The Soul of Croydon?

The Soul of Croydon?

‘Croydon is a soulless place now’, said a very amiable gentleman, that I recently met in a Croydon pub. ‘Those planners tore down the old town and gave us big main roads and underpasses instead’. This was a rather dispiriting thing to hear, for someone like myself, who had not yet been a Croydon resident for a fortnight. Yet this friendly character had made this particular solitary pub-visitor, feel more at home in this apparently soulless place, and had spent most of the time, regaling me with very funny, rude jokes. I couldn’t help thinking that if a few more of Croydon’s residents were as entertaining as this particular gentleman, Croydon would have an awful lot more soul. I was wetting my whistle in the Dog and Bull on Surrey Street. The previous Friday they had offered a free drink to anyone who visited them for their grand reopening. They were doing up their back yard in an effort to entice a few more customers through the doors. On their first day back in business after a week’s closure, it certainly seemed to be working. I hadn’t been having a great day, but after a couple of glasses of their house red in very convivial company, the world began to seem like a much friendlier place.

The Dog and Bull is a delightfully traditional English pub without any of the modern accoutrements that publicans seem to think they need to get people through the doors. No big screens, no one arm bandits, not even a juke machine yet it still seemed to be full of people, having a jolly good time. Located on Surrey Street, one of the oldest thorough fares in Croydon, where a thriving local market existed even before 1276, when it was given the blessing of a royal charter. This has already become one of my favourite places in Croydon. Discovering a bowlful of ripe plums for a pound in early March seemed nothing short of of a miracle on my first full day as a Croydon resident and I have been making use of this veritable treasure trove of fruit and veg. ever since. There is a nice mixture of traditional English fare with some more exotic looking vegetables, and I am looking forward to trying them all as the days roll by.

                                                       The wonderful Surrey Street Market

Someone at the pub had told me that South Croydon was the place to eat. ‘Aye, you can eat your way round the world in South Croydon’, he said, and as it was well within walking distance and I was beginning to feel peckish, I thought I’d leave the pub and see if any of South Croydon’s numerous restaurants could tempt this particular culinary punter to part with his cash. My wife was eating out with a friend, and I didn't feel much like cooking. I looked for somewhere small and cosy, where my solitary state wouldn’t stand out too much like a sore thumb, yet all the trendy, very open plan eateries only seemed to make me feel more alone. Why should I waste my money, dining on my own, when I’d much prefer to save it so that I could perhaps occasionally take my wife out. Yet, there was a cold wind, I was getting hungry and I knew I didn’t really want the bother of cooking. At last a chippie on the road to South Croydon Station came to my rescue. Armed with my open bag of chips, my morale was restored and I wondered homewards, stopping only to buy a couple of smoked haddock fishcakes, from our local mini-Morrisons. These, together with a couple of lettuce leaves and a tomato, would completely quell my hunger. They just needed to be popped in the oven for 16-18 minutes, giving me ample time to peruse the articles in the latest edition of the Croydon Advertiser.

As I savoured my haddock fishcakes, I pondered how Croydon had and would develop. Part of its attraction is the juxtaposition of new architecture with old buildings, yet it sounded as if my friend at the pub, considered that far too much of the Old Croydon had been destroyed in the rush to modernise and develop. It seems to me, that in the headlong drive to make money and try to be more economic, so many places, including Croydon have destroyed the buildings that tend to give places their character. This is not to say that new buildings don’t have character, and to be fair to Croydon, it does have some interesting and colourful new buildings, but rather that planners and developers should perhaps have more respect for the good things that were created in the past. If I had my way, no-one would be allowed to be a planner or a developer in Britain, before they had taken a course on Historical Architecture in the British Isles, and shown that they had some understanding and appreciation of it. These days it has become all too easy to knock down buildings and put up new ones, yet many of the buildings that are destroyed have a value and worth that goes far beyond the costs of the land, bricks and mortar. They are often a part of a place’s history with roots that go deep into the past, and with stories that are well worth listening to. In this rapidly changing world, it is worth remembering that places also have souls, and the buildings of those that lived and worked here before, are an important component of such a vital if rather intangible phenomena.