Under the title "Do you do all the activities you research or just wing it when you arrive?" Wes Fowler says below that he is thinking of touring in Lewisam. Now there's a challenge. Can I think of anything at all to bring an experienced tourist to the London Borough of Lewisham ? Next door Greenwich, of course, including the newly re-opened fifteenth century great hall at Eltham Palace. Next door Southwark, of course, including Dulwich. But Lewisham ? Let's go, from south to north.<BR><BR>Crystal Palace open air concerts in July and August, light classical, with a beer tent. Bring your own picnic or buy sandwiches. A fine sky as the sun sets, and often fireworks to finish. Plenty of children. Twenty years ago I saw two of them skating to the Skater's Waltz.<BR><BR>Victorian models of prehistoric monsters set around the Crystal Palace park. Pick your own dinosaur.<BR><BR>St Bartholomew's Church Sydenham, with so many musicians that they run their own orchestra. It's good.<BR><BR>Penge, where the Martians landed in HG Wells' "The War of the Worlds".<BR><BR>The Black Horse at Catford, an original coaching pub, rebuilt a century ago<BR><BR>The Lewisham Theatre at Catford, built in twentieth century gothic. In the hard times of the thirties the Labour local government of Lewisham commissioned the design of this theatre to employ the greatest possible number of craftsmen. Good spot for pantomime in December, and for unlikely-looking amateur productions of Broadway musicals much of the year. A growing crop of Carribean broad comedies.<BR><BR>Horniman's Museum in Forest Hill. Founded by a tea-retailing capitalist, this is a free museum with a special duty to South London and the children of south London. Strong on folk art, world wide roots music, and ecology. Beside it is the Horniman Gardens, lavish with flowers, and with an Edwardian bandstand fully used on Sundays in summer.<BR><BR>Very near Forest Hill station a prize-winning Indian restaurant.<BR><BR>Ladywell Fields, between Catford and Ladywell. A well kept and well used civic park, with a tiny nature reserve beside Ladywell station.<BR><BR>At Ladywell, the old parish church of Lewisham, with eighteenth century graves around it.<BR><BR>Lewisham College, by St John's station. If you phone to book in advance they'll serve you an excellent lunch, with wine, from Mondays to Fridays for about eight pounds. This is the training restaurant for the course on restaurant work, so you can expect impeccable service, with the occasional hurried whispers when you ask for something the student hasn't heard of - no worry: the tutor has.<BR><BR>The Brockley Jack, a pub near Crofton Park station, with interesting Fringe plays.<BR><BR>The wine bar between the pub and the station: good tapas.<BR><BR>Nunhead Cemetery, a large wooded place with a strong list of rare plants and butterflies, and dramatic Victorian funeral architecture for the tombs of magnates who were important, or who thought they were. An open day once a month.<BR><BR>The Cafe Orange at the top of Telegraph Hill. Cheap lunches Monday to Friday cooked and served by people newly out of institutions, who thereby gain certificates that let them take jobs in cafes and hamburger joints.<BR><BR>Goldsmiths College, where for two decades the Department of Art has turned out prize winners - even though I can't understand what those artists do.<BR><BR>Continued

...Continued<BR><BR>Deptford Town Hall near New Cross Gate station. The exterior is a display of Edwardian pride in a Labour borough (now merged into Lewisham). Look for the model galleon at the top. If the caretaker lets you slip inside and to the Council Chamber you'll see some good craftwork. The hall is still often used for public meetings in the evening.<BR><BR>Deptford station. The only remaining station building of the world's first commuter railway, opened in the 1830s. A ramp leads up to the southern platform: up and down this they trundled by hand railway passenger trucks, for repair and maintenance.<BR><BR>St Paul's Church and St Nicholas Deptford, eighteenth century Anglican, ornate and well-endowed by the ships' captains who lived nearby and sailed from the Thames at Deptford. Sunday Mass at St Paul's draws admirers and worshippers from far and near - incense, bells, prayers to the Virgin, vestments. The interior is stunning. St Nicholas shows a more English restraint, but does include wood carving by Grinling Gibbons, the unmarked grave of Thomas Marlowe the playwright, and a gateway to mark the days when this was a plague pit.<BR><BR>The Deptford Dockmaster's house, eighteenth century, at the riverside.<BR><BR>The new riverside monument by the Russian sculptor Mihail Chemiakin to mark Tsar Peter the Great's embassy to England in 1698. He came here and to Schiedam, the leading shipyards of all Europe.<BR><BR>If you know Peter Seller's 1960s LP "Balham, Gateway to the South", you'll see the comparison.<BR><BR><BR>Ben Haines, London<BR>[email protected]<BR><BR>

How delightful, Ben, and thoughtful, too. I may indeed change next year’s plans for my beloved Bavaria to scour the streets of London’s Lewisham borough instead.<BR><BR>I’ve frequently been bemused by travelers who spend a week or so in London or one of Europe’s other magnificent cities and claim to have fully experienced its delights. Invariably, the typical prospective London visitor picks up a guide book and sees a map that encompasses only that portion of the city that runs from the Tate to the Tower, from Regent’s Park to the Thames. True, in a week’s time that visitor can ricochet from the Tate to the Tower, include the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s, the Cabinet War Rooms, Hyde Park, the National Gallery, Harrod’s, Fortnum and Mason, “Mamma Mia”, “Les Miz” and the Changing of the Guard. In that time, the visitor will interact almost exclusively with Londoners who are in service industries and occupations that cater in good part to the tourist trade, be it the museum guide, Tower Warder, Underground cashier, cab driver, tour bus operator and guide, hotel, restaurant and pub staff personnel and the sales clerks at souvenir counters, whether they be in Harrod’s or one of the street market stalls featured in all the guide books. <BR><BR>What that London visitor fails to realize is that most of what he’s seen has been indoors and for the most part in the company of other tourists not native to the city and in no way typical or indicative of the city’s way of life. What he also fails to realize is that Greater London encompasses an area far greater than the Principality of Liechtenstein and almost on a par with that of Luxembourg. I sometimes think of the area in London from the Tate to the Tower to be akin to a theme park. So too the stretch from the Eiffel Tower to Notre Dame in Paris, or from the Hauptbahnhof to Marienplatz in Munich or within Vienna’s Ringstrasse. I sometimes wonder if there’s been a longstanding plot afoot (and underfoot as well) by citizens of these cities over the centuries to ghettoize their cultural, civic and historic buildings and the treasures they hold simply to corral the hordes of prospective tourists into one relatively concentrated area. By doing so, the natives of neighborhoods and boroughs, arrondisements and Stadtbezirke can enjoy their own ways of life, one undiscovered by and truly foreign to that experienced by the tourist visitor. <BR><BR>Your posting has opened a door to such an undiscovered delight. Thanks! <BR><BR><BR>

<BR>Mr.Haines:Thank you for such an interesting note.<BR><BR>Wes: Well said!

Mr Haines<BR><BR>Thank you for cheering up my evening. I was born in Lewisham Hospital and lived most of my formative years in Blackheath. The thought of Lewisham becoming a tourist mecca! LOL

So, where exactly is Lewisham? Thanks!

I'm afraid I can't tell you exactly. Would you lik me to reply roughly ?<BR><BR>I should perhaps add that I don't think Lewisham is special, except to us who live here.<BR><BR>Ben Haines

"Broad-bosomed, bold, becalmed, benign <BR>Stands Bal-Ham, four-square on the Northern Line"<BR><BR>I loved that sketch! Do you know if the script is available online?

Ben - You cheered me up on my return to grey old England from sunny Sicily. We began our married life in a small flat in Bromley Road, Catford and spent many happy hours in the Black Horse!!

Sylvia: I fear not. I set Yahoo UK to search "Balham Gateway to the South" but found only references to more recent work.<BR><BR>Ben Haines<BR><BR>

Ben<BR>Interesting post. I had a good friend that lived in the Lewisham area several years ago and I spent a lot of time with him and his wife at their home, and thus in the area. It is quite nice and you listed many things of interest. I know the neighborhood they lived in was quite nice. Thank you.