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About The White Hart Hotel
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The White Hart Hotel is situated on the site of an old Roman road. It led up, from a port
now called Dover on the English Channel
coast, to the town the bloodthirsty Roman conquerors called Londinium during their 400-year stay. The White Hart Hotel
dates from somewhat later than that! It was built in 1874. The downstairs bar is
typical of an old Victorian London pub - a mix of olde-worlde charm, photos and curios on the walls, all blended with modern expectations like
draught lager, draught Guinness, tea, coffee,
live and recorded music, and a giant satellite TV screen for the major sporting events. The beauty of staying in accommodation over a pub
- which is a popular, English thing to do - is that it is somewhere to relax, say in the evenings after a day at work or sightseeing, where you will find warm and friendly bar staff, music, drinks
and locals to rub shoulders with. On several evenings
each week there is live music, usually electric jazz, blues or rock.
On warm evenings, you can sit at tables outside and watch the crazy world go by, or you can use our
cosy, secluded
roof garden.
We can't describe the White Hart Hotel as a clichéd "friendly family-run hotel" because
that's not the aim. This is not the
seaside or the countryside - it's London, and south-east London to be more specific. But what we are is somewhere
very handy to stay,
with all amenities virtually on the doorstep, and superb transport links to and from almost
anywhere - without paying central-London accommodation prices. |
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Local amenities
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Almost any service you might need is practically on the doorstep. Two chemists, a bank, a
large post office, three newsagents, four mini-markets,
several cafes, restaurants, takeaways (Chinese, Indian, Jamaican, Moroccan, Turkish, Italian), pubs, hairdressers, nail salons, estate agents, solicitors, betting shops, a garage, dentists, doctors,
two internet cafés, four cash machines and,
so rare these days, an English-style fish and chip shop. It's not a posh area but you name it,
we've got it. |
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Transport links
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The White Hart Hotel is only a few minutes walk from New Cross Gate railway
station. Two other railway stations are only a couple of bus stops away - namely
New Cross station to the east and Queens Road Peckham station to the west. And the Docklands Light
Railway is only 10 minutes away by bus. These ultra-convenient rail links, and voluminous local bus services,
mean easy access is available to all the major south-serving railway stations like Victoria,
Waterloo, Charing Cross, London Bridge, also to all three London airports at Heathrow, Gatwick and City. If
it's good transport links you want, to practically anywhere, you can't get much better than this. |
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Sightseeing
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Buses from right outside the White Hart can take you north, across the River Thames, to
all the top sight-seeing destinations like Oxford Street, Soho, West End, theatres,
Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Downing Street, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, City of
London etc. Or, staying south of the river, to London Bridge, Tower Bridge, London
Eye etc. Or, more locally, to Goldsmiths University, Deptford market, Lewisham market,
Greenwich Planetarium, Cutty Sark, Canary Wharf, Blackheath Common, Woolwich Ferry, Thames Barrier
and more. There is virtually nowhere in London you can't get to pretty easily from where the
White Hart is. It is an ideal base for tourists or business visitors to London. |
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Local Dignitaries
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New Cross Gate is but one small part of a bigger area known as Lewisham. Lewisham has its own,
elected
Lord Mayor, Sir Steve Bullock, who is a very good man.
The Member of Parliament for Lewisham is a highly respected lady called Joan Ruddock who carries a lot of clout and is a shining example of what a local MP should be
like.
She will help any constituent at her periodic surgeries if it's within her power, irrespective of any Conservative, Labour or Lib-Dem
political persuasions.
Neither of these important people have been to the White Hart to have "one on the house" yet - but
the door is always open. |
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About the New Cross Gate area
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The New Cross Gate area has gone through several name changes over the centuries, and significant expansion, before becoming the New Cross Gate
people see today. Back in the dark ages it was just a smallholding which once belonged to an anglo-Saxon called Haecci (hatch-ee). By the 11th century, it was still just a tiny hamlet, with a few pigs, when its name was recorded in the Doomsday Book as Hacheham (hatch-ee-ham). By the 1300s the name had become Hachham (hatch-ham) and, by the 1600s, Hatcham, a name and spelling which still lingers on today, as in Hatcham Park Road, Hatcham
Motors (a garage), Hatcham Arms (a pub) and Hatcham Mews (a new cul-de-sac). However, by the 1700s, the now wider area was commonly dubbed New Cross - after a local
hostelry called the New Cross Inn (which is still there, though since rebuilt). In the early 1700s, a tollgate was built on a forked
road junction in the very place where
The White Hart Hotel now stands. The tollgate was duly named the New Cross Gate and, though the
actual gate is long gone, the name stuck.
In the mid 17th century, the Hatcham estate was leased by a brother of Samuel Pepys who, of course, is famous
to this day for his
literary diaries, and his observations on the Great Fire of London in 1666 (observed from the
relative safety here on the south side of the River Thames,
it has to be said). That local connection with the Pepys
brothers was commemorated in the 1870's when a new, tree-lined street was named after them as Pepys Road.
Out of interest, you may hear locals pronounce Pepys Road as 'peppiz' road
as opposed to 'peeps' road. The reason for this dual pronunciation is because, at the time
Samuel was alive, the letter Y in English was freely used like a vowel and always sounded, never silent - so the people of the
time would pronounce Pepys as peppiz (same as peppies) - so that is what has been handed
down locally.
The present-day New Cross Gate straddles what is called New Cross Road (aka the A2 arterial road). Travel just a little further up the A2, however,
and it becomes the Old Kent Road, a place made famous by the internationally popular board-game of Monopoly.
During World War 2, one of Adolph Hitler's technological marvels, a V2 rocket, demolished the local Woolworths store, killing
dozens of people. The bombed-out shop was never resurrected. The nearest Woollies after that was in nearby
Peckham -
until 2010, when the store was replaced by yet another of
those new-phenomenon bargain-basement 99p shops.
The Woollies chain-store empire had been a household name in England for 100 years before going
under - a collapse ensured by a disastrous re-branding from Woollies to plain 'Woolworth' (without
even the
s). Peckham, incidentally, where the closest Woollies last was, is that part of south-east London made famous in 'Fools and Horses'
- an endearing, hit TV comedy series featuring cockney spivs
Del Boy and son Rodney with their trademark, down-market van, a bright-yellow Reliant Robin
three-wheeler.
Another very famous local personality was Sir Barnes Wallis, who lived in New Cross Gate as a boy. He
was the driving force during WWII in the development of the Nazi-beating bouncing bomb (that busted
the dams), the Tallboy bomb and the devastating Wellington bombers (which incinerated millions of
unsuspecting German civilians).
The late great Sir Henry Cooper OBE was a local Lewisham lad. Our 'Enry was famous as the only boxer
to knock the world's greatest-ever heavyweight boxer, Cassius "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" Clay,
flat on his backside.
Nowadays, the New Cross area is probably best known as home to the highly influential Goldsmith's University and its
hordes of vibrant young students. The same kind who were immortalised in the BBC's fly-on-the-wall TV series
evocatively called "Goldsmiths: But Is It Art?". You can rub shoulders with
non-arty Goldsmith students in the White Hart's bar on occasion, notably on weekend music nights. |
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By air
