Hello! here we (still) are having been here more than 30 years; sometimes open to the public in the ordinary bookshop kind of way; at others only accessible by postal or email means (reflecting the vicissitudes of local pedestrian retail trade in the kind of things we sell - books, pamphlets, vintage magazines, paintings, prints and other things of a related kind).
We are are not (and never were) the kind of place instantly recognisable as a bookshop, even when we had (as we do not now) windows displaying our stock.
For all that, many local people (especially those now more than 30 years of age) remember with pleasure (and a kind of nostalgia it appears) the days when (as soon now again) the premises were open to the public. We found this out from the response - both written and spoken - to the petition we invited local people to endorse to preserve our continuation as a retail premises. I will explain later.
JANUARY 17, 2007 A few days ago I said I would explain about the petition. To do so, it will be easier to understand, for those not familiar with this neighbourhood, if I provide some background info'.
Greenwich, when I first came here, all those years ago, was attractively rural in character. Virtually a large village, on the very edge of the great metropolis, on it's south east fringe. Enormously fascinating to any with a taste for history, architecture, river and ships, and the pervasive presence of birds, animals, trees and natural features generally. In no way populous or metropolitan in character and yet within a few minutes road or rail distance from central London. But, of course, to many, Greenwich was not only, or even mainly, all of this. It was the site of The Royal Observatory, (marking the reification of the zero meridian of longitude), the Royal Naval College and Hospital, The Cutty Sark and the Maritime Museum - to name only the most outstanding features of this "Heritage Site" (characterised now not merely as a "National Heritage Site" but as a "World Heritage Site."
This particular plot of green and grassy land (echoing all Spring and Summer to some of the most beautiful and varied bird song I have ever heard so near to the centre of London) would, of course, be the last place you would expect to be put under threat of a modern commercial development, especially not one of a brutalist design originating in a private developer's dreams of avarice, oblivious to all considerations of aesthetic value and respect for local context; and especially not one which proposes to pointlessly demolish the only remaining period building on this contextually important site (this one, an ex public house built in a characteristic Edwardian style about 1903 it seems).
The local council, conscious of the fact that this site is only a few hundred metres from the epicentre of the historic architecture (painted by so many important painters including Canaletto) and valuing highly the significance and unusual importance of the land under their protection would never countenance such a thing! WOULD THEY! That is, surely, the LAST thing they would do.
Unfortunately, no! It's only the latest!
More later.
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