No 31 Albury St . Mrs Gittins House

That's where she lived when we were growing up. My Nan lived next door. The porch carvings I believe are not the originals. In Fletcher's book "The London Nobody Knows" it shows different porch supports. The originals had cherub heads either side so I suppose these are replacement carvings. Steve who took the photo was aware of this also. I now know the owners of the property removed some of the porches in the late 60's for storage but some were misplaced from their yard. They then had to employed a master carver down the west country to re-carve the supports, but obviously placed these ones in the wrong place or the different design was somewhat cheaper without the carved cherub's. Any comment or info?

My thanks to Steve for permission to use his photo. He has some great photos regarding Fletcher's book. Follow this link. http://www.flickr.com/photos/steve_way/3379105391/

 

The Electric Palace Deptford High Street

Located on the corner of Deptford High Street and Hyde Street. The Deptford Electric Palace opened on 24th December 1910. The front entrance was created out of an existing building, which had most likely previously been a shop. The auditorium seating 625, was built at the rear, along Hyde Street. Hence the local but un-official naming of the site. In late-1912, the auditorium was extended in an unusual way, with the cheap seats at the screen end, as well as being in the main body of the hall, were also now in an annex to the side of the main building, thus giving those sitting on the extreme front side seats an extremely distorted view of the screen. Tragedy struck during a children's matinee performance on 28th April 1917 when a false alarm of 'Fire' sent an over capacity crowd of 1,007 in panic towards the exits. After order had been established, the bodies of four children were found crushed to death. In 1945, it was re-named Palace Cinema. Always independently operated, the Palace Cinema was closed on 18th December 1954 with Charles Starrett(The Durango Kid) in "The Lone Hand" and Mikel Conrad in "Untamed Women". After sitting empty and 'For Sale for a while, it was converted into a supermarket. But this was only to last until the early-1960's when it became a bingo club. In 1989, it was converted into a snooker club, which remains open in 2009 as Shades Snooker & Pool Club.