Publications received - what do they say about Greenwich??

So - what has turned up in the post??

Subterranea
This excellent journal is now turning up more regularly with articles and features about undergroundia worldwide. Greenwich??
  ---  Crossrail Overview - some very sparse details of current tunnelling plans including Plumstead-North Woolwich
  ---  An article on the delays in refurbishing our two foot tunnels. This is taken from News Shopper and so doesn't need requoting here.
  --- 

Redriff Chronicle
We have had three issues of this in the post. So - some of the highlights -

Spring 2012
An obituary to Peter Gurnett - who came to speak to us on several occasions. He was an expert on the history of Stone's (of Deptford and later Charlton).  He had a distinguished career in Deptford's local history and it is important to note his passing.
Other articles include one on successive Rotherhithe Libraries (plus statue of Tommy Steele).  A report of a talk on Firefighting in Bermondsey. A report of a Great War dug out under London Bridge Station and the planned use of railway networks and communications systems during the war (this is fascinating)

Autumn 2011
A report of a visit to the Limehouse Accumulator Tower (sorry, wrong side of the river - but very interesting). 
An article about the Caryatides of Rotherhithe - I can just about remember seeing these ladies holding up a wall in Rotherhithe in the 1960s - always wondered about them - and then in 1980something I cut through the Heygate Estate at the Elephant, and there they were. Anyway, the Heygate is also now gone and the ladies are apparently back in Rotherhithe. Must go and see them!

Autumn 2012
An article about a 17th century Rotherhithe engineer - Thomas Steers. He built some important docks in - er - Liverpool.
Bittersweet - the story of Hartley's Jam. The Jam Factory just off Tower Bridge Road is now posh flats.  The article doesn't shirk from the labour conditions prevailing in the vast sweet and pickle business of east and south east London - where women, whose dockworker husbands depended on the daily 'call in' system, would take any seasonal work at low wages.

and much else.   Their programme of talks for early 2013 is

30th January    The Bermondsey By Election - the 30th Anniversary. with Simon Hughes and Peter Tachell.  (special admission arrangments - need to do it through their web site - assume they don't want the ghost of Bob Mellish turning up)
27th February   Subterranean Railway. 130 years of the London Underground.  Christian Wolmar
24th April    Ships and the Sea in Bermondsey and Rotherhithe. Stephen Humphery
These are at Time and Talents Old Mortuary in Rotherhithe Street. 7.30


Dockyards  - this is the newsletter of the Naval Dockyards Society.  Articles include
Bermuda. .. a Major Royal Naval Dockyard.   This long and important article takes up the majority of the space.
Malta Update

But - most excitingly - they are advertising for 20th April a Conference on Five Hundred Years of Deptford and Woolwich Royal Dockyards.   This follows their AGM at the National Maritime Museum and booking is absolutely essential.  The event is to be opened by Joan Ruddock, MP.
The speaker list is made up of people many of whom will be very very familiar to GIHS members - in fact some of them ARE GIHS members (and they can rest assured they will be asked to do a reprise for one of our meetings).  The speakers are:

Peter Cross-Rudkin on John Rennie and the Naval Dockyards 1806-1821
Chris Ellmers on Deptford private shipyards and their relationship to Deptford Dockyard 1790-1869
Duncan Hawkins on The Archaeology of a Dockyard.  Investigations at Deptford 2000-2012
Chris Mazeika and William Richards on The role of post-closure documentation in understanding the history of the dockyard officers' terrace at Deptford
Mark Stevenson on Block and Tackle: raising significance. English Heritage, archaeology and development management

This all costs £40 and you get lunch and you have to have booked by 12th April.  Information and bookings to Ann Coats.  anncoats49@gmail.com.    Their website is www.navaldockyards.org and on Facebook Naval-Dockyards-Society   and Twitter @navaldocksoc

- a lot more to come - its not just Christmas Cards which have been turning up the last week or so