Tray of bananas a pound (17 minutes)
Location: Beresford Square and Woolwich Market
Transcript
This is the Woolwich Wandering podcast, a series of sensory sketches inviting listeners into the vibrant and complex world of Woolwich, a place in South-East London that I call home.
I am Lizzie Fort, community dance artist and researcher, and a resident of Woolwich since 2016.
In each episode, listeners join me on foot as I move, dwell and feel my way through built and natural environments.
These are dispatches from a community in flux. Where public land and privately owned public space ambiguously merge.
A battleground where efforts to protect the soul and character of a place rub alongside agendas for the future.
OK, let’s get into this episode.
—
This is a sensory sketch of one of Woolwich’s public squares in the town centre, Beresford Square. Home to Woolwich Market, a council run market that operates from Monday to Saturday.
This sketch was recorded in Summer 2023, just before the square was redeveloped in the autumn that as part of the High Street Heritage Action Zone project funded by Historic England.
It documents a time when Woolwich town centre feels disconnected from the river. When the busy Plumstead Road is experienced as a physical, cultural, and social barrier with the Royal Arsenal Riverside.
The sketch offers vivid descriptions of place and reflections about the regeneration of Woolwich on both sides of the road.
[sounds of market callers, footsteps, people talking]
[Lizzie] It’s a busy market day.
I am in the hustle and bustle of Beresford Square is filled with a melting pot of local and global smells, sights, languages and sounds as the market traders exchange cash for clothes, bags, perfume, watches, cooking pots, shoes, fabric, groceries. You can get your bicycle repaired here, or a hair cut in the mobile barbers.
Street food is really popular here. The smells fills the air. You’ve got Mimi’s Nigerian stews and soups, to the Namaste Nepalise Momos, Peter Pana’s Latin American cuisine, and Vietnamese bao buns at VB bar. Although on the edge of the market as you work by these smells are rudely interrupted by the stench of the public toilets, which is not that pleasant.
If you look up, there used to be colourful prayer flags criss-crossed to cut the sky into a collage. But now it’s just wires and lighting.
If you stand in the centre, take a slow 360 turn around and if you look at the edges and you will see a patchwork of old yellow, beige, and red brick buildings. They now have modern shop fronts that house small local businesses where you can get your nails done, or your mobile phone repaired, a loan in exchange for some personal property at the pawn brokers.
[sounds of police car sirens]
[Local voices in conversation “Tibet, not Nepal. Tibet, different country…”]
As a bowl of bananas is tipped into a blue plastic bag, there’s children on scooters, parents with pushchairs, and the chatter of pedestrians and on Sundays there is the music of the church services above the pound shop.
[sounds of traffic]
These sounds float over the murmur of traffic on the South Circular Road, where you just heard the sirens of a police car go by.
People have to cross over to get to Royal Arsenal Riverside, which is a new development by Berkeley Homes. But the road cuts Woolwich in half and to be honest it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth, an ‘us and them’ divide.
[sounds of traffic, car horns]
The fractured relationship is something that the Council’s Heritage Action Zone project is hoping they can address.
This is a council run market dates back to the 1600s. It is overlooked by the impressive Royal Arsenal Gatehouse, also known as Beresford Gate, and it was formally the main entrance to the Royal Arsenal, before the Plumstead Road was built. Hundreds of workers used to pour through these gates on their way to and from work.
Liz, who is a local I have spoken to – she lives in Woolwich. She has lived her all her life actually. Her grandfather worked in the Arsenal and she talked about the Gatehouse is an important local symbol of the past, a symbol of deep connection between the Arsenal and the town centre.
[Liz] And The Arsenal its more personal because my grandad worked there and his stories of working there. So its more that archway for that reason. The workers rather than the military history of the arsenal. It’s the people that worked there. I think its difficult because that physical barrier makes it quite a symbol, I don’t know. It really is like you are going through into another world so I think its quite difficult. It would be a shame to lose those walls and the heritage. Those walls … maybe its them that need to come down and it the archway that stays so you have got the symbol but not the divide.
[Lizzie] Another local resident Seiriol who moved to Woolwich in 2013 shared his thoughts on the square and the gate.
[Seiriol] Yeah I really like Beresford, always feel very European. It’s got that arch into it. It feels like a beauty and the beast, sort of, town square.
[sounds of the market]
[Lizzie] A man in a balaclava stands tall and alert on top of a black bin on the outskirts of the square. He seems to be on the look out for something. I think he spots me with my camera faced in his direction, so I take a slow, turn round to my left, now looking at the fruit and veg stalls, pretending not to have noticed him.
Sounds of the market traders “Tray of bananas a pound. Bananas of tomatoes a pound…”
[Lizzie] That’s the thing about Woolwich town centre, its vibrant, colourful character and liveliness has many layers that lure me into a sensory trance, a feeling of joy, seeing things through a tourist gaze and then sometimes, in a flash, I am reminded not be too complacent, jolted by a little moment of vulnerability. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.
I came here with a group of women early one evening in September 2022. It was the end of the day and there were a few plastic bags and cardboard boxes leftover. They perched on the back of a bench, feet on the seated area, because the seat was dirty. They said they liked this felt like a welcoming open space and felt pretty safe here. Although, Alexis recalled being here when a girl came out of the Gun pub saying in her drink had been spiked. Molly shared that the council tried to put her up in the hostel above the pub, and she refused. She was pretty untrusting of the people in the pub and the hostel and didn’t feel safe sleeping there. I have seen the lively weekend parties at the Gun pub and they spill music, people and pints out onto the street. I doubt there’s much peace in the hostel upstairs.
The women chat about the poor placement of the pubs, the cash machines and the betting shop; all three working in a perfect golden triangle for payday, if you are lucky to have one.
[sounds of traffic and voices]
I look around to see what the man on the bin was looking for. I am expecting to see a gang of youths across the square, or the police chase. But there is no drama.
But sadly in the past some of these public thoroughfares have been the scenes of tragedy, like in July 2021, when 14 year old boy was fatally stabbed at the bus stop by General Gordon Square, which is just up the road.
My friend who is a police officer in another part of London explained to me once that when you know what to look for, the groupings, the signals, then you start to notice the subtle and blatant illegal activity that’s going on. But this subculture is not one I have access to, or experience of. But for some people its their every day.
[Sounds of market callers “tray of bananas a pound”
And all the while, ordinary people go about their day to day, picking up a bowl of apples for a pound, halal meat from the butcher,
[sounds of a man shouting]
or have a pint outside of the Elephant and Castle pub,
or lured into the vaping shop by the provocative icon of a naked woman, sitting with one knee bent, head leaning back, with smoke rising from her mouth.
[sounds of traffic]
Melloney is not sure about the new plans for the regeneration of the square are going to work. It includes the planting of some new trees, seating and a water feature. This opinion is shared by Derek, a market trader who was featured in a documentary I watched recently about Woolwich1. The council ran a consultation process but I sense that quite a lot of people are still sceptical about the gentrification of Woolwich, which is deeply felt by local people on both sides of the road.
[Male voice] So you try to transform our area to make it brand new, but don’t kick out the poor people. The rich people think they are just gonna just come…you wanna kick out the original people and say go to Kent and you are gonna come take our premises. That is where we are gonna go wrong. We are the ones doing the scaffolding in the beginning. We are the ones taking the GAS.
[sounds music playing, cooking frying sounds]
[Lizzie] In comparison to the Beresford Square market, there is a farmers market over the road in the Artillery Square and its got has bakery stalls with beautifully crafted macaroons, handmade crafts, a wine bar. Its on two Saturdays a month. There is live music as well so its pretty good fun. But everything is quite pricey and my impression from speaking to people is that its mainly popular with people who live on this side of the road.
[sounds of food sizzling on a griddle]
I think there’s a place for both of these markets in Woolwich. They just cater for different tastes. Buy my impression from speaking to people is that the new market on the arsenal rubs salt into wounds of the market over the road, which has diminished in size and vibrancy over the years. Locals who grew up here are really nostalgic about how the market used to be, a thriving, dynamic destination for family shopping and it attracted shoppers who came to Woolwich for Cuffs and other department stores.
[Liz] It used to be bigger. There were more stalls and it was always busy. I usually go there towards the end of the day if I go during the week. my impression is that there’s a lot less stalls than they used to be. It was a bit of a destination to go spend your pocket money and get clothes and all that kind of thing where I don’t think it is now. you just get your pound of tomatoes for pound.”
[Sounds of the market traders “tray of bananas a pound”]
This place is part of the spirit and culture of Woolwich. It is a local treasure, but there is no doubt, it has lost its shine. I guess we can only hope that when the square is updated as part of the Heritage Action Zone redevelopment, that the market on Beresford Square is cherished, protected, nourished and cared for. After all, many people’s livelihoods depend on it.
[sounds of the market, people chatting, bicycle passing, “great strawberries or bananas”]
[market sounds fade]
[music fades in]
—
In the next episode, I spend time on a small stretch of the Plumstead Road, where the Royal Arsenal Riverside development and the Town Centre stare at one another across the busy dual carriageway.
For more information on the Woolwich Wandering project or to contact Lizzie directly with comments, responses and suggestions, visit www.woolwichwandering.com,
Resources that have informed the making of the sensory sketches can be found in the show notes.
Thanks for listening.
Show notes
This podcast was created, recorded, and produced by Lizzie between August and December 2023. It was the first one that I made.
With thanks to the research companions who contributed their voices to this podcast, Liz and Seiriol. To Molly, Melloney and Alexis who gave permission for their stories to be included. To Ian for listening to the first draft and offering his astute and candid feedback on the tone and feel of the narrative.
And to Alex Beckett and Paul Hughes for their invaluable feedback on early versions.
Sources consulted:
Future Proof (2023), Directed by A. Wilson, C. Bellamy, D. Sugitani dos Santos and R. Dunmore. [film]. London: Foreign Body Productions. Available at: https://vimeo.com/825112442/22b8023bff?share=copy
Music – ‘In the City’ by Oleksii Kaplunskyi from Pixabay https://pixabay.com/users/lesfm-22579021/
Footnotes
- On 28 March 2023, I attended the event ‘Woolwich Films: Looking at Woolwich from the 1920s to the 2020s’ at the Tramshed, organised by Our Hut as part of the Woolwich Heritage Action Zone project. Future Proof, a film written and directed by students from Thomas Tallis School, facilitated and produced by Foreigh Body Productions, features the voice of Derek Williams, a market trader, talking about the forthcoming regeneration of Beresford Square (3:00). ↩︎
woolwich wandering 