February 2003

Club News

January Meeting
Chairman, Roger Gourd, wished everyone a Happy New Year. He welcomed 27 members and also speaker, our own Jim Mulvey. £52 was raised for the Chairman’s charity and £29 from the raffle.

News of Members
Owen Kelly suffered a further fall and can no longer attend meetings. He is to become a Companion Member. Graham Bass has broken his hip – first Mayday now at Parkview.
Dave Garner had a fall and hit his head – now in St. Helier.

AGM 2nd March 2023 (after lunch)
Election of Committee for 2023. There is a committee designate, however, further nominations (or self-nominations) are invited from Members.
Positions vacant are: Chairman, Vice Chairman, Secretary, Treasurer, Social Sec., Speakers Sec., Welfare Sec., Without portfolio. Also are there any potential understudies for 
the Newsletter Editor and Webmaster (not on Committee).  Final nominees will be published in the March Newsletter. Draft Handbook (including Rules) and GDPR statement will be distributed by email/post following this February meeting.

Newsletter
Your articles/stories welcome – see below.
Please notify lunch changes by 10.30am the prior Tuesday for Thursday 2nd Mar. meeting to chris@moniz.co.uk T: 020 8660 6063. Member News please to Welfare Secretary, John Crumplin T: 020 8668 2924. Please email vincent@fosdike.com with articles/news for the Newsletter.

Speakers
Today: Mike Bunn: ‘High Speed Rail in France’
2nd March: Chairman’s Charity:  Macmillan Cancer Support


January Speaker: Jim Mulvey
History of Croydon from Vintage Postcards

The presentation was on the history of Croydon using vintage post cards. Starting with prints showing the Croydon Market, one of the oldest markets in England founded in 1236 by Archbishop Robert Kilwardby.  The road leading down to the market and the Parish Church from the Whitgift Alms houses was called Church Street. Then a pub was built on the opposite corner to the Alms Houses was which was called The Crown, and that part of the road up to the market became known as Crown Hill. Croydon High Street ran from the Alms Houses to Coombe Road, but being so far from East Croydon Station it was decided to build a new station closer to the High Street – Croydon Central (image next page) which was opened 1871 but it was not a success and closed in 1890.  The station was demolished and the present town hall built on the site and was opened in 1896 by the prince of Wales who became King Edward V11 five years later on the death of Queen Victoria.  In 1905 the new town hall was partially burnt down and did not open again for two years.

Burning of Town Nall 1905

The residential area north along the main road from the Whitgift Alms houses was named North End. But over a relatively short period of approximately 20 years this stretch of road became the principle retail centre of Croydon. The reason for this was the opening of the Croydon Canal and later the railway line. The main Canal Basin was where West Croydon railway station now stands. The Croydon Canal ran from West Croydon to Deptford.

Postcards of various sections of the canal were shown, one of which was where Selhurst station now is – which is where Crystal Palace football club supporters alight to get to the stadium. The canal basin at the Croydon end became West Croydon railway station.

Croydon Central Station

The Croydon to Deptford canal was the second attempt to build a canal from Croydon to the River Thames. The first proposed canal was to be from Croydon to Wandsworth alongside the River Wandle, but after protests from the factories, who used the fast flowing Wandle to power their mills, the plan was dropped. In his book “River Wandle Companion”, Bob Steel points out that the 11 miles of the river Wandle had over 40 mills and was the most productive stretch of a river in England producing, amongst other things, Snuff, Leather, several leather tanners, Paper mills, Fabric dyeing, Ale Brewers at Mitcham and Wallington as well as several cloth bleaching companies and Calico Printing.  The famous Regent Street store Liberty’s had their textile printing factory on the banks of the Wandle until well into the 1940s.

When the idea of building a Canal using the water of the Wandle was abandoned it was decided to build a horse drawn railway alongside the river.  The Surrey Iron Railway followed the course of the river to Croydon then continued south to Merstham.  Several trucks at a time carried goods from the tidal Thames at Wandsworth to Croydon, Purley and Merstham and returned with cargoes to the Thames lock where they were loaded onto the unique Thames sailing barges – shallow bottomed but with two keel boards which were lowered to enable sea travel, thus carrying goods manufactured in Croydon and the Wandle directly to Europe. There are records of the easily worked stone from the Merstham quarries being transported to Portuguese churches.


Not Now!!! I Really Don’t Want to Know Yet

by Vincent Fosdike

Most of the time we experience huge osmotic pressure from the media fuelled by carefully crafted alerts designed to generate anxiety and so expose us to more advertising coupled with the career development of journalists, presenters and “influencers”. Surely we senior citizens are immune to it by now? If you don’t like it don’t switch on or buy a newspaper. Well yes but we risk the charge of being out of touch, mentally obsolete, “head in the sand” in a fast moving “dangerous world”. We will become poor conversationalists and strangers to our grandchildren, FOMO (fear of missing out).

I like to watch certain sports but don’t want to pay for live coverage when waiting for six to twelve hours allows free access. A simple solution but risky and demanding an almost religious retreat from the media fog we live in. It is the reverse of being a spy, an anti-spy in effect! Basic training is as follows.

Don’t activate radio, T.V. or communication device, not forgetting that the car radio may be sitting like a land mine just below your alert status, best to actually switch it off in advance or at least set the volume too low to make out words. One seconds exposure is long enough to ruin your day.

However the addiction to news is strong – whose turn is it to play at being Prime Minister  this week, has my pension fund collapsed and will it rain when I go to the shops?  Attempting to glean these facts in isolation will normally end in disaster, before you can hit the off switch the vital result is revealed. Perhaps you may like some music this is even higher risk as programs often slip in news between concertos with no warning. Phone in programs whilst not dealing with your special interest may contain a gratuitous aside meaning you know who has won! No you just don’t have the reaction time to fight the media especially if you are driving!

Well what about the daily paper sitting on the mat? This is a better bet due to being slightly behind events, but you never know if it was a late edition. One accidental glance at a headline and before you can force your eyes away from it you are dead meat!

O.K so we turn everything off and go out for a coffee, eyes averted from the papers in the news agents widows and the freebies outside the station or lurking inside the bus. Probably best to leave the specs at home or at least in your jacket pocket.

Thank goodness they no longer have T.V.s on in shop windows. The real problem is that the subconscious mind will grab the information before you can block it as it is forbidden fruit

Swing into the cafe with its big screen pumping out news. The trick is not to drift into watching the text as the sound is off. Workers are bringing in early editions of papers but usually lay them flat on the tables (keep the specs off if possible anyway). Be especially careful of persons wearing anything like team colours and sitting in company. 

Your friendly proprietor may share your interest, tell him your problem before he launches into a joyful reprisal of the game. Be firm, speak first, look after number one.

Time to go home, and enter, communications lock down, only eight hours to go. At the pedestrian lights a large van with windows down pauses to let me cross. The on the hour news is blaring out with the special intensity and raised volume always used for sport and adverts. This is really dangerous the lights are changing and I must cross. In desperation I pretend to be talking on my phone and shout loudly into the dormant instrument already switched off. This just blanks out the van’s radio.

Home at last. Somehow I retain my innocence until it is time to turn on the T.V. Not so fast!! I flick through the channels. Best to switch on just after start time. The screen livens up and I navigate to the promised land, wait for a lingering advert to depart and look forward to my well-earned reward. But what is this?  A lengthy special news bulletin has displaced my program. Of course it is troubling news as always. My moment of escapism has gone. O.K. turn off the box, back to my books. I wonder which will serve me best, “War and Peace” or “Wind in the Willows”.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *