peter Marshall | >Re-PHOTO

Kings Cross and Pentonville 1990

Kings Cross and Pentonville: Although I took a few pictures in the next few weeks, mainly on my way to or from meetings, it was well into February before I was able to go on another long photographic walk. Of course the weather at that time of year often isn’t too kind and days are short, but winter is the best season for photographing much of London’s buildings, as so much is hidden once trees come into leaf.

*Grays Inn Rd, Kings Cross, Camden, 1990, 90-2b-54*

I can’t now recall why I decided to return to the Kings Cross area on Sunday February 11th 1990, though I liked to revisit areas periodically, and the journey to the Victoria line station was an easy one, suitable for short days to give me more hours of usable light.

I left the station by the Pentonville Road entrance and walked back towards the main station, taking a couple of pictures on my way before heading down Grays Inn Road. This picture looking back towards Kings Cross Station includes both the station clock tower – I seem to have arrived shortly before 10am – and the well-known “lighthouse” built simply as advertising for Netten’s Oyster Bar. What seems an incredibly long horizontal pole holds one of the many traffic lights in the area .

*Posters, Grays Inn Rd, Kings Cross, Camden, 1990, 90-2b-55*

In the centre of these fly-posted posters is an advert for ‘THE BEST SHOP IN TOWN’, SHE-AN-ME at 123 Hammersmith Road, West Kensington, London W14. It offers ‘UNUSUAL – BONED DRESSES – 6″ HEEL BOOTS – LATEX RUBBER …’ and much more, a fetish shop specialising in PVC, rubberwear and bondage equipment. Although Yelp still has a listing for the business it is long gone; after some years as ‘Simply Pleasure’ it is now ‘Quick Local Store’ selling snacks, cold drinks, tobacco, souvenirs, toiletries and household items.

*Scales, Weights, 319-321, Grays Inn Rd, Kings Cross, Camden, 1990, 90-2b-56*

One of London’s more photographed signs, though now a little faded and above a Nail Bar and Computer Centre on this nicely curved building. The Greek Restuarant at 325 is now a fast-food place – and is flanked by two others.

Tattoo Studio, Pentonville Rd, Pentonville, Islington, 1990, 90-2b-43 — *Tattoo Studio, Pentonville Rd, Pentonville, Camden, 1990, 90-2b-43*

I walked back onto Pentonville Road, here the boundary between the London boroughs of Camden and Islington. Modern Jock’s Tattoo Studio on the south side was on the ground floor and Chestnuts Hair Studio for Men and Women through the same door on the first floor, illustrated by arrows for the non-literate. Born around 1920 British tattooing legend Jock Liddel started as a tattoo artist at the age of 16 in Scotland and his famous shop was at 287 Pentonville Road for many years. He died in 1995 but had moved down to Kent a few years earlier. His shop and several adjoining are now an American multinational fast food burger and fries chain.

*Signs, Caledonian Rd, Pentonville, Islington, 1990, 90-2b-34*

‘Kings X People Say NO’ to the Chunnel Terminal for Kings X – Chaos for London’ read the array of posters on the back of a road sign, one of four signs in this picture, along with those for the Autodrome, Peacemeal Whole Foods and Loseley Dairy Ice Cream.

I was briefly and peripherally involved with the Kings Cross Railway Lands Group and their ‘Planning for Real’ exercise with local residents which formed a basis for the comprehensive alternative plan published in their Kings Cross Railwaylands Towards a People’s Plan Full Report published in October 1991.

Of course their plans were not adopted but the opposition certainly played a part in the decision to drop the plans for a new Kings Cross and instead to develop St Pancras as the international terminal. As an article on Londonist points out, “The plans would have seen 83 homes and 58 shops demolished. The scale of destruction would have witnessed landmark listed buildings like the Scala pulled down … The entire block between Caledonian Road, York Way and Caledonia Street would have also been lost.”

*Northdown St, Caledonian Rd, Pentonville, Islington, 1990, 90-2b-23*

The Kings X Sauna on the corner of Northdown Street and more useful shops and offices on Caldedonian Road. The sauna at No.70 later became an estate agents.

*Mercantile House, All Saints St, Pentonville, Islington, 1990, 90-2b-25*

Further north on Caledonian Road I turned west into All Saints St where I photographed Mercantile House which appropriately later became home to global brand consultancy agency Wolff Olins – who have now moved to Southwark.

Work began in 2022 to transform this and other buildings on the site into Regent’s Wharf, “a ground-breaking new campus … created with the next generation of innovators in mind.”

Mercantile House was built in 1891 as the Head Office for Thorley’s Food for Cattle with their mill behind it on the bank of the Regent’s Canal. They had moved onto the site in 1857.

“A family owned business for over 100 years, Joseph Thorley’s Ltd was an iconic player of the industrial age, inventing and distributing ‘spicy aromatic condiments’ that would beef up your cattle, pep up your pigs and ensure your chicken laid the best clutch in the roost.

This MiracleGro for animals was made to a secret recipe and sold around the world even in far flung outposts such as the Falkland Islands, all from the headquarters at Regent’s Wharf in King’s Cross.”

“Thorley’s progressive ideas extended to their charming and playful marketing, with eye-catching advertising and branding that has become collectable today. Animal feeds went by many wonderful names such as Grula for Horses, the famous Thorley’s Cake that reared ‘Champions’, Ovum for chickens and Rabbitum.”

Battle of Cable St – 75 Years On

Battle of Cable St: On Sunday 2 October 2011 well over a thousand trade unionists and anti-fascists celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street when Mosley’s fascists were prevented from marching into London’s largely Jewish East End.

Since 2011 we have seen other celebrations of this famous event and the people of the East End have also come together to stop other racist organisations marching into the East End, notably the EDL.

In 1936 Oswald Mosley led the ‘British Union of Fascists’, an organisation modelled on Mussolilni’s Italian fascist paramilitary groups on a march designed to intimidate the large Jewish community in the East End.

Although various groups tried to get the march banned the Home Secretary sided with the fascists insisting their democratic right to march had to be upheld by the police. The fascists were also supported by the right wing press, particularly the Daily Mail, while more liberal newspapers urged people to stay away from the counter demonstration.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews had condemned the march as anti-Semitic, and they had advised people to stay away from the march as did the Labour Party. The opposition to Mosley was led by local members of the Communist Party of Great Britain including Phil Piratin who nine ears later became Communist MP for Mile End. They eventually persuaded the party to back the counter-demonstration.

Somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 people turned out to stop the fascists. Many were Jewish, and many were members or supporters of the Communist Party but the call brought out many others from the East End, including “Irish Catholics, Jews, Orthodox Jews, dockers and Somali seamen” in a huge mobilisation across the community.

There are three routes leading into the East End from the City of London where Mosely and people gathered at key points on them, particularly at Aldgate, where most of the fighting between police and protesters took place, particularly around Gardiner’s Corner – where a ten years ago Class War carried out their long series of Poor Doors protests against social apartheid in housing.

Police decided to try and force a way through at Cable Street a little to the south and tried to force a way through the crowds and remove the barricades they had set up.

According to Wikipedia, police managed to take and dismantle the first barrier but the anti-fascists set up another a few yards down the road.

“The police attempts to take and remove the barricades were resisted in hand-to-hand fighting and also by missiles, including rubbish, rotten vegetables and the contents of chamber pots thrown at the police by women in houses along the street … children’s marbles were also used to counter charges by mounted police.”

Eventually the police gave up and told Mosley to march with his followers back to the West End, where they held a rally in Hyde Park rather than those they had intended in Limehouse, Bow, Bethnal Green and Hoxton.

Seventy five years after the battle the crowd was rather smaller, but the well over a thousand who met at Aldgate included several veterans of the 1936 battle, among them 96 year old Max Levitas who led the march and spoke at the rally. He was also there and spoke at the 80th anniversary event in 2016.

The oldest person on the march was 106 year old lifelong political activist and suffragette Hetty Bower who had also been at the 1936 demonstration and was later one of the founder members of CND. I photographed her on several occasions at CND and other protests, the last at the Hiroshima Day commemoration in 2013 where she spoke briefly, a few months before her death.

*Beattie Orwell, 94, was another of the veterans of 1936*

You can read more about the Cable Street 75 event on My London Diary, where there are also many more pictures.
Battle of Cable St – 75 Years

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Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara – Southall 2005

Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara: On Saturday 1st October 2005 I enjoyed a tour of the largest Sikh Gurdwara in Europe. Building had begun in 2000 and the temple opened at the end of March 2003. The tour had been arranged by art and urban historian Mireille Galinou for the now long-defunct and much missed group ‘London Arts Café‘ – and you can still read more about on the web site I wrote for it, although the group came to an end in 2008.

Here is what I wrote about the visit in 2005 and a few of the pictures I took at the Gurdwara – there are more on My London Diary.

October started with a fine day, and I went to visit the largest Sikh Temple or Gurdwara in europe (and the fourth largest in the world) which opened a couple of years ago in Southall, along with a group of friends from the London Arts Café. We were shown around the building by one of the Sikh volunteer guides and also the architect, Richard Adams of Architect Co-Partnership, which had won the open competition to design the building. He had worked fully with the Sikh community to produce a building suited to their needs, and it does so impressively: clean simple surfaces, powerful colour in the windows and light streaming into the central stairway and lobby from the large window and glass roof areas.

The Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara serves the community, both for workship and for other needs. As well as a vast prayer hall officially capable of seating up to 3,000 people (and actually holding rather more at major festivals) there is a fine marriage room, and various other facilities including a Langar (Dining Hall); this free community kitchen can serve over 20,000 vegetarian meals over a festival weekend.

The Gurdwara had a powerfully religious atmosphere. On entering we followed the customary practice of removing our shoes, covering our heads with the scarves provided and washing our hands before commencing our visit.

At various points both our guide and the architect explained how the building served the basic Sikh tenets of service, humility and equality, and also the spiritual guidance from the Sri Guru Granth Sahib, the religious writings which are were appointed as spiritual head of the Sikh religion, the Eternal Guru, by Guru Gobind Singh around three hundred years ago.

Although the architecture and the prayer hall in particular were impressive, what made the strongest impression on me was the kitchen, especially the team of women working together. The food was excellent, a real pleasure to eat, although my still rather painful knee made it easier for me to stand and eat at one of the tables rather than in the traditional manner seated on the floor. Although food is free, those eating may perform some service to the temple in thanks for their food, or give an donation of some kind, which we gladly did.

Southall is now Britain’s holy city, apparently with places of worship for over 50 religions or denominations. Brother Daniel Faivre’s ‘Glimpses Of A Holy City‘ published in 2001 after more than 20 years of living in Southall gives a good insight into some of this diversity.

Unfortunately Brother Daniel Faivre’s 104 page spiral bound book published in 2001 is no longer available. The Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara is, according to Wikipedia one of ten Sikh Gurdwaras in Southall, which also has two large Hindu ‘Mandir’ temples, six Mosques and “more than ten Christian churches including 5 Anglican, one Roman Catholic (St Anselm’s Church), Baptist, Methodist and several Pentecostal or Independent.” In the 2021 Census, 28.5% of the population were Sikh, 24.1% Muslim, 22.6% Christian 22.6% and 14.2% Hindu.

More pictures on My London Diary include some taken in Southall after leaving the Gurdwara.

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Make Them Pay March, London – 2025

Make Them Pay March: Thousands came to the ‘Make Them Pay’ march from the BBC to Parliament Square in London on Saturday 20th September 2025, part of a global week of action on climate justice backed by an alliance of trade unions and campaigning organisations representing millions of workers, citizens and communities across Britain. They say ‘Billionaires have broken Britain – Make THEM pay to fix it‘ and demand the government tax the super-rich, protect workers rather than billionaires and make polluters pay.

The march assembled in nine blocks, in anticipation of this being an extremely large protest given the number of organisations supporting it, but many of these were hard to spot on the march, though they may have been more obvious at the rally that followed.

After a couple of hours photographing before the start and on the first mile or so of the march I was getting rather tired, but also finding that I was beginning to photograph exactly the same people and groups.

It was time for me to take a rest and eat my sandwiches before going to photograph a protest over job losses for cleaners working for University College on the campus and at halls of residence.

Here I’ll try to post a picture from each bloc as well as the list of the organisations involved – although there were many groups I could not identify on the march – and I apologise in advance for any pictures I have featured in the wrong blocs.

Bloc A: Parents, families and kids

London, UK. 20 Sept 2025. Create a better future.

Parents for Future, Mothers Rise Up and Mothers’ Manifesto.

Bloc B: Economic and social justice

Action Aid UK, Another Europe is Possible, Compass, Debt Justice, DPAC, Equal Right, Equality Trust, Fuel Poverty Action, Greens Organise, Green Party of England and Wales, Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, It’s Just Economics, Just Treatment, MenaFem Movement, New Economics Foundation, Patriotic Millionaires UK, Peace & Justice Project, Positive Money, Tax Justice UK, 350.org.

Bloc C: Palestine solidarity

London, UK. 20 Sept 2025. Ecocide in Gaza.

No named group took part, but there were a few Palestinian flags and a few individuals reminding us of the vast ecocide being inflicted on Gaza

Bloc D: Migrant and racial justice

Black Liberation Alliance, Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants,
Migrants Organise, No Borders in Climate Justice.

Bloc E: Workers and trade unions

Bakers’ Union, Equity, Fire Brigades Union, Greener Jobs Alliance, National Education Union.

Bloc F: Billionaires out of fashion

London, UK. 20 Sept 2025. Billionaires out of fashion.

Labour Behind the Label, No Sweat .

Bloc G: Faith groups

London, UK. 20 Sept 2025. No More Fossil Fuels.

CAFOD, Christian Climate Action, Christian Aid, Church Action on Poverty, Faith for the Climate, Muslim Aid, Muslim Charities Forum, Quakers in Britain.

Bloc H: Restore nature

River Action, Take Back Water, Zero Hour. I can’t find a picture featuring these groups, but there were Extinction Rebellion supporters with a large fish.

Bloc J: Climate justice.

London, UK. 20 Sept 2025. Cut the ties to fossil fuels.

Anticapitalist Resistance, Campaign Against Climate Change, Climate Resistance, Debt for Climate, Ecojustice Ireland, Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth EWNI, Global Justice Now, Global Witness, Greater Manchester Climate Justice Coalition, Green Economy Coalition, Greenpeace, Heat Strike, London Mining Network, Make Polluters Pay, Oxfam, People & Planet, Possible, Stop Rosebank, Tipping Point, Working Class Climate Alliance, War on Want, Yorkshire and Humber Climate Justice Coalition.

Many more pictures in my Facebook album Make Them Pay March including some that didn’t seem to fit in any of the blocs.

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Surbiton Festival 2006

Surbiton Festival: On Saturday 30th September 2006 I went to Surbiton to photograph the annual Surbiton Festival for the second time.

As a part of my photography of London I attended quite a few local events across London in the first decade of this century – in September 2004 I had photographed the Surbiton Festival and also the Angel Canal Festival, Walthamstow Festival, the City of London Flower Show, Lady Somerset Road Street Party, Brick Lane Festival, Thames Day, the Shoreditch Car Free Festival and Leytonstone Car-Free Festival, as well as several political protests and other events. I found it interesting how some of these reflected the different population of these areas.

But in 2006 I had another reason to go back to Surbiton, in that I was to appear with two other photographers, Mike Seaborne and Paul Baldesare in the exhibition Another London, at Kingston Museum in January 2007 and I wanted to include some pictures from the local area in my section of the show.

You can still see all 26 of my pictures from that show (and those by the other two. My set included pictures from both the Surbiton Festivals I attended, as well as one from the July 2006 Kingston Regatta, two from the September 2006 Kingston Festival and one of Koreans watching the World Cup in nearby New Malden.

Surbiton is centred around Surbiton Station, a classic 1930s Southern Railway modernist structure and an important commuter station with an incredibly frequent service – around ten trains an hour to Waterloo, the faster taking around 20 minutes.

When it was first developed in the 1840s it was called ‘Kingston-upon-Railway‘, only getting its current name in 1869 – although this is a name with medieval roots, with Suth Bere-tun being Old English for an outlying farm – then part of the Royal Manor of Kingston (Norbiton was closer to the centre.)

*Only one military vehicle joined this year’s parade – unless you count the model held out in the driver’s hand.*

Kingston is an ancient town – it was the town where Anglo-Saxon kings were crowned – but the Surbiton Festival is a modern tradition, begun by the Rotary Club a little over 25 years ago. It seems to have grown considerably since I went in 2006. The 2025 festival was last Saturday and though I considered briefly whether to go, I decided I had other things to do. Perhaps next year…

*Beavers, Cubs, scouts and guides were all present*

You can see a few more of the pictures I took in 2006 on My London Diary. The short text I wrote is a little hidden, so here it is in full – though there is more information in the picture captions.

The Annual Surbiton Festival seems still to be very much a local community based affair, and takes over one of the main shopping streets, still mainly lined by small shops. This year it’s centre was the station car park, with room for a brass band, morris dancing and other activities.

The day started with driving rain, but fortunately it stopped in time for the festival to start, opened by the Mayor of Kingston. I followed her for a while as she visited the stalls along the street, taking a real interest in what was going on.

The 10 am start meant that at first the streets were rather empty, but things began to fill up later. The parade was a little thinner than in previous years, and we [Paul Baldesare and myself] were disappointed not to see more.

After the parade I went back to watch the morris dancers perform a second set, but as it came on to rain, I decided it was time to take a train elsewhere

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Paris and the Nouvelle Vague

Paris and the Nouvelle Vague: Pictures from my own work in Paris over the years and a short review of a current show online and at the Peter Fetterman Gallery in Santa Monica, California.

I first photographed in Paris in 1966, before I was really a photographer, when I spent a week there with the woman I was to marry two years later. I had bought a 36 exposure process-pad cassette of cheap slide film for the holiday, loading it into my fixed lens Halina camera.

Getting into a rowing boat to row at Versailles I dropped my camera into the lake. The man hiring the boats fished around a little with his boat hook, then waved us off, promising to continue the search. When we came back an hour later he proudly presented it, obviously hoping for a reward. But we were penniless students and all he got were profuse thanks.

The camera was never the same again with a leaf shutter that would sometimes stick open – and it was six years before I could afford to replace it. The colour slides had an interesting hue.

Our next trip to Paris was in 1973, when we spent several weeks in a student hostel in the centre of Paris and spent long days walking almost every walk in an old Michelin Green Guide. I’d given the Halina away and now had a clunky Russian Zenith with three Russian lenses and a good supply of bulk loaded cassettes of black and white film.

You can see many of the pictures from that visit on my Paris Photos web site along with those from some later visits, particularly in 1984 when I worked on the project that became my show and later a book, In Search Of Atget. After that we returned every two or three years until fairly recently, and pictures from some of the later visits – mainly for Paris Photo – are also online.

Peter Fetterman Gallery
Nouvelle Vague

SEPTEMBER 6, 2025 – JANUARY 3, 2026
Santa Monica, California

I seldom write reviews of photographic exhibitions now, either of shows I go to or those I simply see on line. Mostly because few interest me and those that do are mainly of work by photographers who I’ve written about at length in the past (though many of those that I wrote professionally are no longer available.)

But this show attracted me, both as a photographer and also as someone who now watches (or falls asleep watching) a wide range of films. I first got a real interest in film back in the 1960s and the films that excited me most were those of the French New Wave, particularly Truffaut and Godard, but later others including Chabrol, Rivette and Varda. And of course a great fan of photographers such as Willy Ronis and Robert Doisneau, and finally as someone who has enjoyed many stays in Paris over the years, at times immersing myself in its thriving photographic culture during the Mois de la Photo, so different and more intense than anything in London. And this is a show which is much more about Paris than about the Nouvelle Vague.

You can see pictures from the show on the Peter Fetterman Gallery website.

Raymond Cauchetier who died from Covid in 2021 at the age of 101 worked as a set photographer on many of the best-known films of the French “early New Wave period, including Truffaut’s Jules et Jim (1962) and La peau douce (1964), Agnès Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962), Jacques Demy’s Lola (1961) and Jacques Rozier’s superb but overlooked Adieu Philippine (1962).” Jonathan Romney, wiriting in the BFI’s Sight and Sound could have included many others, notabley À bout de souffleand ‘Une femme est une femme‘.

A former member of the French Resistance he spent much of the 1950s photographing in South East Asia including in the war in Vietnam, Japan and Hong Kong and it was in Cambodia where he first worked as a set photographer.

He failed to get work as a photojournalist after returning to France but when working on photo-romans was introduced to the then film critic Jean-Luc Godard who hired him as set photographer for his debut film, ‘À bout de souffle‘ in 1960. Cauchetier also worked on his ‘Une femme est une femme‘.

He left the world of cinema a few years later in 1968 as the pay for set photographers was too low, but it was apparently only in 2005 when French copyright law was clarified that he was able to exhibit and publish much of his work from those 8 years. In France, unlike the UK, USA and most other countries, photographers retain copyright of their work even when they are working as employees.

It was good to see the Peter Fetterman Gallery highlighting his work in their new exhibition, Nouvelle Vague, which they call “a compelling survey of French photography drawn from some of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century“.

And the show on-line does have some interesting images by some of the better known French photographers of the era, including Edouard Boubat, Jean-Philippe Charbonnier, Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis and Sabine Weiss, mainly from an earlier age in the 1940s and 1950s along with a few pictures which just happened to have been taken in Paris by others. And although Henri Cartier-Bresson just had to be there, he is hardly well represented.

Of those who are not French the work of Louis Stettner – who went to Paris in 1947 for three weeks and stayed five years stands out. And he arguably played an important part in bringing the ideas and approaches of New York’s Photo League with him. But there are some whose presence seems to me to simply dilute the show.

More of my own work on Paris on my Paris Photos web site, and in my books In Search Of Atget and Photo Paris available from Blurb, as well as in several albums on Flickr including Paris 1997. I really should do more books on my work in Paris.

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Limehouse and the City – Panoramas 1994

Limehouse and the City – Panoramas 1994: I made one panorama at the end of my trip to Limehouse in June which is on a film processed in July which I overlooked when posting pictures to Flickr.

DLR Viaduct, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1994, 94-701-51

This was taken from the top floor of John Scurr House on Ratcliffe Lane where there are open balconies leading to the flats it shows both the National Rail and DLR Limehouse stations with the DLR viaduct leading east, with the white tower of St Anne’s Limehouse just visible at extreme right before the top of the brickwork of the stairs.

You can also just see the north side of Limehouse Basin on the other side of Branch Road, and lower right of centre is a small but packed garden centre. A bus goes along Commercial Road and you can see the houses and flats of Limehouse and Bow beyond. Like all the other pictures in this post it was taken with a swing-lens panoramic camera with a horizontal angle of view of over 120 degrees.

Blackfriars Rail Bridge, Blackfriars Bridge, River Thames, Southwark, 1994, 94-701-42

Early in July I took a train to Waterloo and walked into the City from there, pausing before I crossed Blackfriars Bridge to make this panorama. This is the only place where the City comes ‘South of the River’ and where I was standing in Rennie Garden I was already in the City of London, though the wall at right and half the rail bridge past it is in Southwark.

While the City boundary for the other bridges is in the centre of the river, for some reason the Blackfriars and Southwark Bridges Act 1867 put the full length and its southern end within the city’s borders, in the parish of St Anne Blackfriars.

The garden here Rennie Garden is named after John Rennie (1761 – 1821) the engineer who built several of London’s bridges but not this one, which was by by Joseph Cubitt, also responsible for the dismantled railway bridge whose red piers remain.

This was the site of the Albion Flour Mills designed by Samuel Wyatt on this site in 1786 to house the machinery of Matthew Boulton and steam engine of James Watt – and it was this steam-powered corn mill, the first major factory in London, which is thought to be the inspiration for William Blake’s ‘dark satanic mills’.

The Albion Mill died by its own hand, burnt down in 1791 by a fire probably caused by poor maintenance when a bearing overheated, but four years earlier Robert Barker had sent his son Henry Aston Barker to sit on the roof of the building to make the sketches for his ‘London from the roof of the Albion Mills‘ which he then added detail, “greatly enlarged and painted in distemper on canvas.” He coined the name ‘panorama’ and in 1787 patented the idea. His panorama, first shown at the Albion Mill shortly before it was burnt down and then shown in various galleries in London.

Sets of aquatints were made by Frederick Birnie which toured Europe and went to the United States and while these survive in various collections the original panorama is lost.

Puddle Dock, Queen Victoria St, City, 1994, 94-701-33

Puddle Dock was a dock and also a sewer outfall and was filled in during the comprehensive reclamation and redevelopment of the area between 1962 and 1972 which created Upper Thames Street as a major road and Puddle Dock linking this to Queen Victoria Street underneath part of Baynard House, a Brutalist office block built for BT and completed in 1979.

As a part of plans to separate vehicle and pedestrian movement in the City it included a walkway leading to Blackfriars Station from which I made this panorama. The dome of St Paul’s can be seen just to the left of the tower of St Andrew by the Wardrobe.

Sculpture, Farringdon Rd, Holborn Viaduct, City, 1994, 94-702-51

Holborn Viaduct was London’s first flyover, connecting the City with Holborn over the deep valley of the River Fleet, which had be culverted here in the 18th century, in part for the building of New Bridge Street. Built in 1863-69 it links Holborn Circus with Newgate Street and was a major redevelopment ‘”the most ambitious and costly improvement scheme of the [nineteenth] century” (White 47), and it involved some outstanding feats of Victorian engineering.‘

Over the years I’ve made quite a few panoramas on and of the viaduct and written about it at some length – here are a few from 1994. You can read a detailed account on the Victorian Web site.

*Sculpture, Farringdon Rd, Holborn Viaduct, City, 1994, 94-702-52*

*Sculpture, Farringdon Rd, Holborn Viaduct, City, 1994, 94-703-11*

Anti-War March in London – September 28th 2003

Anti-War March in London: In the face of protests across the country and the world – “between 3 January and 12 April 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against the Iraq war” the USA together with the UK, Australia and Poland began the invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003.

In the UK we had our largest ever anti-war protest on 15th February, with estimates of between 750,000 and 2,000,000 people taking part in a march and rally. I wasn’t there as I had come out of hospital the previous day and was still too weak to walk more than a few steps, so was left at home when my wife and elder son went out to protest. It was the only major London protest against the war I didn’t photograph.

Protests in London continued, with people angered that their voices had not been heard, and particularly as we learnt more about the lies and deceit that Tony Blair had marshaled to get the decision to go to war past Parliament and in particular about the two ‘Dodgy Dossiers’ which Alistair Campbell had “sexed up”, the later one plagiarised from an article by a research associate at a US institute and the earlier making false claims about “weapons of mass destruction.” No WMDs were found in Iraq.

The earlier dossier had made the false claim that some of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons were deployable within 45 minutes, a claim that according to BBC journalist Andres Gilligan was added at the insistence of Andrew Campbell. Gilligan claimed that his source for that was an off-the-record talk with weapons expert David Kelly. Although the Hutton Inquiry concluded Kelly had killed himself following the investigations into this exposé some still suspect our security services took a hand in his death.

You can read an account of the protest in The Guardian, Anti-war protesters vent their frustration, which notes that this was “Britain’s fifth anti-war protest in a year snaked from Hyde Park through the centre of London and filled Trafalgar Square with anti-Blair placards. It was the first national rally since Saddam Hussein’s regime fell in Iraq and the tone had changed since 1.5 million marched to prevent war in February.” It gives the police estimate of the numbers taking part at 20,000 and Stop the War’s figure of 100,000 – the actual figure was probably about halfway between the two.

I didn’t write much at the time – and didn’t post many of the pictures I took, and a few of those here are published for the first time. Here is my 2003 piece – with a link to the orginal.

The Anti-War March on 27 September was another big event, though not on the massive scale of February’s event.

It took about an hour and a half to pass me on Park Lane. The numbers reported by the police and BBC both seemed derisory. Perhaps they were closer to the numbers that ended up in Trafalgar Square, but there were far more on the march itself.

Estimating numbers is hard once the numbers get too high to really count – perhaps a few thousand. The Countryside Alliance had the right idea on this, with their arch on Whitehall although I never see one of their car stickers with 400 thousand and something on without thinking ‘and I was 3 of them.’

More pictures at http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2003/09/sep27-01.htm

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Charlton and Maryon Park – 1990

Charlton and Maryon Park is the final part of my walk on Saturday 20th January 1990 which began with Westcombe Park and Blackheath 1990

*Springfield Grove estate, Charlton Rd, Charlton, Greenwich, 1990, 90-1j-62*

This estate was built on what had earlier been the site of the late 17th Century Springfield House, which was demolished just before the Second World War – the LCC had bought Stonefield Farm in 1927 for the Thornhill Estate. During the war there was a pig farm on the site. Springfield House took its name from a spring here which ran down in a valley here when the house was built. and though it is sometimes described as a wooded combe (dry valley) construction of the estate was held up in 1949 by the spring having to be stemmed and the ten blocks date from 1951-2.

The blocks were named with associations to previous Lords of the Manor of Charlton “Bayeaux – Bishop Odo of Bayeaux ; Downe & Ducie – Sir Wm.Ducie created Vise.Downe ; Erskine – Sir John Erskine Games – Wm.Langhorn Games ; Langhorne – Sir Wm.Langhorn, Mar – Earl of Mar (Sir J.Erskine) ; Priory – Priory of Bermondsey and Wilson – Sir Thos. Wilson 6th Bt. who married into the Maryon family, owners of the Manor & Estates.“

These ten brick LCC point blocks in the Sparingfield Grove Estate (also known as Thornill Estate which it adjoined) were built around 1950, and the view between the towers here is described in the conservation area document as the most dramatic of the “number of good panoramic vistas” from the escarpment here, with a view towards the Thames and central London. The estate was built by the LCC but was transferred to the London Borough of Greenwich when that was set up and then in 1999 to a housing association. In 2012 the blocks were clad hiding the brickwork, which although I think is aesthetically poorer will have been much appreciated by residents for increasing their comfort.

I walked along here, but perhaps the best way to appreciate the views is from the upper deck of a bus going along Charlton Road or Charlton Church Lane.

*War Memorial, Drinking Fountain, Public Toilets, Charlton House, Charlton Church Lane, The Village, Charlton, Greenwich, 1990, 90-1j-54*

The triangle in the middle of the junction between Charlton Church Lane and The Village would, apart from the traffic be a pleasant place to sit and there is now a seat between the war memorial and the drinking fountain, though I think you need to bring your own drink. Most of our old drinking fountains have been disconnected for hygienic reasons, though London does now have some new ones. At least in winter you can see a wide variety of architecture, though trees tend to block some views for the rest of the year.

The cattle trough which replaced the old village stocks must I think have been just out of my picture on the left and like the drinking fountain was erected to commemorate the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902, together costing £247 donated by local residents and Sir Spencer Maryon Wilson, 11th Bart – who gets his name on the side of the trough. The fountain was damaged in 1980 when a driver without tax or licence drove into it; Greenwich Council decided they could not afford the £3,000 needed to repair it, but local residents again reached into their pockets.

*Charlton House, The Village, Charlton, Greenwich, 1990, 90-1j-66*

Charlton House is said to be the “finest Jacobean mansion in all London”, designed by architect John Thorpe, said to have been the inventor of “humble and now-ubiquitous corridor” which allowed independent entrance to the various rooms of a grand house – previously each room had led through doors to the next in what was know an an enfilade.

The house was first opened to the public in 1909 with the one shilling (5p) entry fee going to provide free lunches for the children of Deptford. Now in public ownership for 100 years it is one of the few things that cost less than then, with house and grounds free to the public.

The large classical arch was once the entrance to the grounds but is now isolate, all on its own in a large area of grass.

*Charlton House, Charlton, Greenwich, 1990, 90-1j-55*

Part of the house was badly damaged by wartime bombing in 1944 but has been carefully restored, and perhaps the only visible sign is a slightly lighter colour to the bricks used – and apparently the sundial between the first and second floor windows was fitted upside down.

Charlton House, Charlton, Greenwich, 1990, 1990, 90-1j-56 — *Charlton House, Charlton, Greenwich, 1990, 1990, 90-1j-42*

The house was built by the crown for Prince Henry, the son of James I, and older brother of the future Charles I and his then tutor, Sir Adam Newton who was Dean of Durham, though hardly convenient for him as the 260 mile commute would then have taken several days. But I imagine he could claim his salary while working from home despite there being no internet connection.

The house has a grandly decorated doorway.

*Roman Stone, Acorn, Charlton House, Charlton, Greenwich, 1990, 1990, 90-1j-45*

Charlton was of course long famous for its Horn Fair, held not at Charlton House on the top of the hill but at Cuckold’s Point on the River Thames. It was described by Daniel Defoe as a “yearly collected rabble of mad-people” which “ought to be suppressed, and indeed in a civiliz’d well govern’d nation, it may well be said to be unsufferable” and at which “the women are especially impudent for that day; as if it was a day that justify’d the giving themselves a loose to all manner of indecency and immodesty, without any reproach“.

And in 1872 it was suppressed but a considerably “tamer version of the fair was re-established in 1973 in the grounds of Charlton House“. I went at least once and was disappointed, particularly by the lack of female impudence.

The ‘Roman Stone’ is not of course Roman, but an artificial stone probably bound together with Portland Cement (invented by Joseph Aspdin in 1824) much used for garden ornaments in the Victorian era and beyond. These materials can be moulded using sand moulds.

*Woodland Terrace, from Maryon Park, Charlton, Greenwich, 1990, 90-1j-25*

Woodland Terrace is in what was a large wooded area known as Hanging Woods which hung on the side of the slopes rising from the River Thames here. The main Dover Road runs through these woods and Shooters Hill was a popular haunt for highwaymen, though less popular for travellers. Hanging Woods was a wild wooded area good for the gentlemen of the highway to hang out and evade pursuit.

*Maryon Park, Charlton, Greenwich, 1990, 90-1j-11*

Maryon Park is a former quarry, part of Charlton sandpits on the edge of Hanging Wood, which the Maryon-Wilson family gave to the LCC in 1891. The sandpits were dug in the 18th and 19th centuries for sand in the local foundries and for making glass, and there were also chalk pits nearer to the river. One of the four pits, Charlton Station Pit is now The Valley, home to Charlton Athletic Football Club, and another, Gilbert’s Pit, is part of a nature reserve. The East Pit is Maryon Park, along with an un-quarried ridge on its west side.

*Maryon Park, Charlton, Greenwich, 1990, 90-1j-15*

On the Charlton Parks Reminiscence Project you can read a great deal about the history of the park which was opened in 1890. Serpentine fenced paths lead down from Woodland Terrace to the floor of the park below. The park’s moment of fame came in 1966 with the filming there in Michelangelo Antonioni’s ‘Blow Up‘ featuring David Hemmings, and Vanessa Redgrave. A YouTube video ‘Blow Up Revisited‘ intercuts scenes from the film with those taken in the same areas of the park in 2010.

I’d photographed the park in 1985 and in 1990 only too a few pictures of some of the fences before rushing to the station to catch a train towards home.

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Muslim Veils, Illegal Goods, Murders, Union Busting and London – 2010

Muslim Veils, Illegal Goods, Murders, Union Busting and London: Saturday 25th September 2010 was a day for several fairly small protests around London, involving me in quite a lot of travelling around. As well as photographing Muslim women protesting against a French ban on Islamic face veils, a protest and counter-protest at a shop selling products from an illegal Israeli settlement, families of murder victimes calling for tougher sentences and a protest against a company employing cleaners for their union-busting activities I also took quite a few pictures as I rode buses and walked around between these events.

Hizb ut-Tahrir Women Protest French Veil Ban

French Embassy, Knightsbridge

Muslim Veils, Illegal Goods, Murders, Union Busting and London - 2010

I’ve often commented on how women were normally sidelined – literally – at protests by the now banned Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain but at this protest outside the French Embassy they were very much at the front, with around 80 women, many with children, and only a handful of men – who did seem to be organising the event.

They were to protest against a law passed by the French Senate on September 14th to prohibit all full-face coverings in public places, clearly aimed at Muslim women who wear the niqab or burkha.

Such garments were then rarely worn in France, certainly outside of Paris and some Mediterranean coastal cities, and of France’s 2-3 million Muslim women the ban is thought likely to only effect around two thousand of them.

Very few of the women at the protest wore veil, most simply covering their hair. The protest in a wealthy area of London close to Harrods was passed by quite a few women who were veiled, but who all seemed to ignore the protest.

I wrote:’ Speakers at the event castigated the French government for taking a measure which they felt limited the freedom of women to make decisions on what they wear while at the same time ignoring issues that degrade and oppress women – such as domestic violence, and “the objectification and sexualisation of women’s bodies in pornography, lap-dancing clubs, advertising, and the entertainment industry, all permitted under the premise of freedom of expression and driven by the pursuit of profit in Western societies.”‘

More at Hizb ut-Tahrir Protest French Veil Ban.

Protest Against Illegal Israeli Goods

Ahava, Monmouth St, Covent Garden

This was one of a series of fortnightly demonstrations outside the Covent Garden Ahava shop which sells products manufactured in an illegal Israel settlement on occupied Palestinian land. These protests were a part of an international ‘Stolen Beauty’ campaign organised by ‘Code Pink’, a women-initiated grass-roots peace and social justice movement which began when American women came together to oppose the invasion of Iraq.

As usual there was a smaller counter-demonstration by a few EDL supporters and a handful of Zionists, handing out leaflets which described the call for a boycott as “bigoted, complicitly and politically antisemitic“.

The protesters say Israel in in breach of international law and Ahava “has openly flouted tax requirements by exploiting the EU-Israel trade agreement and violates UK DEFRA guidelines in respect of proper labelling.” I read the leaflets they handed out and the web sites calling for the boycott and could find no evidence of anti-Semitism. Many calling for a boycott of Israeli goods are Jewish and I reflected that when I began taking photographs in London no Jewish shop would have opened on a Saturday.

More at Protest Against Illegal Israeli Goods.

Families of Murder Victims Call For Justice

Embankment

‘Families Fighting For Justice’, including many families of murder victims, marched through London on Saturday calling for tougher sentences for murder – with life sentences meaning life imprisonment.

The group was formed in Liverpool by Jean Taylor whose sister, son and daughter were all murder victims. She set up a petition which said “Life should mean life, for first degree murder, also tougher sentences for manslaughter” and in 2008 recruited families of other murder victims to join her and march with it to Downing Street.

You can read some of the horrendous stories on the groups web site, and some I was told at the protest were truly heartbreaking and showed why many ordinary people have lost faith in our justice system – and I highlight one of them on My London Diary.

But as I also commented “I don’t feel that the ‘Life 4 A Life’ campaign would actually do much if anything to solve the problem“. Murder is never a rational act where murderers weigh up how long a sentence they might get if caught and draconian sentences would have little or no deterrent effect. Things more likely to help include better social services and policing, but we really need “changes that bring back some of our community spirit and give people a greater engagement.” There really is such a thing as society despite Thatcher’s dismissal and we uirgently need more of it.

Much more at Families of Murder Victims Call For Justice.

Protest Over Initial Rentokil Union Busting

Old St

A short protest by around 20 trade unionists outside the Initial Rentokil offices in Brunswick Place near Old Street on Saturday afternoon marked the start of the campaign against the company for its intimidation and bullying of union members who choose to speak out about pay and employment practices and play an active role in the union.

The cleaners employed by the company at the Eurostar terminals at St. Pancras International were RMT members and the dispute between the union and Initial has continued.

The unions alleged that Initial was deliberately employing workers with doubtful immigration status so they can pay minimum wages and provide sub-standard working conditions, often requiring them to work without proper safety equipment or precautions. They allege that workers who question their rights or attempt to organise have been reported to the immigration authorities who have then raided the workplace.

More at Protest over Initial Rentokil Union Busting.

Around London

One bus I didn’t travel on but photographed outside the former Aldwych Piccadilly Line Station.

‘I am Here’, one of London’s largest art installations overlooking the Regent’s Canal at Haggerston with photographs of former residents on empty flats where people are moved out to redevelop the Haggerston estate – with the promise they will be moved back to new social housing on the estate

Missing letters on an advert beside the canal for Ron’s Shellfish on sale every Saturday at Hoxton Market create a puzzle for those walking by, though this and another picture on My London Diary concentrate on the images and miss out the centre of the sign.

Decoration on the Suleymaniye Mosque on Kingsland Road which mainly serves the British Turkish community.

More at Around London.

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Bloc A: Parents, families and kids

Bloc B: Economic and social justice

Bloc C: Palestine solidarity

Bloc D: Migrant and racial justice

Bloc E: Workers and trade unions

Bloc F: Billionaires out of fashion

Bloc G: Faith groups

Bloc H: Restore nature

Bloc J: Climate justice.

Peter Fetterman GalleryNouvelle Vague

Hizb ut-Tahrir Women Protest French Veil Ban

Protest Against Illegal Israeli Goods

Families of Murder Victims Call For Justice

Protest Over Initial Rentokil Union Busting

Around London

Peter Fetterman Gallery
Nouvelle Vague