Page 10 of London 1986 begins in the city of London, and strongly features a remarkable set of figures around the Institute of Chartered Accountants building from 1890-93 in Great Swan Alley, off Moorgate a little to the north of the Bank of England. Above its first floor windows is a long frieze of figures representing various trades and figures, some dating from the 1890s and others added in the 1930s and 1960s when the building was extended. Among them you can see Wren holding a model of St Pauls Cathedral.
But apparently of more interest to me were what Pevsner describes as the “small very female termini caryatids” whose figures seemed very much at odds with my ideas both of the Victorians and of accountants and on whom I expended far to much film.
I managed to drag myself away from the sirens of the ICA and out of the City into Petticoat Lane and the area around this, finding as well as a market a large group of Christians armed with muscial instruments.
Later I returned to the City for more pictures, including some of one of my favourite modern buildings in the city, the Exhibition hall, Magistrates’ court and Offices by Richard Gilbert Scott at 65 Basinghall Street with its wonderful concrete roofs.
The city’s Highwalks also attracted my attention, part of a post-war vision of separating pedestrians from traffic by visionary architects who perhaps failed to appreciate the tremendous residue of street-level development that anchored people to the ground. It worked for areas that had been largely obliterated by bombing, particularly the Barbican, but could never become sufficiently comprehensive elsewhere across the city to make sense. It did however provide photographers with some useful elevated viewpoints.
At the end of the page are a few pictures from Bromley-by-Bow and Stratford back rivers, including some of the near derelict lock linking the City Mill River and St Thomas’s Creek with the tidal Waterworks River. I think this lock dated from the 1930s when the City Mill River was enlarged and other work done as a part of a flood relief plan for the area (and also to give work to the unemployed.) Because the Waterworks River was then tidal, the water level in it could be either above or below that in the City Mill river and there are two pairs of gates at this end of the lock. These were replaced by modern gates a few years ago, but a new lock was built at Three Mills as a part of the Olympic redevelopment, which probably makes the double gate redundant.
