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From the
https://runner500.wordpress.com accessed 2024.
The Long Good Friday & the Camouflaged Pub.
The demise of some pubs is felt strongly by local communities, by
their former regulars and often by those who were occasional
drinkers but perhaps saw the pub as part of their community – their
passing is regretted and the mere mention of their name provokes
fond memories. But for a pub which started life as the ‘Northover’
on the south corner of the junction of Northover and Whitefoot Lane
these rose-tinted reminisces proved harder to find, although not
impossible, as we’ll return to later; a comment on a local blog
described it as the ‘late unlamented "Governor General" (its latter
name) set the scene.
Source – via Historic England.
The pub opened around 1937 as the "Northover;" not that much
imagination in naming a pub after the street it was sited on. It was
a striking, large building on a big plot designed by the firm A W Blomfield for Watneys. Blomfield was a well-established
architectural firm, the founder made his name as a church restorer –
his work included substantial alterations to what was then St
Saviours, Southwark – now the Cathedral and his staff included for a
short period a very young Thomas Hardy. Arthur Blomfield had died a
generation before the pub was designed though.
The pub is clear about 40% of the way up on the right hand side of
the 1937 photograph from Britain from the Air website that was taken
around the time it opened. Beyond it are the well planned lines of
the Corbett Estate dominating the rear of the shot and the local
authority housing of Waters Road the mid ground. The open ground
around the middle of the shot was to become the Excalibur Estate a
decade later.
The location of the pub was on the edge of the Downham estate which
had been developed from the 1920s, there was an excellent post on
the estate in the Municipal Dreams blog. The first and then largest
pub in England, the "Downham Tavern," had been built in 1930; the
"Northover" was one of the second phase of community facilities which
included the library and swimming pool, whose original incarnations
were also opened in 1937.
It was in a prominent location and as the Britain from above shot
showed, highly visible from above; as a result it would have been
vulnerable to attacks from the Luftwaffe – so some attempts were
made to camouflage the pub during World War Two – they clearly
worked as the pub survived the war intact – remnants of the
camouflage remained into the 1970s.
It is not clear when the name change happened, although the logic is
clear – it was a reference to the rich and prominent local Forster
Family, who lived at Southend Hall, which was at what is now the
junction of Whitefoot Lane and Bromley Road. Henry Forster had been
‘elevated’ to the peerage in 1919 and was Governor-General of
Australia between 1920 and 1925. He died in 1936.
The pub’s only real claim to fame was that it was that it had
a small ‘part’ in the 1979 gangster movie ‘The Long Good Friday’
which starred Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren, which the picture to below (source – the fantastic Reel
Streets) is a ‘still’ from. Unlike Bob Hoskins, where the film
became a launchpad for a successful career, the Governor-General
faded back into obscurity and local semi-notoriety.
Other on line references are very few and far between, the
"Governor-General" appears in several message board discussions of
‘rough’ pubs where fights were a regular occurrences and there was
even a strange suggestion that the pub’s name change followed its
purchase by Danny LaRue. While LaRue certainly owned other pubs and
hotels, such as the Swan at Streatley on the Thames, and the
upmarket hotel Walton Hall – owning a boozer on the edge of a
council estate is probably unlikely.
There have been a few Facebook ‘threads’ on the pub including
several relating to this post; the SE London Memories Group which
started with its reputation claiming it ‘used to be a drinking hole
for most of South East London’s underworld.’ Many remembered this
aspect of the pub’s past with comments such as – ‘Northover was the
sort of pub where you wiped your feet on the way out and ordered a
fight at the bar along with your drinks.’ Someone else called it a
‘pint and a fight’ pub. One person remembered their father returning
home, rather shaken, after someone he had been standing next to at
the bar was threatened with a crossbow.
One former employee described it as ‘a dump …. nothing but punch
ups, (the) public bar was like a wild west saloon! ’ It was pointed
by someone else though out that most of the pubs in the area had
fairly similar reputations.
But many more had fonder memories – there was a function room at the
back which several had held their weddings receptions, it was often
packed out on Friday evenings when there were rock & roll and
rockabilly bands and often discos; and, for the more refined, there
were dinner dances there too. It was the venue for football and
other club ‘do’s’ too.
There were memories of the two worlds colliding too – there was a
recollection of a mass brawl following a talent night being
gate-crashed in the 1970s.
On a different thread, the pub is remembered as the location of the
first, underage, pint – trying to and probably failing to look 18,
and younger memories of sitting in the garden with just lemonade and
crisps where the salt came in a blue packet (presumably before it
was done on a retro basis). Similar recollections came on some of
the threads relating to this post too.
The filming of the Long Good Friday is remembered too – apparently
Bob Hoskins had a kick about with several local teenagers, and
generally being friendly towards locals; he may have received the
attentions of a number of the local young women… One of the part of
the filming went slightly wrong in that an actor was meant to be
swung around seem to hit a poster on a wall, there was apparently a
mixture of fake and real blood when it was salvaged as a souvenir.
The pub car park was the scene of a rather bizarre incident in the
late 1970s when a large block of ice deposited from an aeroplane
smashed through a car taking the engine with it!
The pub closed in the early 1990s – a pattern followed by several
others on the edge of Downham – the "Garden Gate," now a McDonalds,
just off Bromley Hill and the "Green Man," demolished and now a
housing association office. These days the site would no doubt have
been developed for housing but around 2000 it opened as a petrol
station, initially, as Q8, latterly a Shell filling station.
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