An alternative view

Andrew Gilligan has written a column in praise of Deptford. If you are interested in what he thinks of our quaint little community, you can find it here.

Deptford redevelopment plans

I have been a little remiss about reporting back on the plans for the redevelopment of Giffin Street and surrounds that were shown at the exhibition at the end of January, but here they are now.


Firstly, a round-up of the current situation, to set the scene. Although the aerial photograph from the Lewisham Council masterplan is slightly out of date, it will give you an idea of things.

The two grey circles in the upper right side of the picture are the Wavelengths centre; the horizontal line at the top of the picture is the railway line, and the vertical line crossing it on the right is Deptford Church Street.

Missing off the picture is the new pool at Wavelengths, and the picture still shows the Women & Baby Health Centre (4) which has since been demolished (presumably housed elsewhere, perhaps in the new Waldron Health Centre?).

The numbers show:
1. Giffin Street car park
2. Frankham Street car park (currently closed)
3. Wavelengths
4. Mother & baby centre
5. Access point & council offices
6. Toilets (Which I had no idea even existed, but then I do live close enough to use my own!)
7. Giffin Business centre
8. Minzel Works (apparently an attractive building which is only used by market traders for storage at the moment)
9. Flats to be retained on Giffin and Frankham Streets
10. Tidemill School - pay attention to this one, it will be important
11a Giffin Square (the scrubby bit on the corner with lots of wonky paving stones and nasty street furniture)
11b Frankham Street open space
11c The grassy bit on the end of Reginald Road that looks like it would be good for allotments (my words, not Lewisham Council's!)




The changes that are proposed:

1. Wavelengths: with the new pool and changing facilities completed, the next stage will be the relocation of the library and the redevelopment of the existing library space into a new ground-level gym. This is some time away, given the fact that the library cannot move until part 4 is completed.

2a. Giffin Square: This is proposed to be refurbished into a market square and gathering place, including a café with external seating which will be located in the same building as the library and the relocated public toilets.

2b. The existing Job Centre will be relocated (no details of where it will be going) and the building will be redeveloped into new flats with room for a restaurant at ground level.

More details and FAQs here.

3. Tidemill School and 4. Deptford Lounge
This is where it gets quite exciting and interesting. The proposal is to transform a large car park and collection of dull modern buildings into a new home for Tidemill School, and an open access building for Deptford which will house the library, public rooms, toilets, a cafe and council facilities as well as some new artists studios. The intention is that parts of the school such as the halls, ball court, music and cookery rooms will be available for use by community groups out of school hours.


Giffin Square is in the foreground, the Deptford Lounge is the main building.
More information and FAQs here.

5a. Deptford Station.
Ah, Deptford Station indeed! Apparently all wrangling over planning permission, funding etc etc is now finished, and the project is truly moving on to the next stage. Money has been allocated, planning permission obtained, agreement reached over the main elements of the design, and Network Rail is due to start construction in due course, with the station planned for completion at the start of 2011. Good news for commuters - services will not be affected during the work.


5b and 5c relate to the transformation of the carriage ramp and the station forecourt. If you're not as jaded as hearing about this as I am, click here for more info and FAQs about this and the station.

6 a/b/c. Improvement and maintenance of existing council-owned housing on Giffin Street, Frankham Street and surrounds. I'm not sure what the current parking arrangements are for residents, but they should be aware that the council is intending to make it a controlled parking zone, which may have implications for them. FAQs here.

8a. New housing to be built on the site of the old Tidemill School by Quadrant Housing Association - with preference given to local residents and including family homes, not just one and two-bed flats presumably.

8b. Princess Louise Institute redevelopment on Hales Street, which is now completed.
FAQs on both these are here.

Two major items are missing, in my opinion. I realise they might not fit within the strict remit of the regeneration department, but I feel they are central to improving the environment for residents and visitors to Deptford town centre.

The first is the need to address the appalling traffic problems on the northern end of the High Street, which is a rat run for commuters and after about 6pm on weekdays turns into a grim scene of bad parking and aggressive driving. I'm not advocating closing it to traffic totally (except on Saturdays as it is already), and I recognise that many of the drivers who make it hellish in the evening are also customers for the local businesses. But how about one-way traffic and some bollards on the pavements to prevent people blocking them with badly-parked SUVs?

I understand that the plans for Giffin Square include integrating road traffic at the same level as pedestrians and minimising separation in order to reduce driving speeds - a tactic which has proved useful elsewhere. But I feel that something a bit more drastic should be considered by the highways department in order to try and make a more substantial improvement on the whole street.

Secondly is the omission of improvements to the market square in Douglas Way and the area outside the Albany. This badly needs a facelift, and it would be great if it could be redeveloped at the same time and in the same way as Giffin Square, to give the whole of the market area a feeling of continuity, and tie it together visually.

Deptford Dark Nights

Watch out for a series of free public projections around Deptford in February and March. Short films and video works made about or by local people will be projected onto public spaces in the area.

More information on the Arts Service Un-Incorporated website here.