Lee High Road runs between Lewisham and Lee Green, in south-east London. The road forms part of the A20 (one of the main routes to Kent since the 19th Century) running between London and Folkestone, on the Kent coast. The road is about 1.5 miles in length. Lewisham is six miles south east of central London.

Lee High Road isn't a much-loved road. It's a functional road; people pass along on it on the way to Kent, on the way to London or to take the train from Lewisham. There is no common acronym for it, and no alternate names.

Despite being a busy main road, people live here. There are flats above the shops, a large number of council homes and about 100 faded Victorian mansions. The population is diverse in every imaginable way, including residents who have lived on the road all their lives, authentic Londoners who would have seen the arrival of immigrants and asylum seekers, blow-ins from other parts of the UK and Europe, and other Londoners moving further out of town. All have one thing that unites them: Lee High Road is a reasonable place to live¹. Houses are cheap to buy or rent, however, people who end up on Lee High Road can rarely afford to move to other parts of London.

Sometimes, when you use a route too often, you become impervious to shops and houses, and the queuing traffic and noise. It's difficult to feel this about Lee High Road. There's a fascination about the diversity of the shops, the ebb and flow of the traffic (look, someone turning right at Belmont Park has caused a tail back again!) and the unpredictable events couched between the everyday goings on.

Shops

There are all manner of takeaways, clothes shops, off-licenses, shoe shops, hairdressers, accountants and jewellers. These are common enough of course. Then there are the shops peculiar to Lee High Road, maybe even to London. There's a high-end hi-fi shop (systems up to 50,000 GBP) with impressive looking boxes of moulded plastics adorning chrome hi-fi stands. Nearby there is an accordion shop, seemingly always closed but with white teethed accordions grinning ominously out the windows. The local joke shop always has an interesting theme in its window and there are regular themes for Guy Fawkes, Halloween and Valentine's Day. Sometimes they have themes for each decade, moustachioed models with ludicrous perms of the 1970s, mop tops for the 1960s.

There is a shop selling fireplaces, arranged over two floors. Given what is being sold in there, the shop always feels cold. Next door is a boutique specialising in French furniture and soft furnishings: in the window, wicker bird cages hang from chandeliers, and on entering the shop, you are overwhelmed by the smell of perfume competing against oil burners.

There's also an angling shop. Lee High Road is more than 10 miles from the nearest candidate for a fishing trip. Towards the Lee end of the road, there is a glazier and a cycling shop. There is a florist that, at Christmas time, has three levels of Christmas trees displayed above its facade, strapped to scaffolding.

It's as if the God of Shops has looked down on Lee High Road and scattered his detritus on it, but clearly holding back on the Teddy Bear restorers for other parts of London. The reason for such diversity is easy to determine: Lee High Road is a long road and historically it has a large number of shop units; it is not a main shopping boulevard. So the rents are cheaper and the shops with lower turnover can afford to be there. So in actual fact, there is no divine intervention after all.

There are some great pubs on Lee High Road. The best Guinness is available in The Woodman, although it is rumoured that The Duke of Edinburgh runs it a close second. The Woodman is the local Irish pub, with a real buzz about it, and on Sunday nights hosts a traditional Irish music night. The Duke of Edinburgh is an English pub, with an English folk night on a Wednesday and a large patio area overlooking the River Quaggy.

It is a place where incidents happen. There are accidents of course and occasionally buses catch fire. There are flash floods when it rains hard as the River Quaggy runs parallel to the road at a distance of 20 metres. Late at night, there is a small chance of being mugged or involved in a fight.

Some Practicalities

The bus routes 261, 278, 122 and 321 all run down Lee High Road. The 261 runs from Lewisham to Bromley; the 278 between Lewisham and Kidbrooke; the 122 between Crystal Palace and Thamesmead; and the 321 between New Cross and Sidcup. You are unlucky if you have to wait more than five minutes. Lewisham is well served by Connex South East overland train service and the Docklands Light Railway.

Things have started to change on Lee High Road. It started when the Ford dealership closed down at the Lewisham end of Lee High Road. Then the insurance broker closed and now the stationers has gone. The Sultan pub, a seedy haunt which few bar the regulars will miss, is being turned into flats. Slowly the character of life is changing; the road will become a street of flats, houses and bus stops. The road will no longer be a microcosm of London life. When the shops close, it will be gentrified like so much of London.