Sydenham Town Forum

I've recently become quite partial to Calabash of Culture - anyone who ever ate in Covent Garden's much-loved institution Food For Thought will be struck by how similar their food is. I had a sweet potato curry from Calabash recently that was great - blew my hangover clean away. I do think C of C ar...

Lewisham actually bought those spaces? I just assumed that they were working with the owners, acting as kind of temporary-use brokers. Lewisham Council must really love Catford! I thought most cash-strapped, cuts-beleaugured London councils were generally selling off properties rather than buying th...

No, Pally, never. It would have been great, for example, if Lewisham Council had put that (Royal Mail?) building on Silverdale up for Temporary Use tenders. What a great gallery/studio space it could have made. Am I right in thinking its been sold/under offer?

Only in Sydenham would we be debating whether or not it would have been OK if it had turned into a Wetherspoons! Sometimes it seems as if we want to be hair-shirted masochistic martyrs about the state of the high street. I would have been gutted if it had ended up a Wetherspoons. I think it's pushin...

And you should soon be doing it in well under 50 mins when the acquired fitness kicks in. Isn't Sydenham to Bank about 10 miles? It used to take me between 20 and 25 mins to cycle from Brixton [where I used to live] to Covent Garden, door to door, and that was about 4.5 miles. Once or twice I manag...

I'll throw in a curveball: The Goldsmiths Arms in Penge. Despite being a pub, it's very good for kids (lots of space, boardgames, table football etc) and the food, as with all Antic pubs, is very good. Obviously, it being a pub and you having kids, you're better off going during the day or early eve...

Come Spring you could even be brave and cycle - it's a reasonably perpendicular route, via Forest Hill and Peckham. Would take you about 50 minutes.

Hmmm, Brixton Jamm is a bit crap. It's a bit of a soulless shell, to be frank, with a slightly odd live music policy (seemingly endless bands and DJs from the 1990s). Better than nothing, but shame it's not Antic. I know Antic applied (unsuccessfully) the first time, and told me they would definitel...

As mentioned above - Brown & Green. On the Hoof is very welcoming of children. Don't know about Hibagon (not sure what its opening hours are) but worth a phone call in advance to ask as the food is probably Sydenham's most interesting. I used to take our son into Trattoria Raffaele when he was t...

Link leads to a dead page!

All slowly moving in the right direction.....not as quickly as we in Sydenham would want but..... Pat, do you mind me asking how/why/to what extent Lewisham Council and/or the Sydenham Society are informed of progress? And how they monitor and assess any such progress? Like most of us on these boar...

It's not unpleasant. My objection to allowing it inside - especially in pubs - is not that one person next to me might be doing it, it's the potential for lots of people to be doing it in the pub en masse. I'd prefer it if pubs didn't become the go-to "places where you can vape inside"

That's a shame. It makes them seriously out of step with the majority of other businesses (including pubs) in the UK

did you complain to the staff? (or to those smoking?) I'd be very surprised if they were allowed to do that - I don't know any businesses that allow e-cigarettes to be smoked indoors

The Penge Means Business thing too:
http://pengetouristboard.co.uk/penge-me ... gn-up-now/

There's just a general sense of genuine interest in the High Street; coupled with a bit of savvy than us Sydenham residents.

Except that, as far as I'm aware, the Greyhound is currently Under Offer. And while I know there was an application made for the Greyhound to receive ACV status (asset of community value) I don't know if that application was successful. I asked somewhere in this thread. Nobody answered to tell me ye...

2-bed flat on the highstreet would sell at around £380 grand I reckon. Let's say they spend 100-150 grand on the conversion. That's still a pretty tidy profit margin.

Bovine Juice wrote:Has anybody thought of contacting the current managers at the Grape and Grain in Palace? They have to quit the site in January because Wetherspoons are taking it over and I believe they recently showed an interest in the Alexandra in Penge.

Did you contact them?

What happened to the 'Friends of Sydenham High Street' idea somebody mooted? I think that if we are serious about wanting to improve the high street, then we need to make a concerted, co-ordinated effort to intervene in these sales: we need to be reacting to this information before these commercial ...

Blimey that's cheap. They were asking £120,000. Which means they might have actually accepted between 100–115,000. And they were only asking 12K per year rent. It's a decent-sized space too, with a basement. That's so cheap you could have bought it and sub-let the basement as storage space for half ...