Last Sunday saw the permanent closure of Crayford Greyhound Stadium. Originally opened in 1986, Crayford Stadium was built on the site of the former Crayford & Bexleyheath Stadium, which had hosted greyhound racing since the 1930s. The new stadium quickly became a popular destination for racing enthusiasts, offering a blend of modern amenities and classic sporting action. Over the years, Crayford Stadium witnessed countless memorable moments, including the hosting of prestigious events like the Champion Hurdle and the Golden Jacket. It was also a training ground for numerous champion greyhounds and a source of livelihood for many in the local community. The closure of Crayford Stadium reflects a broader trend of declining greyhound racing tracks in the UK, particularly in urban areas. Factors such as changing demographics, increased competition from other forms of entertainment, and concerns about animal welfare have all contributed to the sport's decline in popularity. With the closure of Crayford, Romford Greyhound Stadium now stands as the sole remaining greyhound racing venue in Greater London. The site of the former stadium is expected to be redeveloped, although specific plans have not yet been announced.
An issue that has been looming over the entire South East region for nearly fourteen years seems to have finally come to an end. On Friday of last week, a judge came to the conclusion that the proposed London theme park company at Swanscombe was to undergo liquidation. The company now known as London Resort Company Holdings (LRCH) - has been forced into liquidation. The £2.5 billion proposed park - was set to feature rides, restaurants, hotels, create tens of thousands of jobs and pulling in millions of visitors - was first proposed in 2012. It suffered a host of setbacks - most significantly when the 372-acre site it intended to build on was declared a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in 2021 by Natural England. That decision was made after environmental campaigners fought against the plans. the Swanscombe Peninsula is home to a number of rare and protected animal and plant species, including one that is almost unique to the area; the Distinguished Jumping Spider is incredibly rare. The species is a conservation priority, and has been placed on the UK list of Biodiversity Action Plan species. In the UK, the spider's only other habitat is the West Thurrock Marshes in Essex. As well as the spider, the Swanscombe Peninsula is home to more than 1,700 invertebrate species, and a quarter of the UK's water beetles. The reed beds and marshland also provides a vital habitat for wading birds and other marine wildlife, which activists say would be destroyed by the theme park. Initially I was quite enthusiastic about the theme park, especially as it was supposed to create many thousands of jobs for the entire region, but as the years and problems mounted, my opinion changed. I am now of the opinion that the whole project was far too ambitious and unrealistic, and was never actually going to proceed. It would seem that the producers had done little research into the local environmental conditions. Back in May 2019 I wrote the following:- "Veteran readers may recall that I first talked about the forthcoming, what was then termed The London Paramount Theme Park back in October 2012. The London Paramount Theme Park was originally scheduled to open at the latest by 2020, but due to a number of factors - not least that of major partner Paramount dropping out of the project a couple of years ago, the whole affair looked like it was dead on the vine. Last week the new consortium behind the theme park - the London Resort Holding Company, announced a new partnership had been agreed with ITV as the content provider - a bit less ambitious than Paramount perhaps, but still worthy of attention. The theme park will be built on the site of the derelict quarry site at Swanscombe, which has got to be excellent news for the entire region, if not the country as a whole. The proposed site features Europe’s largest indoor water park, theatres, hotels, restaurants and all manner of themed rides, all in a site spread over approximately 110 acres in the core resort, with another 600 acres surrounding; allowing for typical British weather, over seventy percent of the attractions will be under cover. The bill (at least now, but it is bound to escalate) is estimated to be in the region of £3.2 billion, and the park will employ 27,000 people, many of them from the local area. It will be a massive boost for the economy for the whole of North Kent and South East London. One downside - whilst a lot of ITV content will be used in the new park, along with rides and attractions based on BBC shows such as Doctor Who, one other content contributor announced last week that it soo was pulling out. Aardman Animations, the creators of Wallace and Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep said in 2015 that the deal would “bring a number of the nation’s favourite characters to the resort and introduce them to a whole new international audience”. However, last week a spokeswoman for Aardman announced that the company is “no longer involved with this project”. A spokesman for London Resort Holding Company said: “The partnerships are under continuous review and when the agreement with Aardman expired both parties decided not to renew the partnership.” The park will be a complete economic game changer for an area that will encompass a vast swathe of the South East of England. Once the park is built and running there will be all sorts of permanent jobs needed to keep the place ticking over – electricians, security, engineers, cleaners, administrators – the list is as long as your imagination. The concept is to produce an attraction so large and absorbing that it will take a visitor around three days to see everything. It seems that the planners have been very clever in their thinking; they realise that much of the new economic growth is coming from China and the Far East. They realise that tourists coming a long distance will think “we can go to Disneyland Paris and ITV London in a one – week holiday”. The planners chose Northfleet and Swanscombe, as the area has excellent road and rail connections, is only forty minutes or so by rail from the coast, and is on the rail route to London. It also helps that the land in and around Northfleet and Swanscombe is dirt cheap brown field stuff that would be excellent for a change of use as a theme park. According to the London Resort Holding Company (the organisation behind the project, now in conjunction with ITV) want to present a very British feeling amusement park experience – they are not trying to emulate Disney, rather to make something with a unique and British identity. I would imagine the success of the Harry Potter Experience may well have stimulated this approach, though the Potter park will be miniscule in comparison with the ITV London site. The London Resort Holding Company team did not select Swanscombe / Northfleet for its new theme park on the ground of aesthetics (the place is full of old gravel pits, and is currently somewhat of an eyesore). They chose it as the area has excellent road and rail connections, is only forty minutes or so by rail from the coast, and is on the rail route to London. It also helps that the land in and around Northfleet and Swanscombe is dirt cheap brown field stuff that would be excellent for a change of use as a theme park. People who complain about the potential traffic congestion that a large influx of new residents will do to North Kent should consider the huge number or well paid, permanent jobs the developments will bring – initially in construction and associated support services (the builders will need to eat, for example) and later all manner of trades and professions will be required to run the theme park. When I mentioned this to one local a few weeks ago, I got the response “But I don’t want to work in a furry character suit!” The reality will be that whilst suitable individuals will be required to dress up in character costumes, these will in a tiny minority. Most of the jobs involved in running a theme park are in areas like facilities – cleaners, repair engineers, project managers, electricians, administrators, security and the like – and these will no doubt have a wide appeal. The ITV London Park and the Ebbsfleet garden city will, if properly developed and run, be a huge benefit to the entire region in terms of economic activity. The one thing that does concern me over the town will be the price of property – if it is too high, the whole project could wither on the branch. Local workers at the theme park and surrounding businesses are likely to be on the low to middle incomes; there is no point in having half million pound homes in the town, if the average wage is in the region of £20 - £30K range. Developers will need to be realistic regarding their target market for this to work. Other parts of the country need the same, but the spur to building a new town is the availability of work for those that are going to live there – this is where Ebbsfleet / Northfleet / Swanscombe win out. The place is in the right spot at the right time. The project planners conservatively estimate that the park would attract around ten million visitors in the first year, and around fifteen million a year by the fifth, when there are more rides on offer. By way of comparison, Thorpe Park pulls in about two and a half million visitors a year. On top of the money visitors will bring into the region, there are the aforementioned new jobs that will result both directly and indirectly from the park. It is estimated the beneficial financial impact of the park will stretch from Greenwich to Dover, with thousands of permanent jobs being created both in the park itself, and in industries that service both the park, and the park workers themselves. The down side to the project is the loss of Paramount, and the on boarding of ITV has affected the project plan to a pretty dramatic extent. The earliest the new park will now open is 2024, and that date is dependent on construction beginning at the start of 2021, and I suspect that this date will be about as accurate as the originally announced date for the opening of the Crossrail project". In some ways I am sorry the project has now ended; it could have been a huge employer for the entire region, but I am also of the opinion that if it had gone ahead, the social, economic and environmental costs would have been far too high. Most of the investment for the project was due to come from the far east, rather than from local investors, and thus the profits from the venture would have ended up overseas. What do you think? I am aware that this is a controversial subject. Comments to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.
This week marks the 62nd anniversary of one of the most popular and successful media formats ever. The story begins in 1963 with the Philips company in Belgium. Lou Ottens, a Dutch engineer, led the development of the compact cassette, aiming to create a user-friendly and portable format for audio recording and playback. Prior to this invention, After the Second World War, magnetic tape recording technology proliferated across the world. In the United States, Ampex, using equipment obtained in Germany as a starting point, began commercial production of reel-to-reel tape recorders. First used by broadcast studios to pre-record radio programmes, tape recorders quickly found their way into schools and homes. By 1953, one million US homes had tape machines, and several major record labels were releasing select titles on prerecorded reel-to-reel tapes. In 1958, following four years of development, RCA introduced the RCA tape cartridge, which enclosed 60 minutes (30 minutes per side) of stereo quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape within a plastic cartridge that could be utilized on a compatible tape recorder/player without having to thread the tape through the machine. This format was not very successful, and RCA discontinued it in 1964. Compared to the bulky reel-to-reel tape recorders of the time, the cassette was a revelation. Its compact size and enclosed design made it far more convenient for everyday use. In the early 1960s Philips tasked two different teams to design a high-quality tape cartridge for home use, utilizing thinner and narrower tape compared to what was used in reel-to-reel tape recorders. A team at its Vienna factory, which had experience with dictation machines, developed the Einloch-Kassette, or single-hole cassette with involvement from Grundig. At the same time, a team in Hasselt led by Lou Ottens developed a two-hole cassette under the name Pocket Recorder. Philips improved on the Compact Cassette's original design to release a stereo version. By 1966 over 250,000 compact cassette recorders had been sold in the US alone and Japanese manufacturers soon became the leading source of recorders. By 1968, 85 manufacturers had sold over 2.4 million mono and stereo units. Initially, the cassette's sound quality was considered inferior to vinyl records. However, advancements in tape formulation and noise reduction technology gradually improved fidelity. The cassette's true strength lay in its portability and affordability. Portable cassette players, like the iconic Sony Walkman (introduced in 1979), revolutionised how people listened to music. Suddenly, music became mobile, and personal mix tapes became a cultural phenomenon. Tape length usually is measured in minutes of total playing time. Many of the varieties of blank tape were C60 (30 minutes per side), C90 (45 minutes per side) and C120 (60 minutes per side). Maxell made 150-minute cassettes (UR-150) - 75 minutes per side. The C46 and C60 lengths typically are 15 to 16 micrometers (0.59 to 0.63 mils) thick, but C90s are 10 to 11 μm (0.39 to 0.43 mils) and (the less common) C120s are just 6 μm (0.24 mils) thick, rendering them more susceptible to stretching or breakage. Magnetic tape is not an ideal medium for long-term archival storage, as it begins to degrade after 10 – 20 years, with some experts estimating its lifespan to be no more than 30 years. A common mechanical problem occurs when a defective player or resistance in the tape path causes insufficient tension on the take-up spool. This would cause the magnetic tape to be fed out through the bottom of the cassette and become tangled in the mechanism of the player. In these cases, the player was said to have "eaten" or "chewed" the tape, often destroying the playability of the cassette. The arrival of the compact disc (CD) in the 1980's marked the beginning of the cassette's decline. The advent of the MiniDisk and CDs offered superior sound quality and (debatable) durability. The rise of digital music and MP3 players in the late 1990s further accelerated the cassette's demise.
The history of Erith was obliquely referenced some time ago in a BBC Radio 4 documentary presented by Steve Punt about a chap called William Cantelo, who allegedly was the original inventor of the recoil operated machine gun. Cantelo was a Southampton pub landlord whose experiments in the cellar of his pub often caused consternation to both his regulars and his neighbours. Once he was confident that his machine gun was ready for the world, he packed several prototypes up and went off to market the weapon. That was the last anyone ever saw of him. Not long afterwards, Erith's own Sir Hiram Maxim (born in America, but a naturalised Briton) started producing his range of Maxim Guns - touted as the first recoil operated machine gun, which were made at his large factory in Fraser Road, Erith - to this day the area is known locally as "The Pom Pom" - after the noise of the guns being tested made. Investigators have noticed that Cantelo and Maxim looked remarkably similar - and certain conspiracy theorists have had a field day in supposing what the connection between the two men was. The thing is, back in the late Edwardian period, most men over the age of thirty had large bushy beards - as did both Cantelo and Maxim, and a lot of their physical similarity would seem to be due to the beard element. Later, Hiram Maxim claimed that he had a double who was impersonating him, but this was never independently confirmed (Maxim was fond of making sweeping statements, so this was nothing remarkable or at all unusual). It is a fascinating story that I was unaware of, though as long - term Maggot Sandwich readers will recall, I have written at length about Hiram Maxim in the past, listing some of his less well known inventions (the spring loaded mouse trap, for one) and his semi successful attempt at heavier than air flight which took place in Baldwin's Park five years before the Wright Brothers claimed the record for themselves.
A new mini crime wave is hitting the local area; restaurants and takeaways are finding that their containers of waste cooking oil are being stolen. Many food outlets use large quantities of cooking oil, which is usually vegetable based. When it has become contaminated, they store it for collection by specialist cooking oil companies, who pay good money to get hold of the oil. Where’s the money on old cooking oil? I hear you ask; well, it makes excellent bio diesel. There is a general perception that cooking oil needs to be specially treated before it can be used in diesel engines. This is actually not true. You can empty a bottle of Mazola or whatever oil you fancy straight into the fuel tank of your diesel vehicle and it will work a treat. The only thing you need to do with old oil is filter out any particles or bits of food – as these can clog up the fuel injectors of the engine. Old fish frying oil actually smells of the chip shop when you burn it in a diesel engine. Some years ago Mercedes Benz commercial vehicle division did some tests on the use of vegetable oil versus conventional diesel in long term use as a fuel. They found that engines run on vegetable oil actually suffered significantly less wear and tear than those run on conventional diesel – this is not much of a surprise, as Vegetable oil is a lubricant, and diesel is a solvent. Vegetable oil has a lower energy density than diesel, so your miles per gallon does drop a bit, but the cost savings are so big that it makes it worthwhile. It is not illegal to power a road vehicle on chip oil, as long as you have declared it to HM Revenue and Customs, filled in the relevant paperwork and paid the excise duty. Obviously the crooks that are currently nicking cooking oil for use as fuel have no intention of doing that – so if you see some shady looking characters in a van smelling of plaice and chips goes past, be very suspicious...
The end video this week is from historian and author John Rogers. He walks from Woolwich town centre to Thamesmead via Lesnes Abbey. Comments to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.
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