High-rise cups of tea…
11 Mar 2021
Dear LPG,
I found a YouTube video recently which got me thinking. If you were in England back in the 1950s and 60s, just after the war, you had to be part of the population that saw England, and especially London, get really tall quite quickly, and while some of those buildings were for commercial use, all too many of them contained loads of homes.
I remember my family visiting a friend who lived on the 24th floor of such a building in the 1960s, back in my youth. I have to admit that, once the lift journey was over and I had a welcoming drink in my hand, I could have been in any home. I think that I got a bit worried when I felt the really strange sensation of the building swaying a bit, but our host explained that her home had been built with a certain amount of ‘give’ so that it could withstand the winds at that altitude. The only other thing that really worried me was the view from the windows which reminded me of that from an airplane porthole at just after take-off and the really worrying thing was her added comment about them being suicide-proof.
That was when I was well and truly put off and I have to say that I was relieved when they started coming down a few years later. I wonder if any other readers remember the demolition reports that were regularly news items at the time.
I don’t go to the centre of Lewisham very often these days although so many of my friends have told me how much the skyline has changed, but I do remember hearing all the news about the work that has been going on near the station over the past five years or so. I don’t drive anymore which meant that when, the other day, I found myself in the passenger seat of a car which travelled past the site, I realised just how tall Lewisham is getting again which truly worries me.
My grandson once allowed me to try his VR visor which gave me a taste of virtual reality. I have virtually been left terrified while standing on top of a tall building and, I have also found myself in the middle of a huge field. Both equally convincing experiences taught me that today’s children and young people don’t need space to play their computer games, and the internet has also taught me that Lewisham is not that ‘tall’ when compared with the rest of the world or even the rest of the UK, but I worry about the generations who will be drinking the modestly high-rise cups of tea in the Lewisham of the future.
LB, New Cross
LB reminds us of the news items she mentioned…
… offers us a reminder of what we are expecting in Lewisham…
… and a look at just how relatively small Lewisham really is…
