Pass through the station barrier and go up the two escalators to the DLR platform. Until the Bow Creek Walkway is opened this gives some of the best views of this part of Bow Creek.
Pura Foods
Across the railway track and the Bow Creek is the former site of Pura Foods, a large factory site which filled almost the whole of the area in the bend of the river north of the Lower Lea Crossing, and gave the area both a distinctive appearance and smell.
Pura site in 2004 from the SW.
Pura, a leading supplier of edible oils and fats to the UK and for export, began as the Pure Lard Company, but is now a part of a large American company ADM. It moved out of the area probably because of the development value of the site, although there were some years of pressure from local residents in TELCO to improve its environmental act. It continues to process oils on sites further downstream, including Belvedere. Ships used to bring oils to Brunswick Wharf, close by on the Thames, with a pipeline connection to the site, filling the shining storage tanks.
Demolition of the works started around October 2006 and are now (June 2007) virtually complete. A revised planning application seems likely to be approved, if with some revisions. The proposed development is to be mixed use, including a primary school as well as up to 1800 residential units (mainly flats), offices, shops and restaurants, as well as other commercial, community and leisure space. It will be very different from the old site. [London City Island – which has a new bridge across Bow Creek, close to the riverside exit from Canning Town Station. You can now walk through the development and on down to Trinity Buoy Wharf at the mouth of Bow Creek]
Thames Ironworks
These occupied most of the land on the Essex side of Bow Creek, some of which you can see from the platform, as well as parts of the other side closer to the Thames.
Thames Ironworks occupied most of the land adjoining Bow Creek
Board a train for Beckton, getting off at Custom House
From the Train: Silvertown Way
Look through the windows on the left side of the train. You will see it passes the entrance and ventilation towers for the Jubilee Line tunnel under the Thames to North Greenwich. Beyond this, it runs alongside the largely derelict buildings behind Silvertown Way, before going under this to Victoria Dock Station.
Royal Victoria Square
Silvertown Way was the first flyover to be built in Britain, and was completed in 1934. It was followed in 1935 by the Silvertown Bypass, another similar concrete structure, distinguished by a fine bowstring bridge. Unfortunately this was demolished in the 1990s.
My picture from 1984
The increasing use of road transport was already leading to impressive congestion in the area around the Royal Docks, and these developments were necessary to keep the traffic moving.
[Construction of the London Cable Car began here in 2011 and it opened in 2012. Worth a ride as a tourist attraction it makes no significant contribution to travel in the area. The Crystal, completed in 2012, was commissioned by Siemens and designed by WilkinsonEyre as an exhibition centre and a think tank and since 2022 has been London’s City Hall.]
I’ll post Part 5 Custom House and Canning Town later, again with a few more pictures and comments. You can see the whole walk still on the former London Art Café web site.
The walk starts at the top of the stairs leading up from the Station to the Bus Station. Here there is a memorial to the Thames Ironworks.
C J Mare’s shipbuilding firm did not prosper and was soon bought out by the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company, whose works soon occupied most of the Essex shore of Bow Creek as well as areas close to the Thames on the Middlesex side. Over the years it built at least 650 ships (some sources say 900) as well as bridges and other iron structures.
Frank Hills
Its greatest fame came under the ownership of Frank Hills who bought the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company in 1880, when it was struggling to retain employment for its 6,000 men in face of competition from larger yards on the Clyde, Tyne and Mersey.
Thames Ironworks occupied most of the land on the east of Bow Creek and some on the far side.
Hills, educated at Harrow was a Christian, a fine sportsman, English champion in the mile and 3 miles, an Oxford football blue, and played for England when they beat Scotland 5-4 in 1879. He was also the first President of the London Vegetarian Society (1888) and the Vegetarian Cycling and Athletic Club, and also served as President of a London Vegetarian Rambling Club. He also founded The Vegetarian, an independent magazine, and founded the Vegetarian Federal Union (1889), becoming President. He was also a member of the Temperance (total abstinence) union.
As an employer he was described as an “enlightened patriarch” who cared deeply for the welfare of his workers. For some years he lived among them in a small house in the East India Dock Road. Despite this, relations at work were not always good, especially when he engaged non-union workers, and some of the workforce went out on strike at the time of the dock strike of 1889.
Hills was one of the first employers to set up a bonus scheme – in 1892 – and he voluntarily introduced an eight-hour day in 1894 at a time when many employers demanded 10 or 12 hour days. He tried to get his workers to “sign the pledge” and take healthy exercise – and set up clubs of all kinds to keep them out of the pubs. These included a temperance league, cycling club, cricket club, an amateur operatic society and a brass band as well as a football club, the Thames Ironworks Football Team set up in 1895. In 1900, Hills put up the money to fund a merger with another local side, the Old Castle Swifts, and they became West Ham Football Club. The nickname the Hammers comes from the tools they used in building ships.
Leamouth, 1992. Thames Ironworks formerly occupied all the land to the left of Bow Creek at its mouth and some parts in the centre of the picture.
The Albion Disaster
Disaster struck at the Ironworks in 1898 at the launch of HMS Albion. The Duchess of York (later Queen Mary) tried 3 times to break the champagne bottle on the steel hull, but it just bounced off. Despite this bad omen, the launch went ahead. The 12,950 tons batleship, then the largest of the ship ever built on Bow Creek and the wave it created as it slipped into the water smashed a temporary jetty between it and a ship under construction for the Japanese navy.
A huge crowd had turned up to watch the launch, and a large number had managed to get onto this jetty (which hadn’t been intended for such use.) 26 people were awarded Royal Humane Society Broze Medals for their attempts to save those in the water, but despite their bravery, 38 were killed. Hills was devastated. He personally visited the families of the bereaved and paid the funeral expenses, as well as contributing generously to the West Ham Council fund for the survivors.
In 1911, the Ironworks built the Thunderer, at 22,500 tons the Navy’s largest dreadnought and the last great ship (and the largest) to be built on the Thames. It was an order that broke the yard. Hills, his health gravely effected by the Albion disaster in 1891, had a stroke shortly before its launch. The company closed at the end of the year, but Hills lived on until 1927, dying a few days short of his 70th birthday.
Flat-pack Steamers
Should you visit Lake Titicaca in Peru, (The Sacred Lake and legendary birthplace of the Incas), you can see the steamship Yavari, now the only ‘working’ single-screw iron passenger ship in the world.
Ordered from Boulton & Watt in Birmingham by the Peruvian government as one of a pair of cargo-passenger ‘gunboats’, her iron hull (and that of her sister ship) was built in Bow Creek, in numbered pieces, none weighing more than 3.5 cwt, the heaviest that a mule could carry. The two ships were completely fitted out here, then carefully stripped down, numbered and colour-coded and crated for transit.
In 1862, they travelled on a ship around the Horn accompanied by 8 British engineers to Ordered from Boulton & Watt in Birmingham by the Peruvian government as one of a pair of cargo-passenger ‘gunboats’, her iron hull (and that of her sister ship) was built in Bow Creek, in numbered pieces, none weighing more than 3.5 cwt, the heaviest that a mule could carry. The two ships were completely fitted out here, then carefully stripped down, numbered and crated for transit. In 1862, they travelled by sea around the Horn accompanied by 8 British engineers to Arica, Peru, where the railway (the oldest in South America) took them the first 37 miles of the journey. The remaining 190 miles were to be by mule, and over mountain passes higher than anything in Europe up to the lake at 12, 500 ft, across the driest desert in the world. Meanwhile the engineers went ahead to build a jetty and machine shop on the lake. It took over 7 years for all the parts to arrive, and the Peruvian Navy in the meanwhile helped itself to the guns, which never made it.
Eventually the rest was there and the first ship, the Yavari was launched on Christmas day 1870. There was still a problem. There was no coal at Titicaca for the steam engines; the only fuel available was dried llama dung, and a simple journey along the 100 mile lake and back took 1,400 sacks. Its perhaps not surprising that the steam engine was replaced by a diesel in 1914. The ship continued in regular service until the 1950s. It was rediscovered in 1982, and found to be in excellent condition, thanks to the clean fresh water and high altitude of the lake, and is now preserved by a Peruvian charity.
The Memorial
At the top of the stairs leading down to the station barriers at Canning Town is a memorial to the Thames Ironworks by Richard Kindersley, unveiled by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1998. The large cast iron plate across its top is from the first iron Royal Navy vessel with a full iron hull, HMS Warrior, built around a quarter of a mile south of her by the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company in 1860.
The Warrior had 3 masts, two funnels and a screw propeller. When under fire, wooden ships splintered terribly and it was flying wood splinters that resulted in most injuries and deaths, and the use of iron cut this down. Other navies soon followed the example. The ship is restored and can be seen at Portsmouth.
The elegant engraving on the stonework in the middle of the stairway tells some of the story of the company. You can see a part of the company site (now empty) from the station platform.
3: Canning Town Transport Interchange
From Thames Ironworks memorial, look through the large glass windows towards the station, with its two level platforms. Walk along to see the bus station (which includes toilets) before taking the escalator down into to the bottom level of the station.
Canning Town DLR and Jubilee Line stations. Bus is in Bus Station
One of the better aspects of the LDDC, responsible for development from 1981-98 was the creation of the DLR and some other aspects of transport infrastructure. Widely derided as a ‘toy train’, the DLR has demonstrated the use of light railway technology.
The new Canning Town station replaced one to the north of the A13 on the North London Line, and opened as a DLR and Silverlink station in 1994, to close after a few months for a couple of years for the building of the Jubilee line. The station reopened – together with the adjoining bus station – in 1999.
North London Line services stopped in December 2006 in preparation for the DLR extension to Stratford International. The station has three levels; at the bottom is the booking hall and barriers, above that are the Jubilee line platforms, with the former NLL platforms at the same level to the east. The DLR lines and platforms are above those of the Jubilee Line.
This is perhaps the best example, indeed one of very few examples of an integrated transport interchange in London.
Bow Creek Walkway
As you walk past the ticket machines and office, in front you will see the exit from the station to the Bow Creek Walkway, completed in the 1990s, but still not open to the public.
Weeds on the walkway – now open but still incomplete
Newham has at least one other example of an expensively constructed foot path in a similar limbo. In this case the reason is said to be that the various parties involved, which include Tower Hamlets and Newham have been unable to reach an agreement about the ownership and liabilities involved.
Canning Town & West Silvertown: Recently I published here a few pictures from a walk in this area in 2006. On 23 June 2007 I led a group visit around the area for London Arts Cafe, LAC, an organisation that ceased to exist a few years later, then devoted to “viewing, expressing and discovering all forms of urban art“.
Although the LAC has long been wound up, I had been responsible for its website, and decided to leave it online – with a clear message that the organisation no longer existed – as a historical record which still contained much interesting material – including the backgrounds of notes that I wrote for the walk I led around the area in June 2007.
As I wrote on My London Diary in 2007, “there was much to look at, including public art, relics of the docks and the new developments that make this one of the largest of current regeneration areas.”
You can still read the ‘Canning Town Walk (June 2007)’ in full on the LAC web site, beginning here and split into ten sections, each with its own page. You are welcome to print it out and follow it for your own walk around what is still a very interesting area of London, though you will note some changes. Here I’ll include the few pictures from these pages, mainly taken on 21 June on my final planning trip for the walk a few days later with a few others, mainly from the same era.
Bow Creek from Canning Town Station DLR platform
It’s a walk that like many I made in the area was based around the Docklands Light Railway which had made transport to the area much simpler. The area has changed in many ways since 2007, not always as I expected, but I think the walk is still a good guide to the area.
Canning Town Walk (June 2007)
1 Introduction
The walk starts at the top of the stairs leading up from Canning Town Station to the Bus Station.
The DLR runs south, to Beckton and North Woolwich (now to Woolwich Arsenal). At left is the tunnel entrance for the Jubilee Line
You can read this on your way to Canning Town Transport Interchange, served by various bus routes, the Jubilee Line and the Docklands Light Railway (DLR.)
DLR platforms and buses in the bus station at Canning Town
Canning Town is in the London Borough of Newham. The latest census showed the population of Newham to be 61% non-white – the highest proportion for any British borough. 41% of the population are under 24 – the highest figure in England and Wales. It has the second highest proportion in the country of three ethnic groups, Asians, Bangladeshis and Black Africans.
Dockside cranes – the Royal Docks closed to commercial traffic in 1981.
Unemployment in Newham is 6.7%, higher than any London borough other than Hackney. Youth unemployment is particularly high, as is the number of unemployed single parents. Canning Town has in the past been one of the most deprived areas of the borough on most social measures.
Demolition at Pura Foods on Bow Creek in September 2006. Bow Creek runs around three sides of the site
Canning Town has Bow Creek – the lower reaches of the River Lea – at its western edge. The Lea is the traditional border between civilisation (Middlesex) and Essex and when the London Building Act of 1844 proscribed noxious industries from London, a more over the river found a laxer regime.
Demolition of Pura Foods, a noxious edible oils works, was almost complete in 2007
The 1840s were also the age of rail building, and the railway companies saw the potential of this riverside area, known as the Plaistow levels, several miles of empty marsh between Bow and Barking Creeks. One of them bought up the area at a knock-down price, and started making plans for docks that their railway could service.
Tate & Lyle originally built two competing sugar works; later the two businesses joined.
The first major industry to move onto a riverside location was C J Mare’s shipbuilding firm in 1846, soon followed by a glass factory owned by the brothers Howard. In 1852, S W Silver & Co, the Cornhill outfitters, set up a factory on the Thames to make rubber coated garments (an idea they borrowed from a Mr Charles Mackintosh.)
More detail about the Thames Ironworks in the Part 2 of my June 2007 Canning Town walk document which will be a later post.
One of the best-known businesses in the area was the ship-builders Thames Ironworks who were founded to take over Mare’s several sites in the area in 1857. They were the last of the London shipbuilders, specialising in their later years in building warships and mail steamers. The company finally closed in 1912-3, but the football club set up by managing director and philanthropist Arnold Hills for its workers in 1895 had changed its name in 1900 to West Ham United.
Last week I was pleased to attend the opening of a heritage pavilion, the Boat House, at Cody Dock on Bow Creek, which uses the fully restored Frederick Kitchen lifeboat as its roof. This is thought to have been the last craft completed by the Thames Ironworks in 1913.
More detail about the Thames Ironworks in the next part of my June 2007 Canning Town walk document.
Budget Day: Tuesday 22nd June 2010 came after the May general election which had resulted in a hung Parliament, with the Tories winning 306 votes, 20 short of the number needed to for a majority. It had been a defeat for New Labour, in power since 1997, who only achieved 258 MPs. The Lib-Dems were the third party with 57 seats. Theoretically an anti-Tory coalition might have achieved a small but workable majority, but instead Nick Clegg decided to join a coalition government with the Tories which would have a clear majority – and lasted until the 2015 General Election.
Their decision resulted in a programme of austerity and cuts along with increases in tax which began with George Osborne’s budget on 22nd June. This included a rise in VAT from 17.5% to 20%, cuts in public services and a 2 year pay freeze for workers in the public sector, freezing of child benefit for 3 years, pegging state benefits and public service pensions to a lower price index, capping of housing benefit , cutting research and development and more.
PCS outside the Treasury
Most of these changes had been widely signposted before the budget speech and opponents had made clear that they were likely to stifle growth and to have a disproportionate effect on the poor, women, disabled people and ethnic minorities. It was the most controversial budget in recent history and so it was unsurprising that so many came out to protest. And later the changes it introduced were probably a major factor in both the disastrous Brexit vote and the succession of hopeless Tory governments that led to the 2024 Labour landslide.
‘Can’t Pay Won’t Pay’s funeral procession with coffin, widow and gravestones
Brian Haw’s Parliament Square Peace Campaign was also still in Parliament Square, although Brian himself was in court on the morning of the budget. But they had been joined there at the start of the previous month by the Democracy Village who were still camping there, and though relations between the two groups were not positive, both were still protesting, and on Budget Day others including the PCS union, ‘Can’t Pay Won’t Pay’, Stop the War and CND also came to protest at Westminster too.
I missed what was probably the largest protest of the day opposite Downing Street, having been held up photographing the Democracy Camp calling for an end to the war in Afghanistan.
‘Cameron’ and ‘Clegg’
The PCS were protesting outside the Treasury. Democracy campers went with their banner to the media village. ‘Can’t Pay Won’t Pay’ campaigners arrived with a coffin and a little street theatre (it even got them a short mention on the BBC) and I followed them back to Parliament Square, missing two attempts to make citizens arrests on Labour politicians.
You can read more about the events on My London Diary, as well as a police incident involving gun violence campaigner ‘King David’ who was holding a brass ornamental pistol – clearly not a weapon – but was stopped and searched under terrorist legislation.
King David was searched under the Terrorism act for holding this brass ornament
More protesters arrived with placards and masks protesting about the housing crisis and the lack of affordable homes, and there was a man with a megaphone lampooning the whole thing and getting some attention from the police who today seemed clearly did not want to make arrests.
Jeremy Corbyn
The final event I photographed before leaving Parliament Square was by Stop the War and CND, pointing out that the war in Afghanistan had cost more than £20 billion, and that a large saving could be made by deferring or cancelling the replacement of our Trident nuclear deterrent, for which there was no longer any possible military justification.
The race starts in several waves from outside the Houses of Parliament
As I walked back across Westminster Bridge towards Waterloo Station I noticed a number of boats being rowed upriver in what appeared to be a race.
The Admiral of the Port’s Challenge, a “historic tradition”, appears to have started around 2008 by the London livery companies, liverymen rowing “traditional” Thames Waterman’s Cutters, 34 feet long and 4 feet 6 inches wide, with fixed seats for 4 rowers and a canopy over 2 passengers, to the rear of which the cox sits. The boats start in waves from outside the Hoses of Parliament and row around a mile and a third to a boat club in Pimlico.
These boats, though based on those shown in 18th century paintings, are actually a modern design, adapted and built to be fast and stable for modern use for the Thames ‘Great River Race’ which started in the 1980s. Unlike modern racing craft they can cope with choppy waters on the river or even in coastal waters. And at the end of the race there is a champagne reception for those taking part.
Canary Wharf and the Millenium Dome from Silvertown
Stratford & Silvertown: One of the shorter posts I wrote on My London Diary was about my trip to Silvertown and Stratford in East London on 21st June 2006. Here it is in full, just as I published it then:
on wednesday 21st i took the DLR to stations in silvertown, taking pictures from the train, the platforms and around the stations. then i went to stratford to make more pictures there.
I left home in mid-afternoon and began photographing from the DLR a little after 4pm. It was a fine day and I was going to join a walk around Stratford in the evening by the Greater London Industrial Archaelogy Society and had a couple of hour before I was to meet with them at Stratford Station.
It was almost a year since London had been awarded the 2012 Olympics and I had made a number of visits to the Olympic area to record it before the huge changes that were about to take place.
The DLR extension to King George V station in North Woolwich had opened in December 2005, but had yet made little impact on the surrounding area. Construction had already begun on its extension under the River Thames to Woolwich Arsenal which opened in January 2009.
The line is largely elevated on a concrete viaduct which gives extensive views of the area. As the trains are driver-less I was able to sit at the front of the train and photograph through the front window. Then the DLR was relatively little used and at least on schooldays there was little competition for the front seats – and I think the train windows were usually cleaner.
Trains on the line were then reasonably frequent so I was able to get off at various stations to walk around a little and then return to the station to continue my journey, including a visit to Lyle Park with views across the River Thames.
The station platforms also provide elevated viewpoints to photograph the area. I went as far as Silvertown station and then made my way back to Stratford.
Here I left the train to join the GLIAS walk around the area to the south of the Olympic site, including the Carpenters Estate, a popular council estate close to the station which Newham were then trying to empty and sell off against local opposition, Stratford High Street and the Waterworks River.
By the time this evening walk ended although it was the middle of June the light was fading, though I think this picture exaggerates this a little.
There are quite a few more pictures on My London Diary, beginning here, but I took many more that day, particularly on the evening walk. Perhaps I will post more from this here some time.
Islington, Charlton & Refugees: On Saturday June 19th 2005 I photographed Imagine Islington, a green festival in Islington, then went out to Charlton for the Horn Fair, before finally returning to central London for a Refugee event taking place as a part of the Coin Street Festival in Bernie Spain Gardens on the South Bank of the Thames in Lambeth. Again I’ll give the texts I wrote at the time with links to more pictures from the events on My London Diary.
Imagine Islington
Islington
Painting the ‘Hugh Jart’ mural on Islington Green
Imagine Islington was another green festival, but with rather more fun than some, taking place at 7 locations around the Angel and Islington Green.
Rhythms Of ResistanceWeapons of Sound, playing a range of containers, trolleys and other objects
On the Green there was music from Rhythms Of Resistance and Weapons Of Sound, a giant mural to paint by ‘Hugh Jart’, an air-miles game and other attractions.
The food miles interactive game from ‘Arts Desire’ was designed to show the high cost in carbon emissions of importing fruit and veg
Elsewhere there was a wind installation at St Mary’s Church, a Biodiversity Garden in the NI Centre, the Incredible String Trio Pluck (they described themselves as “the world’s most musically challenged string trio“) in Chapel Market and more.
Recycling is fine, but there needs to be more emphasis on reusable containers and on simply consuming less and wasting less.More Pluck in Chapel Market
This was a pleasant event for the family but largely concentrated on the froth rather than the essentials of the challenge the world faces.
I wanted to go to Charlton simply because the annual Horn Fair there was notorious for its “indecencies and frequent riots“, eventually leading to its suppression by an order in council in 1872.
Irish dancing
Unfortunately its modern recreation turned out to be a much more tame affair, although Charlton House remains impressive.
[I also took a few pictures on my journey to Charlton and on my way from there to Coin Street, some also included in my 2006 post.]
Meanwhile in Coin Street, another Refugee Week event, Celebrating Sanctuary, was taking place.
The men’s dance was more energeticThis Chinese dancer made some great patterns with her long streamersThen we had a fantastic performance by a large group of all ages from Uganda, in various tribal dress and a great deal of energy
Among the events I photographed were Albanian dancing, a Chinese dancer with long streamers and African dancing from Uganda.
Rathayatra, Roller Skates & the World Cup: I began Sunday 18 June 2006 by photographing the annual Rathayatra chariot festival in Hyde Park and on its way to Trafalgar Square, before going to Parsons Green where I found the West London Green Fair rather disappointing but did briefly meet a large crowd on roller skates on a ride around London.
Later I went to New Malden to meet a friend and photograph Koreans who had gathered at a local pub to watch South Korea playing France in Leipzig in Group G of the 2006 World Cup. South Korea had earlier beaten Togo, and drew with France but a few days later lost to Switzerland and so failed to progress to the knockout phase of the cup. Below is what I wrote in 2006 (with the usual corrections) and links to more pictures from the day.
Hare Krishna: Rathayatra Festival
Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square
One of London’s more colourful annual events is the Rathayatra or Chariot Festival organised by the Hare Krishna movement. The three chariots carry representations of three deities, Lord Jagannatha (Krishna, the Lord of the Universe), Lady Subhadra and Lord Balarama, and pulling the ropes grants eternal service at the end of life in the spiritual world.
The ceremony dates back around 5000 years in the ancient holy city of Jagannath Puri in Orissa, India, but was only established in London rather more recently in 1969.
The chariots are accompanied by musicians and dancers, and there is free food for all at Trafalgar Square where the procession ends.
This year’s festival also celebrated the 108th anniversary of the birth of A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977), who in 1966 founded the Hare Krishna movement.
I called in briefly at the West London Green Festival at Parson’s Green on my way to New Malden, but there didn’t seem to be much happening there.
The Skate Rollerstroll called in briefly, but didn’t stop for long.
Korea v France
The Fountain Pub, New Malden
Korean Face painting in New MaldenI’m about to have two stripes painted on my cheeks by this young woman
I was on my way to New Malden, where I met up with Paul Baldesare to go and photograph Korean supporters watching the Korea v France match at one of the local pubs.
Both inside the pub and in the garden were a whole lot of large screens, with Koreans coming to watch the game.
We got there quite a while before the start when everyone was just starting to get into the mood. Soon we both had red and blue stripes painted on our faces.
It was very much a community event, with everyone enjoying themselves, and emotions obviously ran high once the game had started.
Along with the hundreds of Koreans there were a few non-Korean locals, and one French woman with a France t-shirt. I talked to her briefly before the game began, but couldn’t find her later when I went to take some photographs in the crowd. So everyone in my pictures is a Korea supporter.
When I left, a few minutes into the second half, Korea were trailing 1-0. I missed the equaliser, and the after-match celebrations when the High Street was full of Koreans celebrating the draw.
More From Brockley: Pictures from my walk on 18th March 1990 in Brockley. The previous post on this walk was Nunhead and Brockley. The pictures in this post are all from a small area of Brockley.
Mantle Rd, Brockley, Lewisham, 1990, 90-3f-31
Two men walk around a street corner into the sun, their shadows clean on the pavement behind them. Like many who lived# in the area the two men are black.
This Brockley Cross at the north end of Mantle Road and it slopes down under a railway bridge to Brockley Station. Two railway lines cross here and I think the 4 aspect signal was on the line from London Bridge to Brockley. The other line, according to Edith’s Streets, was a goods line and the area behind the hoardings was Martin’s sidings with room for 36 coal waggons. This was on land belonging to Martins Dairy at 4 Endwell Road, leased to leased to the London North West Railway and sub let to coal merchant Charrington Warren Ltd.
The steps at right lead to the side entrance to Endwell Court, a block features in my previous post.
Josies Cafe was next to the railway bridge on Mantle Road which is at the right of the picture. There was still a café here (no longer Josie’s) until around 2010, but since then this has been a small empty plot.
Josies Cafe seen from the opposite side of Mantle Road with the grassy bank leading up to the goods line which crosses Mantle Road here.
Brockley Paper Co, Mantle Rd, Brockley, Lewisham, 1990, 90-3f-35
I think this building housing the Brockley Paper Co was next to Josies Cafe, and has been demolished and replaced by a block of flats with shops on the ground floor. One of these at 1a Mantle Road is now the London Print Shop.
This small row was just south of Foxwell Road and you can see the railway bridge in the distance at right and the sign for Josies Cafe.
This block which included The Maypole Inn whose sign can be seen was demolished before 2008 – the pub closed in 2006. A block of flats was built on the northern part of the site around 2012, but I don’t know where the ‘low cost flats’ advertised here were located.
I walked to the other side of Brockley Station over the station footbridge and along Coulgate Street to Brockley Road and into Harefield Road. The building in the centre background is the back of a house on the corner of Foxberry Street and Coulgate Street,.
This post began with two men, so I’ll end it with two women who walked in front of me to cross the road as I was looking at the graffiti on the wall at the read of the corner shop.
This had the message ‘FREE WINSTON SILCOTT’ above a lot of less legible scrawls. Silcott was one of the ‘Tottenham 3‘ convicted in 1987 for the murder of PC Keith Blakelock on the Broadwater Farm Estate in Tottenham in October 1985, but had been nowhere near the scened. All three convictions were quashed in 1991 after it was found the police had fabricated their confessions. He remained in jail as he was convicted for an unrelated murder of a boxer and nightclub bouncer and was only released in 2003.
Carnival, Political Prisoners & Naked Bike Ride: On Saturday 14th June 2008 I called in at Hampton Hill on my way into London for the 30th annual Hampton Hill & Hampton Carnival Parade, but it turned out to be a rather small event. In Trafalgar Square there was a protest outside South Africa House calling for the release of political prisoners held in prisons around the world and after this I went to Hyde Park for the start of the London World Naked Bike Ride.
Hampton & Hampton Hill 30th Anniversary Parade
Hampton Hill
In Hampton Hill I found cows on the High Street and a large rabbit as well as a few cars and some people on foot including a gardener with a wheelbarrow, but it was a small and rather disappointing parade and I left to continue my journey to London as it made its way towards Hampton.
The protest here was also rather smaller than I had hoped but included a group of Kurds calling for the release of their leader, Abdullah Ocalan from a Turkish jail.
Others called for the release of the Miami Five, Cubans who came to Miami to disrupt terrorist raids made by right-wing Cuban exiles living there against Cuba and imprisoned by the USA.
There were also calls for the closure of the illegal US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay and for an end to the continuing torture there and release of refugees and asylum seekers locked in detention centres in the UK.
In 2008 the London World Naked Bike Ride began in Hyde Park, and I went there to photograph the riders getting ready and setting off. The start was very crowded mainly with tourists eager to view the spectacle.
When all had left I took the tube to Westminster to photograph the ride going over Westminster Bridge and then as the ride regrouped I rushed to the footbridge into Waterloo Station (now demolished) for pictures from above as it came down York Road. As the last cyclist passed below me I walked into the station to catch my train home.
As I commented “while bodies are very much on display environmental messages seemed at times to be rather well-hidden, leaving many of the public along the route bemused.” And on My London Diary I recount briefly the reactions of some of the people I talked to and heard as we watched the event.
Those organising the ride say it is a “peaceful, imaginative and fun protest against oil dependency and car culture. A celebration of the bicycle and also a celebration of the power and individuality of the human body. A symbol of the vulnerability of the cyclist in traffic.”
The annual ride continues to take place in London and in other cities. The 2026 London ride is today, Sunday 14th June 2026. Riders are starting from Clapham Junction, Croydon, Deptford, Hackney Wick, Kew Bridge, Regents Park, Tower Hill, Hyde Park Corner and all meeting up close to the south end of Westminster Bridge to ride together around Central London.
Gravesend and Northfleet, Kent: Twenty years ago on Thursday 8th June 2006 I took my folding bike by train to Gravesend and spent an afternoon cycling through the area on the Kent bank of the River Thames, long home to the cement industry – the manufacture of ‘Portland Cement’ began here in 1834.
Looking across the cement works at Northfleet to Tilbury docks
I’d long had an interest in the area, both for its industrial history and for its sometimes spectacular landscapes created by this. I was first inspired when I borrowed an old book from my local library, Donald Maxwell’s ‘A Pilgrimage of the Thames‘, published in 1932. His accounts and sketches, some first published earlier in the Church Times present an interesting and romantic view of places and people along the river beginning at Gravesend and ending at Oxford.
Maxwell (1877-1936) reports a Thames pilot telling him as he sketched on a jetty, “The principal products of Gravesend are paper, cement and smoke – especially smoke.”
Later, writing about Northfleet he muses prophetically “One day, when the cement industry has left this valley, and centres of population have shifted, this district will be called the Switzerland of England, and weekend châlets, each with its aeroplane-landing on the cliff, will look down once again upon green shores and tree-embowered banks.”
Henley’s Cable Works Offices
It hasn’t happened quite like that, though the cement industry has gone and there are some luxury riverside flats and the new town of Ebbsfleet developing around a new station on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (which Eurostar trains whizz through non-stop at around the same speed as aircraft when Maxwell wrote.)
A footbridge over a chalk ravine left by quarrying
Of course Maxwell’s book was not my only source for information about the area. Particularly useful was the 1971 geography text ‘Lower Thameside‘ by Roy Millward & Adrian Robinson with its chapter ‘The Cement Industry of Lower Thameside‘ which gave some rather more precise information and a suggested itinerary which informed my first actual visits to the area in the 1980s.
A few years after I took these pictures in 2006 the vast cement works at Northfleet had gone.
The photographs on My London Diary are not captioned (and I wrote nothing about them) but a they are in order of my ride beginning in Gravesend and moving west, with views across the Thames to Tilbury. From Rosherville I moved on to Northfleet (where Gravesend & Northfleet FC is now Ebbsfleet United) and then on to take the train home from Swanscombe.
