Welling - Welling Today

Welling Today

Welling is home to a refurbished reference and lending library with an IT educational and training room, free use of Internet and toilets, a Masonic Hall, a Martial Arts Academy, an Academy of Performing Arts, a Snooker Hall, Bellegrove Social Club and a Salvation Army Chapel.

The Age Concern pop-in parlour on Bellegrove road closed in May 2012 and is now based on the first floor of the Welling Library nearby.

Welling is also home of the football ground of Welling United F.C. which is also shared with the Erith and Belvedere F.C.,

Welling as a shopping area has plenty to offer such as several restaurants and take-away outlets, a range of fashion, sports, entertainment, and IT shops, computer and laptop repair shops, betting shops, charity shops, fast-food takeaways, cafés, tea shops, estate agents, banks, a post office, bakeries, bike and flower shops, pubs and barbers all lining Welling High Street (ancient Watling Street), Upper Wickham Lane, and Bellegrove Road and several local supermarkets, namely: Iceland, Morrison's, Shell (petrol station), Lidl and a well-stocked Turkish Food Centre (TFC).

On 8 November 2010 a new Tesco supermarket was opened, along with new apartments above the store. The Co-op Superstore opposite (formerly operated by the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society) ceased trading on 19 September 2008 and was redeveloped as a Morrison's supermarket that opened on 16 November 2009.

The former Foster's School building in Upper Wickham Lane is a local landmark. The school relocated to Westbrooke Road in Welling and its original site was converted to residential use (retaining the old Grade II listed main school building and headmaster's house). Further north of the original site is an ancient church, now used by a Greek Orthodox congregation.

A large Russian gun is located at Welling corner. This Russian weapon is a 36-pounder carronade (calibre 6.75 inches - weight 17 cwt) of a type used during the Crimean War (1854 to 1860), displayed on a simple wooden replica carriage. The carronade was in service from 1780 to 1860 and is now on loan from the Royal Artillery Museum in Woolwich as a reminder of Welling's early association with the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, when huts at East Wickham were built as homes for munitions workers in the Great War.

For five years after 1990, the headquarters of the far-right British National Party (formed in 1982) were based in Welling. The presence of the party in Welling sparked a rise in racially motivated crime in the area and several nearby communities. At least three people from ethnic minorities - Afro-Caribbeans Rolan Adams and Stephen Lawrence and Asian Sikh Rohit Duggal - were murdered in the local area within three years of the British National Party's arrival. Bexley Council shut down the BNP Headquarters in 1995

In 1992 a group of local people, led by local Councillor Nigel Betts, revived the old Memorial Hall Trust which was set up in 1921. In 1995 it started operation as a local grant giving charity called the East Wickham & Welling War Memorial Trust using the revenue from the old hall to fund grants in the area. Its main aim is remember the men of the district who were killed in World War One so a new War Memorial was built in 1996. Its charitable aim is to help local groups with rents on their meeting places or to help groups maintain their halls. Other grants help young people with adventurous activities and there is an annual academic bursary. In 2006 it gave grants totaling £47,000. As part of a re-investment programme, the Trust sold the Hall for re-development in 2007.

A major upgrade of paving and street lighting was completed in the autumn of 2005. The retention or removal of a section of westbound bus lane from Welling High Street became one of the few specific local issues on which the main political parties disagreed in the approach to the local Bexley Council elections held on 4 May 2006. The incoming Conservative administration immediately revoked the bus lane.

The MECCA bingo hall in Upper Wickham Lane has ceased trading, apparently one of nine in England unsuited to operate after the national ban on smoking in public places. This large building, which originally was an Odeon cinema is operating now as Freedom Centre International, a Pentecostal Church.

Rosebys, the Co-op and Tesco's old store all closed since 2007, as has the pub near the station (formerly the Station Hotel) lately known as Inferno's.

Live music is performed occasionally at the Avenida restaurant, at The Duchess of Edinburgh public house and, towards Plumstead Common, at The Glenmore Arms.

The Old Koffi Pot café, dating from the 1930s was until the early 1990s known as 'Ferrara's'. The venue was well-known locally for its ice cream and enjoyed its heyday at the height of the 1960s cafe culture, when young people from Kent and South East London would call in for refreshments on the way to or from dancing at the Embassy Ballroom (demolished to make way for the building of Embassy Court).

The Old Koffi Pot closed in 2009 for 'economic reasons', but a modern coffee shop has since opened in its place retaining the name The Koffi Shop but a brand new black frontage and interior decor have abruptly erased any historical link with the original establishment.