IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Leegate, LONDON, SE12 8SS

The Image pictured at the first dusk of this year's British Summer Time, being the last Sunday in March, with the clocks having gone forward an hour overnight.

Rather uneven paving has led to puddles across the precinct of the Leegate Centre (see Image, although this is at the eastern end opening widely alongside the Eltham Road). The signage of the bookmaker Coral is reflected in one of them, while autumn leaf fall stands in a larger one.

Looking along Leegate (see Image, viewed from the opposite end) as the Christmas lights are on above the walkway. The large shopfront with the white boards was a Sue Ryder charity furniture shop, occupying a former Kwik Save supermarket, which was wrecked by fire not long after being opened earlier in the year.

A closer view of the door to the old Provincial Building Society in Leegate Shopping Centre (see Image). There are a couple of baffling things about the sign. Firstly, most obviously, is that we are seemingly welcomed to the Slough High Street branch; but secondly, the Provincial was merged to become the National & Provincial in 1982, and the latter was itself subsumed by the Abbey National in 1996. So one wonders how this sign (a) came to be here in the first place and (b) has lasted so long since it presumably became redundant 37 years ago.

The eastern corner of the Leegate Shopping Centre is occupied by the office of Bridget Prentice, MP for Lewisham East and on a Sunday morning the sound of band music emanates from the floor above, which houses the Christ Apostolic Church.

Stalls on the marketplace at the corner of Leyland Road and Eltham Road.

An instruction to dog owners, painted on the pavement.

These shops are the nearest ones in this picture: Image which I took nearly 9 years ago. The one directly in front of us is a closed branch of the Provincial Building Society, according to the rather surprising sign above the door. The Provincial was merged in 1982 to become the National Provincial, which itself was subsumed by the Abbey National in 1996. See Image] for a closer view of the rather baffling sign.

It is hard to tell whether these are all closed shops, or just do not trade on Sundays. Certainly a quarter of them are without signboards but there is a Woolworth's, an Iceland, a pharmacist, a butcher and a charity shop.