Pier.

This is the first time in 18 years since it originally started that I've been unable to attend the annual Bexley Beer Festival. As you can see from the photos above, the event was as always very well attended and the selection of real ales on offer was excellent. Fortunately this year the weather was also very good which is not always the case. Figures are not yet in for the number of attendees or the amount of beer sold but it would seem to be as high as ever. Thanks to regular reader and occasional contributor Ian for the photos and the live video call he made with me during the event. As many of you may be aware I have been ill for some time now and as a result I have been made housebound. Even walking the length of my living room causes me extreme exhaustion. I have a hospital appointment tomorrow for further tests but at this stage it is thought that I have Long Covid which at the moment does not have an accurate medical diagnosis, but my symptoms include nausea, diarrhoea and extreme exhaustion. I'm fortunate that tomorrow I am being chauffeured to and from the hospital as I would be unable to make the journey unaided. I've never felt this ill before and I'm normally a very fit and healthy person. In fact, the results of the previous set of blood tests I had at Erith Hospital showed that I have very low cholesterol which is not too surprising as I do not eat fatty foods, very occasional red meat and mostly vegetables along with some fish and a little chicken. 

There was a great deal of emergency service activity on Friday centring around Erith Pier. There was a large fire which had taken hold at the small wooden building at the far end of the dog leg of the pier structure. By the time the fire brigade were able to run hoses along what is the longest pier on the River Thames. The structure was almost completely destroyed, as you can see in the photo above. Click on it to see a larger version. Thanks to Miles for supplying the photo. There was a large response from the first responders. At the time of writing the exact cause of the fire is uncertain, although I have heard unconfirmed reports that a group of street drinkers had been living in the structure and that one of their group had allegedly been arrested for arson. No doubt more information will come to light in due course. Coincidentally it has also come to my attention that person's unknown have removed the life rings which were normally installed along the length of the pier in case anybody fell into the Thames. These have now been gone for some time and it is unclear why they have not been replaced as this is a vital safety facility. If you have any insights into these issues then please contact me in complete confidence at the usual address - hugh.neal@gmail.com.

If you have access to Amazon Prime video, you may have seen a TV series available to stream called Deals, Wheels and Steals which is about a group of small time second-hand car dealers trying to make a profit after buying cars at commercial auction, then reselling them. I have been casually watching the show which is quite entertaining in a happy shopper Wheeler Dealers kind of way. What I have noticed is that some of the car auctions featured in the TV show take place in Charlton and a scrap yard featured in the series is actually located on the Slade Green industrial estate on the marshes along Wallhouse Road; there are other local locations including Parsonage Manorway in Belvedere, the Manford Industrial Estate in Erith, and Northumberland Heath. It would seem that the programme has quite a high level of local content in it, and several of the dealers have some kind of local connection. It is not an earth-shattering show, but it is worth checking out if you have any interest in cars, although the show will never win any awards. 

Following the article I published last week on the discovery of World War II air raid shelters in the park adjacent to Erith Leisure Centre. Since then local Councillor Nicola Taylor (third from left in the photo above - click on it to see a larger version) has been in contact with me regarding the discovery, along with some exclusive photographs - which you can see above - click on any one to see a larger version. Nicola writes:- "About two years ago there was a ground collapse at the park adjacent to Erith Sport Centre. Erith Rec. After investigation it was discovered that this was caused by a small section of old second world war air raid shelters that were installed in the park during the war. There was a number of these in Erith mainly and in Bexley in general. Basically, these are concrete structures under the ground which are formed from by long corridors of about 2.2 metre high, 1 1/2 metre wide and then with side wings to shelter residents during the raids of the German bombers in the Second World War. As you know Erith historically was a base for a manufacturing of arms, ammunition, and electrical cables. There were lots of weapons industries especially ammunition in Erith and Crayford from the beginning of the 1900s giving us the road names Nordenfeldt, Maximfelt, Vickers etc. During the construction of Bronze Age Way lots of archaeology was discovered (hence the name of the road), including a huge air raid shelter under the car park adjacent to Erith Station. That was demolished with the roadworks. We published a book about the archaeological discoveries of Bronze Aage Way called ‘Under the Road’. This book is still available in the Central Library. As for this shelter, after carrying out various investigations, it was decided to fill it and preserve it in situ. The area was surrounded by Herras fencing for over two years for Health and Safety reasons whilst a contractor was found at a reasonable price. After much research and tendering, local contractor ‘Zack Contractors’ was chosen for the works. They are experienced in earthworks and have worked for the Council before. They started work on Wednesday 23/4/2025 and it was believed the works would take 3-4 weeks. However once they started work good progress was made and it was clear the project could be finished within a week. From a construction point of view the contractor will establish a small compound on site and work in phases using excavator and other relevant machinery. The ground will be stripped to expose the roof of the shelter which is about half a meter below ground level. The concrete roof will be removed, and the void below filled with an approved fill. Between 50 and 60 tipper lorry loads of fill material will be required. The program of the works is three to four weeks. There will be some noise from the breaking of the concrete roof and from construction machinery. Minor disruption may be expected in the car park area while the lorries are in and out from site. Upon completion of the fill operation the site will be reinstated and open to the public again. Just before the project began I was asked by the Borough engineers team to contact local groups for a time capsule project. As the work was progressing so quickly ( less than the predicted 3-4 weeks timescale) we had less than a week to get time capsules together and I am grateful to Claire and Tracey of 2nd Erith Scout Group, and Yuekai from Active Horizons for working so quickly. Their groups put together a slice of life in Erith 2025, everything from Minecraft and Lego toys to letters from the children involved. I included a Covid Testing kit, programme from Erith playhouse, Poppy badge from the Police cadets and mentions of local news and groups in the area amongst other things.  The contractors kept a part of the site open for us to bury these on Friday 2nd May and then the infill was completed. The grass onsite will be reseeded and the fencing will stay until the grass has a chance to grow but hopefully the area will be back available to the public by the end of this summer. The record of the site, including pictures of the shelters will be kept in the Bexley Archives completing the story of the shelters. Many people suggested that they should be preserved and kept open to the public. Sadly the site was not safe for the public to enter and it would have been too costly to make the site accessible and keep safe on an ongoing basis. Whilst the works were ongoing many people visited and were able to take pictures, and the contractors spent some time talking to interested residents about the site. I attach photos from the site.  We were able to recover one of the cages from the bulk head lighting which was used through out the shelter. This is with the 2nd Erith Scout group together with some pottery that was found in the spoils. Both groups were able to use this opportunity as part of a study of Erith and its role in the war which is particularly relevant as we celebrate VE day this week".  Thanks to Nicola for this article. Comments and feedback as usual to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com. 

Following my article last week on the temporary closure of the Royal Standard pub in Nuxley Road, Upper Belvedere, I have since heard that it is now back open under new management. This has certainly got to be good news for the local area. I had a number of readers contact me regarding the situation with the pub and with comments about the quality and availability of the food prior to the change of management. As you can see in the photo above, some time ago I visited the Royal Standard and had a cheese salad sandwich along with chips and a pint of real ale. I have to say that the sandwich was extremely filling and very tasty. The chips were well cooked and I could not fault the the level of service at the time, although as I have previously written in the last couple of years before the pub management changed, food service could be somewhat intermittent and unreliable which was real pity, because when it was working properly it was good. Although not a patch on that of the excellent Robin Hood and Little John in Lion Road, Bexleyheath - which to me is the top standard for any pub catering within the local area. Nevertheless, I was quite satisfied with what I had to eat at the Royal Standard and I just hope that new management can build on this and improve it even further, as previously written availability of a sit-down restaurants is severely limited with only the Belvedere Tandoori offering a sit-down service in the evenings and it would do well for the Royal Standard to offer both a lunch time and evening food service.

This week, back in 1998, Steve Jobs took to the stage of the Moscone Center in San Francisco for a product launch that would indelibly change the face of computing and arguably save the firm he founded almost 22 years earlier. The machine showcased at the MacWorld event was the iMac G3. It was, to put it gently, uncharacteristic for the era. As the wider industry churned out unremarkable beige boxes and towers, the iMac was colourful and appealing to non technical users. An advertising catchphrase was launched - "Chic, not Geek". By 1997 Apple was steadily losing money and market share after a series of failed product launches, including the Newton MessagePad. Experts predicted that it was not a question of if but rather when Apple would go out of business. Steve Jobs, who had recently found himself in the unlikely position as leader of  the company for the second time, was looking for an opportunity for growth, and he turned to the design of the company’s computer cases. Apple had long differentiated itself with its superior graphic performance and a devoted following, but it was producing beige box devices like every other PC on the market. Steve Jobs saw an opportunity to reinvent the notion of personal computing and, possibly, to save the company from collapse. Keeping in mind the rapid ascendancy of the Internet in the daily lives of computer users, Jobs and his team created a device that integrated Internet-ready technology with high-quality graphics performance and a futuristic all-in-one shell. The resulting computer was the iMac, which Apple released in May 1998. The iMac (the “i” initially stood for “Internet”), created under the direction of Apple staff designer Jonathan Ive, quickly became synonymous with sleek, sophisticated, and forward-thinking design. The iMac’s computing systems were integrated into one cohesive unit (harking back to the Macintosh), which subverted the beige plastic standard and was wrapped in a translucent white and aqua (famously called “Bondi” blue) shell. The iMac could be plugged into the wall and used immediately; it required no peripheral parts or connections other than a matching mouse, a keyboard, and an Internet cable. Despite a critically mixed reception and only middling sales numbers, the iMac was a design success and set the course of a new transparent plastic aesthetic in personal computing that can still be felt today.

Above you can see a historic local photograph - it shows the 229 and 99 buses parked at what was then, and is still now the bus halt in the old Erith Town Centre, along what appears to be a Ford Escort Mk1 van - almost certainly a bus mechanic's service vehicle. The photo would appear to have been taken in around 1975, and the original frontage of the White Hart can be seen in the background, many years before the criminals that later bought the place and illegally removed the locally listed frontage and installed the current hideous plate glass frontage. If you have any old photos of the local area, please feel free to send them to me - you will receive full credit.

The end video this week is a short drone flight over and around Christ Church in Bexleyheath Broadway. Comments and feedback to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.