Ghost Buses of London: the 178

I spend far, far too much of my time on buses, crawling endlessly round the Bricklayers Arms with head in book, but there are always the lost buses: the ones that go round the houses, as it were. Today I needed to get from Woolwich to Lewisham, and I saw a bus which declared its intent to go to Lewisham Station, although this was a bus of which I had not previously been aware. I was, it would turn out, in luck: the 178 is a lingering bus, a single decker packed with old folk which takes seemingly endless, looping, circular runs round the back end of SE London.



First, rather than taking the obvious more or less straight A to B that is an option in this journey, it curves around to the hinterlands of Woolwich: a social housing extravaganza here, with Georgian terraces occasionally standing out amidst jagged 60s terraces and walkways. Then, suddenly, this warren is broken up by a huge swathe of scrubland: apparently this is Woolwich Common, and there isn't a soul to be seen, although a long, long row of intricate, multi-level blocks runs alongside, like a cross between Lillington Gardens and a poundstretcher Frank Lloyd Wright: and then to the MOD landscape that lies beyond there. A huge amount of Woolwich is open land owned by the MOD, with occasional outposts and barracks originally built for the Napoleonic wars. But after a few more of its circles, it comes to Kidbrooke's Brutalist ghost town Ferrier Estate, and loops around it for about half an hour.



Heralded by a blank sign, this is, to put it mildly, a startling place. Like the Barbican, it has a sort of trompe l'oeil effect: you can never really work out if it's smaller than it appears, or if its vastness is completely unassimilable. Row upon row of towers, connected by walkways, with lower rise blocks criss-crossing, all looking utterly forlorn. Every window seems to be covered with thick net curtains. Strange landscaping has created grassy hillocks sprouting and bulging seemingly randomly about the place. A patina of grime and mist seems to hang over the Ferrier Estate, which is unsurprising, as Greenwich council are cleaning it out, for an (as ever) frankly evil PPP venture in which a tiny portion of the original inhabitants will be rehoused, and the density more than doubled, you know the drill. Those who took advantage of right-to-buy are being 'offered' 60 grand - this is London, zone 3, so multiply that figure by 4 and you're in the area that they're worth - as was being discussed by a couple of policewomen on the bus. Unsurprisingly, there are horror stories about the place, so perhaps the 178 is the best way to see it before it all gets detonated, but regardless, this is truly a Stalker among buses.