September, 2018 | >Re-PHOTO

London 1978 (5)

Continuing my series of posts of my pictures from 1978 which will eventually include all of the selected photographs I took in London in 1978 and posted recently on Facebook with comments, and a few related images. All of these pictures (and more) are in my London Pictures web site, and eventually I intend to add the comments there too.

Click on any image to go to the web page with a slightly larger picture.
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London 1978 (5)

Salem Baptist Church, The Green, Richmond, 1978
14j44: richmond, church, disused, doorway

My first thoughts on seeing the doorway of the then disused Salem Baptist Church on Richmond Green were undoubtedly about the Salem Witch trials in Massachusetts in 1692/3 which were the subject of Arthur Miller’s powerful play The Crucible.

It gave Salem, which in the Old Testament was the home of Melchizedek king of Salem who was the priest of the most high God and provided bread and wine to bless Abraham after his victory against the kings, a bad name. Salem was the name of the god who was worshipped in that city and comes from the same Hebrew root as ‘shalom’ which means peace and wholeness, and the city of Salem became better known as Jerusalem, the added ‘yeru’ meaning a foundation stone.

Salem became a popular name for Christian, particularly puritan churches who were averse to naming their churches after saints, and there are many Salem churches and related organisations, particularly in the USA, and there was even a Battle of Salem Church in Virginia during the US Civil War.

The congregation that worshipped in Richmond, Surrey’s Salem Baptist church was founded in 1861 and after over a hundred years moved out some time before I took this picture to smaller but more modern premises a mile or so away in Kew, where they continue under their new name of Kew Baptist Church.

Kristine Hair Fashions reflected in window, Pimlico, Westminster, 1978
14k55: westminster, pimlico, reflection, hair salon

One of several images from a walk through Pimlico, few of which I am able to locate precisely. But I think that this shop, which I had my back to was possibly in Denbigh Place, where a short row of houses, now all with smart black front doors, shares this rather unusual fenestration, though there are some differences, and it could be another block by the same builder/architect. The houses, like that I was photographing the window of have been rather done up and with some alterations, including metal fences to make those wide shelves under the upper windows into false balconies. The area was originally laid out by Thomas Cubitt for Richard Grosvenor, 2nd Marquess of Westminster from around 1825, and some parts of the area when I walked through it were distinctly down-at-heel, with large houses in multiple occupation. Many were like these were being given a face-lift in the 1970s and 80s, and property prices around here are now of course astronomical.

I had for some years been intrigued by reflections and taken many photographs with them, perhaps encouraged in particular by a number of pictures by Lee Friedlander. Few of them hold a great deal of interest for me now, though sometimes others seem to like them. Here the white-washed cross and tick form a separate layer on top of what seems at first glance simply a not very clear view of the front of a house.

Iglesia Ni Cristo, Battersea, Wandworth, 1978
14l22: wandsworth, battersea, church, house

The Iglesia Ni Cristo was on a main road in Battersea and close to a railway bridge, probably on Latchmere Rd, but there seems to be no trace of this building now and I think it has been demolished.

The Iglesia Ni Cristo formed its first European congregation in a house – not I think this one – on the Latchmere Rd in 1975 and now has a large modern building not far away in Parkgate Rd. The church was founded in the Phillipines in 1914 by Felix Y Manalo and claims to be the one true church, recreating the original vision of the church founded by Jesus. It is a unitarian church, believing in the one true God and rejecting the divinity of Jesus, who it believes is the ‘Son of God’ and God’s highest creation.

I connected the addition to the billboard’s ‘Switch to Michelin poster’, ‘No, switch to Bicycles for Longer Life!’ not just with that poster but also with the Church of Christ and its promise of life everlasting.

Three young girls, Battersea, Wandworth, 1978
14l25: wandsworth, battersea, girls

These three girls saw me with my cameras taking pictures – somewhere in Battersea, perhaps at Latchmere House, a small block of council flats at the corner of Abercombie St and demanded that I take their picture. But they were hyperactive and although I took two frames, at least one is moving on both.

I’m not too good at guessing ages, but I think they would now be around 50. I often wondered when I took pictures like this – it was usually easier to do so than to refuse – why they wanted me to take their pictures when they would never get to see them. Often they thought I was ‘from the papers’ and they wanted their small piece of fame, though I always denied being a press photographer. I think this is probably the first time that I’ve published this picture and I wonder if any of the three will see it.

Council flats, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1978
14l36: wandsworth, battersea, girls

Latchmere House on the corner of Abercrombie Street was a small block of eighteen flats built by Battersea Borough Council in 1927.

This was an age where local councils were proud to build houses for local people, and realising that many lived in poor quality and over crowded privately rented properties they built homes to a good standard for the time, both large housing estates mainly on the edges of their boroughs for those who could afford slightly higher rents and the cost of travel to work, and also blocks of flats such as this in the middle of their boroughs for those who could not afford council house rents and travel costs.

Things are rather different now, with councils long constrained by government from serious building programmes, and looking at their estates not as housing but as development opportunities, assets to be realised by working with private developers (including some housing associations that appear to have lost track of why they were created) to build homes for the wealthy, often just as investments rather than places to live, forcing former residents to move out of London.

This was a small block of less than 20 flats and was demolished some years ago.

River Thames & Chelsea from Battersea Bridge, Battersea, Wandworth, 1978
14l41: wandsworth, river, thames, battersea, tug, barges, power station, works, flats

In this view from Battersea Bridge looking upstream two towers of the World’s End Estate and the chimneys of Lots Road Power station, then supplying power for the Underground, are clearly visible. THis site is now being redeveloped to plans by Terry Farrell as Chelsea Waterfront. The lighter building to the right of the chimneys is the Chelsea Flour Mill, parts of which has been demolished thou some warehouses hardly visible in this image beyond remain as a part of Chelsea Wharf, a mixed development on Lots Rd.

To the left of the power station there is a view of a gasholder at Sands End. None of the other buildings remain and the area around Chelsea Basin is now Chelsea Harbour, with the reduced size basin becoming a marina for the owners of the luxury flats and hotel residents around it. Planning permission for the ‘millionaires’ Toytown’ was granted and work began there in 1986 and it provided a memorable locale for J G Ballard’s 2003 novel ‘Millennium People’.

The design for the World’s End tower blocks was commissioned by the Metropolitan Borough of Chelsea from Eric Lyons in 1963, but work only began, then under the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in 1969 with the first residents only moving into the blocks in 1972, and the estate was only completed the year before I made this picture. The design of this ‘village style living in the heart of London’ was for a density of 250 people per acre, almost double the LCC’s limit; the council argued this was needed to rehouse those who would be moved out of the 11 acre site of closely packed Victorian housing, and their appeal was allowed.

The 7 towers are linked by low rise blocks with walkways in a plan of two rectangles with towers at all but one corner, which links to the corner of a second rectangle by a low block; the towers and low rise links contain a roughly equal number of the 750 homes.

Slated by critics when built, World’s End has become one of the more successful council estates and a desirable place to live. Over three quarters of the homes are still council-owned and flats seldom come on the market with 2-bed flats selling for around £500,000

More to follow….
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My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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.

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London 1978 (4)

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London 1978 (4)

Shopfront and reflection, Covent Garden, Westminster, 1978
14c25: westminster

Shop Window with woman, Covent Garden, Westminster, 1978
14c32: westminster, shop, art, art dealer, gallery, woman

J Evans, Diary, Warren St, Camden, 1978
14d35: camden, shop, diary, shop window

The only one of my grandparents I remember was a small elderly woman dressed in black with very strict rules, particularly on Sundays, when we were not allowed to play but had to read improving books. She sat in the corner by the fire, where a smoke-blackened kettle always stood. She didn’t say much and didn’t like children to make much noise either.

At Christmas we would all get together for a family meal around a large table in the front room, seldom used for the rest of the year, where all except me would eat goose, sent up from the family farm by train to Paddington where one of my uncles would go to collect it the day before. I found goose far to greasy and instead gorged on the chipolatas and bacon from the local butcher.

My grandmother had been born Eliza Ann Davies in Llansaintfread in mid-Wales on Boxing Day in 1865, so the Christmas meal was a joint celebration. She had met my grandfather who came from Essex but moved to London to work when she, like many young Welsh girls had also come up to work in London, perhaps in a shop like this, perhaps the family dairy shop, somewhere long gone on the Gray’s Inn Road. London dairies would sell produce sent from Wales by train, but also might have a cow or two kept in the back yard. Not far away there is still the London Welsh Centre (“The world’s only Welsh cultural centre”, though it only opened there in 1937) and the 1854 Welsh Tabernacle (Eglwys y Tabernaacl) Grade II listed and still standing, though now Ethiopian rather than Welsh.

The shop in the picture, J Evans, on the corner of Conway St and Warren St is Grade II listed and was built around 1793, though the shop front dates from around 1916, when J Evans, dairyman, is recorded as having arrived here, presumably with a cow or two. It was more a small general store when I took this picture (along with others, mainly in colour which show up the beautiful blue of the tiles and surrounding the gold lettering) and is now the Old Diary coffee shop.

Washing on balcony, Key House, Lambeth, 1978
14i43: lambeth, vauxhall, council flat, flat, balcony, washing

Key House on Bowling Green St, not far from the Oval was where friends we often visited lived in a shared flat. It was one of Lambeth Council’s hard to let properties that were advertised and eligible local residents and workers could queue to get, an overnight vigil to be near enough to the front of the queue.

Built around 1930, when both the London County Council and the Metropolitan Borough of Lambeth where building large blocks in the area to provide low cost accommodation for the working class poor. The rent for their 3-bed flat would probably have been around 12 shillings (60p) a week. The flats were built to relatively high standards, providing some of those moving into them when new for the first time with a scullery, bathroom and toilet in their home. The rooms too were rather larger than in many of the ‘luxury’ flats now being built, and similar flats in this block have sold recently for over £400,000.

Some things were of course not up to modern standards, particularly the single-glazed draughty windows, and central heating was at that time unknown. Living rooms had a coal fire and bedrooms were usually unheated, though they might have had fireplaces. But the flats they were solidly built, with brick walls that provided better insulation than many postwar system built flats.

What let them down over the years was maintenance and the cleaning of the communal areas – the balconies, laundry rooms, stair cases, rubbish chutes and courtyards. The council made some attempt to improve them in the 80s and 90s, fitting doors at the entrance to the stairs, but many residents found these a nuisance and some locks were broken and other doors wedged permanently open in the years until all our friends moved out. If one stair was locked you could usually find another open and walk around on the balcony.

There were still communal laundry rooms, and still a mangle in the one next to our friend’s flat, but most people by then had some kind of washing machine in their own flats, but they still hung their washing out along the balconies.

Everything coming into the flats had to come in up the stairs, and there were five floors; fortunately my friends were only on the second but helping to get a piano up the two flights to store in the laundry room left me with painful back for several weeks.

Writing on Wall, Vauxhall City Farm, Lambeth, 1978
14i34: lambeth, vauxhall, city farm, farm, poem, hymn

The building at the City farm was some kind of former school at the back of St Peter’s Church which included the 1861 Lambeth School of Art. We organised some meeting in this building to which almost nobody came and there was no heating on a desperately cold winter day and we froze even in our outside coats.

The church, Grade II* listed and consecrated in 1864 though its tower was never built, and the city farm are both on the site of Vauxhall Gardens, a notorious Georgian pleasure ground where great festivals took place, along with many amorous encounters in the darker wooded corners; the church itself was on the site which once had a Moorish tower built as a firework platform in 1823 which burnt down 14 years later and a dimly lit ‘Lovers Walk’, and the art school on St Oswald’s Place on the site of the Vauxhall Garden’s famous Neptune Fountain, his marine chariot drawn by five horses from whose nostrils water, steam and even flames would emerge.

Once I went to a service in the church, whose magnificent interior is well worth a visit and there are regular concerts there. We went to a service there, a small group of people on chairs in the middle of a large building, led by a young priest in black leathers.

Make what you can of the writing on the wall, part-hidden by the stacked wood – and I think left from an earlier event. I think it reads:

HYMN

LAUGHING MAN
MEGALITH
—-
BEATING DANCE
CANDLE
—-
FIRE
AWAKENING
MAKING OF TALISMAN
DISPLAY OF TALISMAN-ARK
GROWTH
TOKEN
FOOD
SPACE
PROCESSION
MIND
RELEASE

Vauxhall City Farm, Lambeth, 1978
14i31: lambeth, vauxhall, city farm, farm, chickens, people

Another picture from Vauxhall City Farm, this time a chicken’s eye view of my wife and son looking at them.

Good to have the houses and flats in the background which shows clearly this is a city farm.

This was not long after the farm was founded in 1976 as Jubilee City Farm by a group who were squatting in St Ostwald’s Place. The farm is still going in Tyers Place, but unrecognisable from those early days when it was run on a shoe-string by a few local enthusiasts and volunteers.

Vauxhall City Farm, Lambeth, 1978
14i21: lambeth, vauxhall, city farm, farm, goats, people

A group of our friends lived in a council flat in Key House in Kennington and we went with them to Vauxhall City Farm, which one of them was very involved in, and I’ve put several pictures from the visit on-line.

Usually I like – other things being equal – to work from a normal eye level, it fitting in with my ideas about a naturalistic approach to the medium. Its the viewpoint from which we mainly see things. And these days if I climb up on anything I’m likely to get the shakes, while if I get low down its sometimes rather an effort to get up. I suspect I took this picture from a ladder rather like the one in the picture, presumable there to allow those looking after the goats to easily access their enclosure. Though there isn’t one on the other side to allow them to get out, perhaps because the goats might take advantage of it.

At bottom left you can see the head of my wife and our then two-year old son in a buggy looking at the goats, and the two women were I think both among our visiting party. The fence wasn’t quite dividing the sheep from the goats, but this did come into my mind and still does whenever I see this picture.

More to follow….
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My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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.

To order prints or reproduce images

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London 1978 (3)

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London 1978 (3)

Barrows, Borough Market, Southwark, 1978
14s11: southwark, market, borough, cobbles, barrow

I plead guilty to nostalgia in this image, though I also saw it as an exercise in framing (and a slight hint of homage to one of the truly great photographers whose work I admire.) It should really not be seen in isolation but as a part of my wider work on this area around Borough Market and the nearby wharves, some of which I posted here earlier.

Hand carts such as these barrows were of course much more common when I was young, and many trades made use of them, including as I’ve mentioned before, jobbing tradesmen like my father who used one to carry his tools, ladders and materials.

My paternal grandfather had owned several small and not very profitable businesses and I suspect the hand cart that my father used was one that he had made himself in his younger days. Dad’s large work shed, inherited from his father, was a real museum, and still had all the tools needed to build some quite fancy horse-drawn vehicles, including a small bellows furnace with a large drum of coke which was used to heat the iron rims to put on wheels such as this, and once or twice when very young I was employed as an unpaid bellows boy. Next door in a smaller shed was a treadle-powered wood-working lathe which we often used to play with when small, though fortunately we were never allowed to play with the band saw, a large and rather fiendish device and I made to adulthood with a full set of limbs. My father also worked in his youth for other companies, including Dennis, where he built wooden fire engines before they decided metal was a better idea.

For more complex iron work, a few streets away was the ‘power forge’, owned when I was small by my father’s brother, with much belt-driven machinery and a steam hammer, but at its centre a coke fire with an electrically driven air supply on which metal ingots would be heated to the required colour before being removed with long tongs and hammered on an anvil before being worked on the other machines.

The Cross Keys and barrows, Covent Garden, Camden, 1978
14c11: camden, pub, barrows

The market at Covent Garden closed in November 1974 and moved to Nine Elms, but there were still some traces in the area.

The Cross Keys is still there, a small pub with an extravagant facade, built with the rest of Endell St in the 1848-9 and Grade II listed. As well as the two cherubs holding St Peter’s Keys who I rudely cut off at the top of the frame, the interior walls are incredibly cluttered, thanks to the owner being addicted to the collection of largely Victorian bric-a-brac, abetted until recently by the presence of Bonhams nearby. It’s also now soemtimes hard to see the pub through a collection of hanging baskets, tubs, shrubs and flowers, which together with the putti and keys make it one of London’s most photographed facades by tourists. Better news is that it is now no longer a Watney’s pub.

The barrows outside when I photographed them were I suspect kept there by the landlord to add a little character. More recently the whole area is paved and there are a couple of large barrels, and in summer at least outside seating for the pub.

Building site, Covent Garden, Westminster, 1978
14b62: westminster, pub, building site, poster

The fences around building sites were seldom officially decorated back in the seventies, but those in areas like Covent Garden soon attracted extensive flyposting for events and record releases. Across the building site here is the Shelton St frontage of the Crown and Anchor pub in Neal St, and I think this picture and that below were probably taken in Endell St.

Building site, Covent Garden, Westminster, 1978
14b63: westminster, pub, building site, poster

4-wheel barrow, Covent Garden,Westminster, 1978
14b53: westminster, market, stall

Blitz was a weekly club-night in Covent Garden, London in 1979-80, much frequented by art students, where the New Romantic subcultural movement is said to have begun. People would spend the week preparing their outfits for it hoping they would look interesting enough to pass Steve Strange on the door, who famously turned away Mick Jagger. I’m not sure where this was taken, but Blitz was certainly not far away.

The text on the wall lacks much artistry, but the four-wheeled barrow in front of it was one which could be used to wheel goods into a market pitch and sell from.

Ellen Keeley barrow makers and barrows, Covent Garden, Westminster, 1978
14c31: westminster, pub, barrows

Ellen Keeley’s shop at 33 Neal St, opened in 1900 closed around 1982. The Keeley family came from Ireland at the time of the potato famine in 1830 and began business in London then. James Keeley is said to have invented the costermonger’s barrow and the company also made donkey barrows as well as simple wheelbarrows like those in the photograph. Often barrows were hired rather than sold, and the company Keeley Hire now hires these and many other things to film and TV companies.

Ellen Keeley barrow makers and barrows, Covent Garden, Westminster, 1978
14c41: westminster, barrows

More to follow….
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My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

London 1978 (2)

Click on any image to go to the web page with a slightly larger picture.
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London 1978 (2)

Rosings’ Wharf (once part of West Kent Warehouses) and St Mary Overy’s Wharf, Southwark, 1978
14v61: Southwark, wharves, Victorian

This time I am sure where the picture was taken, as the background building has a name on it, which is St Mary Overy’s Wharf and in front of it is the wall at the end of the dock. The building at left is Rosing’s Wharf, and at the right is a part of the sign on West Kent Warehouses. The next frame makes this even clearer, taken from a similar position but with a wider lens it shows the whole sign, AD 1858 James Hartley & Compy. Messrs. Rosing Brothers & Co., coffee cleaners and merchants took over the building and renamed West Kent Mill in 1891.

Rosing’s Wharf has the name Michael Wooley Ltd, and a sign on the wall gives the safe working limit for the hoist to the upper floors of 15 cwts – 15 hundredweights or three-quarters of a ton. Wooley was a wine importer and the building was still in use until 1979, the year after I photographed it. Rosings took over this building in 1890. It had been built around 50 years earlier and used for storage of various foodstuffs and for feathers, and, from 1872 for Danish bacon, butter and cheese.

The premises were taken over by the Proprietors of Hay’s Wharf in 1921 and used by them until 1964. Michael Wooley Ltd moved in, putting in new offices and toilets in 1967 and the building was demolished in 1983.

Although called wharves, buildings such as Rosing’s Wharf had no direct river access. Goods would be landed from lighters at nearby wharves or docks – such at the St Mary Overy Dock a few yards away – and then brought by cart or lorry for storage.

Rosings’ Wharf and West Kent Warehouses, Southwark, 1978
14v62: Southwark, wharves, Victorian

Rosings’ Wharf (once part of West Kent Warehouses) and St Mary Overie Wharf, Southwark, 1978
14v65: Southwark, wharves, Victorian

The concrete wall visible here in the foreground (and further back in the above images) is the dock wall for the dock which now holds the replica Golden Hind. Like other walls along this part of the Thames it was raised at this time to help prevent flooding.

Pickford’s Wharf, Southwark, 1978
14v53: Southwark, wharves, Victorian

There was an area of small alleys and streets close to Southwark Cathedral which I wandered around, and it is hard to know precisely where this photograph was taken. There were overhead bridges between a number of the warehouses in this area, including Rosings’ Wharf and Stave Wharf, Stave Wharf and West Kent Wharf and West Kent Wharf and Hibernia Wharf, as well as between the buildings of Hibernia Wharf on either side of Montague Close.

Hibernia Wharf was a large complex of buildings in Montague Close, between West Kent Wharf which was on the east side of St Mary Overy’s Wharf and the ‘new’ London Bridge. These buildings in the Pool of London were all latterly owned by the Proprietors of Hay’s Wharf, further downstream. Only St Mary Overy’s Wharf had direct water access with lighters coming into the dock which is still there, and goods were taken to the various nearby warehouses either along the narrow streets or by bridges between buildings such as these. Most of the goods handled here were foodstuffs and other low value items.

West Kent Warehouses were rebuilt by the wharfingers J. Hartley & Co in 1858. Hibernia (or New Hibernia) Wharf, immediately to the north of Southwark Cathedral was originally built in 1836, most was destroyed by fire in 1851, but the rebuilding was to the plans of William Cubitt. At the east end of the site on London Bridge and Montague Close you can see the facades of a part of this building but the interior was gutted in 1970 and interior walls replaced by concrete, though parts of the original undercroft were retained.

These wharves handled goods on a small scale, using hydraulic cranes and other machinery, and largely went out of use in the 1960s as bulk handling of cargoes, decasualisation of dock labour and containerisation moved the traffic to large docks downstream. Some buildings continued to be in use for storage of goods until around 1980, but were demolished shortly after.

Looking carefully at the picture again I think it may actually be looking west along Pickfords Lane, with the building on the right being Pickford’s Wharf, which had further buildings to the south across the lane. I think you can see a little of Winchester Palace and Clink St in the distance.

West Kent or Hibernia Wharves, Southwark, 1978
14v54: Southwark, wharves, Victorian

West Kent Warehouses, St Mary Overy’s Wharf, Southwark, 1978
14v51: Southwark, works, derelict,

Clink St, Southwark, 1978
14v55: Southwark, wharves, Victorian, posters,

Clink St, Southwark, 1978
14v56: Southwark, wharves, Victorian, posters,

More to follow….
______________________________________________________

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

London 1978 (1)

The first in a series of posts which will eventually include all of the selected photographs I took in London in 1978 and posted recently on Facebook with comments, and a few related images. All of these pictures (and more) are in my London Pictures web site, and eventually I intend to add the comments there too.

Click on any image to go to the web page with a slightly larger picture.
__________________________________________

London 1978 (1)

Clink Wharf, Clink St, Southwark, 1978
14s21: Southwark, warehouses, bridge,

1978 was really the year I came of age as a photographer, having met and been challenged, inspired and encouraged by one of the UK’s greatest photographers and teachers through a series of workshops. Raymond Moore made me think seriously about producing bodies of work that led to my projects on Hull and on London. I was still desperately short of time, working well over 60 hours a week during term-time in my teaching job (and even shorter of sleep after my second son was born.) Among the first fruits of this were a series of images on the former docklands in Southwark, and this was one of the earliest images.

Wharf, Clink St, Southwark, 1978
14s23: Southwark, warehouses,

New British Wharf, Clink St, Southwark, 1978
14s24: Southwark, warehouses,

Sennet Bros, Castle Yard Factory, Holland St, Southwark, 1978
14t11: Southwark, factory, Hatters, Furriers, Skin Merchants

Sennett Brothers who had the Castle Yard Factory off Holland St were a reminder of some of the earlier industries of Southwark, Hatters, Furriers and Skin Merchants. The official address of the company, liquidated in 1963 was in Hopton St.

Renny’s Dining Rooms, Southwark, 1978
14t22 Southwark, cafe, restaurant,

Renny’s Dining Rooms seem to have disappeared with no other trace on the Internet, and while it had been clearly at No 41, I can’t recall exactly where it stood. But I think from the name it was probably on Rennie St, just a little to the west of the Blackfriars Rd, possibly close to its start on Upper Ground, but no trace of it remains. But the whole area had a strong connection to the Rennie family

The street will have got its name from the engineers John Rennie the Elder and John Rennie the Younger who had their engineering works in nearby Holland St, but lived at 27 Stamford St, a few yards from where Rennie St crosses. They were the best-known civil engineers of their era, with the elder responsible for many canals and other great schemes, including many bridges. The old Waterloo Bridge was perhaps the best known by the father, while his son built London Bridge, which was sold in 1967 and some of its stones used to build a replica in Arizona. There was also Rennies Wharf nearby.

Porn & Dunwoody, Bear Gardens, Southwark, 1978
14u22: southwark, works, yard,

OXO advert, Parker Horwell and Kirk Ltd, Southwark, 1978
14u24: Southwark, factory, engravers, die stampers, Victorian, Edwardian

Parker Horwell and Kirk Ltd were engravers, and the Southwark Borough Commercial & Industrial Guide gives their address as 14 Southwark Bridge Rd, SE1, where it bridges over Park St. There are now 2 large blocks on each side of Park St, Rose Court at 2 and City Gate House at 22, and nothing between. I think this building was on Park St with an entrance on Southwark Bridge Road, with the large OXO advert facing the main road.

There is of course a far better known OXO advert around a kilometre to the east on the OXO Tower, built into the architecture of the Liebig’s Extract of Meat Company’s factory to get around a ban on advertising on the South Bank. Presumably there was no such ban away from the river.

Grey & Martin’s City Lead Mills, Southwark Bridge Road, Southwark, 1978
14u25: Southwark, factory, lead mills, Victorian

Just across the Southwark Bridge Rd from Parker Horwell and Kirk, where now the FT building stands were the City Lead Mills of Grey & Marten Ltd (my London’s Industrial Heritage site puts them on the wrong bridge) whose address was City Lead Works, Southwark Bridge, London, S.E1. To the right in the distance you can see Cannon St railway bridge and Adelaide House, on the north bank of the Thames next to London Bridge.

The company was established in 1863 and was apparently still in business in the 1960s and among other things sold leaded windows from an address in Little Park St as well as making lead containers and protective lead sheeting for medical X-ray and radioactive equipment.

More to follow….
______________________________________________________

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________