Santacon Comes to Town: On Saturday 15th December 2015 hundreds of santas, some elves, the odd reindeer and a few others converged on Trafalgar Square at the end of the annual Santacon event.
Santas celebrate on the plinth of Nelson’s Column
Santacon described itself as “a non-profit, non-political, non-religious and non-sensical Christmas parade“, though that makes it sound rather more organised than it is, with hundreds roaming the streets with their friends, largely sticking to routes from various starting points published shortly before the event and indulging in a considerable amount of festive drinking.
“Most of those taking part were young, in their teens or twenties, but there were a few older participants, although most of the beards on show were profuse, white and fake, as well as some younger children and at least one baby elf.”
Police don’t like it, I think mainly because it interferes with the great god of traffic as santas often spill across roads though they probably call it “inconvenience to the public”. But the great majority of the public seem to be amused and welcome the spectacle. And some even join in the festivities.
One particularly controversial aspect has been the friendly rivalry between elves and santas which erupts into battles between the two groups pelting each other with Brussels sprouts. It’s something firmly deprecated by both Santacon organisers and police, but elves will be elves.
A Santa uses his guitar as a bat to hit Brussels sprouts back
It would be unusual for a Brussels sprout to inflict any real damage – I was hit be several while taking these pictures, but it does seem rather a waste of my favourite Christmas vegetable.
Some had a rather minimal Santa outfit
Santacon in London seemed to reach a peak around 2010, though I think I last photographed it in 2018. The date for 2025, announced only at the last minute, was December 6th, but I didn’t go.
The conclusion to my 2012 post included a snippet of history: “The first mass event with people in Santa costumes began with a street theatre group in Copenhagen in 1974, but the event took off in the USA in the 1990s and has spread to cities across the world. Some of those taking part see it as a protest against the commercialisation of Christmas, but for most it’s simply a fun day out in the city drinking on the street with friends.”
The Chenies, Pancras Rd, Somers Town, Camden, 1990, 90-2e-41
This 8 storey block was built in a vaguely Art Deco style in the late 1940s as council flats for St Pancras Borough Council, one of two blocks in the Godlington Street Estate. Later it passed to the London Borough of Camden. John Russell, an adviser to Henry VIII was given the title Earl of Bedford in 1551 and the Bedford family later gained other titles including that of Baron Rusell of Chenies. The Bedford estate owns much of Bloomsbury and some other parts of Camden and in the 16th century acquired Chenies Manor in Buckinghamshire by marriage.
The former premises of Pancras Tyres which had moved, though it was now impossible to see where they had moved to, I could still read 56 PEN, but there are a surprising number of streets in London beginning with Pen. The notice obscuring the rest of the address claims that (despite the move) the gates are in constant use, but they were certainly not while I was there.
St Pancras Old Church, St Pancras Old Burial Ground, Pancras Rd, Somers Town, Camden, 1990, 90-2e-43
This Grade II* listed 11-13th Century church was enlarged by A D Gough and R L Roumieu in 1847-8 and later ‘restored’ with Norman remodelling by A W Blomfield, Very little can now be seen of the original Norman building, but there are claims that there are some much older Roman remains in parts of the walls, and that this was a place of worship possibly as long ago as AD 314, A 6th century altar stone was found here.
The church remains in use as “a traditional Anglo-Catholic church that rejects the ordination of women as priests and bishops” and as a music venue.
The Hardy Tree, St Pancras Old Burial Ground, Pancras Rd, Somers Town, Camden, 1990, 90-2e-22
The railway line out of St Pancras Station runs through St Pancras Old Burial Ground and before it could be built in 1865 many of the graves their had to be dug up and moved. Some were piled up in a heap here, with the young Thomas Hardy, then an assistant to architect Arthur Blomfield, delegated to be the overseer for the work. At the centre of the pile of gravestones was an seed or small sapling, which sprouted and grew into the large ash tree whose trunk can just be seen in my picture and which became known and loved as ‘The Hardy Tree’.
Sadly the tree became infected with a fungus in 2014, severely weakening it and on 27th December 2022 it collapsed. A beech sapling was planted in 2024 to replace the original tree.
Tomb, Sir John Soane, St Pancras Old Burial Ground, Pancras Rd, Somers Town, Camden, 1990, 90-2e-26
Sir John Soane (1753 – 1837) was one of Britain’ greatest architects, the son of a bricklayer who rose to became a professor of architecture and was responsible for influential Neo-Classical buildings including the Bank of England and Dulwich Picture Gallery.
He designed this Grade I listed tomb following the death of his wife in 1815 and it was erected here in 1816. His wife, Soane and his son were all buried here. In 1924, Giles Gilbert Scott (son of Sir George Gilbert Scott architect of St Pancras Station and hotel) walked in the burial ground and was inspired by the central part of this tomb for his entry to the comptition to design a telephone box. His winning entry, the K2, produced in 1926 was the iconic telephone box – though it changed a little over the years, developing into the 1935 K6 model.
Gasholders, Goods Way and Midland Road: Continuing with pictures from my walk on Sunday 18th February 1990 – the first post on this was Between Kings Cross & St Pancras – 1990.
Gas Holders, Goods Way, Kings Cross, Camden, 1990, 90-2d-16
I photographed the gasholders here on various occasions and from various places, both in black and white and in colour. The Pancras Gasworks and those at Shoredittch were the first gas works of the Imperial Gas Light Company (later the Imperial Gas Light and Coke Co) were built in 1822 on Battlebridge Road beside the Regent’s Canal. In the 1860s it was still the largest gas works in Britain if not the world, but soon it was eclipsed by others.
Although the gas works closed in 1904 and was dismantled three years later, the gasholders continued in us for gas storage for gas from the company’s vast Beckton gasworks and were only finally decommissioned around 2000 well after town gas had been replaced by natural gas.
These three gasholders were originally built in 1879, replacing an earlier triplet from the 1860s designed by engineer John Clark. He had them built as ‘telescopic’ holders with two interlocking sections or ‘lifts’ around the outside of the ‘bell’ which could rise up inside the guide frames to increase the capacity.
As the Grade II listing text states this involved “replacing the guide frames in their entirety by the contractors Westwood and Wright under the direction of John Clark. The columns of the new guide frames observed classical rules so that the lowest tier was in the Tuscan order, the middle in the Doric and the topmost in a simplified version of Corinthian.”
These small industrial workshops were also demolished in the redevelopment of the area for the building of St Pancras International.
Water Point, St Pancras Station, Goods Way, Somers Town, Camden, 1990, 90-2e-01
This Grade II listed water point is close to the new location of the gasholder frames and also the redeveloped coal drops on the north side of the canal. Built around 1870 for the Midland Railway it was probably designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott’s architects office.
Like the gasholders its original location was in the way of St Pancras International and was moved around 2001 to its new location on Camley St, some 700 yards to the north. When built it was condemned by some architectural critics for being an inappropriate use of Gothic for a functional building, but it well matched the station and hotel.
Together with the Granary building and others in the area according to Historic England it forms “an evocative ensemble of former industrial buildings of considerable urban landscape value.” Having a theme park like this is certainly better than losing these structures completely but it isn’t any real replacement for the original.
Photographers Christmas Walk: Six years ago on Thursday 7th December I celebrated the Christmas season with a walk around the City of London with four other photographers, old friends I had known – and occasionally worked with – for over 20 years.
We began at the lowest level of the Guildhall Art Gallery where there are the ruins of London’s Roman Coliseum under the glass area of floor
It was something we have been doing every year for quite a few years, though in the 1990s there used to be a dozen or so of us. I’ll be making another similar outing this year, though its a rather sobering thought that of the five of us who were there in 2017, two have since died. This year there will be only be three of us.
Walking across Guildhall Yard. The much-missed John Benton-Harris (centre) always complained about the pictures I took of him
Not all of the others in the original group have died – some have moved away, and one or two others – as in 2017 – are too busy to come at this time of year. But it’s a time when we will remember them all – and lift a glass to the memory of the dead as well as celebrating we are still here.
A well-known gateway in Throgmorton Street
I’ll leave you to read what I wrote about the walk on My London Diary in 2017, but I think the pictures I took as we walked around show some interesting parts of London, and I’ll say a little here about one of the places we visited.
Walking around the City gave us a thirst – and we went into the Crosse Keys in the grand building of the former Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank on Gracechurch Street. Wetherspoons may be owned by a man whose politics I loathe, but I have to admire the way they have found a new life for buildings such as this. And the building is a grand one, even though it is a reminder of the hey-day of Empire, funded by exploitation of the people and resources of an age when Britain ruled the world – and did so extremely bloodily.
This Grade II listed banking hall was designed by William Campbell Jones (1862-1951) and built in 1912-13 – you can read much more about the building here.
Now the building is a pub with an unusually wide and changing range of real ales – and whatever their faults, all Wetherspoons keep their beers well and the prices are – by London standards – keen. Though as you can read I wasn’t entirely won over by ‘Smokestack Lightning’.
I get in the picture at last
It took some dragging for me to get the group of four of us (one had sulked and gone away as we entered the pub) out while there was still enough light to take pictures, and I led them down to the river.
We walked back to the bus stop at St Paul’s Churchyard across a small remaining part of the City’s highwalks, part of a post-war scheme to separate pedestrians and traffic, doomed from its inception by the nature of the City. I had photographed them extensively in many panoramas in the 1990s. I think we then ate and had a few more drinks at a pub in Holborn.
Gate Gourmet & a Bike Ride: On Sunday December 4th 2005 I got on my bike and rode the roughly 1l miles to Southall, where I locked up my bike (not the Brompton, but an old CinellI racer I’d got many years ago for my 13th birthday) and photographed a protest by workers sacked from their jobs at Heathrow airport catering firm Gate Gourmet.
There is an excellent article on the Striking Women website which gives the background to the dispute and explains why 56 women workers of South Asian origin felt betrayed by the agreement reached by the TGWU over the dispute and refused the compensation offered of between £5000 and £8000 – and refused to leave quietly – though most of the workers took the money rather than fight for justice.
The workers and their shop stewards received little support from the official trade union movement in their fight for justice and the TGWU hardship fund ended its support in January 2006, and the TGWU (by then part of UNITE) cease all support in 2009. Around a dozen of the workers – mainly those who were for various reasons not at work when Gate Gourmet locked the workers out – eventually won claims for unfair dismissal.
The dispute made very clear the extent to which union powers had been emasculated by a succession of Acts passed under Thatcher – the Employment Act 1980, Employment Act 1982, Trade Union Act 1984, Trade Union Art 1990, Employment Act 1988, Employment Act 1990. John Major continued with the Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act 1993 and then Blair and New Labour took over the job.
But even given all this, the TGWU ended up caving in to the employers and giving them everything they wanted in the settlement it made.
Below (with minor corrections) is the post I wrote back in 2005.
Gate Gourmet – the Struggle Continues
Southall, December 4, 2005
Gate Gourmet was split off from British Airways in 1997 to cut costs by out-sourcing their catering. It was sold to US company Texas Pacific in 2002, and they also decided to cut costs. This seems to have meant increasing workload, bringing in more managers (why?) and replacing skilled and experienced staff by unskilled workers. They went into a dispute with the TGWU (Heathrow’s major union) over layoffs and worsening conditions, then on 10 August 2005, took on 120 temporary workers.
Their aim was to provoke an unofficial walkout, which would allow them to sack the workers. The workers held a union meeting in the canteen and were told by management that if they were not back at work in 3 minutes they were all sacked. It is claimed that management had locked the doors just to make sure they didn’t return. The workers were then forcibly evicted from the premises by the private security guards the management just happened to have standing around waiting.
Britain’s anti-union laws (thanks to Mrs Thatcher) stack the odds against workers, allowing unscrupulous management to get away with most things short of murder if they put their minds to it.
The TGWU were hamstrung by a High Court injunction, which prevented them from doing much to help the workers. The only thing that helped them was illegal action by their former colleagues at BA, said to have cost that company £40 million. So eventually BA forced Gate Gourmet to come to some kind of compromise with the TGWU, but this has failed to satisfy most of the workers, who wanted their jobs back and decent working conditions. So, although all the papers reported it as over, the action still continues. When my wife flew BA from Heathrow a few days ago, she got a voucher to get sandwiches in the departure lounge rather than in-flight catering.
This is a dispute that highlights the need for proper trade union laws that give workers and unions a fair deal. It shows how union weakness has allowed the Labour Party to renege on the promises it made in opposition and to turn its back on its traditions of fair play. BA has also emerged as pretty short-sighted in its decision to out-source its catering, much as we have found out-sourcing to be a mistake over key services in hospitals and schools.
After the protest I was relieved to find my bike still in one piece where I had locked it and rode home. On my way to Southall I had time to spare and stopped to take a few pictures -and just a few more on my way home. Here is what I wrote in 2005.
I took my usual route to Southall on a push-bike – it takes me around 45 minutes if I don’t stop. but I nearly always do stop at least once to take some pictures. So here are a few pictures from around Heathrow, including a farm. Heathrow swallowed up some of the most productive arable land in the country including a number of fine orchards, but there are still a few farmed areas around its edges – cutting down the dangers of a crash, although some of the most used approaches come in low over many homes.
It was never a suitable site for a major airport, but the chances of any government biting the bullet and closing it down seem low. We should have been running it down for years, but instead have built 2 new terminals (both of which the airport authority said they would never need) and further disastrous development looks likely.
I spent a long day in July 1994 travelling up and down the recently opened Beckton Extension, taking some pictures from the trains but also getting off at every station and explouring the area around the stations, sometimes at some length. The previous set of pictures, DLR – Beckton Extension – 1994, began from around the end of the line at Beckton, and these images start with those from a walk from the next station along, Gallions Reach.
In the 2000s there was a plan to extend the DLR from here to Dagenham Dock, but these were cancelled in 2008; now plans have been approved for an extension to a Beckton Riverside station and on under the Thames to Thamesmead.
From the Gallions roundabout you can go north and south along Woolwich Manor Way or take the more recent roads, Royal Albert Way, Royal Docks Road and Atlantis Avenue. My picture was made from Woolwich Manor Way looking roughly north. In the centre of the roundabout is a pumping station, which I think is a 16-sided building, though I always lose count. On top in its centre is a small 8 sided pimple. Locally listed, it was built for Thames Water in 1974.
Ruins, Beckton Gas Works, Beckton, Newham, 1994, 94-717-61
Beckton Gas Works were built on the East Ham Levels from 1868-1870 by the Gas Light and Coke Company which had been founded in 1812 by Frederick Albert Winsor and was not only the UK’s first gas company but the first public gas company in the world. It was for some years the largest gas works in Europe and until 1969 produced gas for industry and homes across much of East London.
The site was named Beckton after then company chairman Simon Adams Beck and covered a huge of 550 acres. As well as giving room for the huge works, its site on the Thames well to the east of London meant that larger colliers could bring coal to it than to the gas works closer to the city.
As well as town gas, the site also contained the Beckton Product Works which became the largest UK manufacture of tar and ammonia by-products. Beckton was a huge local employer, providing jobs for as many as 10,000 men.
For many years after it closure the site remained derelict and was used in a number of films, most notably Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam War film ‘Full Metal Jacket’. Back in 1994 there was little left on the site which is now largely a retail park.
I’d taken a few pictures in the area in black and white and colour ten years earlier when more of the works where still there – such as this one:
Beckton Gas Works, Beckton, Newham, 1984
[If you open the image you can browse a few more on Flickr.]
I went up to the station platform and made this picture as I waited for a train to arrive. At right you can see the Thames Water pumping station in the middle of the Gallions roundabout. On the left others waiting on the platform can be seen in a mirror. Beyond that is the Royal Albert Dock and in the distance the hills on the other side of the Thames. In the sky is a plane shortly after take-off from London City Airport.
Beckton Park Station, DLR, Beckton, Newham, 1994, 94-717-31
I can’t remember if I got off the train first at Cyprus station or continued directly to the next stop, Beckton Park. The two stations are fairly similar and both are in the centre of roundabouts in the Royal Albert Way, built for the LDDC and opened in 1990.
DLR, Royal Albert Dock, West Beckton, Newham, 1994, 94-717-11
I got back on a train to go to the next stop on the line, Royal Albert, where I took a walk around the area beside Royal Albert Dock dock, making this picture from its west end looking east down the dock. In the distance is a DLR train approaching and to the left is the road leading the the Connaught Bridge. I think the brick structure at left of picture is a ventilator for the railway tunnel below.
Connaught Bridge, Royal Albert Dock, Silvertown, Newham, 1994, 94-717-12
I made this from a temporary footpath across the channel between the Royal Victoria and Royal Albert Docks a few yards to the west of the Connaught Bridge. Under the bridge is the full 1.75 miles of the Royal Albert Dock, built in 1875-80 and opened by the Duke of Connaught. The dock finally closed to commercial traffic in 1981.
In 1984 I got permission to go onto the site and photograph the remaining buildings – virtually all now demolished. They had no great architectural value but were an important part of London’s history. You can see some of the black and white pictures I took in the book The Deserted Royals – there is a good preview with over 40 pictures on the website and the PDF version is reasonably priced – and rather more, including colour work on Flickr – in the two albums 1984 London Photographs and 1984 Docklands Colour.
More Docklands colour from 1994 in my next post in this series.
Between Kings Cross & St Pancras: A week after my previous walk which began from Kings Cross I was back there again for another walk on Sunday 18th February 1990, beginning with a few pictures close to the station in Kings Cross and Somers Town. This was an area I’d photographed in earlier years but still interested me. Since 1990 it has of course changed dramatically.
Cheney Rd, Kings Cross, Camden, 1990, 90-2d-34
Cheney Road is no longer on the map of London although one of the buildings on it remains. It ran north-east from Pancras Road along the side of Kings Cross Station, then turned north-west towards Battlebridge Road and the gasholders you see here. Of course those gasholders are no longer where they were in 1990, but were moved further north and to the opposite side of the Grand Union Canal as a part of the redevelopment of the area including the addition of the Eurostar lines into St Pancras.
This street was a popular film location, best known for its use in The Ladykillers. In the middle distance at left you can see the roof of the German Gymnasium, with its distinctive windows at its top, I think the only building in my picture that remains (at least in part) in situ.
St Pancras Hotel and stating seen looking south down Pancras Road on a sunny Sunday morning. I think I used the controlled parking zone sign to cut down flare. A taxi is turning into Kings Cross over a short section of cobbles.
The station was completed in 1869 and the Midland Grand Hotel in 1876, though it had its first visitors in 1873. Both were designed by George Gilbert Scott and are Grade I listed. They were built for the Midland Railway whose main lines ran from here to Manchester, Sheffield and Nottingham via Derby. The hotel was expensive to maintain and closed in 1935, then becoming used as railway offices by the London, Midland & Scottish Railway.
My first trip to Manchester in 1962 was from here, but soon after in 1967 the central section of the route – one of England’s most scenic – was closed. Now the line ends at Matlock (with a Couple of miles of preserved railway to the north, and we have change at Derby on our journeys to Matlock.
Pancras Rd, Somers Town, Camden, 1990, 90-2d-21
Looking north up Pancras Road with the arches of the station to the left of the picture and one of the gasholders in the distance. The curved pediment above the door in the middle block at right is the entrance to the German Gymnasium. This end of the Grade II listed building was demolished when St Pancras International was built, and the west end of the building was replaced by modern brickwork in keeping with the other walls of the building.
Turnhalle, German Gymnasium, Pancras Rd, Kings Cross, Camden, 1990, 90-2f-66
This was the original west end of the Turnhalle at 26 Pancras Rd.
Pancras Rd, Somers Town, Camden, 1990, 90-2d-22
Kings Cross Automatic Gearbox Centre at 87-89 Pancras Road, Newport Joinery at 92 and other small businesses along the west side of athe road were all demolished to make room of the new platforms for St Pancras International
Stairs, Stanley Buildings, Stanley Passage, Kings Cross, Camden, 1990, 90-2d-15
A notice at the left of the stairs of Stanley Buildings flats, says NO to the British Rail bill in Parliament which would see the building of the new international station and the demolition of much of the conservation area. Despite much opposition, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Act was passed in 1996.
Stanley Buildings were built in 1865, designed by Matthew Allen for the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company under the guidance of Sydney Waterlow. Grade II listed in 1994, but that has not enough to save them as they were and one block was entirely demolished and the remaining block incorporated into a modern building, losing much of its character. The listing text ends: “Among the earliest blocks built by Waterlow’s influential and prolific IIDC, Stanley Buildings are in addition an important part of a dramatic Victorian industrial landscape.” Their remnant now sits largely hidden in a modern development.
DLR – Beckton Extension: One of the earliest projects I had used a panoramic camera on was the building of the Docklands Light Railway Beckton extension which had been a part of a transport show at the Museum of London in 1992. I had made these pictures on black and white film – you can view these along with many other pictures in my Flickr album ‘1992 London Photos‘
So when the Beckton branch from Poplar opened at the end of March 1994 I made a note to myself to return there and make more panoramas along the completed route, but this time working in colour. But I was busy with other things and it was only in July 1994 that I finally managed to go and take some new pictures.
Station Entrance, DLR, Beckton, Newham, 1994, 94-715-13
I began by taking a DLR train to the end of the line, Beckton Station, and then walked out to make a few pictures in the area surrounding the station.
Horses, sculpture, Brian Yale, Beckton Bus Station, Woolwich Manor Way, Beckton, Newham, 1994, 94-716-62
I’d first visited Beckton in 1981, and had gone back briefly when I was working on the DLR construction in 1982, but by 1994 things were very different to my first visit. Then Beckton was still a largely uninhabited area, noted for its gas works – then mainly in ruins and for being at the end oof London’s Northern Outfall sewer.
Station Entrance, DLR, Beckton, Newham, 1994, 94-716-51
There had also been a large postwar prefab estate, but that had been swept away and plans to build large council estates to help solve Newham’s huge housing problems were swept away with the advent of the London Docklands Development Corporation, who sold off most of the land for private housing. The LDDC also commissioned the Horses sculpture by Brian Yale, who had worked for many years as an artist and environmental designer for the architecture department of the Greater London Council, creating “designing murals, sculptures, public art works and play spaces for GLC housing estates and schools“. He was also commisioned by them to produce the long 50 panel The Docklands Frieze at Prince Regent Station.
Robert, a 0-6-0 tank engine was built in 1933 for the Staveley Coal and Iron works and worked in their sidings until 1969. It then went to various preserved railway sites, at one of which it gained its name. Kew Bridge Steam Museum in 1993 restored it to look like a Beckton Gas Works engine (presumably for the LDDC) and it was placed here. After some vandalism Newham Council took Robert over and moved it close to Stratford Station. The engine was again moved during building works assocatied with the 2012 Olympics and finally came back to a different location outside Stratford Station in 2011. It was still there when I last went to Stratford a few weeks ago.
Beckton, Newham, 1994, 94-716-43
I took a long walk around Beckton, and made quite a few normal format images in black and white, but relatively few colour panoramas, mainly close to the station, then walked rather futher around the area making more panoramas, only relatively few of them on-line at Flickr – two of those in this post are online for the first time including ‘Link Road, Beckton’ below.
Link Road, Beckton, Newham, 1994, 94-716-11
I this was part of one of the ring road schemes around London that was never built, Ringway 2, which was planned go under the River Thames at Gallions Reach in a new tunnel between Beckton and Thamesmead. When I made this picture it simply came to a dead end not far on.
More panoramic pictures from around the DLR Beckton branch in a later post.
House, 1A, Cornwallis Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1990, 90-2d-56
This 3 storey detached house on Cornwallis Road, just a few yards down from Tollington Way, attracted my attention for its unusual decoration above what seemed a very ordinary door and window. According to Streets With a Story the street was developed in three periods as Shadwell Road, Esher Villas and Cornwallis Road in 1863, 1879 and 1885. This house probably dates from the latter part of that development but I’ve found nothing about it on-line
Royal Northern Hospital, Tollington Way, Holloway, Islington, 1990, 90-2d-42
The Royal Northern Hospital was founded in York Rd (York Way) in 1856 at his own expense by a surgeon who had been sacked from University College Hospital for smacking a patient’s bottom. The hospital provided free services for North London’s Poor as well as treating railway workers. But the railway bought the house and they had to move, using several properties in the area. Finally it got is own home and the Great Northern Central Hospital opened on Holloway Road in 1888, changing its name to the Royal Northern Hospital in 1921 and expanding to Tollington Way in the 1930s. It merged with the Whittington Hospital in 1963. The facade of the main building has been retained on Holloway Rd and the building is the Northern Medical Centre
Holloway Rd, Holloway, Islington, 1990, 90-2d-43
This picture was made from Tollington Way looking to the rather grand Italianate terraced villas on the opposite side of Holloway Road, Belgrave Terrace. They were locally listed in 1978. At left is The Cock Tavern at 596 Holloway Road. The pub was built in the 1880s and in the 2000s became a live music venue and bar, now Nambucca. Damaged by fire in December 2008 it reopened in 2010 and was refurbished in 2014 only to close in 2022 but unexpectedly reopen in 2024.
VICTORY TO THE IRA, Landseer Rd, Holloway, Islington, 1990, 90-2d-46
Holloway is one of the more densely populated areas of London with a very multicultural population including many Irish among its residents, and among them a significant number who supported the Irish struggle against the English occupiers in Northern Ireland. In 1990 we were in the middle of active attacks by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on targets in London – the following year they attacked Downing Street using mortar shells and in 1992 a powerful bomb at the Baltic Exchange destroyed it and other buildings in the City of London, following this in 1993 with another bomb in Bishopsgate.
The street was named after the animal painter and sculptor Sir Edwin Landseer, best known now for the lions at the base of Nelson’s column. He became a ‘national treasure‘ and his death in 1873 gave rise to mourning across the nation and large crowds lined the streets as his funeral cortège made its way to St Paul’s Cathedral. Probably the street dates from around then.
The building is still there on Holloway Road, but sadly is no longer an Egg & Butter Merchant and has a new shopfront – and a bus shelter on the pavement in front of it.
As I made my way to the station at the end of my walk I could not resist this shop window with a rather strange mix of products including those listed and some rather strange health supplements. I only stopped long enough to take a picture and wasn’t tempted to buy anything.
My next walk a week later was also in North London and will be the subject of a later post.
Stanford-le-Hope, Corringham, Fobbing and Vange: On Thursday November 17th 2005 I took my Brompton folding bike on the train to Waterloo, cycled from there to Fenchurch Street station and then took another train to Stanford-le-Hope, a small town in Essex east of Tilbury. For some years I’d been photographing on both sides of the River Thames in Kent and Essex, but this was an area I’d yet to explore.
View down Fobbing HIll of Coryton.
Much of the area is marsh and there are few roads, but it is also the site of Coryton and Thames Haven oil terminals.The building of London Gatway Port began there three years later and it opened in November 2013, “a fully integrated logistics facility” located 30 miles east of London, “able to handle some of the largest container ships in the world.”
Lane between Stanford-le-Hope and Corringham
I wasn’t able to access the oil terminals but could see them from a distance both on this ride and on other rides I made to Canvey Island.
The distance is dominated by Coryton
Below is what I wrote about the ride in 2005:
The Thames estuary across the fields with Kent in the distance. Near Corringham, Thurrock, Essex.
We had some fine weather in the middle of the month, which got me out on my bike again to take a ride around the north side of the Thames estuary, from Stanford-le-Hope – where Joseph Conrad lived and wrote for a couple of years along to Corringham village, then on to Fobbing and past Vange marshes to Pitsea station.
The Bell, Corringham
The first miles were on low-lying farmland, with the skyline dominated by the oil tanks and refinery at Coryton (named for the Cory brothers who bought the site in 1923). The old village at Corringham is on a low hill, and parts remain very picturesque. Fobbing has some more serious hills, its main street falling sharply from the church down to the marshes. I took the bike a short way on the footpaths across the marsh, but it wasn’t a suitable surface for riding.
Coryton from Fobbing churchyard
Large-scale development is expected in the area, as the former Shell Haven site, just to the west of Coryton, is to become a large container port, London Gateway.
Peasant’s Revolt memorial arch
In the recreation ground at Fobbing is a memorial arch. In May 1381, a tax collector, Thomas Bampton, came to the village to demand unpaid poll tax from the peasants of Fobbing, Stanford and Corringham; his demands were so unreasonable that this caused a riot and the villagers threw him out.
Coryton and Thames Haven from Vange
By the following day, three of Bampton’s men had been killed and the revolt was spreading through Essex and further afield. News doubtless travelled across the river to Kent, where John Ball had earlier been arrested for his radical views, and Kent peasants also revolted. The arch was erected for the 600 anniversary in 1981. [More about the 1381 Great Rising or Peasant’s Reevolt on Wikipedia]
Fobbing churchyard and view towards Southend
North of the village, Marsh Lane is a bridleway leading out onto the marshes. There had been rather too much rain recently to make cycling along it easy, with large puddles and tractor-churned mud. After around three quarters of a mile, the track became just a grassy footpath and I turned round and made my way back up to the main road on the higher ground overlooking the marsh. [My Brompton soon becomes unrideable on very muddy ground, with mud between the mudguards and tyre locking the wheels – and a difficult job to scrape out.]
Vange is now very cut-off from its marshes, both by the railway line and the A13 road. I’d hoped to explore the marsh a little more, but when my front tyre got a puncture decided to make directly for Pitsea station and the trains home.
