David’s memories – Crewdson Road

David wrote to me in January 2013, sharing his memories of living on Crewdson Road and of the surrounding area, he writes:

I lived at 44 Crewdson Road between 1972 and 1976. I shared the bottom flat with 3 or 4 friends as I was attending Camberwell College of Art and some of the others attended South Bank Polytechic. We were 19 and this was a our first time living away from home – the other end of the Northern Line for most of us in Barnet! It was a wonderful time – we had no money but luckily Chick, a mate of ours who was in full time work stayed a couple of years and ferried us around in his Ford Anglia. We discovered pubs which had strippers (The Skinners Arms) and there was cricket at The Oval round the corner where in 1973 the locals descended in their thousands from Brixton to support the West Indies. We called ourselves The Brixton Bolts and visited the legendary Beckys Dive Bar in Southwark (?) and other truly Dickesian hostelries – Saff London was quite grim in the early 70s. At gigs we met Ian Dury and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. If we needed cheering up we threw a party and half of North London would descend on the flat – they were really great times and I still get a fond chill when I’m in the area.

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