20 February (Part 2) - Shabby Wood
Continuing
the theme of Bexley’s Conservative council’s neglect of the north of the borough, here is another typical street scene. In a few year’s time passengers will alight from their
shiny new Bombardier Crossrail trains and come down to earth with a bump as they
step over the border into Bexley. Not that Greenwich just a dozen steps away is any better.
A problem at this site is that many of the nearby traders have no place to keep
their rubbish. More about that another day.
Three minutes walk in an easterly direction will find another rubbish dump. The
dried up water course that was once, depending on which history book you read,
the route taken by barges carrying stone to build Lesnes Abbey. If you could
follow it to the south it you would end up in that big water filled depression
in Lesnes Abbey park said by some to be a Roman dock.
If
you decide to visit the park and exit via one of the stairways to Abbey Road, be very careful where you put
your feet. The 40 year old concrete has crumbled away and the repairs have not
been very successful. If you decide not to descend to Abbey Road but instead
take the Green Chain Walk towards Thamesmead and use the steps there, things are
rather worse. Almost every step (†) has crumbled away and not just some of them with no
sign of a repair. It’s Thamesmead, why should Bexley council care about them
when it has a 43 seat majority in the south?
Confusingly, it is Greenwich council which appears to lay claim to this decrepit walkway, it is
their
notices which warn of dog fouling, not Bexley’s.
All this at the end of four years of tender care of the area by councillors John
Fuller and John Davey. Is it surprising they have scarpered to pastures new?
† A week later the steps had been repaired.