The White Swan Charlton: 'Save it from developers'

"Some causes are worth making a song and dance about. That’s why Charlton’s locals are trying to pull together to save one of their favourite pubs from property developers.

The White Swan has been silent and empty since March 2020. Not so long ago this pub was the beating heart of Charlton’s village.

Sadly, in recent times it has stood boarded up, silent and empty, facing the axe. But there’s a growing momentum to reclaim this space for the good of the community.

Arnold and Charlie at The White Swan (Image: Paul Breen)

To help achieve that, a number of interconnected initiatives are happening. There’s a petition calling on the local Council to restore the premises to a working pub. A new campaign group has evolved from several years of work behind the scenes.

Most notably, that includes the work of The Charlton Society. Firstly, this local voluntary group succeeded in having The White Swan declared as an Asset of Community Value (ACV) by Greenwich Council in 2014. Further to this, the group secured the pub’s place on the council’s local heritage list.

Informally too, there’s a common refrain of opposition. Nobody in Charlton, least of all business owners want to see more faceless flats further eroding the character of a conservation area. Instead they want to hear the songs of a Swan in full flight.

They want to win back the sounds of what now seem like halcyon days. This was a place of loud music in the hot squeeze of band performances. It had a roaring fire. It had film evenings, writers’ nights or just gatherings of people putting the world to rights, over pop-up vegan feasts or Sunday lunches.

It had board games and bored dogs to entertain people. Fridays with friends, Christmas nights with community groups, mornings for mums, and fever-pitched banter before football matches.

Once upon a time it even served as a hub of resistance in the days of Charlton Athletic’s ownership struggles. A time when the only talk of Erasure maybe came from the DJs in the midst of an 80s night.

We thought such days would last forever, photographed in our memories of roaring flames, thunderous music, and beers lightening the mood out in a garden under a willow tree.

That willow tree is now said to be gone as a result of planning permission for a dwelling in the garden. But that’s given rise to rebellion against such destruction.

Throughout the community, whether in its greengrocer’s or its coffee shops, there’s a new expectation taking flight. It’s not uncommon to hear such sentiments as ‘hopefully we’ll get to meet there for a pint again in 2024.’

Achieving that will be tough but out of small acorns, mighty things grow. That’s why The Charlton Society is organising a fight-night at the cinema. Not physically, but in a spirit of resistance and an act of symbolism.

This civic group is organising a get together at Greenwich Picturehouse next Thursday, October 19 to watch The Old Oak, a new film about a community pub facing a battle to stay open. As the chair of the Society Ruth Dodson says ‘it’s an informal event, a social get together, with everyone welcome.’

Although just one small informal act, it’s hoped this will give momentum to conversations around saving the pub. Property developers are ripping the heart out of local communities with their purchase of pub buildings.

This is happening right across London, with a common playbook of activity used.

Often this is done in a slow-creep fashion, starting out with ‘Trojan Horse’ planning applications. These begin as a proposal to build flats around the ground-floor shell of a pub.

Gradually, with such a curtailed space becoming commercially unviable, the developers up the ante, going full throttle on pub closure.

Some that have fallen foul of this in the past decade include The Junction in Brixton, Two8Six in Lewisham and The Lost Society in Wandsworth.

But others have taken on the developers in different ways, achieving victories large and small. Amongst these, we find The Old Justice on Bermondsey Wall East.

There, a group of campaigners by the name of No More Lonely Nights fought against closure. They achieved restoration of the pub to its original form, after developers had altered the interior. Other groups have won similar battles.

One community enterprise up in Liverpool serves as a really good example. There, a micropub has grown out of a community regeneration project, planting seeds of inspiration and a template for similar campaigns to adopt.

This very weekend too, campaigners up in Shropshire are sipping their first pints of victory. Such stories give hope to those championing Charlton’s community spaces. Hopefully in years to come, The White Swan will fly again.

Events like this can help that happen. They show the fighting spirit that’s going to be needed over a sustained period to win the fight. But it can be won and we look forward to winning it. I’d even bet a few good beers on victory.

If I’m right, I look forward to somebody buying me a pint in a reborn Swan. If I’m wrong, then there may not be a place to buy one back, as the loser of the bet. That’s why we’ve got to win this for the good of the whole community.

So come along to the show, and sign the petition. Object to planning proposals too! Chop, chop – to save this pub from the axe."