The Past and Present of Croydon's London Road

Schedule change for 2015

2 January 2015

Just a quick announcement today — from 2015 onwards, I’m slowing down my article schedule from one every three weeks to one every four weeks.

Connected Croydon sign outside Lidl, August 2014. Photo: author’s own.

When I started this project in late 2012, my main aim was to provide information on the current businesses trading along London Road, in the hope that this would help bring them new custom, and help Croydonians discover more of the independent shops on their doorstep.

However, over the two years since, my interest in local history has grown to the point where I’m now equally keen to document the full history of the buildings along the road, right back to when they were first constructed. I’ve also discovered many new sources of information — libraries, archives, digitised materials, oral histories, planning records, and so on — all of which take time to go through.

Cutting back to one article every four weeks means I have more time to thoroughly investigate each building, which in turn I hope will help me to continue increasing the quality of these articles.

This does push back my expected completion date to March 2062, at which point I will be 86 years old and many of you reading this now will be no longer with us. But then I always expected this to be a long-term project.

The Norbury end of London Road. What will be here in 2062? Photo © bob walker, used under Creative Commons by-sa.

(The first “proper” article of 2015 will be published on 9 January.)

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« 61 London Road
61 London Road has seen service as a private residence, a doctor’s surgery, a menswear shop, a fruiterers, a surgical appliances shop, an insurance brokers, and a hair salon. It now hovers on the brink of becoming an African grocery shop.
63 London Road: ABM Electrical & Lighting »
ABM Electrical & Lighting at 63 London Road is one of the older businesses on this part of the road, having opened nearly a quarter of a century ago. Originally a private school, it’s also seen use as a Labour Exchange and a butchers shop.