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New Cross

Your guide to your New Cross Town Centre

About New Cross Town Centre

Council: Lewisham

Phone Code: 020

Postcode Area: SE14 County: Greater London


Don’t be fooled into believing New Cross’s gritty reputation, scratch the surface and you will find a diverse area brimming with history, culture, art and music.

New Cross was once a heavily wooded area known as Hatcham. The ancient and important road from London to Dover and Canterbury, now the A2, runs through the area, and in the 18th century travellers using the road paid tolls at the gate at the junction of Queens Road and New Cross Road. The gate was called New Cross Gate, after the New Cross Inn, which stood nearby and over time the area became known as New Cross.

In 1614 most of the land in New Cross was bought by the Haberdashers Company. However, it wasn’t until the 1860s they began to transform the area, building palatial houses and founding a grammar school using money from a charity founded by Robert Aske.

The first railway station was on the London to Croydon line and opened in 1839. The North Kent Line station followed in 1849. Both stations were called New Cross until 1923, when the Croydon Line station was renamed New Cross Gate. The East London Line, running northwards and through the original Thames Tunnel, began operating in 1869.

On 25 November 1944, a V-2 Rocket exploded at the Woolworth's store in New Cross Road (on the site later occupied by an Iceland supermarket). 168 people were killed and it was the most devastating V-bombing of the entire Second World War.

In August 1977, the area saw the Battle of Lewisham, during which the far right British National Front were beaten off by militant anti-fascists and local people.

In January 1981, 13 young black people were killed in the New Cross Fire at a party at 439 New Cross Road. Suspicions that the fire was caused by a racist attack, and official indifference to the death, led to the largest ever political mobilisation of black people seen in Britain.

During the 1980s, New Cross venues played host to some of the decade’s most innovative and exciting comedy and music acts, securing the areas place in entertainment history. Bands such as the B 52's, the Pogues, The Monochrome Set, Simply Red and Wet Wet Wet all performed at the Goldsmiths Students Union and comedians including Vic Reeves and Julian Clary got their big break at the Goldsmiths Tavern “alternative cabaret nights”.

In the following decade, The Venue nightclub was pivotal in the emerging Brit Pop scene with bands such as Oasis, Shed Seven and Sonic Youth performing there.

In the 2000’s New Cross continues to be a groundbreaking music destination. Heralded as the birth place of New rave, its reputation as an area to travel through rather than to is changing, thanks to an increasing recognition of its reputation as a hub of creativity, music and art. Described by Time Out magazine as a modern day Haight-Ashbury and likened by Vogue Italia to the Montmartre district of Paris, the area is fast becoming known as “Rocklands”.


Some of Lewisham Borough's famous residents, past and present

Danny Baker (Broadcaster)

Kate Bush (singer/song-writer)

James Callaghan (Labour Prime Minister)

Sir James Clark-Ross (polar explorer)

"Big" Jim Connell (socialist)

Ernest Dowson (poet)

Alfred "Titch" Freeman (cricketer)

Gabrielle (singer/song-writer)

Sir Isaac Hayward (politician)

Glenda Jackson MP (politician & actress)

David Jones (painter & poet)

Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen (TV presenter)

Spike Milligan (comedian & writer)

Mica Paris (singer/song-writer)

Sybil Pheonix MBE (community worker)

Doris Stokes (medium)

Terry Waite (Archbishop's Envoy)

Max Wall (comedian)

Ian Wright (footballer)

Sir Barnes Wallis (inventor of the Bouncing Bomb)

Gary Oldman (actor)

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