The Landscape of Murder

The Landscape of Murder – a very dark blog, photographing and recording murders around London. This post deals with the murder of Gagandip Singh in Blackheath in 2011.

Brake Bikes

I’m no expert on bikes, but have to say that the eye-catching Brake Bikes make a nice addition to Blackheath’s high street. The business model is interesting – a kind of “pop-up shop” appearing outside various shops on the street – I’ve seen them at the hairdressers next to Strada, and Raffles the clothes shop. Wondering if a bike shop could be the next addition to the high street? Never ridden a “fixie” myself, unless you count a BMX (many years ago).
UPDATE: They’re not fixies. See the comments. Told you I don’t know about bikes :)

Makers and takers

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Received this from Handmade Food yesterday:

We recently received a London Borough of Lewisham Business award for most sustainable business practice . We are grateful to Sir Steve Bullock and panel for recognising Hand Made Food’s efforts. Fourteen of us, chefs, shop staff, baristas, events staff, washers up raised a glass of Sussex’s best sparkling Breaky Bottom in a toast to our patrons and supporters. We recently lost a great Blackheath independent Sisters and Daughters to a stinging rent increase and ever increasing costs. We got Cook ( national chain of 60) a shop full of factory produced ready meals , a cashier and a freezer filler – at least they put gingham round the freezers.

Congratulations to them. I’m sure it’s not easy trying to run an independent business on the high street at the moment, and I have to agree about Cook, which I shall continue to refer to as Posh Iceland. The wicker baskets and picnic cloths aren’t fooling me… Handmade Food on the other hand is a lovely place, which I’ve spent a lot of time in, but for some reason never mentioned much on here. It serves Monmouth Coffee, which is delicious, and Neal’s Yard Cheese, not to mention all the food which is solid and tasty. It’s not cheap, but if you’ve looked at the rents on that high street, it’s not hard to see why (£100k a year for Venice Restaurant?)

Eliot pits – playground proposed

There’s a plan afoot to build a playground on Eliot Pits. (Eliot Pits is not a kid that went to the same school as you). It’s that really picturesque valley from where you can look down across the whole of London, on the edge of the Heath. It’s also been left relatively unchanged and wild for centuries.

The funding has come from a strange place. Boris has proposed a quite sensible idea to increase the number of “pocket parks” in urban areas, so that more people can enjoy green spaces. Which is a great idea! The problem is that this is already a green space, and it is being seen by some as a way to sneak development into this area by the back door.

A website opposed to the proposals has been created.

There’s a petition to stop building on the site.

And a campaign leaflet.

It seems like this should be a core issue for the Blackheath Society over the next few months…

Massive Ad Screens at Sun In Sands Roundabout?

TfL want to put massive LED screens up on the Sun-In-Sands roundabout. See Blackheath Labour councillor Alex Grant’s blog post:http://www.bwlabour.wordpress.com

We’re looking for a home on the heath

Telegraph article today.
I’m sure you are, and for £3.25m who wouldn’t…

Anyway, here’s a Google Street View Hyperlapse of Blackheath for your viewing pleasure. A few weird frames in the middle with white dots on, very odd…

Based on this project – check out their much more impressive video at the bottom of the page.

Mysterious painting

UPDATE: See the bottom of this post – the mystery appears to be solved.
Alan writes:

I am trying to trace the location of a painting of “Church near Blackheath“, painted by Elwin Hawthorne and I was wondering if you might be able to help identify the location? His notes for the picture say:- “Vanbrugh Park from the Standard public house”. Looking at Streetview, I wonder whether there was a church on the site of what is now Blackheath High School, Senior School? Possibly the church was destroyed during the war.

Below is where I think he’s referring to on Google Street View, but the outline of the building looks different to me. Any ideas?

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UPDATE:
Alan has been sent a photograph of the scene by the artist’s son (also called Elwin Hawthorne). It is his Father’s photograph of the scene from which he painted his picture, hence the “squaring up” lines across the image.

Elwin was one of a group of artists known as the East London Group – see Alan’s website here.

Alan writes:

With a bit of help from a “local”, Nick Sack, I think we may have identified the site of the church on Vanbrugh Park; it looks as if it is on the site of what is now the Blackheath Senior School which used to be the Church Army Chapel. I have attached two screenshots from Streetview which show the road outside the School and, in that image, you can just make out the presence of a redbrick house behind the trees on the right; in the other shot, you will see a shot of the building frontage which is extremely similar to that represented in the painting, although it now appears as if one half of what was most likely a double fronted building has disappeared, along with the church next door! It would be fascinating to find out a bit more about the history of the area; whether it was hit during the war and, if so, what effect did it have in the area? I think that what we need now is an identification of the actual church’s name and the history that goes with the area!

The streetview shots he mentions are the same as the location shown in the initial post above.

Starbucks becoming Jigsaw clothes shop

Interesting that Starbucks has finally given up on their Blackheath branch. The council had prevented them from changing the use of the building to allow any more than two tables upstairs. I suspect that if any more suitable location came up in Blackheath, Starbucks will be back.

Leaning on a lamp column

Nobody calls them lamp columns. Nobody.

Melting Spires

Every day, twitter user @blkheath takes a photo of the All Saints church on the heath. I’ve realigned them so that the spire of the church is at the same position in each image. Then I timestretched the video to see what the effect would be. Hope you like it (images used with permission).