The Quest for Upper Penwortham

Tags: foundspeech, local, urbanwalks, upnorth

Date: 10 May 2007 02:43:17

Well, I found Higher Penwortham.

Quite different from Lower Penwortham. Large parts of it are very like a sort of northern version of Woodingdean. Other parts could be in Worthing, or some of the more downmarket bits of Hendon.

Lower Penwortham is basically a southward extension of Preston. Houses get newer as you get further from the bridge. One main street, with solid brick buildings that the builders probably called "substantial villas" when they were flogging them, a few side-streets from about 1890 to 1914, an few slightly sider streets with 1920s and 30s houses, and some (rather more upmarket) infill from the 1960s to now. It looks as if the builders of Broadgate in Preston got to the river, moved over and carried on.

The newest houses of all, being built in between Upper and Lower Penwortham, on the hill facing the bypass, seem the poshest of all. Some of them look as if they might be worth millions. But most are largish traditional-looking houses, made from apparently local brick, semis or even terraced, with quite small gardens, The gospel of redensification seems to have finally got even to these newly Tory suburbs. About time too, because the "bypass" is a huge gash in the landscape replacing the old railway, leading up to Preston, splitting what might once have almost been a town into two, and isolating the old church, St. Mary's, at the end of a long and not-very-winding avenue. This is car territory now.

The church looks like a thoughtful 19th century restoration from outside but I only looked at it for a minute or two.

I spent more time in the graveyard with Victorian families that lost four children in as many years, followed by their father, but whose mother survived another thirty. Or one where the mother died aged 22, not long after her brother and her father, and only weeks before her son and then the father of her son. But her mother lived to see the 1930s, and her sister was "killed by enemy action" in 1941. And the memorials of men who made it to the second half of 1918 but still never came home are always poignant.

Beautiful wild garlic in flower all over the churchyard. All over the banks of the Ribble. It smells like Durham in the rain. If you are willing to go through some holes in fences you can get down from the churchyard to the banks of the river without having to go all the way back along Church Avenue and walk along the river for a while.

Then back up to the centre of Penwortham, for what its worth. Upper Penwortham is larger, more traditionally suburban than Lower. There is a rather sadly nostalgic shopping street, and quite a few more shops ribboned out in a big loop from Upper to Lower. 1910ish mostly at the street front, most converted to shops, some older Victorian buildings scattered around (& maybe a few much older). There are a few streets of 1920s and 30s housing and what looks like a small council estate, and some very swish new crescents and closes with Mercedes and Jags. It also seems to be getting posher as the houses get newer.

At the centre (such as it is) where Cop Lane meets Liverpool Road there is a watertower turned Estate Agents, some otherwise anonymous "Government Offices" (looks like 1950s or 1960s low-rise redbrick and prefab sheds with tarmac rooves that look like my old primary school), and a large attractive old pub, the Fleece. Slightly disappointing inside, a bit ersatz and chainlike (the staff wear uniforms, never a good sign in a pub) and the building is grossly overheated.

And yes, if you walk along Cop Lane to Pope Lane and carry on, it does turn into Leyland Road as it arrives back in Lower Penwortham, just after another small group of shops, a co-op and a health centre, and some rather more attractive pubs than the one on Liverpool Road. Well, they look nice enough outside, especially the Black Bull.

Next time, maybe.

Overheard in that pub in Upper Penwortham:

"I've got no time for all this software stuff. I just use my computer for what I want it for. I'm not interested in fiddling about with software."

Then back to London by train. The wonderful London transport system isn't so wonderful when you are arriving from outside and you've forgotten that your travelcard has expired. It must be even worse if you don't know your way around. The wonderfully transparent and flexible London transport system becomes very opaque and intransigent when you have no weekly or monthly pass.

I found the bus stop at Euston and was going to get a 68 or 59 down to Waterloo and than another bus to Old Kent Road, but forgot that I didn't have a ticket. They don't sell tickets on central London buses any more, you have to get one from the machine by the side of the road. And it costs two pounds for a single or three pounds fifty for a one-day pass (the idea behind the outrageous prices being that you are supposed to have a pass, ideally an Oyster card). But the machine gives no change and accepts no small coins, so even though I had £3.50 in change I had to buy a £2 ticket.

So I got on a 59 or 68 (I for get which) and down to Aldwych, where the bus collided with a taxi. No-one was hurt, but the drivers got into an argument so the passengers disembarked and on to a 171, whose driver didn't bother to make us pay again, which was actually better for me because it extended my two-quid ticket to Brockley, almost home. But knackered and carrying bags after midnight I didn't fancy walking the last mile so I got off at New Cross and was then faced with having to get change for another two pound ticket. Where can you get change in New Cross? Well there are a couple of bars I could have gone in to, but I'd already had enough beer and was carrying too many bags for comfort and needed to get home, So to one of the grottier of the grotty kebab shops of New Cross to buy some chips.

They looked as if they were closing but fried some more for me. I felt almost guilty about making them do it. I didn't really want to eat - I'd had dinner and also some sandwiches on the train, and chips seemed the most harmless purchase. A fizzy drink would have been cheaper but viler. An apparenlty pissed African bloke came in and asked for a chicken kebab, was told that there was only lamb left (though I could see two doner machines and one of them didn;t look like lamb to me. It didn;t look like chicken eitherm but I wasn't about to investigate closely), he walked out, came back a few minutes later after talking to someone invisible outside in the street, asked for the lamb anyway and got into some complicated negotiating about the difference between a large doner for four pounds and a small for three, much to the frustration of the sellers. I think he actually only wanted a small one, but it seemed to be an matter of honour for him to not be seen to be caring about the price - the kebab shop people were, he said, from A-broad where all they are interested in is money, just like the government who put VAT on everything even ESOL lessons. (He's not the only person I've heard moan about that - I wonder if the government has the slightest idea how many votes they lost over ESOL charges). But then an east-Asian couple came in, Chinese, or maybe Koreans. They didn't order any food but asked the people serving if they knew any hotels nearby - there was a sort of just-off-the-boat feel to he conversation, not that very many boats call at Deptford any more - and then after somethinelse I didn't catch, they asked if the women could use the toilet. She could, and they were told where it was, but her English wasn't up to it (or maybe the perhaps Kurdish English she was listening to wasn't up to it, even though it was little more than down the steps walk to the end and its on the left) so the man with her translated directions for her and the pissed small-kebab-eating man started parodying his language loudly. Sort of "Ah DONG wa PING-pang-ting" Sticky moment, for a moment. But everyone smiled it off and nothing happened. One of the things about people who work in kebab shops is that they use what are in effect floppy swords or large flensing knives to slice the meat of the giant doner sausage. I don't know if this makes me feel safer or not.

The chips were nice.