Lewisham: The Long Goodbye

If everything goes according to plan, our time in Lewisham is nearly over. The refurbishment of the flat is nearly done, and it should be on the market by the spring. And, when it is sold, we’ll be moving away from Lewisham.

Just as I spent a while looking at Soho in the lead-up to leaving it, I’m going to do a series of posts, saying goodbye and charting what I thin about the past, present and future of the borough where I’ve lived for over a decade. A lot of my early blogging was about Lewisham, and many of my early blogging contacts were locals. This seems a fitting end to this era of my life.

Let’s start with this:

A whole parade of shops has suddenly closed down on Lee High Road. That’s a classic sign of a landlord pulling in leases for redevelopment. And let’s face it, Lewisham is ripe for redevelopment. Aside for a dodgy pub making way for a new Nando’s, the only significant thing to happen in the town centre over the last decade has been the Docklands Light Railway terminal.

There’s plenty planned, sure, but I’ve been hearing about Phase II of the Lewisham Shopping Centre for around 7 years, so you’ll excuse me if I take the current proposals for the north of the town centre with a pinch of salt.

The recent wave of redevelopment seems to have bypassed Lewisham as it rushed eastwards along the Thames, passing just north of the town centre. But, given London’s desperate need of new accommodation, how long can that last? Are all these streets of Victorian suburbia ripe for gentrification, or redevelopment at higher density? Or is the area destined to become a slum and a dumping group for another decade?

That’s what I hope to explore over the next few weeks.

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