IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Westow Hill, LONDON, SE19 1TX

Busy street in Norwood. This is one of the three streets forming a one-way traffic system in this busy suburban shopping centre.

Pizzeria and hair salon on Westow Hill.

This building, formerly the Natwest Bank and now a solicitor's, stands on the site of a house in which Camille Pissarro stayed when in exile from the Franco-Prussian War. The blue plaque commemorates this. Rules for "official" blue plaques erected by English Heritage (and before them, the Greater London Council and London County Council) are strict, and require the building marked to be the actual one commemorated: standing on the site of it is not good enough. (A few exceptions sneak through from the very earliest years of the scheme.) However, there is nothing to stop an organisation having its own blue plaque made by the same firm that English Heritage uses and this is what has happened here: the plaque was a joint venture by the Crystal Palace Foundation and the National Westminster Bank.

This can be seen on the wall of Pedder's estate agency 'Selling South East London' in Westow Hill. It records that the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) stayed on this site 1870-71. For the context and more information, see Image Photo number 7589179.

A vehicle has damaged itself and destroyed a bike stand. This otherwise pleasant street of shops, restaurants and cafés is flooded with traffic including buses at all hours. The air quality cannot be good.

A poster for a house music event bears witness to the recently-passed New Year, with all its millennium celebrations. At this time the three roads of the Upper Norwood triangle were all two-way: the triangle turned into a one-way system two or three years after this. The traffic in this picture is chiefly heading in the direction that would become the obligatory one after the street became one-way: however, a few parked cars pointing the other way betray the fact that it is still possible to drive along here westwards.

Imposing Victorian building at Norwood's main crossroads, formerly "The Bluebottle", the pub is now a friendly "Westow House" with a pavement beer terrace.