Plumstead is a hilly place, rising quite steeply from the River Thames as I remember from my first visit to the area when still in short trousers, trudging up a long hill holding my mother’s hand to visit some distant relatives, whose names I no longer remember, nor exactly where they lived. Their back garden went up steeply behind the terrace house.
I don’t think it was this road was the one I walked up back then, but it was still hilly and you can see the houses going down on both sides and I think in the distance to trees and buildings on the other side of the river.
Park, Plumstead Common, Plumstead, Woolwich, Greenwich, 1994, 94-809-61
The previous picture was taken just a few yards from Winn’s Common, one of several areas also including Bleak Hill and The Slade which make up Plumstead Common. I think this is close to Lakedale Road and shows the foundations of a building with beyond it the rose garden in the next picture.
Park, Plumstead Common, Plumstead, Woolwich, Greenwich, 1994, 94-808-13
I made several other pictures on Plumstead Common, though I can’t remember exactly where on the common this was and can find no traces now of this sunken garden with walkways which must once have been covered by plants and flowers but seem to have left in a semi-derelict state, though there are still some rose bushes.
Here I deliberately tilted the panoramic camera to give a curved horizon rather than try to level it with a spirit level as I usually did, partly to include the lower edge of the bushes and small trees, but also to create a kind of enclosed space.
Across the common is a pub, the Woodman, one of the 5 Plumstead Common Idlers, ‘the Woodman who never felled a tree’ at 35 The Slade.
“The Star which doesn’t shine in the sky, the Woodman who doesn’t cut down trees, the Ship that cannot sail the seas, the Mill which doesn’t grind corn, and Who’d a Thought it!”
Radnor Crescent is some distance to the east on the edge of Winn’s Common and I’m not sure exactly which direction I was looking to make this picture, perhaps looking towreds Shooters Hill.
Waste Land, Woolwich Church St, Woolwich Ferry, River Thames, Woolwich, Greenwich, 1994, 94-807-42
From here I walked to Woolwich and the Woolwich Ferry. More pictures from Woolwich in a later post.
Belvedere Riverside & Plumstead: Some more pictures including some panoramas from my Thames riverside walk on Monday 1st August 1994, and a few from Plumstead a few days later.
Ford Ferry, Pier, River Thames, Belvedere, Bexley, 1994, 94-805-22
Ford at Dagenham was just on the opposite bank of the Thames, with a Ford ship moored in front of it and some ominous black smoke rising.
But although the Ford was only around 600 metres away, the fastest route for workers driving from here to the factory was around 15 miles. Taking the Woolwich ferry would take a couple of miles off this, but be slower.
Ford Ferry, Pier, River Thames, Belvedere, Bexley, 1994, 94-802-11
Many of Ford’s workers did live south of the river, either in Thamesmead or further away, and Ford provided a large suppposedly secure car park here from which they could walk down the pier to the Ford Ferry to take them across the river.
Ford had come to Dagenham in 1929 and opened the factory in 1931. They set up the private ferry for workers living in Kent in 1933. In its heyday it made 50 crossings a day taking as many as 1,500 workers to and from the plant, but after vehicle production ended with the plant turning to making engines it was only taking around 240 across and Ford discontinued it in 2003. Eventually they were forced to pay around half a million in compensation and to provide a bus service instead.
Much earlier there had been a Pilgrims ferry from Rainham to Erith, for pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, said to have begun in 1199 and to have continued in use until the mid 1950s.
Riverside Path, River Thames, Belvedere, Bexley, 1994, 94-802-12
Around here I turned back towards Erith, taking some more pictures on my way (some of which were included in my previous post.)
Riverside Path, River Thames, Belvedere, Bexley, 1994, 94-802-13
I can’t now remember exactly where on the path this was, but I think I walked all the way back to Erith and to the station there.
Penny’s Cafe, Motor Auctions, Manor Road, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-803-32
Finally from that day in Erith, one I took earlier around the start of my walk but failed to post previously. Manor Road leads out east from Erith and was then an industrial area.
This Café (and Motor Auctions) had also clearly once been a factory and still catered for workers in nearby factories. Facebook posts say it had been an engineering factory called Ivor & Jettage, that the café was full of boxing photos and that its yard, used for motor auctions and later car boot sales on Sundays, was in 2024 a scaffolding yard. But I have been unable to confirm this.
Nathan Way, Plumstead, Greenwich, 1994, 94-806-52
A few days after my Erith walk I was back not far away in Plumstead, and made just a handful of colour images including these three.
This picture was made from The Ridgeway a foot and cycle path on top of the Southern Outfall Sewer from Plumstead to Crossness. Nathan Way runs for around 600 metres just to the north of this and most industrial sites along here were demolished by 2015 and are being replaced by a huge estate of blocks of flats, Lombard Square, with 1,913 new homes. The first were finished in 2025.
Nathan Way, Plumstead, Greenwich, 1994, 94-805-24
Another image from The Greenway not far from where I made the panorama above. From 1888-90 here or close by Royal Arsenal football team played here at what became the Manor Ground. They moved next to Woolwich, becoming Woolwich Arsenal but soon found the rent there too high and moved back. They played their last game here in 1913 before moving to Highbury in North London – and of course losing the Woolwich.
Some industry remains at the east end of this stretch of Nathan Way but I’m not sure this includes any in my picture.
Nathan Way is a long road leading from Plumsteaad to Thamesmead and I think this may have been on the corner with Kellner Road.. But the name repeated on the lorry and the large modern shed behind as well as on what was perhas a small shed in the foreground was unmissable. I just had to make a Panorama.
Tony’s Snack Bar, Nathan Way, Plumstead, Greenwich, 1994, 94-805-26
I think the building at left it 115 Nathan Way, now occupied by Hydraquip Hose & Hydraulics, while behind are the roofs of Belmarsh Prison. But the picture is about the mobile snack bar here and the neat empty row of six white chairs for its then non-existent customers.
My walk continued on into Thamesmead but although I took quite a few black and white pictures I can’t at the moment find any more colour – and perhaps I took none.
More From the Riverside: More pictures from my walk by the River Thames at Erith and Belvedere on Monday 1st August 1994 to its end in Plumstead.
My previous post from this walk, Thames Riverside – Erith 1994 ended as I approached the Erith Oil Works jetty. The path here climbs up to go over the roadway from the jetty into the works which provided some good views of the jetty,
Jetty, River Thames, Erith Oil Works, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-802-52
This whole shoreline was once lined by industrial sites with their own jetties, by 1994 mainly like this now derelict and shortened.
Riverside Path, River Thames, Belvedere, Bexley, 1994, 94-805-45
Riverside Path, River Thames, Belvedere, Bexley, 1994, 94-805-32
Looking inshore there will still industrial sites, but much no longer relying on the river, though there were still some like the aggregate works that still had working jetties.
Jetty, Riverside Path, River Thames, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-802-43
Another disused jetty a short distance upstream from the Oil Works.
Sheds and neat stacks of orange and green boxes at a wharf – now serviced by road – at Mulberry Way. This gets its name from the temporary portable floating harbours some of which were constructed here in 1944 by Nuttall Brothers and towed to the French coast after D-Day to land supplies for the Allied invasion. Two temporary harbours were constructed on the Normandy coast; one only lasted a few days before being destroyed by a storm but that at Arromanches remained in use for 10 months.
A panoraamic view from the same viewpoint as the previous image. I had climbed up on the wide concrete flood defence wall here to make the picture. The sky was filled with clouds, perfect weather for panoramic landscapes.
Remains of wharf, Riverside Path, River Thames, Belvedere, Bexley, 1994, 94-802-21
I kept walking along the riverside path, coming to these timbers which would once have supported a long landing stage on a wharf with a short jetty into deep water. Across the river you can see Tilbury Docks at the left of the picture, with the blue hull of a ship there and some cranes, and further towards the centre the chimney and turbine hall of East Tilbury Power Station.
The horizon, dead centre in the picture is straight but as you move further down in the picture the curvature produced by the cylindrical perspective become more and more apparent. The path at left is straight and it remained straight to where I was standing to take the picture and beyond. Usually I tried to compose photographs so that this curvature was less apparent, but here I rather liked the effect.
I was working with two swing lens panoramic cameras (and two ‘normal’ SLR cameras.) Normal wide-angle lenses use rectilinear perspective become unusable with a horizontal angle of view of around 90 degrees as the distance from the centre of the lens to the film increases as light travels to the edges of the frame, increasing the size of image objects. The curved film plane in a swing lens camera keeps the lens centre to film distance constant so objects are recorded at the same scale across the image. Of course the wooden posts get smaller in the image the further away they are from the camera.
Riverside Path, River Thames, Belvedere, Bexley, 1994, 94-802-23
The curvature is much less apparent in this image taken a few minutes later and a few yards further upstream. But the shadow at bottom left as actually the shadow of the same straight flood wall as the larger shadow at the right.
Both of the panoramic cameras I had gave images with a horizontal angle of view of somewhere around 130 degrees.
I’ll post more pictures from this walk later. More pictures also in my Flickr album 1994 London colour – and you can see these images larger there by clicking on them in this post.
Thames Riverside – Erith: The Thames Path National Trail was only inaugurated on 24 July 1996 and then stopped at the Thames Barrier, but years before I had often walked along much of it in or near Greater London as well as much further east towards the Estuary.
It had taken a long time since 1947 when the towpath along the Thames was identified by the Hobhouse Committee on National Parks as one of six long distance and coastal recreational walking routes. Work began seriously in 1973 but there were many problems to be overcome, particularly in the upstream areas where much of the towpath had deteriorated, ferries closed and more.
The Thames Path still ends at Woolwich but it now joins the England Coast Path, but long before that it was possible to simply keep on walking beside the river – and I did along the south bank as far as Cliffe. Further on it became difficult to access using public transport.
These pictures come from Monday 1st August 1994 when I took a train to Erith as my starting point. I began by taking black and white pictures of buildings in the town centre, then walked east out of the town as far as the saltings and Erith Yacht Club. The town has changed considerably since my visit. The first industry developed on this side of town, but I think there is now a large supermarket with huge car park in the almost all the former industrial area. In the 1930s the area in my picture above, on Crescent Road or ManorRoad was a part of the British Fibrocement Works.
Erith Yacht Club, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-801-53
I turned around and came back through Erith to the Riverside Gardens close to the centre of Erith and then walked upstream beside the river to Belvedere before turning around and coming back to take a few more black and white pictures on the west side of Erith before taking the train home.
In the distance you can see the housing around Chandlers Drive, one of the first residential devolopmens on the river here, which had previously been highly industrial.
Riverside Path, River Thames, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-803-33
River Thames, Flats, Chandlers Drive, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-801-22
Jetty, River Thames, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-805-53
One of a number of jetties here, this more colourful than most, but I think no longer in use. On the opposite bank I think the hills are where rubbish has been brought out from London and tipped to build up what was previously marsh.
Jetty, River Thames, Erith Oil Works, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-801-13
The jetty of the Erith Oil Works, still in business. It was set up on Church Manorway in 1908 and is the the largest vegetable oil mill in the UK. My next post in this series will have more pictures of the Oil Works and other industry on the riverside, again mainly panoramas made with a swing lens camera.
All pictures here and more from this and other walks in 1994 are in my Flickr album 1994 London colour and you can view them larger by clicking on them in this post.
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.
More City Panoramas: I spent several days wandering around the City of London – the “Square Mile” in July and August 1994, I think in prepaation for a group show in which I had decided this would be my contribution.
Bubbs, Restaurant Francais, Farringdon Rd, West Smithfield, City, 1994, 94-702-43
Bubb’s Le Restaurant Francais with the address Central Market, Farringdon Street is long closed, but a listing states that they served “a variety of traditional French dishes at their restaurant and can cater for private parties of up to 30 guests upon request.” There are still several French restaurants in the area.
A little further down West Smithfield was the London Central Market with on the corner a wholesale Cash and Carry and Harry’s Drinks and in the distance a covered way across the road between market buildings.
I photographed this corner on several occasions, making a similar panorama here in 1992, perhaps why I have not put this on Flickr.
River Thames, Thames Path, Vintners Hall, Paul’s Walk, City, 1994, 94-703-52
Looking west along the river to Bull Wharf, Queenhithe and beyond. Bull Wharf proudly states it was REBUILT 1980 and it looks to me exceedingly ugly, probably why I didn’t upload this picture to Flickr. My picture perhaps makes the red brickwork event more virulent – the building looks much better to me in a black and white non-panoramic image I made at the same time from more or less the same spot.
Car Park, Smithfield St, City, 1994, 94-704-51
Slightly out of focus in the distance I can just make out Lady Justice on the roof of the Old Bailey and to her right more clearly the tower of Holy Sepulchre Church at the east end of Holborn Viaduct.
I think this car park probably extended to Hosier Lane and is now filled with the shops and offices of 12 Smithfield Street, built in 2004 and now described on Buildington as “an outdated office block that has suffered from poor environmental performance, limited architectural merit, and inefficient servicing. Its ground floor lacks engagement with the surrounding public realm, and its dated façade no longer reflects the character of the conservation area” and being refurbished and extended.
St Mary Somerset Church, Upper Thames St, City , 1994, 94-704-13
A rather dark rendering of this high contrast scene with deep shadow the block of St Paul’s Vista (or 1 High Timber St, now One Millennium Bridge) straddles Upper Thames Street with the bright sky above. My picture was made from the footbridge of Fye Foot Lane carrying a section of the CIty’s Highwalk across Upper Thames Street and Castle Baynard Street and on to Queen Victoria Street.
St Mary Somerset Church was one of those destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and like 50 others rebuilt by the office of Sir Christopher Wren. The tower remains between Lambeth Hill and Castle Baynard Street but the rest of the church was demolished in 1871 when like other redundant churches the land was sold to build churches in the rapidly expanding suburbs of London. The tower was a Ladies toilet before the Second World War, Damaged by bombing, it was restored by the city in 1956 and has now been converted into a private residence.
Highwalk, Footbridge, Huggin Hill, Upper Thames St, City, 1994, 94-705-41
A fruit and vegetable stall on the pavement in Front of St Mary Aldermary (another rebuilt by Wren after the Great Fire) on busy Queen Victoria Street which you can see at extreme left. I think the extremely low stone wall on the pavement and the railings mark the former edge of its churchyard.
I liked the range of architectural age and style across the upper half of this image, and particularly admired the ornate Victorian block in the centre of the picture. As well as a bus and a coach there are 5 London taxis in the picture, an aspect of London’s traffic congestion long overdue for reform.
Highwalk, Footbridge, Huggin Hill, Upper Thames St, City, 1994, 94-705-31
This was taken from a now-closed section of Highwalk across Upper Thames Street and the church at left is St Mary Somerset. The alley at right is Huggin Hill with a view of the distinctive building on the block between Queen Victoria St, Bread Lane and Cannon Street, 30 Cannon St built for Crédit Lyonnais between 1974 and 1977.
Highwalk, London Wall, City, 1994, 94-706-51
So many buildings have changed around here since 1994. The building right of centre is Standard Chartered on the corner of Aldermanbury and Aldermanbury Square and was remodelled around 2010 and the building left of centre is Brewer’s Hall, now with a roof extension. I think this section of the highwalk led up at Brewers Hall Gardens
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.
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
Darfur and the Mayor’s Thames Festival: On Sunday 16th September 2007 I went to London to photograph a march on an International Day of Action over the genocide which had been taking place on a large scale in Darfur since 2003, with around 300,000 civilians killed. My comments at the time are in italics below. After the end of the march I went to walk along the riverside wher the Mayor’s Thames Festival was taking place, though I found little actually happening.
Protect Darfur – International Day of Action
“Several hundred marched from the Sudanese Embassy in St James to Westminster where a protest rally was held opposite Downing Street over the continuing failure of the international community to take effective action over Darfur.”
“Among the mainly African demonstrators were groups of Jews, concerned that, as in the 1930s, too many are happy to turn a blind eye to what is going on.”
The Sudanese government had earlier co-opted and armed the Arab Janjaweed militias against those opposed to it in Darfur and they created what the UN described as one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.
In July 2007 the UN and the African Union approved a the largest joint peacekeeping mission in the world UNAMID to the area, and over the years there were various peace agreements, but despite this conflicts continued and in 2023 a civil war broke out in Sudan between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) (which developed from the Janjaweed) and the government’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) – and genocide returned to Sudan.
The BBC has an article, ‘Sudan war: A simple guide to what is happening’ about the renewed genocide and famine in Darfur and across the country which again the United Nations has called the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
At the rally opposite Downing Street, demonstrators were asked to put on their blindfolds as a reminder that leaders around the world are refusing to see the problem in Darfur.
“I didn’t stay to hear all the speakers. The position of the rostrum made it hard to photograph, working directly into the sun behind the speakers’ heads from any available close positions, and photographs were not going to be of great interest.
The message on Darfur is clear, and the international community needs to take action.”
Many more pictures (too many) on My London Diary at protect darfur.
River Thames and the Mayor’s Thames Festival
“We were promised that Sunday was the end of our short, late summer, and I took a walk along the south bank of the River Thames from Westminster to Tower Bridge, among the crowds who had turned up for the Mayor’s Thames Festival.“
Nothing much exciting seemed to be happening while I was there (it seemed mainly a commercial opportunity for the very large number of stalls along the riverbank), but I then didn’t hang around for the procession and fireworks promised later.
I did take quite a few pictures which you can see at river thames and the mayor’s festival – and it looks as if I found it a little more interesting than my account suggested.
Greenhithe, Swanscombe & Broadness: On 25th August 2006 I travelled by train with my Brompton for a day riding and photographing this area on the River Thames in North Kent. A few days later I posted the following account on My London Diary, along with quite a few pictures from the ride.
Broadness moorings – in 2025 now under threat– see the bottom of this post
My London is a pretty flexible area, and takes in all of the Greater London area and everywhere else within the M25, as well as obvious extensions including the area covered by the Thames Gateway plans for a mega-city covering a much wider area than the present boundaries. One of the growth axes is the high speed rail link from France, with stations at Stratford and Swanscombe (as well as Ashford, Kent close to the tunnel mouth.)
Greenhithe, across the Thames to West Thurrock
The areas around Stratford and Swanscombe are both places I’ve photographed at intervals since the early 1980s, and I made a couple of visits to them again close to the end of August 2006. Swanscombe, best known for the early human remains – Swanscombe Man – found there, is in the centre of what was a major cement industry (a little of which still remains) with some dramatic landscape formed by quarrying.
River Thames: Landing stage at Greenhithe with Dartford bridge and passing ship
I started my visit there at Greenhithe, still a Thames-side village at its centre, but now dwarfed by new housing developments and the huge shopping centre in a former quarry at Bluewater. This time I gave that a miss and took a look at the housing development on the riverfront. This is a prestige scheme that has retained ‘Ingres Abbey’ and the core of its fine grounds, where there is now a heritage walk.
New riverside housing on Ingress Abbey estate, Greenhithe
The grounds, in a an old chalk quarry with high cliffs, were provided with follies and landscaped in the 18th century by Sir William Chambers and later by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, but the 17th century house at their centre was demolished in 1815 when the navy had plans for a huge riverside dockyard. After these plans were dropped, it was sold to a London alderman and barrister, James Harman who built a large ‘gothic revival’ private house there in 1833.
Ingress Abbey, Greenhithe, now restored and used by a high-tech company
Harman had hoped to attract other wealthy Londoners to develop parts of the extensive grounds for their own villas in this scenic area, hoping it would rival riverside developments as those in Chiswick and Richmond, but failed to attract any takers.
Part of the site to the east was later sold for the building of the Empire Paper Mills, and the Navy again took an interest in the area, mooring the training ship HMS Worcester in front of the abbey in 1871, and also acquiring some of the estate. The Thames nautical training college continued in use until 1989, and had some large concrete buildings from the 1970s.
Harman’s dream has been partly completed now by the developers, who have won awards for their handling of this ‘brownfield’ site. The house and the various follies were listed buildings and have been retained (fortunately for the developers, neither the paper mill nor the training college gained listing.)
Moorings on Broadness Salt Marsh
Although the architecture of the new housing is perhaps pedestrian (although not suburban), the abbey and its surroundings immediate have been restored (although most of brown’s parkland is now under housing.) The development is high density, but there are quality touches in the street furniture. The spacious lawn in front of the house (offices for a high-tech company) has its impressive steps, but the housing is terraced town houses with balconies rather than gardens.
About all that remains of the cement works at Swanscombe
From here I cycled on to the open emptiness of Swanscombe marsh. In the distance were the heaps of spoil from the Channel Tunnel Rail Link which burrows under the Thames here. The piers for the former cement works are now derelict and closed off, used only by a few fishermen. The Pilgrims Road no longer leads up to the village, cut off by the work on the link.
Past the giant pylons carrying the grid across the Thames, I came to the saltings on Broadness Marshes and was rather surprised to see these still in use as moorings. The tide was high as I walked down beside them, and a boat made its way out. Another was being worked on near the landward end, but otherwise the place seemed deserted.
Recently the Broadness Cruising Club in the saltings have discovered that the owners of the Swanscombe Peninsula have “registered the land our boats are moored on and our jetties and boat sheds are built on as their own” and are trying to get rid of them from the site, restricting their access. The club has been there for over 50 years and is now fighting for the right to stay with a fundraiser for legal costs.
Battersea Riverside. The short walk from Battersea Bridge to Wandsworth is one I’ve done quite a few times over the years. For most of the walk you can now keep to the riverside, with views across the Thames, though a few short detours are needed. It’s on of my favourite walks in London and only a couple of miles, though if you want a longer walk it is now part of the Thames Path so you can continue for many miles either upstream or down.
Lots Rd
When I first made this walk in the 1970s the riverside was lined with industry and I could only access the river at a few locations. By 2012 the industry had almost all gone and there were blocks of private flats along most of this length. But ‘planning gain’ meant a riverside path even if it was lined behind by planning loss.
Thames at BatterseaSt Mary’s BatterseaOld Swan Wharf
People have to live somewhere and London needed extra housing, though almost all of these new developments were the wrong kind of housing and not the social housing desperately needed by Londoners. Back in the early post-war years we saw social housing being built to provide mixed communities and promote social cohesion, but Thatcher changed all that, and social housing became something only for the poor and that stigmatised residents as failures.
Overground train on its way to Clapham JunctionDemolition at Fulham WharfNew Flats and Wandsworth Bridge
The loss of industry also meant the loss of jobs in the area, and took place at a time of increasing gentrification in Battersea, with people moving in who worked in wealthier parts of the city.
Looking upstream from Wandsworth Bridge
As I wrote in 2012, “Every time I walk it a little more has gone with a new block of flats or hotel or other luxury development. But a few things remain.”
Waste transfer station, Wandsworth
You can see the panoramic images larger by right clicking on them and choosing Open Image in New Tab’ More pictures on My London Diary at Battersea Riverside.
