I have some friends who live in the East End and continually go on about how rubbish Plumstead is. This bugs me to the extreme - the cheek of it! There is absolutely no way I would trade in my little part of South East London for the East End. I've tried it before and hated it.
Sure, Plumstead has its problems (especially down by the high street) but it is a kind of paradise to what awaits you north of the river.
Here we have trees and wide-open green spaces, cute little streets and nice little houses that - to the most part - are well maintained. Over there it seems so awfully grey and grotty in comparison. There's litter everywhere and every other house has an unwanted sofa or bed dumped in the front 'garden'. People just don't seem to care about the place and it really shows. The crime rate is much higher and (at least in my experience) it is generally far less neighbourly.
The one thing that East London does have over Plumstead is better transport links to the rest of the city. This cannot be denied, but even so, Plumstead is hardly the in middle of nowhere as it only takes 30 minutes to get to the centre of the city by train.
How very dare they!
Purely physically speaking, Plumstead- with its victorian terraced houses, many green spaces, curving streets lined with trees, its hills and vales- is one of the prettiest pieces of (sort-of) inner suburb anywhere in London. It's gobsmacking sometimes to drive in from the Winn's common end past the Slade on a late summer evening with the sun slanting across the common and onto the clock-tower...
ReplyDeleteYippee! Another local blogger. Welcome - I look forward to your posts.
ReplyDeleteRe this post - you started talking about East End and I was with you. Then you said North of the river - and you lost me! I grew up North of the river and it was and still is lovely.
Mind you, let the rest of London believe Plumstead is a dump so we can keep the riffraff out.
North London is great particularly Clerkenwell where I grew up but I have grown to love this corner of Southeast London and we have the green spaces and now the DLR and soon Crossrail: Yippee!
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