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This morning as usual, I made a point of going for a walk to get some exercise and to break the tedium of lockdown. By chance, last night I had watched the excellent BTF short film "The Elephant Will Never Forget" about the final week of trams in London in July 1952 and thought..
that I'd revisit some of the sites featured in the film, as the trams were very much a feature of my part of SE London. We start with a still not actually from the film but from an unknown photographer at the junction of Woolwich Road with Charlton Church Lane by a now-closed
pub, The Antigallican. I have shown this photo before but make no apologies for repeating it. In the 1952 photo, we see trams doing what they did best-clearing vast crowds quickly and efficiently. This is the scene as the crowd from The Valley, home of Charlton Athletic FC heads
for home following the end of a home game. I next walked eastwards along Woolwich Road trying to locate the location of this scene as a tram pulls up outside a pub that I cannot identify. I did try and match it up with a couple but without success. So many pubs in London have..
bitten the dust since 1952, so it is quite possible that I walked past the site without realising it. One pub that it wasn't is this one - The Victoria, long derelict but remarkably one that I have had a beer in back in happier times. Its been like this for some years now sadly.
My next "then and now" comparison came where the Woolwich Road veers sharply right and becomes Woolwich Church Street. In 1952, it was one of the many bombed out corners in London and although the sharp right hand turn has been replaced with a roundabout, the corner is still just
about recognisable by dint of the high pavement on the right and the sharp right turn at the roundabout. In 1952, MacDonalds was probably a shop somewhere in Scotland and fast food was limited to fish and chips. Such is change. From here, I continued my eastbound trek and after..
took my life in my hands by crossing the road to take refuge on the central reservation to look along Woolwich Church Street, with the former Woolwich Dockyard on my left. Fortunately, the distinctive tall chimney is still there, although the wall has been lowered slightly.
The road has been widened considerably here as well, so the 1952 buildings to the right have been swept away and replaced by a variety of unremarkable 1960s structures. Continuing eastwards, my next halt was in Woolwich High Street, once a hive of activity with a real industrial
look to it, with the Woolwich Ferry to our left and the old Woolwich Power Station dead ahead. This was also where the trams changed from trackside current (using the "plough" system) to the overhead and so was always a busy spot. Once again, the road has been widened to a dual-
carriageway and such is the scale of the demolition, it is hard to get the exact spot of the 1952 photos, plus the fact I miscalculated slightly but here goes. Everything to our left, as well as the power station has gone and only a few of the buildings on the opposite side of
I've also included another shot from an unknown photographer that shows the same scene from a slightly different angle, which again I have slightly miscalculated when trying to repeat. Its really hard to appreciate that this is the same spot but trust me, it is! Our final stop
took us further to the east into Plumstead High Street and the junction with Lakedale Road and White Hart Road and another still from a now-unidentified photographer. In the 1952 shot, we see a tram heading eastwards towards Abbey Wood, with the sign for White Hart Road just to
the right of the tram at waistrail level. I've tried to replicate the shot today, although the amount of street clutter is absolutely staggering. Instead of a tram, we have a bus approaching and White Hart Road can still be seen branching off to the right. Most of the buildings..
here have survived, which makes life easier when comparing the views. I hope you've found this variation from wartime to early post-war London of interest but in case you haven't, don't worry we'll be doing our usual wartime themed thread on Saturday morning. To close with, our..
last couple of views, we're heading back west along Woolwich Road to the former tram scrapyard or "Tramatorium" at Penhall Road. Amazingly, some tramlines can still just be made out here and it was at this suitably bleak spot that the majority of London's trams met their end at..
the hands of the scrap men's torches and bonfires./END
