Well-known former football hooligan Cass Pennant has gone back to his roots in Slade Green and Erith for his latest film project.
Cass was once a part of West Ham’s feared Inter City Firm but nowadays the 56-year-old produces movies like Beverley, which he has been shooting in his old stomping ground.
The film tells the story of a young mixed race girl growing up in the harsh world of early 1980s Leicester, but Cass saw a chance to shoot some scenes in the area where he lived until the age of 16.
He told News Shopper: "It was a shock because part of my story was being the only black kid growing up.
"It was Britain before it was multicultural. You had to go to Woolwich or Plumstead to see the next black face.
Setting up a shoot in Slade Green Road (image by Topham-Brown Photography).
"The shock for me was to see how multicultural Slade Green is now.
"I felt like saying to black people I saw on the street ‘you’re here because of me – I was the one’."
Cass lived at houses in Northend Road, Craydene Road and Beacon Road when he was being brought up by white foster parents Cecil and Dorothy Chambers.
He went to Pearsewood Primary School when it was known as Northend Primary School and later Howbury Grange Technical School in Slade Green Road before it closed in 1992.
On Saturday (October 11) a crew of 20 used a house just round the corner in Alderney Road as their base for some post-production work on short film Beverley, featuring Bafta award-winning actress Vicky McClure.
Cass said: "It’s very difficult to get period drama into today’s modern world so to go back to a community like Slade Green 40 years later and find it’s still a community is very interesting film-wise and personally a jolt for me.
"I had lost memories of my upbringing in Slade Green but the last couple of weeks a lot of them have come back."
Visit beverleyfilm.com
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