I met a man who met a man who knew a man
who spoke to Napoleon! Stories from a little street ...
Today’s story is about memories and stories on a road I call the fast flowing river
The road is Camden Road in Tunbridge Wells. The man in the recording is Ian Relf, from Ian Relf Antiques, 132 Camden Road Tunbridge Wells, who has kept shop since 1973. This year, sadly (for us,) on the 26th April, he’s closing.
I ask him how he will leave. “Very quietly, just shut the door and go.”
Filmed by Jeanne
I have one month left to get stories, and as time runs into time, I slice moments from my busy day and rush to the shop, three minutes from our home. He has promised me a walking tour of Camden Road. His memory is amazing, he knows times, dates, people, places and upstairs in the upper chambers he holds memorabilia from all over the town. Thank goodness I am filming him now.
Why do I want to delve into the past of this place I know so well, have run from so many times, and now I am back, here, living in a side alley with my daughter and granddaughter, in what was once upon a time the servants’ quarters.
Well, I am making a documentary, a slow-burning doc, meaning, I am in the pre-production stage, and that means I am hunting and gathering all my pieces, collecting the subjects, doing research, making myself a bit of a nuisance, being a hustler, for making a documentary is not about sitting quietly, it is about walking up and down the city roads, in and out the Eagle, like meeting the fella who stands in the early spring sunshine with a big lion medallion glinting and a winking. “Hey,” I say, “are you a Leo?” “Oh no,” he says, with a grin which ties a bow at the top of his head. “I am a lion tamer.”
Yes, that’s Camden Road, and as Ivan my brother fondly says, there are Camden Road’s in every town.
Every town has a Camden Road and everywhere I have lived I have looked for its twin. As an artist I always liked to live and work on the industrial periphery of town or city. As a hitchhiker I walked endlessly through the outskirts of towns and cities. That’s what Camden Road is, an arterial route that linked the industrial edge Quarry Road, to the centre.
When I was young it was a mysterious place where it was safe to take your few pennies because there was always something to buy. I remember going to the indoor market and buying cheap toys for my siblings and a fake water lily for my granny. It broke on the way home…
We lived in Queens Road and there were three ways into town: up and along St Johns then to swoop down towards fiveways; down to Upper Grosvenor Road…or across the bridge to the bottom of Camden Road.
The bridge was a dream site when I was young and in a small gang of boys. We would climb over the parapet and walk along on the outside. We would climb down the the railway lines and put pennies on the track to recover a flattened coin after the train had gone past. For a long time both Camden Road in one direction and Grosvenor Rec in the other were out of bounds, but we went there anyway with the thrill of transgression.
Today there is still that feeling in the air, and in my mind, figuratively dreaming there are still the fire throwers, and jugglers, good-time girls, and dandies, war-fallen heroes, and conscientious objectors, and dentists who came back from the US and tell stories of pulling out Amish women’s teeth, there are Molly and Alain, who sold Tuppeny rice and Treacle.
All that and more.
I have just back from Ian’s
He is clearing up, but each time there is more on show. This time he brings me a photo of his Uncle, his mother’s brother, Pte, William Norman who died in the Great War. He holds up a poem William wrote as he lay wounded, in a hospital in France, and later, would go back to the front where he died. As if he knows he will never come back, his poem foreshadows his death.
This is but one shop that opened in 1974, just up the road from our house. So how am I going to make this film? There is an entire street wiggling up in front of me. It is ambitious, it is bold, it is ridiculous, and it is also wonderful. I get so excited thinking about it all.
There used to be a pub, the Roebuck, half way up, or down Camden Road
Today, it is a mosque. Nothing extraordinary, but if you knew this pub as we knew it in its heyday, when it was once the centre for the Chelsea Head Hunters, where an old school friend, Stephen Hickmott, Hicky, held court. (The Chelsea Headhunters formed in the late 1960s, and grew in importance during the 1970s and 1980s when football hooliganism in the United Kingdom was at its height - From Wikipedia.)
“First time I ever saw Hicky was at Orient in the FA Cup. He was standing quite near, but the next thing I knew, he was climbing up the floodlight pylon in his gorilla suit!” Someone recently said in a recent post.
The pub, when I knew it as a kid, was a- buzzing, a sidewalk catastrophe, a melting pot of madness, lager-louts, singalongs, good-looking blokes, mean girls, fights, make-ups; a mix of scary and sassy. It is part of Camden Road’s collective conscious memory, not one of shared values but that invisible thread connecting us through our past. (The French sociologist Émile Durkheim made this concept popular in 1893 in his book The Division of Labour in Society.)
Hicky moved to South East Asia years ago, but is back, somewhere. I hustle here and there and finally find his number. Tomorrow I will ring him, he will crack the screen with laughter, I will beg him to let me interview him.
This is recorded in the first week of Ramadan outside on the pavement at 9.30pm.
I find this above photo of our Mosque, taken by a man who calls himself Hassocks5489 on Wikipeida. (Read more here.)
In a nutshell Mr Hassocks5489’s bio reads like this:
interests include:
• Listed buildings, especially in Sussex
• Churches in southeast England (Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Isle of Wight)
• Featured List Candidates and occasional reviews
• Did You Know?—highlighting obscure facts, including Sussex churches
• Railway-related articles
• Photography to enhance articles—I’ve gone through four cameras since 2008! My uploads, from Brighton landmarks to bus photos, can be found on my Wikimedia Commons account (Hassocks5489).
I also participate in several Wikiprojects—details on my Userboxes subpage. Mr Hassocks also has regular editing times: Editing times below:
I will typically be browsing or editing for about an hour at lunchtime (UK time), and from about 6pm until about 11pm. On Saturdays I will usually be around from late morning onwards, and on Sundays from when I get back from church at around lunchtime. Some weekends, of course, I will out taking yet more photos of listed buildings/churches/railway stations, or doing something in real life! I try to respond very promptly to Talk page messages, and will always place a Wikibreak template if I am not around for more than a couple of days.
His photos have been viewed more than: 2.6 million times
So, there you have it!
I go and meet Caroline A, for coffee, she tells me about Helios Homeopathic pharmacy next door to the Mosque, the once-upon-a-time-Roebuck. It is famous the world over. Yes, it is. Go to any herbalist and you will find Helios remedies there. Born from a tiny workspace in Camden Road. Caroline tells me she saw the deeds and it was once the house of Mr. Tattershall Dodd, the Victorian painter, buried in the Woodbury Park Cemetery where I volunteer, and am on the committee - we basically protect the space for future generations. “All is connected, everything, everyone.” She tells me it was also a cinema, and an anarchist lived there at the end of the Victorian era. How exciting. More work, more to search, more to discover.
Later, I walk past the old post office. Julie stands at her shop door - Julie’s Alterations and Sales. Julie is from Greece and has had the shop for four years. Prior to this, she worked from home. I ask her tentatively if I can interview her at some point.
“Sure,” she says, “we all have a story to tell. Everyone.”
I have to go to class soon, my last documentary class until the end of April. I have lovely learners, all making pivotal work. I am very proud I have managed to pass off my hustler side to them… I pack my bags and walk up the road again, the fourth time today. Julie laughs and waves to me. The Mosque is full and happy, packed. It is nearly the end of Ramadan, and on the evening of Fri, 28 Feb 2025 – Sun, 30 Mar 2025, Eid will occur. Vivi, my granddaughter, and I have been invited to break fast with Syrian friends.
I love my hood.
For now, this is where I live
Thank you so much.
Enjoy these Spring days, we need some Spring right now!
If you would like to learn a little bit about documentary filmmaking, read my