please empty your brain below
Such a shame. Sad story.

Jag | Homepage | 12.03.09 - 7:40 a.m. | #

It doesn't matter who you vote for in council elections, you only get a bunch of moronic vandals in charge, who just want to trash the borough and rebuild it along whatever lines the fashion of the moment dictates. Thats why I gave up voting at council elections.

Max Roberts | Homepage | 12.03.09 - 8:28 a.m. | #

The late comic Linda Smith once said "Erith wasn't twinned with any town but did have a suicide pact with Dagenham"

I worked there for 4 years in late 70s and it was already going downhill then.

Bexley council has never been interested in Erith.

Invicta | 12.03.09 - 9:28 a.m. | #

Thats really a shame Diamond. I know I didn't like Erith (see link) but the library and museum were the best bits. I remember a tour of the library one open house where the guide in the library proudly showed us the gents urinal and the ladies incinerator. I seem to remember that the museum was once the librarian's flat - bit too attic-like for my tastes although the library is a very fine building.

Richard | Homepage | 12.03.09 - 10:27 a.m. | #

The only way you could improve Erith would be to level it completely and start again.

There's a sweet little theatre, but its sandwiched between two of the roughest pubs I've ever seen. The only way to get from the railway station to the "centre" is via a confusing network of dark, dank semi-subterranean footpaths and underpasses.

I wonder what the authority in charge of "Listing" - presumably English Heritage? - have to say about all these listed buildings being left, effectively, to rot. We have a similar problem in Eltham, where the local cinema (wonderful 30s art deco building, Grade II listed) was bought by a redevelopment company because they wanted a seat on the local Town Planning Committee. They werent best pleased to find out that the building was actually too far out of central Eltham for this to be granted. So they've just let it rot.

Capability Bowes | Homepage | 12.03.09 - 11:31 a.m. | #

Time for a Museum Museum, for all the lost museums...

disgruntled | Homepage | 12.03.09 - 11:53 a.m. | #

I don't suppose the MLAC is any help to volunteer local museums..

http://www.mla.gov.uk/what/progr...mes/
renaissance

Autolycus | Homepage | 12.03.09 - 1:34 p.m. | #

Alas, poor Erith, I knew it well. I hope that whoever was responsible for replacing a shabby-but-okay Victorian town centre with the nightmare in concrete that got dumped there in the 60s is rotting in a special architectural hell. I lived there in the 80s, and about all you could say for it was that at least it wasn't Thamesmead. Or Slade Green - which you should cover some time, (if you're brave enough), Howbury Grange is worth a look.

Shame about the library, and that whole little street it's on which was about the only nice part left - but Capability Bowes is spot-on about those pubs, and yup, levelling it is probably the answer. But going by Morrisons and those hideous new waterfront flats, it's probably not going to be much of an improvement.

ex-Erither | 12.03.09 - 2:18 p.m. | #

Slade Green is an entirely different level of nastiness (but some of the riverside bits are surprisingly scenic, in a dirty, polluted and run-down and uncared-for way).

Poor Erith, though. (And the "where to eat" bit on the theatre's website when I last looked was only able to name the drive-thru McDonalds, Morrisons and a greasy spoon that shut after lunchtime anyway. Though a drive-thru KFC has opened too now. Add I suppose they forgot Greggs) A great windswept waterfront vista is there, too. And at least the most recent town centre makeover did away with the worst of the one before. But making it a pleasant place to be - would take much more, alas.

dg writes: I can offer two photos of Erith's windswept waterfront vista. And I'm fascinated by your photos of Slade Green.

Venichka | 12.03.09 - 2:37 p.m. | #

oh how sad. i was there for a meeting this week, in the cold and rain from the station to the riverside. i'd like to see the museum and the old library - the new one's ready to move into i think. it's a strange mix of rather uncared-for and bleak, and tangible historical-but-recent civic pride and community there.

HF | 12.03.09 - 6:24 p.m. | #

Why, when they built the new library, didn't they consider the museum as well I wonder?

Andrewh | 12.03.09 - 9:09 p.m. | #

I am so glad to have seen this entry because my late father actually used to work at one of the companies mentioned - Sovex - in the 1960's. Sometimes my mum would drive down with me in the car to pick him up after work - and thus my earliest memories of Erith are of road after road of factories... some of which are still there but many are now long gone.
Hmmm. Only the other day you mentioned an underpass around Wandsworth in relation to the filming of Clockwork Orange; some of the film was also shot around the then new Thamesmead and in fact they're actually in the process of demolishing some of those sites (eg 'The Pyramid Club') as we write.
If there is any time of year for a visit to Lesnes Abbey it is definitely now - it is renowned for its annual show of daffodils.
I will ensure to pay a visit to the museum - and soon.

RogerW | 12.03.09 - 10:11 p.m. | #

Actually, come to mention it, Plumstead used to have a great museum, upstairs above their library.
One of the last events I remember there was a celebration of a local naturalist from the Darwin era, which included displaying (not normally on public view) exhibits from his collection.
They also made an active contribution, if I remember correctly, to a commemoration, in Beresford Square, of the former AJS/Matchless (later AMC) factory that had been at Maxey Road, until the end of the sixties.
Alas, another museum now gone. (And another sign of getting old)

RogerW | 12.03.09 - 11:02 p.m. | #

Earriff is a hole, and it's all bexley councils fault.

Move all the (light) industry to belvedere and build more home around the town centre, make the station more accessible and make the town centre more pedestrian and consumer friendly. Simple, everyone just takes the bus to bexleyheath or even the hour or so to bluewater

Or just bulldoze it and build a park.

Lower Belvedere is worse though...

diamond encrusted platinum gee | 14.03.09 - 8:42 p.m. | #

Indeed, Earriff has seen better days. The riverside walk from there, around Slade Green to Crayford is a remarkable thing to experience, though - if only for the desolation, but also for the peace and quiet.

darryl853 | Homepage | 15.03.09 - 11:10 a.m. | #

Museum closed, 12th March 2009.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 17.03.09 - 12:22 a.m. | #











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