phaetongraph
New Member
lived in West Norwood many years, grew up there. Pass through now and then. mostly to visit B&Q which used to be a massive cinema - The Regal? - they had Saturday Morning screenings there for kids but that's all i remember, doesn't say much for the programme. The place is a shell of it's former self, I go into culture shock further up, towards Elder Road, every other shop derelict it seems, that was what I remember as the High Street, it was a thriving place, it had a record shop, it wasn't falling to bits like it is today. Saying that, it's photogenic now, like it never was in the past.
The opening of the new library / Nettlefold Hall was the high water mark, I used to visit the library just to gaze at it, breathe in the newness of the place, walk the hush-hush carpeting, you could borrow records - that was great - the Hall had its own theater, I saw a People Show there in about 1978. Then they nicked all the copper from the roof, or was it lead? The library now sits like a corpse in a forward adjunct of the cemetery, all the windows blanked out. Who do we blame, the thieves or the system which has driven people to desecrate places of learning and risk their lives clambering over roofs presumably in the dark? That's another question.
I noticed they've opened the old library on Knights Hill, I haven't been in there since I was a kid, I didn't remember the place when I went in, it seemed much smaller than I expected but I imagine the interior I knew back in the 60s has been completely stripped out many time over by now.
Couldn't live there now though - the culture shock would be too disturbing - I moved away in the mid 80s. A lot of the pubs have closed I notice, the irony might be that the last pub remaining may some day be the Hope near West Norwood station, and that was the first pub in the area, may even have been one of the very first High Street houses? The Hope was known as a fairly posh 'real ale' pub decades ago but before that it had been a rough house. I was told there were fights there every Saturday night and locals would jump up and down on each others legs if anyone was knocked down, in order to put them into hospital. Not nice. There was a lot of housing in that area pre-1970s but it was all cleared, that's where the light industry estate is now, there were crumbling tenements there, pulled down ages ago - that's probably why there were so many pubs close together in that part, and near to the station, another factor...
The opening of the new library / Nettlefold Hall was the high water mark, I used to visit the library just to gaze at it, breathe in the newness of the place, walk the hush-hush carpeting, you could borrow records - that was great - the Hall had its own theater, I saw a People Show there in about 1978. Then they nicked all the copper from the roof, or was it lead? The library now sits like a corpse in a forward adjunct of the cemetery, all the windows blanked out. Who do we blame, the thieves or the system which has driven people to desecrate places of learning and risk their lives clambering over roofs presumably in the dark? That's another question.
I noticed they've opened the old library on Knights Hill, I haven't been in there since I was a kid, I didn't remember the place when I went in, it seemed much smaller than I expected but I imagine the interior I knew back in the 60s has been completely stripped out many time over by now.
Couldn't live there now though - the culture shock would be too disturbing - I moved away in the mid 80s. A lot of the pubs have closed I notice, the irony might be that the last pub remaining may some day be the Hope near West Norwood station, and that was the first pub in the area, may even have been one of the very first High Street houses? The Hope was known as a fairly posh 'real ale' pub decades ago but before that it had been a rough house. I was told there were fights there every Saturday night and locals would jump up and down on each others legs if anyone was knocked down, in order to put them into hospital. Not nice. There was a lot of housing in that area pre-1970s but it was all cleared, that's where the light industry estate is now, there were crumbling tenements there, pulled down ages ago - that's probably why there were so many pubs close together in that part, and near to the station, another factor...
(plant shop looks nice! 
