Orange.

I received an email from a long term reader Christopher on Tuesday evening. He informed me that the troubled Barnehurst Golf Club has been put up for sale. Since 2022 the course has been operated by a company called American Golf; it would seem that a new owner / operator is being sought by Bexley Council. Barnehurst Golf Club us described thus:- "Set in approximately 45 acres, this 9 hole course is situated in Bexleyheath, within the M25 and just 18 miles from Central London. The course was originally laid out in 1904 and designed by Open winner James Braid. It is set in a mature landscape extending to 2,372 yards and includes a great variety of holes which are suitable for beginners and more advanced players alike. The course also includes a practice putting green and an automated irrigation system to greens. The clubhouse has been recently redecorated and comes equipped to allow the new operator to start trading immediately. Alongside the course and clubhouse, there is a recently built 16 bay floodlit driving range. Matthew Lynwood of Faybrook Consulting who are handling the letting on behalf of the London Borough of Bexley commented: “It is rare to bring to the market such a fantastically located quality golf facility within Greater London. The course is steeped in history, golf holes are set in mature woodlands and the property includes a recently built covered range. “As you play the course you enjoy fantastic views over the River Thames and beyond into Essex as well as far reaching views into Kent. It is a gem set in a great landscape yet surrounded by dense residential areas. It truly presents an opportunity for an operator to manage a busy and successful business which is able to attract beginners to the game as well as providing a challenge to more advanced players.” In late 2021, a report on London's golf courses was published. According to the study, Britain is home to a quarter of all the golf courses in Europe, with one in 20 found in London, despite the capital making up just 0.65% of the UK’s total land area. The 43 publicly owned golf courses in London take up just under 1,600 hectares (3,950 acres) of land in Greater London, bigger than the borough of Hammersmith & Fulham, which has a population of 185,000. The borough of Enfield alone contains seven courses, but the council receives just £13,500 from Enfield golf club each year to rent its 39-hectare golf course – less than the typical annual rent for a two-bedroom flat in the area. In a recent article in the Guardian, Russell Curtis, an architect and the author of “Golf Belt”, a new study of how London’s golf courses could help address the housing crisis, said he was not calling for all the capital’s golf courses to be turned into housing, but that some courses could be made more accessible to the capital’s residents if they became allotments, bio-diverse green space, sports facilities or even urban farms. “This is not a war on golf,” said Curtis in the Guardian article. “There surely has to be a way of improving the social utility and accessibility of golf courses to benefit the wider population. The redevelopment of golf courses is always presented as a binary choice between beautiful green fields or concrete, but there’s a model in the middle where you could provide new homes and social infrastructure while achieving biodiversity gain.” You can read the details of the Barnehurst Golf Club sale by clicking here.  

Last week I wrote an article about Rotosound - the world's largest manufacturer and supplier of musical instrument strings, who for many years were based in Upton Road, Bexleyheath. The local area has strong links to music - Jennings Musical Instruments / Vox were based in both Erith and Dartford, as I have written in the past, and thanks to an email from a reader which I received last week, another major player in the music business was also based in Bexleyheath - only two doors away from Rotosound. The person, who chooses to remain anonymous writes:- "I read your article on James How with great interest. The James How (Rotosound) factory was at the far end of Upland Road and I worked for another famous music company a couple of doors down called Orange Music. There is plenty of online history of Orange, and Youtube of some of us, online but to fill you in here’s my version. Orange music was the brainchild of Cliff Cooper and began in a music shop in Old Compton Street in the late sixties. At first Cliff had Orange guitar amplifiers built up in Huddersfield by Matt Mathias but he wanted to move the operation to London. In 1970 I joined Orange as the shop engineer repairing all manner of guitars and amplifiers. The next year Cliff asked me to redesign the amplifiers and start building them in London.. Once the design was finalised I began manufacture in a small room at the rear of, another Cliff owned shop, Rhodes Music in Denmark street - known as “Tin Pan Alley“. This took off and we soon moved to a small unit at Shorts Gardens in nearby Coven Garden where a staff of 3 of us began building in larger quantities. Within a year or so we outgrew that place and Cliff bought the factory in Upland road. We were there building and exporting amplifiers and speaker cabinets for about 10 years. The range was expanded and we designed several more models of amplifiers and effects, and became friend with the Rotosound folk 2 doors down. In 1980 there was a slow down in the valve amplifier market and the Bexleyheath factory closed. I went off to tour the world as a live concert monitor engineer for many famous artists, which I still do today at 74. After a few ups and downs the Orange equipment became more and more popular and Orange is now a worldwide brand, and very successful. I always enjoy reading your local news, especially the technical info you write". An absolutely fascinating story - please send any comments to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com. 

Further to my recent articles regarding the increasing unreliability of Arriva buses in the local area, another person has contacted me with their thoughts - and the photo above - click on it to see a larger version. "North Cray Residents Association have been going mad over the 492 having numerous cuts. There has been a report that regular daily checks have been replaced with weekly ones to save money this also reflects on the number of buses being taken out of service in and around Bexley and they are removed from service for many reasons, disability ramp not working, door not opening properly obviously not for leaking windows. I witnessed a 492 being taken out of service in Sidcup because of a floppy wing mirror, it was repaired road side but then taken out of service. When you look back to the old RT and RM buses they lasted over 30 years in service whereas those buses on the routes being mention are only 7-10 years old". 

I have been informed that as of Saturday afternoon, the ULEZ camera on the corner of Mayplace Road East and Barnehurst Road in Barnehurst has been cut down yet again; to my knowledge this is at least the third occasion in the last few months. The cost to TfL must be enormous. 

Regular readers will be aware that I quite regularly write about matters of local history, and of people who once lived locally and had some impact upon the world. This week I am featuring a man, who in his heyday was incredibly famous and extremely rich, yet today he is almost unknown. Sir Hall Caine, born Thomas Henry Hall Caine (1853-1931), was a writer who experienced a meteoric rise to fame in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. He lived for some years at  Aberleigh Lodge, Red House Lane, Bexleyheath, next door to William Morris' Red House. In appearance Caine was a short man who tended to dress in a striking fashion. His eyes were dark brown and slightly protuberant, giving him an intense stare. He had red-gold hair and a dark red beard which he trimmed to appear like the Stratford bust of Shakespeare; indeed if people did not notice the likeness he was inclined to point it out to them.He was also preoccupied throughout his life with the state of his health. This was often the result of overwork or other stresses in his life and he sometimes used nervous exhaustion as an excuse to escape from his problems. Though largely forgotten today, his novels were once international bestsellers, captivating audiences with their melodrama, social commentary, and exotic settings. Hall Caine was an enormously popular and best-selling author in his time. Crowds would gather outside his houses hoping to get a glimpse of him. He was "accorded the adulation reserved now for pop stars and footballers". Caine's path to literary stardom was unconventional. He left school at 14 and began working as an architect's apprentice. However, his true passion lay in writing. He honed his skills as a journalist and critic, even befriending Pre-Raphaelite leader Dante Gabriel Rossetti and serving as his secretary. This association exposed Caine to artistic circles and likely influenced his later focus on atmosphere and vivid characters. Caine's early attempts at serious literature met with limited success. He then made a strategic shift, turning to romantic fiction in the vein of Walter Scott. This proved to be a golden ticket. His 1885 novel, "The Shadow of a Crime," featuring a love triangle, became a bestseller. He followed this with a string of popular novels that tackled social issues like adultery, religious hypocrisy, and women's rights. This, coupled with his melodramatic style and strong characterisations, resonated with a wide audience. Works like "The Manxman" (1894) and "The Christian" (1897), the first British novel to sell over a million copies, cemented his place as a literary superstar. Caine was a prolific writer, venturing into play writing and social activism. He campaigned for social causes like copyright reform and advocated for persecuted groups like the Jews in Russia. He even served in the Manx House of Keys, the island's parliament during the time when he lived on The Isle of Man. During World War I, Caine channeled his energy into patriotic writing and fundraising efforts. This earned him a knighthood in 1918. While Caine enjoyed unparalleled success during his lifetime, his popularity waned in the 20th century.  His melodramatic style fell out of favour, and his novels were deemed overly sentimental by later critics. Sir Hall Caine's legacy is a complex one.  His melodramatic plots and moralistic themes are no longer in vogue. However, his immense popularity reflects the Victorian public's appetite for social commentary wrapped in a thrilling story.  Caine's influence on dramatising social issues paved the way for future writers who tackled similar themes. Though his work may be less read today,  Sir Hall Caine remains a significant figure in British literary history, offering a window into the cultural and social landscape of a bygone era.

BBC Radio 4 will turn off its Medium Wave frequencies and end its separate schedule for Long Wave by April 15th 2024. Daily Service and the extended edition of Yesterday in Parliament will be available on BBC Radio 4 Extra on DAB, Digital TV and BBC Sounds from April 1st. Upon its return, Test Match Special will continue uninterrupted on Radio 5 Sports Extra on DAB, Digital TV and BBC Sounds. The Shipping Forecast will continue to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 twice a day (weekdays) and three times a day (weekends). This will be available on all platforms: FM, DAB, BBC Sounds, Digital TV. This means there will no longer be a separate schedule for Radio 4 Long Wave and the BBC is encouraging listeners to transition to alternative platforms from April 1st. Finally, Radio 4 will no longer be available on Medium Wave in any part of the UK by April the 15th. In London and the South East this will mean the end of the service on 720 kHz. 

In what may be a surprise to many, the publicly accessible front desk at Bexleyheath Police Station is closed until the middle of June. The nearest Police front desk is at Plumstead Police Station, which is still open 24/7. The reason for the temporary closure of Bexleyheath is so that the front desk area can be refurbished. The rest of the Police Station is open and functioning normally; it is just the public area that is currently out of commission. 

The end video this week dates back to 2015 and the final stages of the demolition of the old Larner Road Estate, prior to the construction of Erith Park. The short time lapse film shows the last two residential blocks being demolished. Comments and feedback to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.