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Lea Valley 1993 – Around Tottenham Hale

Stonebridge Lock, Northumberland Park, 1983 37c-22_2400

Continuing my pictures from walks along the River Lea and Lea Navigation in 1983 which are in my Flickr album River Lea – Lea Navigation 1981-1992.

Tottenham Hale station on the Victoria Line was a convenient starting point for walks both north and south along the Lea navigatiion, which is crossed by Ferry Lane around 200 metres from the station.

Stonebridge Lock is around 3/4 miles north up the path from Ferry Lane, where steps lead down to the towpath immediately after you cross Pymmes Brook. The view above is looking south back towards Tottenham Hale.

Lea Navigation, Tottenham, 1983 34l-51_2400

Thames Water Sludge Mains Bridge No 3 crosses the Navigation closer to Ferry Lane, and as well as a crudely painted landscape also carried racist graffiti from the National Party, a splinter group of the National Front which was active from 1976-83.

A lone tree behind a gate somewhere on Ferry Lane (or its eastern continuation, Forest Road.)

Flood Channel, Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1982 32d-46_2400

The Lee Flood Relief Channel at Forest Rd. There are now tall recently built blocks of flats replacing the inustrial units and garage in this picture.

Ferry Lane Wharf, Tottenham Hale, Hackney, 1982 32d-56_2400

This extensive range of warehouses fronting the navigation immediately south of Ferry Lane has now been demolished and replaced by housing.

Ferry Lane Wharf, Tottenham Hale, Hackney, 1982 32d-55_2400

There is a channel here from the River Lee Diversion which takes excess water from the river and navigation north of Enfield, though usually most of the flow in this rejoins the navigation around half a mile further south.

Ferry Lane Wharf, Tottenham Hale, Hackney, 1982 32d-53_2400

The pattern of waterways it the Lea Valley is difficult to understand and as well as the diversion there are also various flood channels, as well of course as tributaries such as the Pymmes Brook and Dagenham Brook. In the old days there were various man-made channels to feed water mills, while more recently, particularly in the twentieth century various projects to control flooding in the area.

Flickr album River Lea – Lea Navigation 1981-1992.

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

Pymmes & Tottenham Marsh 1983

Pymmes Brook, Edmonton, 1983 37c-55_2400

The Pymmes Brook is a stream in north London which runs from Barnet and joins the River Lea at Tottenham. It got its name from William Pymme who was given land in Edmonton by Edward II in the fourteenth century.

Pymmes Brook, Edmonton, 1983 37c-56_2400

Although it begins from underground springs at Monken Hadley Common in the London Borough of Barnet, these supply relatively little of the water which reaches the River Lea, particularly when the river is in flood, augmented by water runoff from streets and sewage overflows along with the more normal industrial effluent. Because it used often to flood in its lower course, much is now in deep concrete channels, and in some places is culverted.

Pymmes Brook, Edmonton, 1983 37c-65_2400

I’m no longer sure exactly where I took most of these pictures of the Pymmes Brook, but I think they were just a little after it flowed under the North Circular. I think some may actually be of the Salmons Brook which runs down from Enfield and joins it in Upper Edmonton. This gets its name not from the fish – which were probably once found in it before the area became urban and industrial – but from the 13th century landowner John Salemon.

Pymmes Brook, Edmonton, 1983 37c-23_2400

The river runs more or less parallel to the Lea Navigation just a few yards away across Tottenham Marshes and only finally flows into the Lea close to Ferry Lane in Tottenham Hale.

Chalk Bridge, Tottenham, 1983 34l-13_2400

My pictures of the Lea continue south from Chalk Bridge and past Tottenham Marshes.

Lea Navigation, Tottenham Marshes, 1983 34l-31_2400

On the east side are the large Banbury and Lockwood reservoirs, part of a series up the Lea Valley providing water for much of east London.

Banbury Reservoir, from Lea Navigation, 1983 34l-24_2400

This is one of the most picturesque sections of the River Lea, certainly in its lower reaches. I could almost imagine Izaak Walton walking along here in conversation (as Piscator) with his friends Venator and Auceps on May Day holding the discussion of the relative merits of fishing, hunting and fowling as recorded in his ‘The Compleat Angler‘.

Lea Navigation, Tottenham Marshes, 1983 37c-33_2400

More pictures from the Lea in my Flick album River Lea – Lea Navigation 1981-1992

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

Using Flickr

Thames Barrier, Charlton, Greenwich, 1985 85-4j-56 — Flickr album: 1985: South of the River: Deptford to Cliffe

Some time last Saturday (19th December 2020) the total number of views of my photographs on Flickr passed the two million mark. Of course I have rather a lot of pictures on show, precisely 11,236 at the moment, so that’s only an average of around 178 views per picture if my arithmetic is correct.

Quai de Jemappes / Rue Bichat, 10e 84-8s01 — Flickr Album: In Search of Atget – Paris 1984

Most of those 2 million views have been this year. Until the start of December 2019 I only had a free Flickr account which I had been required to set up to join a web forum, with a total of about 100 pictures on it. I set up a paid account and began uploading pictures seriously on December 3rd 2019, wanting to find a better way to share pictures with a wider public than my various web sites.

Hanbury St, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets 86-4p-52_2400 — Flickr album: 1986 London Photographs

I looked at several alternatives, including Instagram before deciding to go with Flickr. I think Instagram would probably have provided greater visibility for my work, but I couldn’t find an easy way to upload large numbers of images. Flickr certainly isn’t perfect, and in particular those 2m views have largely been by other Flickr users rather than a more general public. But if you are thinking of using Flickr for showing pictures taken on film you may find my workflow described below useful.

Notting Hill Carnival, 1991. Peter Marshall 91-8au-36-Edit_2400 — Flickr album: Notting Hill Carnival – the 1990s

It’s still taken considerable time to put over 10,000 images onto Flickr, but most of that time is in the digitisation of the negatives – now mainly using a Nikon D810 and a 60mm macro lens with the Nikon ES-2 adaptor which is far quicker than scanning – and their preparation.

Barges, The Old Harbour, River Hull, Hull, 1977 12g41 — Flickr album: Hull Black and White

Currently I import the photographs of the negatives into Lightroom, where I roughly crop off the borders and rotate them as necessary, rename them to my negative file numbers and use Negative Lab Pro to batch invert them to positives. I don’t really need NLP for black and white negatives, but it’s convenient and does a good job needing very little user intervention.

From LR I then export the original files to Photoshop for accurate rotation and cropping, and of course dust removal. Generally I’m finding that images digitised using the camera require less retouching than scanned images and except for some old negatives that are badly damaged this seldom takes more than a minute; using a cheap XP-PEN stylus and tablet makes this far easier and faster than a mouse. A Photoshop action does a little edge-burning to correct slight light fall-off at the edges, and to convert black and white images from 64bit colour to 16bit grey and I make any necessary slight adjustments to black and white points, curves etc before saving back as 16bit Tiff files to LR. These then become my master images and I remove the RAW files from LR, keeping them as a backup.

It’s taken me almost a year to work out the best way to add the Titles, Description and Tags for Flikr is to do this in LR – and you then have them available for other uses. The answer is of course metadata.

The keywords you put into LR are picked up by Flickr as ‘Tags’;
The IPTC Headline becomes the image title on Flickr (if the IPTC field is blank this defaults to the filename);
The IPTC Description becomes the Description on Flickr.

Some of my descriptions are several hundred words, but so far I’ve not come across any limits on either IPTC or Flickr. It’s better to enter the data in LR, partly because it is a little easier to do, but mainly because you have a copy safely on your computer. The Flickr web uploader does occasionally freeze or crash and lose data which can be very annoying if you have spent several hours on getting a large batch ready. The only things I need to do in the uploader is to drag in the files, select them all and chose an album for them to go in. I also usually drag the files around into the order I want them to appear in the album (or rather its reverse as Flickr seems to do things back to front.)

Entering the data in LR also has the advantage that I have it with the pictures on my computer for when Flickr’s life comes to an end or changes in such a way that I no longer wish to use it.

To browse my work on Flickr you can start from any of these collections:
Black and White London
London Cross-Sections (1977-82)
Paris & France
Hull
Protests
Other Albums

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

Solstice 2006

Today, 21 December 2020 is the Winter Solstice, when in London we have only 7 hours 49 minutes and 41 seconds (or 42 seconds) between sunrise at 8.03 am and sunset at 15.53 pm. It’s a depressing time of year for photographers who work outdoors, though we have now passed the earliest sunset which was on 12 December at 15.51pm. Sunrise continues to get later until almost the end of the month, but at 8.06am I’m usually still eating my breakfast rather than wanting to take pictures.

I had forgotten when I began this piece what it was that dragged me away from the fireside and out to take pictures on 21st December 2006, but I had been working on a set of pictures for the book by Cathy Ross, ‘The Romance of Bethnal Green‘. As my text below makes clear, although most of my pictures which feature in it (and I get a credit on the cover and title page) are from the 1980s and 90s, I think she had wanted a picture of the frieze on the Bethnal Green Museum (a double page black and white spread on p36-7) and I had gone up to take this, but I also took a short walk around the area and made a few more pictures.

You can see some of these in My London Diary, beginning towards the bottom of the page for December 2006 under the title Bethnal Green Solstice. In the colum to the left is the following text:

thursday was a cold dark day, the mercury hanging on zero and grey in the air, a fog which never quite cleared. i needed just one more picture for the project on bethnal green and emerged from the underground half an bour before the shortest day of the year officially turned to night. having done what i had to do, i kept walking as it got darker still, and more lights came on.

My London Diary then was a rather more tentative and arty production , even less polished than in later years, and I then eschewed capitalisation, writing in a rather less formal style.

There are 13 panels along the side of the museum facing the park, each depicting a rural pasttime, and I photographed thoroughly in the dying light in various combinations and some singly. I was working by then with a Nikon D200, with a much improved viewfinder over the D100 I’d started with and which gave 10Mp files. Later when I got home I chose the image above – with ‘Picking Apples’ and ‘Fishing’ – and converted it to black and white for publication, cropping it slightly at the right to fit the double page.

Having taken the necessary image, I walked north up Cambridge Heath Road to the canal, taking a few pictures as I went and on my way back, including a couple more of the museum. The light had been dim when I was photographing the frieze, but it was now definitely dark, with most of the lighting coming from the street lights. I was soon back on the train having spent around an hour on the streets taking pictures.

These pictures were all made at ISO 800, though on at least one the shutter speed was only 1/13s. Even at this relatively low speed some have a high degree of noise. They may have been underexposed but I think that comparing them to pictures taken with the D750 or D810 shows the great advance in sensor quality over the past decade or so. And I suspect re-editing the files in Lightroom now would show the improvements made in software too. The noise isn’t (at least to me) objectionable, any more than the grain in a black and white film image would be, but it is noticeable.

Timber – Lea Navigation

Timber made up a very large proportion of the commercial traffic on the Lea Navigation, certainly in the twentieth century. In its earlier years barge traffic on the River Lea and its canalised sections was largely of agricultural products – malt, meal and grain – being carried down to London, with barges being returned empty or carrying coal upstream. Trade was substantial even before the construction of the navigation began following plans by John Smeaton and the 1767 Act of Parliament, and the river carried an estimated 30,000 tons a year coming mainly from around Ware and Stanstead Abbotts.

The flash locks then in use, with gates that were removed to allow barges to pass wasted large quantities of water and tolls were high, and they also meant that loads going upstream were restricted to a third or a quarter of the 35-40 tons of a downstream load. There were many later improvements to the navigation, though most of the current system comes from an 1866 Act of Parliament.

Timber yard, Towpath Road, Dorford Wharf, Edmonton, 1983 34m-52_2400

In the twentieth century barges carried loads of 100 tons on the waterway and the main traffic was timber, carried upstream from the Surrey docks to a number of timber wharves, one of the larger of which was the Edmonton Wharf at the Lea Valley Trading Estate, which I think was operated by Hahn & Co Ltd, though I can find no further details.

Timber yard, Towpath Road, Dorford Wharf, Edmonton, 1983 34l-16_2400

I made several visits to this large site and took pictures, and returned in later years when it had become a bus depot. Back in 1983 there was another timber yard on the opposite bank of the navigation, which I think was called Dornford Wharf, though the old street plan I used labels this area of the east bank with this name.

Timber yard, Towpath Road, Dorford Wharf, Edmonton, 1983 34l-15_2400

In the Flickr album River Lea – Lea Navigation 1981-1992 I’ve captioned these images as being in Dornford Wharf, Towpath Rd, and I’ve also included a few more images which are simply slight variations on those show here – as well as many other images taken along the river.

Timber yard, Towpath Road, Dorford Wharf, Edmonton, 1983 34m-61_2400

Timber yard, Towpath Road, Dorford Wharf, Edmonton, 1983 34m-63_2400

Timber yard, Towpath Road, Dorford Wharf, Edmonton, 1983 34m-66_2400

If these huge trunks had been brought here by the navigation they will have been here some time as commercial traffic ended a couple of years earlier in 1981. There didn’t appear to be any work being carried on in the timber yard when I took these pictures, but they were possibly made on a Sunday.

Timber yard, Towpath Road, Dorford Wharf, Edmonton, 1983 34m-51_2400

At the side of the yard close to the towpath I came across an area that had clearly been used fairly recently to cut up some wood on a rather smaller scale but which had produced a prolific amount of sawdust.

Although the Flickr album River Lea – Lea Navigation 1981-1992 only currently contains black and white pictures, I did also make some colour transparencies when I was photographing the Lea Valley. Three of them, including the image above, were my contribution to the show Roof Unit Foundations at [ space ] in Hackney in 2007.

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

City Walk 2004

I can’t remember exactly why I went up to London on 16th December 2004, but my pictures taken that day tell me fairly clearly the route that I took, taking me in a rather roundabout fashion from London Bridge to a meeting with someone at the Museum of London.

It was a fine day, and I’d obviously decided to take an early train to give me time to wander and take a few photographs before the meeting, arriving at London Bridge Station over an hour before. I can tell this because I was using a digital camera, my first interchangeable lens digital camera, a Nikon D100 and can read the times the images were made from the Exif data embedded in the files – such as the example below.

1/200s, f/7.1, ISO 400
Mode: P, Meter: Matrix, No Flash, Auto WB
Focal: 52mm, 16/12/2004 14:49:27, Adobe RGB (1998)
6.1MP (3,030×2,021) NIKON D100

I only used one lens, the very versatile 18-125mm f3.5-f5.6 Sigma lens, a relatively light and compact zoom that really showed the advantage of the DX system over the later bulkier full-frame lenses. I imagine its test results wouldn’t quite match those of more expensive Nikon glass, but the images seem fine and sharp looking at them now.

Although the D100 was only a 6 Mp camera, this provided images at 3030 x 2021 that were large enough for most repro purposes and gave me excellent prints at 12×8″ and even larger – one picture from it – taken with another Sigma lens – went on exhibition 2.3m wide and paid well.

I think I will have taken these pictures using RAW files, though it would take me a while to locate these on a backup disk, and I only have jpegs and some tiff files to view on my current system. Software for converting from RAW has improved significantly since 2004 and I would almost certainly be able to produce some improvements, in particular reducing the little colour noise present in some. But I think they are fine as they stand.

I arrived at the meeting presumably on time but can tell you nothing about it other than it probably lasted for a little over an hour and came out to make my way home a little after 4.30pm, by which time it was dark. I took a picture of Shakespeare’s bust using the D100’s built-in flash – which came out as badly as you would expect, one in the interior of No 1 Poultry you see here, and then stood still for a final picture on the moving walkway taking me down to the ‘drain’ (Waterloo & City line) to Waterloo for the train home.

A few more pictures from the walk and others from December 2004 on My London Diary. It was a month I also visited Mucking (its in Essex) and photographed ‘Fathers For Justice’ protesting in Santa suits and took a couple of walks close to where I live. All have something of a sepia quality – thanks to the raw conversion – which I find quite appealing and perhaps nostalgically appropriate.

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

Lea – by the North Circular

North Circular Rd, Edmonton, 1983 37c-44_2400

The North Circular Road crosses the Lea Navigation in Edmonton, where there are now a whole series of six bridges over it, though I think there were fewer when I was taking these pictures in 1983. The street map I used shows the North Circular as just a single carriageway, Angel Road, which on the east side became the Lea Valley Viaduct, and I think this picture is taken across the whole of the roadway.

Lee Valley Trading Estate, Angel Rd, Upper Edmonton, 1983 34m-41_2400

To the south of the North Circular there were industrial and commercial areas on both banks, with Clements International UPH, “Europe’s Largest Maker” on the west, a huge furniture showroom (I suppose the UPH stands for upholstery) and beyond it to the south a timber wharf.

Lee Valley Trading Estate, Angel Rd, Upper Edmonton, 1983 34k-46

On the east bank wasDorford Wharf and the extensive Lea Valley Trading Estate and Kingsway Industrial Estate, and another timber wharf, which I’ll post pictures from later.After re-instalapi-ms-wi-

On the east bank wasDorford Wharf and the extensive Lea Valley Trading Estate and Kingsway Industrial Estate, and another timber wharf, which I’ll post pictures from later.

Lee Valley Trading Estate, Angel Rd, Upper Edmonton, 1983 34n-24_2400

I think all of the businesses by the navigation were closed, including the cafe here. Now the whole area has been cleared.

Timber yard, Towpath Road, Dorford Wharf, Edmonton, 1983 37c-31_2400

Although commercial traffic on the Lea Navigation had come to an end, there were still a number of lighters on it, including this one moored in front of a timber wharf. There were so many timber wharves on the Lea because the entrances to the Limehouse Cut and Bow Creek leading to the Lea Navigation were opposite the Surrey Docks, where ships brought in timber from the Baltic and elsewhere and which had large storage ponds where it was stored and seasoned.

Lee Valley Trading Estate, Angel Rd, Upper Edmonton, 1983 34n-23_2400

There is still a timber merchant not far away, just to the north of the North Circular at Ash Wharf, but none of its timber comes in by barge.

You can click on any of the above images to see a larger version in the Flickr album River Lea – Lea Navigation 1981-1992.

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

Ponders End & Edmonton

Lea Navigation, Brimsdown, Ponders End, 1983 34m-22_2400

I’m not sure why the name Ponders End so appeals to me. It has a rather down to earth quality (or perhaps down to water) which is apparently reflected in its etymology, stretching back over 600 years to the Ponder family, with a John Ponder being recorded as far back as 1373. He or his family apparently got their name because they kept or lived by a fishpond or mill pond on the River Lea. Ponders End was their end of Edmonton.

Lea Navigation, Ponders End, 1983 34m-23_2400

The River Lea was important for the movement of people and goods from the earliest times and was improved for navigation at various times in the middle ages; later the first modern gated lock on a river was built at Waltham Abbey in 1577 and the basis of the current Lea Navigation – including the Limehouse Cut – were laid in the 1770s, though there were further improvements well into the 20th century. You can read more on Wikipedia. In recent convention the spelling Lea is used for the river and natural features, and Lee for those man-made features such as the navigation but I tend to use Lea for both.

Lea Navigation, Ponders End, 1983 34m-24_2400

Because of its good transport links to London, industry began to arrive here in the 19th century, with wharves along the canal. Later with the growth of motorised transport development became centred along the Great Cambridge Road, the A10, a short distance to the west, particularly after its improvement in the 1930s. When I took these pictures back in 1983 the area was full of factories, but many were derelict, their demise accelerated by Thatcher’s national flight from manufacturing – something which was at the centre of my recording of out post-industrial landscape

Lea Navigation, Brimsdown, Ponders End, 1983 34m-32_2400

The area had turned its back on the canal where all commercial traffic had ceased a couple of years earlier, but many of the structures were still present. Now almost all have been replaced by warehousing and some residential development. In later years I photographed around the little that remained, including Wright’s Flour Mill, parts of which date from the 18th century.

Lea Navigation, Brimsdown, Ponders End, 1983 34m-36_2400

Back in 1983, there was no GPS and it was hard to determine the exact location of the pictures I took as I walked beside the navigation, and I made few records that would help. In a few pictures it is possible to see features which still exist, particularly the tall blocks of council flats close to Ponders End station.

Thorn Lighting, Edmonton, 1983 37e-34_2400

The last two pictures are of one of Edmonton’s best known and largest industries, Thorn Lighting. Julius Thorn opened his Atlas Lamp Works Ltd in Edmonton in 1932, and later at the start of the war a second factory in Tottenham. The company is now part of the Austrian company Zumtobel. I think that these two pictures are part of their Angel Road site. The main production moved from here to Merthyr Tydfil soon after the Second Wolrd War, but speciality lamps were produced here until around the late 1960s.

Thorn Lighting, Edmonton, 1983 37e-35_2400

More pictures in River Lea – Lea Navigation 1981-1992 on Flickr. Click on any of the pictures above to go to a larger version in that album, where you can also comment on the pictures.

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

More from the Lea: Enfield

Enfield, 1983 34y-16_2400 — Enfield, 1983

I’ve now put more photographs in my Flickr album River Lea – Lea Navigation 1981-1992 to add pictures from Broxbourne to the River Thames to my earlier uploads.

Enfield Lock, 1983 34y-35 (2)_2400 — Enfield Lock

I’ve gone through the contact sheets from 1981-3 and selected and digitised a few more pictures I found of interest to add to those I’d scanned preparing for earlier shows, but I think there are pictures from some of the later years in that period I may add later.

Lea Navigation, Brimsdown, Ponders End, 1983 34n-52_2400

But for the moment this album is complete – with 418 pictures. Because I made these on a number of different visits to the area, it was difficult to put them into sensible order – and a few are still obviously in the wrong place. But I’ve tried to put them at least largely in order as the valley leads down to the River Thames at Leamouth.

Lea Navigation, Brimsdown, Ponders End, 1983 34n-41_2400

Back in 1981-3 I was not too concerned with the exact locations of the pictures, and my contact sheets seldom have little indication except for the contents of the pictures. I can no longer find the notebooks in which I wrote about the project, though a few of the vintage prints have locations on them and a couple even grid references. I’ve tried to give locations on Flickr, and already a few viewers have been able to help me on this, and correcting a few mistakes I made. Corrections and comments are always welcome, and clicking on any of the images in this post will take you to a larger version where you can post comments.

So, for example, this picture I’ve captioned simply ‘Broxbourne, Herts, 1983‘ but I could be quite wrong. It could be Cheshunt or somewhere else. And I’d be happy to be told exactly where it is. It’s easier to remember pictures further south as I’m more familiar with the area, though thanks to some who have already corrected a few of my confusions such as mistaking the Clapham Park flats for the Trowbridge Estate.

Lea Navigation, Brimsdown, Ponders End, 1983 34n-42_2400

Most of the pictures in today’s post are from Enfield, Ponders End or Brimsdown, in the London Borough of Enfield, where a large industrial area is located to the west of the canal. I think most of the structures I photographed back then have since been replaced.

Lea Navigation, Brimsdown, Ponders End, 1983 34m-14_2400

In a later post I’l post more selected pictures from Ponders End and Edmonton and then further south. But you can see them already at Flickr album River Lea – Lea Navigation 1981-1992.

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

Signs and Animals

Gosheron Tapes, Kensington Church St, Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea 87-10c-14-positive_2400 — Gosheron Tapes, Kensington Church St, Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea

I’m often surprised by people who look at some of my photographs and say to me “ I never notice that”, but I think it’s true of all of us that we walk around without really noticing things. Even buildings like Vicarage House, home of Gosheron Tapes, whose frontage screams out onto the street. But Gosheron’s days – at least at this address – had clearly passed, as an estate agent’s sign and flyposts on the windows clearly show, though they seem to have continued making packaging materials elsewhere until at least 2005.

The building now has antiques on the ground floor and serviced offices elsewhere, including the Nicaraguan Embassy. I’ve failed to find any information about its exact date – somewhere around 1900 – or the monogram which appears to be CS on its frontage. Information is welcome.

Godfrey's Model Bakery, Arlington Rd, Parkway, Camden, 1987 87-10b-66-positive_2400 — Godfrey’s Model Bakery, Arlington Rd, Parkway, Camden, 1987

The ‘Tasty Corner’ on Arlington St and Parkway in Camden is now an estate agentss and its large sign with its baker for Godfrey’s Model Bakery has disappeared.

Palmers, Pet Stores, Parkway, Camden, 1987 87-10b-55a-positive_2400 — Palmers Pet Stores, Parkway, Camden, 1987

Many passed Palmer’s Regent Pet Store on their way to and from London Zoo from Camden Town Station. It was established by Mrs Florence Palmer around 1918 but was run from 1924 by George Palmer, who built up the business and expanded into a second neighbouring shop in the late 1930s. Perhaps surprisingly this shop was listed Grade II in 2007, largely for its shop front which the listing text suggests dates from around 1940, though the houses containing the shop were built in the 1820s.

The shop, which had sold Winston Churchill his cat Orlando as a kitten which later moved into Downing St, and a couple of Abyssinian kittens to Charlie Chaplain, stopped selling animals around 2005 and moved across the road. After being empty for several years it became a tea room.

Clarence Cottage, Albany St, Regent's Park, Camden, 1987 87-10b-15-positive_2400 — Clarence Cottage, Albany St, Regent’s Park, Camden, 1987

On their way to the Zoo walkers might have walked down Albany St, or at least past its corner close to this hous, Clarence Cottage, which stii has its row of ornaments with a rather weather-beaten lion at its centre. Previously called Glenhaven, it isn’t clear to me why the mid-19th century house was Grade II listed in 1974, though it’s a pleasant enough building of its age, only really distinguished by this extension with a Ionic pedimented doorway onto the pavement outside and the ornaments above it – including that lion.

It’s in a area of London that has many fine buildings from that era and earlier – much of which is probably also listed.

Sussex St, Pimlico, Westminster, 1987 87-10a-42-positive_2400 — Sussex St, Pimlico, Westminster, 1987

I came across two dogs in Westminster, looking to me rather snooty. But I’d failed to note down their exact location and it took me a long time to hunt them down again – but they are still there in Sussex St.

Romany Hotel, Longmore St, Guildhouse St, Pimlico, Westminster, 1987 87-10a-62-positive_2400 — Romany Hotel, Longmore St, Guildhouse St, Pimlico, Westminster, 1987

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the Romany Hotel is that it is still there as the Romany Hotel, though the signage has changed and now includes an e-mail address and a fairly discrete extra floor has been added on top.

But in keeping with today’s theme is the bird in flight at the top left corner. Although I’m no ornithologist at first glance it looked like some bird of prey, but I think it is really just a pigeon doing a good impression.

1987 London Photos

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.