Tower Hamlets | >Re-PHOTO

Bengali New Year and Levellers 2013

Bengali New Year and Levellers: I spent Sunday 12th May in East London, beginning at Weavers Fields in Bethnal Green for the Boishakhi Mela procession and then moving on to Wapping where a plaque was being unveiled at the burial place of Leveller Thomas Rainsborough. On my way there I was passed by a large group of motorcyclists out for a ride.

Boishakhi Mela Procession – Bethnal Green

The Bengali New Year is in the middle of April, but when the annual celebrations by the Bangladeshi community in Tower Hamlets began in 1997 they decided April in London was too cold and likely to rain and moved their celebration to a month later.

The celebration, which I’d photographed in 2006 and 2008, had been based around Brick Lane, but had by 2013 become a victim of its own popularity and had outgrown its original location, and had been moved to Victoria Park, well away from the centre of the Bangladeshi community. I think in later years it returned to its original location in the Brick Lane area, but I’ve not been back since.

The Mela is said to be the largest celebration of Boishaki outside of Bangladesh, and it was certainly very crowded when I was in Brick Lane in 2008. Tower Hamlets Council had that year banned it on safety grounds from using their parks, but later allowed them to use Weavers Fields for the main stage. It is said to be the second largest street festival in UK – though at around 80,000 taking part it is still an order of magnitude smaller than Notting Hill.

But as the pictures show it is a very colourful event. The council took over the management of the festival in 2009 when a record 95,000 people attended.

I walked with the procession to the gates of Victoria Park taking photographs, but left as they entered the park to go to Wapping.

Boishakhi Mela Procession

Bikers – Bethnal Green

The Boishakhi Mela Procession had been held up for a couple of minutes in Bethnal Green and had to wait as a large group of motorcyclists made its way down Old Ford Road where they were to go. I talked briefly with some of the bikers as they waited at the traffic lights, but conversation was rather difficult over the noise of perhaps a hundred poorly silenced engines. But I think they were simply a group from Dagenham and other parts of Essex out for a ride around London.

Bikers

Leveller Thomas Rainsborough – St John’s Churchyard, Wapping

Although I had walked through and photographed the small park, saved from being built on by local campaigners, which had been the churchyard of St John’s in Wapping, I don’t think I had previously known it was where Thomas Rainsborough had been buried.

Colonel Thomas Rainsborough was a military leader in Cromwell’s New Model Army, fighting for Parliament against the king in the English Civil War. He was killed by a Royalist raising party during the siege of Pontefract on 29 October 1648 and buried at Wapping on 14th November.

Rainsborough is best remembered now for his statement in the Putney Debates in London in 1647 about all men being equal:

"For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under…"

It was truly a revolutionary idea at the time, and he was labelled as an extremist. He was the most senior officer to support the Levellers.

The four Royalists had entered his lodgings at night and attempted to arrest him. There was a huge funeral procession by Levellers from Tottenham to Wapping for his burial. His sea-green regimental standard (a replica of which was carried by the Sealed Knot’s ‘Colonel Rainsborough’s Regiment of Foote’ in today’s ceremonies) was torn into strips and the sea-green ribbons became a Leveller symbol.

He had been an important military leader, in command of 1500 musketeers, but today there just five from the Sealed Knot, along with an officer and some pikemen, but they put on an impressive performance for the hundred or so of us who had turned up for the event, with speeches by John Reese, Tony Benn and others before Tony Benn pulled the string to unveil the plaque. This included words from the inscription on his long lost tomb which proclaimed he had made ‘Kings, Lords, Commons, Judges shake, Cities and Committees quake‘.

After the official proceedings and while photographs were being taken Ian Bone of Class War seized the opportunity to speak against the appropriation of Rainsborough by members of the political establishment who had taken part in the ceremony, but would still be opposed to the radical ideas put forward by the Levellers.

Standing in front of a fine banner showing a red sleeping lion with the text ‘Who shall rouse him up’ he spoke about the more radical Fifth Monarchists, fifty of whom staged a brief and doomed insurrection following the restoration in 1661, led by Thomas Venner. They stormed St Paul’s Cathedral on January 1 and held parts of London for three days before all were killed or taken prisoner. Venner was captured after suffering 19 wounds, tried and then hanged, drawn and quartered on 19 January 1661.

More at Leveller Thomas Rainsborough.

Olympic Park, Barts and Food Poverty – 2014

Olympic Park, Barts and Food Poverty. On Wednesday 16 April 2014 there were two events in the evening I wanted to photograph, the first in Whitechapel and another in Westminster. It was a fine Spring day and I decided to go out much earlier and take a long walk around the former Olympic site, much of which had just been opened to the public ten days earlier.

Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park Panoramics – Stratford

Olympic Park, Barts and Food Poverty - 2014

My walk got of to a poor start, as I followed the large signs in Stratford Station to the park and found myself hopelessly lost.

I retraced my steps and went through where I thought I had probably missed a turning and walked though Stratford Westfield past many shops I would never feel any desire to enter.

Emerging on the other side I could still find no way into the Park, keeping coming up to areas still blocked by fencing.

Google Maps wasn’t much help. Streetview, claimed to work on some streets in the area, “but actually carries out what seems a fairly random translocation to some varied London locations. All of them seemed more interesting than the actual topography I had found myself facing on the ground.”

Eventually I managed to access the park, though it didn’t seem much like a park to me. As I wrote back then, “It gives the impression that as little has been spent and done as possible post the Olympics and it largely remains a series of routes to the Olympic stadium, ready for the mass tramping feet of West Ham fans, though some might favour more direct routes. It is a complete contrast to what might be expected of a new park for – and there is a good example of one just a couple of miles away in Thames Barrier Park.”

It has improved a little in the nine years since this visit, but still in many areas seems more desert than park, and my conclusion that it was “a rather bleak area, enlivened occasionally by the odd art work” still seems apt for much of the area.

Of course I was comparing it to the same area before the Olympics, which I had often wandered and enjoyed, and had been a more exciting and much wilder area. Of course a part of its attraction had been its relative isolation and the new park will attract hugely greater numbers to its various attractions. The local schools were on holiday and there were areas in which children were playing which for various reasons don’t feature in my pictures.

Many more at QE Olympic Park Panoramics

Barts cuts Health Advocacy & Interpreting – Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel

From Stratford Marsh and Pudding Mill Lane Station it was a short journey to Whitechapel, with just a short walk in the middle from Bow Church DLR to Bow Road on the District Line.

The Royal London Hospital at Whitechapel is run by the Barts Health trust, who were proposing to make drastic cuts in advocacy and interpreting services.

The hospital is in the centre of a multiethnic community of great deprivation and need, a community desperate for an increase in these services,with an ageing population many of whom speak and understand little English but are now in much greater need of health care.

I was there to photograph the handing over of a petition by GPs and other health professionals as well as members of various parts of the BME community, including Somalis, Bangladeshis and Chinese. The Mayor of Tower Hamlets backed the campaign and had sent apologies and a representative to express his support, and a Labour councillor gave support from the Labour group.

The removal of the services at GP surgeries and community and hospital services would mean the loss of around 11 full-time Bengali/Sylheti Health Advocates and the languages affected would include Somali, Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi, Tamil and French.

Bart’s Health Trust has huge financial problems because of the huge PFI debt incurred in the building of the sorely needed new hospital in front of which we were meeting, with continuing huge payments that mean that they have been unable to fully use the new building and have cut other vital services. PFI was always a mistake and the civil servants who negotiated the terms were no match for the skilled and highly paid operators for the developers who ended up with terms that were hugely favourable to them – and which changes in the financial conditions since then have made even more so.

The hospital tried to restrict the publicity for the event, although they had agreed to accept the petition, they wanted to do so in private. Hospital security staff tried to stop most of those present from witnessing the handover, and to prevent photography, but without success.

Barts cuts Health Advocacy & Interpreting

End Hunger Fast Vigil against Food Poverty – Old Palace Yard

Over 600 leaders from all major Christian denominations, including 47 bishops had earlier in the day called for urgent government action on food poverty, and earlier in the month thousands had taken part in a 24 hour day of fasting, praying and reflecting on the hunger in the one of the world’s richest countries came to the vigil.

On 16th April, ‘End Hunger Fast’ campaigners held a vigil outside Parliament, lighting candles and breaking bread together.

Earlier in the day figures from the Trussell Trust and independent food banks had been released showing that one million food parcels were handed out over the previoUs year as the safety net for the poor and vulnerable in Britain was crumbling.

There were a number of speeches before a sharing of bread in a minute of silence before eating to reflect on the problem faced by those who cannot afford food. CanDles were then lit (with some difficulty because a a stiff breeze) for another period of silent contemplation before the final address by End Hunger Fast media spokesperson Keith Hebden. He was then going without food for 40 days and 40 nights to draw attention to food poverty, and stressed the importance of getting politicians to take action on the issue.

End Hunger Fast Vigil against Food Poverty

More From Bow Creek, April 1989

The second part of a short walk by Bow Creek on Friday 7th April 1989. The first part is at Bow Creek, East India Dock Way, April 1989.

*London Sawmills, Bow Creek, East India Dock Rd, Canning Town, Newham, 1989 89-4b-15*

I walked back a few yards to the west along the East India Dock Road and made this picture looking south down Bow Creek, again showing the stacked timber on the wharf. The closer of the two bridges visible was I think just a pipe bridge, probably to carry gas from the nearby gasworks from Poplar to Canning Town, and has since been removed.

The second bridge is a Dock Road Foot Bridge, more commonly called the Blue Bridge (a name it shares with several others in London), though it also carries pipes and is still in place. I think it was intended to provide a route for people living in South Bromley to Canning Town station, and it leads to a bridge taking the footpath over the DLR, but unfortunately this has been almost permanently locked. It has been at least partly rebuilt since I made this picture

Hidden by this bridge a few yards further downstream and fenced off is another bridge, Canning Town Old Railway Bridge, long disused which was built to carry a single rail track over the river.

*Pipe Bridge, Bow Creek, Tower Hamlets, Newham, 1989 89-4c-61*

I walked on across Bow Creek and took this picture of the pipe bridge. As you can see it was well fenced off and although there were steps up and a footway across I could not access this.

All this brickwork on the Middlesex side of the river has gone, I think when the road bridge here was widened and a link road provided to the Limehouse Link tunnel but the brick abutment remains on the Essex side. The bridge was built to give sufficient clearance for navigation.

*Pipe Bridge, Bow Creek, Tower Hamlets, Newham, 1989 89-4c-63*

At the centre of the river I had crossed from Newham into Tower Hamlets. My street atlas names this area as South Bromley, but I don’t think anyone now knows where that is, as there is no station of that name, the DLR having decided on East India instead.

A few yards on along waste ground I made another picture showing the pipe bridge and the river, before turning back to the East India Dock Road. I made two exposures and I wonder if I may have chosen the wrong one to digitise as it is just slightly unsharp.

London Sawmills, Bow Creek, East India Dock Rd, Canning Town, Newham, 1989 89-4c-65 — *London Sawmills, Bow Creek, East India Dock Rd, Canning Town, Tower Hamlets, 1989 89-4c-65*

Across the water you can see much of the planks produced by the sawmill on the wharf, as well as stacks on a further wharf downriver between the building around 50 yards away on land but half a mile downstream round what is now the Bow Creek Ecology Park. Behind the cut timber you can see part of the Pura Foods edible oils factory on the opposite bank of the invisible river, and above that the top of the flood barrier across the river on the other side of the factory.

Timber was for many years a major industry on Bow Creek and along the Lea Navigation, as the Surrey Docks just across the Thames was mainly a timber dock, with large timber ponds. Boats and barges would have brought huge trunks to sawmills such as this, and the cut timber was also mainly transported further on by barge.

*Pura Foods, Bow Creek, Tower Hamlets, 1989 89-4c-52*

I walked further east and used a short telephoto lens to make this image of Pura Foods. Their factory processing vegetable oils here at Orchard Place had grown considerably over the years, as had the smells from it, and many locals were pleased when the factory moved out in 2006.

Almost all of my pictures at this time were taken with a 35mm lens, giving a moderate wide angle view. The Olympus Zuiko lens I used was unusual in being a shift lens, allow me to move the optical elements relative to the film to give additional control over the perspective. It made it possible for example to photograph taller buildings without tilting the camera which would have resulted in verticals that converged.

Lens design has improved considerably since, and so have our expectations of lenses. Many of my pictures made then have a lack of critical sharpness at the corners which we would now find unacceptable. Digital imaging in particular means we now routinely look at images on a much larger scale on screen than the prints we used to make.

*West Ham Power Station, Bow Creek, East India Dock Rd, Newham, 1989 89-4c-55*

I crossed to the other side of the busy East India Dock Road, going along Wharfside Road under it, and made this view looking north up Bow Creek. As you can see the West Ham Power Station was then being demolished. This was the last in a number of power stations on the site since 1904, when West Ham Council built one here to power its trams. This was West Ham B, built in 1951 and it used coal brought up Bow Creek as well as coke from the neighbouring Bromley Gas Works.

Power production at the station dropped off from the late 1960s and it closed in 1983. By 1989 its two 300ft cooling towers had already been demolished and the rest of the station was following.

*West Ham Power Station, Bow Creek, East India Dock Rd, Newham, 1989 89-4c-56*

A second view shows more of the Newham (or Essex) bank south of the main power station building and the closer parts are again full of stacked timber.

Newham Council together with Tower Hamlets has plans for a number of new bridges in the area providing links across Bow Creek, at Lochnagar St, Poplar Reach near to Cody Dock and Mayer Parry connecting the Leven Road former gasworks site to roughly where the old power station was, now the SEGRO industrial park.

It had been a short and interesting walk and I made my way to Canning Town station for the slow journey home. Canning Town is much easier to get to since the Jubilee Line opened at the end of 1999.

Bow Creek, East India Dock Way, April 1989

I only had time for a short walk on Friday 7th April 1989, cycling home furiously from the college where I was teaching at noon as I had no afternoon classes, picking up my camera bag and rushing to catch a train into London.

*Essex Wharf, Bow Creek, Pura Foods, Wharfside Rd, Canning Town, Newham, 1989 89-4b-31*

Canning Town, where I was heading, was on the other side of London and not then the easiest of places to get to before the DLR and Jubilee lines were completed. My journey involved a slow transit around North London on the line from Richmond on the North London Line to the old Canning Town station immediately north of the A13 East India Dock Road, next to Stephenson Street.

If you are not familiar with the geography of this area, a small clip from OpenStreetMap, slightly enhanced, will help. The East India Dock Road on this map is labelled Newham Way, which is here a flyover above the road itself. The former station I used was just to the north of this. Pura Foods was inside the loop which is now London City Island and there was no bridge across the river at the top of the bend.

Essex Wharf, Bow Creek, Pura Foods, Wharfside Rd, Canning Town, Newham, 1989 89-4b-34 — Essex Wharf, Bow Creek, Flood Barrier, Pura Foods, Wharfside Rd, Canning Town, Newham, 1989 89-4b-34

A subway close to the station entrance took me to the other side of this busy road, where I had a view of Bow Creek, northern end of its loop dominated by Pura Foods, looking across waste ground where the DLR would shortly run. The flood barrier on Bow Creek became redundant when the Thames Barrier was built.

*Essex Wharf, Bow Creek, Pura Foods, Wharfside Rd, Canning Town, Newham, 1989 89-4b-35*

I moved slowly west along the East India Dock Road, stopping to take occasional images. There was a considerable amount of waste including old tires dumped here, but it was also a working industrial area, with workers cars parked alongside the river.

Essex Wharf, Bow Creek, Pura Foods, Wharfside Rd, Canning Town, Newham, 1989 89-4b-26 — Essex Wharf, Bow Creek, Pura Foods, East India Dock Rd, Canning Town, Newham, 1989 89-4b-26

The main business on this side of the river appeared now to be the sawmill, though I also photographed the sign board for Haughton Engineering, but I’m unsure whether they were still in business.

*Bow Creek, Pura Foods, Wharfside Rd, Canning Town, Newham, 1989 89-4b-11*

It seemed to me an area which cried out for some panoramic images, and I took a set of three overlapping handheld pictures – the left of the set above – intending to combine them – which back then would have involved cutting and pasting the three together, but later I found I couldn’t quite get them to match up. Even when it became possible to do this digitally I found I hadn’t quite made these precisely enough.

*Bow Creek, Pura Foods, Wharfside Rd, Canning Town, Newham, 1989 89-4b-12*

It was experiences like this that led me a couple of years later to save up and buy a proper panoramic camera – I think the first one cost me around a month’s wages.

*London Sawmills, Bow Creek, Wharfside Rd, Canning Town, Newham, 1989 89-4b-13*

I continued walking west, the road on a low viaduct giving me a good view of the area to the south, coming to a timber yard where Bow Creek flowed into the area, going down south towards Orchard Place before turning north to go back towards the East India Dock Road where I had taken the earlier images.

I’ll post about the second and final part of this short walk later.

Brick Lane and Tubby Isaacs

Brick Lane and Tubby Isaacs is the third and final part of my walk which began with A Walk In the City – March 1989. The previous post was Shops, Soup Kitchen, Spitalfields 1989.

*Posters, Brick Lane, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, 1989 89-4a-01*

Hanging on the wall outside the Mosque on Brick Lane were a number of posters for sale showing various aspects of the Muslim World.

As is widely known, the mosque – which I’ve photographed on various occasions so didn’t bother on this walk – has a long a varied history since it was built in 1743 as La Neuve Eglise for the Huguenots who had come to the area as refugees from persecution by Catholics in France.

In 1809 is became a Methodist chapel for the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, changing ten years later to a more mainstream Methodist chapel.

In 1898 it became the Spitalfields Great Synagogue for the Machzike Hadath communty of Lithuanian heritage, one of several large synagogues in the area. Not far away in Aldgate was the Great Synagogue of London (destroyed in wartime bombing) as well as the Sandys Row Synagogue and there were others in the area. After over 70 years the Machzike Hadath moved in 1970 to Golders Green where most of the community now lived.

The building was bought and refurbished by Bangladishis, by then the main community in the area, and opened as a mosque for in 1976 as the London Jamme Masjid. Friday sermons are in Bengali, English and Arabic and the Grade II listed building can accomodate over 3,000 worshippers.

Horse & Cart, Brick Lane, Bacon St, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, 1989 89-4a-02 — *Horse & Cart, Brick Lane, Bacon St, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, 1989*

I continued north up Brick Lane and was surprised to see this workmanlike horse-drawn cart crossing the street and going up Bacon Street, pulled by a rather resigned-looking small working horse.

I hadn’t seen something like this since I was in short trousers back in the early 1950s. There were still some breweries using horse-drawn drays, mainly for publicity but those were much grander affairs with huge Shire horses. This was a rather smaller and more crude heavy-duty construction, almost home-made compared to the highly finished examples my father worked on in his father’s workshop as a young man.

Probably you are more likely to see horse-drawn vehicles in London now than back in the 1980s, but these are either the grand carriages such as those used on occasions such as the Lord Mayor’s show or light traps in which a few mainly travellers occasionally come in from the countryside for a sporting Sunday ride around the capital.

*Surplus Centre, Brick Lane, Bethnal Green Rd, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, 1989 89-4a-61*

The buildings on the corner of Brick Lane and Bethnal Green Road still look much the same, at least above the ground floor, where the shops are now rather less interesing than the Surplus Centre, dealing as it states in ‘Government Surplus Clothing & Camping Equipment, JEANS, Trousers, Combat & Donkey Jackets, Leather & Fur Lined Jackets, Motor Cycle Clothing, Anoraks, Shirts, Gloves, Tents & Everything For Camping’

*Pool Room, Hanbury St, Brick Lane, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, 1989 89-4a-64*

Although the small print helpfully informs me “126 Brick Lane & 45-B Hanbury St Prop Contessa-Restaurants Ltd‘ and gives telephone numbers its difficult to recognise this location now, though I think the two doorways are still present if no longer in use on a graffitt-covered brick wall which has lost its upper storey, just a few yards east of Brick Lane on Hanbury St.

The first Indian Restaurant in Brick Lane was The Clifton, a cafe which opened in 1959 by Musa Patel, a Pakistani migrant to the UK in 1957, named after the wealthy seaside suburb of Karachi where he had been born in 1936.

In 1974 he made it into Brick Lane’s first licensed restuarant, later renamed The Famous Clifton. It was the first restaurant on the street to use a tandoori oven, and the first to attract customers other than the local Bangladeshi clientele and thus begin the transformation of Brick Lane. It closed soon after Musa Patel’s death in 1996.

*H Suskin, Textiles, Brick Lane area, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, 1989 89-4a-65*

H Suskin Textiles Ltd had a workshop in Wilkes St and are said to have had a shop at 45 Wilkes St, since demolished. This is very clearly at Number 45 so I think this is probably it. They also had a shop at 79 Brick Lane.

At the top of the flyposted window shutters are political posters in Bengali and English asking for votes for Mohammad Huque and Syed Islam in the local elections. Below that are three adverts for Gurdas Maan Nite, an Indian musical event starring the famous Indian Punjabi singer, songwriter & actor, probably on film.

At bottom right are adverts for an expensive Dinner and Dance in August 1988 at the London Hilton, but the largest space is taken by posters ‘Hands Off Afghanistan‘ advertising New Worker public meetings in Manchester, London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Sheffield calling for support for the People’s Government left in charge when the Russians withdrew and for an end to UK support by MI6 and the SAS of the Mujahideen. The New Worker is the weekly newspaper of a 1977 splinter group, the New Communist Party of Britain, from the Communist Party of Great Britain which among other differences had been opposed to the 1966 renaming of the Daily Worker as the Morning Star.

*Tubby Isaacs, Sea Food Stall, Goulston St, Whitechapel High St, Aldgate, Tower Hamlets, 1989 89-4a-66*

I walked on down Brick Lane and Osborne Street to Whitechapel High Street and then back towards the City. On my way I passed the corner with Goulston Street where until 2013 you could still see the world famous Tubby Isaacs sea food stall.

Isaacs was founded by Isaac Brenner in 1919, and when he emigrated to the USA in 1939 to avoid conscription it was taken over by Solomon Gritzman. He had a brother Barney who set up another stall opposite and the two were bitter rivals for many years – I think the ‘We Lead – Others Follow‘ was a reference to his brother. When Solly died in 1975 the business passed to his nephew Ted Simpson who had worked with him.

My picture shows his son Paul who had just taken over, having worked with his father since he was 14. In 2013 he decided it was time to close the stall as most of its customers had died. I don’t know where this gang of children came from but I don’t think they were about to buy anything back in 1989.

I made my way back to Bank for the train home, pausing only briefly for yet another picture of the recent Lloyd’s building, not digitised.

Shops, Soup Kitchen, Spitalfields 1989

Continuing my posts about my London walk which began with A Walk In the City – March 1989. The previous post was Men At Work, Cherubs, Trees and More.

*Intercity (East) Ltd, Clothing, Shop, City, Tower Hamlets, 1989 89-3e-42*

I was on my way to the East End, and I’m no longer sure where this shop was located, although my contact sheet has Cutler Street, it also has a question mark in front of this. I will have marked up the contact sheets while I still remembered my route (and had probably marked this on a map more or less after I got home) so I will have walked this way towards Leyden Street where I made the next picture. But all I can find on Google about Intercity (East) Ltd is not about clothing stores but trains.

Cutler Street begins on Houndsditch and I think both corners there have been demolished and rebuilt since 1989. It has two more corners where it turns 90 degrees to the right in front of Cutlers Gardens, again both now occupied by more recent buildings.

*6-10 Cobb St, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, 1989 89-3e-43*

From Cutler Street I went up Harrow Place and crossed over Middlesex Street into Cobb Street, going out from the City of London into Tower Hamlets. Much of the area I went through has since been redeveloped but unfortunately I took no pictures.

Blue Bird, Childrens Wear, Cobb St, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, 1989, 89c03-04-71

Blue Bird, a wholesale children’s clothing cash and carry was a shopfront I also photographed in colour on this same walk. This building remains, though was extensively renovated internally around 2020 and 6 at right, Dunmow Trading, is again apparently in the clothing trade, though perhaps the renewed shopfront is a nod to the past hiding some completely different activities.

*Brune St, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, 1989 89-3e-22*

This was a frontage I passed and photographed several times over the years, but never went inside. Founded in 1854 in Leman St, the Soup Kitchen for the Jewish Poor moved to Brune Street (then Butler St) in 1902 and eventually closed in 1992, its work being carried on by Jewish Care in Beaumont Grove, Stepney. I had assumed it was now longer operating when I took this picture in 1989.

*Shopfront, Fournier St, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, 1989 89-3e-11*

Another shopfront I photographed on several occasions and in colour, and it was hard to decide which if any of the businesses were still in operation. Now the whole area has been tidied up and shops like these converted to slightly twee ‘period’ residential properties.

This early 18th century Grade II listed terrace house was sold in 1998 for £236,000, probably just before or after conversion, and in 2021 sold for £3.5million.

*Christ Church, Fournier St, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, 1989 89-3e-13*

The fine row of houses on the south side leading up to Christ Church was still I think occupied and possibly in use by firms in the clothing trade, with M Lustig & Co, Manufacturers of Superior Mens Clothing, Dilal Fashions at No 10 and Gale Furs at 8. Though their days were clearly numbered and all are now high priced residential properties and maintained in considerably better condition. I think all of the street is Grade II listed.

Christ Church is one of Hawksmoor’s masterpieces, built 1723-9 and Grade I listed.

*J Minksy, Fashion St, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, 1989 89-3e-16*

Established in 1902 and supplying textiles and trimmings to the fashion trade, in 1998 J Minsky sold its warehouse premises and began to focus on property investment, selling the textile business in 2005. This was 48 Fashion Street, which is a part of a listed building, but it is very difficult to recognise in this picture, which managed to avoid its more distinctive features, with just the slightest hint on its upper edge.

This walk will be concluded in a further post. The first post on this walk was A Walk In the City – March 1989.

A Walk Along Bow Creek, 2017

On Thursday 2nd March 2017 I had a meeting at Cody Dock about my photographic exhibition there later in the year. The weather forecast was good and promised me a day with blue sky and some clouds, perfect for my photography, particularly for some panoramas, where a clear blue sky or sullen grey overcast are both killers, so I rushed to get on an earlier train than I needed for the meeting to give time to take a walk along a part of Bow Creek before the meeting.

Years earlier there had been plans for a walk beside Bow Creek all the way from where it meets the Thames at Trinity Buoy Wharf up to the Stratford to join the tow path beside the Lea Navigation, but so far only some separate sections have materialised. The original plans envisaged two bridges taking the path across Bow Creek, and although a competition was organised (and won) for designs for one of these, neither had been built, largely because the money wasn’t there.

*This section of the Leawalk has yet to open*

Instead the plans were changed to make use of existing bridges, but vital riverside sections remain closed, either because of existing users of the land refusing access or because of new developments taking place in the area. One such development, that of London City Island has recently provided a new bridge which allows an alternative route to the mouth of the creek.

*The red bridge built for London City Island*

Part of the problem has probably been that the walk is along the boundary of two local authorities, Tower Hamlets and Newham, with sections in both.

I walked one section before the meeting, but came to a locked bridge which led to a fairly lengthy detour, and ended up with me having to run along the West India Dock Road to catch the DLR to get to the meeting in time.

There is currently no path between that road and Cody Dock which would have been a faster route for me. Instead I took the DLR from Canning Town one stop to Star Lane, from where a walk through an industrial estate took me to Cody Dock.

After the meeting I was able to rejoin the riverside path, now renamed the Leaway after I and many others made fun of its previous title as the Fatwalk, and made my way to Stratford.

On my way I was pleased to find a newly opened link from Twelvetrees Crescent (named after a Mr Twelvetrees who built a bridge there to his factory) to the footpath between the river and the Lea Navigation, enabling me to avoid the rather nasty detour between here and the path via the horrendously busy Blackwall Tunnel Approach road.

This part of the Leaway is now walked much more, not least because if forms part of of ‘The Line’ sculpture trail, which rather roughly follows the Meridian from Greenwich to Stratford. But those following this still have, like me, to take the DLR or walk along busy and dusty roads from Canning Town to Cody Dock.

There was still plenty of daylight left by the time my wanderings took me to the DLR Stratford High Street station, where I entrained back to Canning Town for a few more pictures which both lack of time and the position of the sun had made impossible before my meeting. Then it was back to the station for the Jubilee Line back to central London.

Many more pictures from these walks on My London Diary at:
Three Mills & Stratford
Leawalk to Bow Locks
Cody Dock
Bow Creek Canning Town

Before the Olympics – 2007

Five years and a few months before the London 2012 Olympic Games took place much of the site was still open although businesses had been moved out and some of the buildings were becoming derelict. I’d had an invitation to a party at a site there the previous evening but hadn’t been able to attend, but on Sunday 11th February 2007 I took my Brompton on the trains to Stratford Station for a tour of the area. It began as a rather gloomy day but the weather at least brightened up later.

I did return to parts of the area in later months as the close down was taking effect – and even led a two-day workshop at the View Tube in April 2010. And in June I was there to photograph workmen putting up the blue fence to keep us out of the whole Olympic area until well after the games were gone.

Before the Olympics - 2007 — *Footbridge to railway works over Waterworks River, Stratford Marsh.*

Here’s what I wrote on back in 2007 about my ride around the area, much of which I spent pushing and carrying my Brompton bike along footpaths. But it did make it possible for me to cover rather more ground than would have been possible on foot. I’ve corrected the capitalisation etc. There are several pages of pictures with the original on My London Diary, just a few of which are shown here.

2012 Olympic Site – Stratford, Sunday 11 Feb, 2007

Sunday I went to the Olympic site again, keen to photograph before the area becomes ‘fortress Olympics’ and is destroyed. Many of the businesses have now moved out and some of the small industrial estates are looking pretty empty. Tate Moss, who occupied a site by the City Mill River had staged their final event the night before, but the partying didn’t keep going long enough for me to look in and the place was deserted.

*Marshgate Lane under the Northern Outfall Sewer is blocked with old tyres*

Some of the riverside paths were open again after the test borings that have been going on, although several were fenced off over a year ago. The gate to the path by the waterworks river from the Greenway wasn’t locked, so I took a walk up this, but I knew that it was no longer possible to get out onto Marshgate Lane so had to retrace my steps.

*The Marshgate Centre and Banner Chemicals from the Greenway*

The route back up to the Greenway from Marshgate Lane was almost completely obstructed by heaps of old car tires, and I had to carry my Brompton for a few yards and climb up onto a grass bank where the steps were completely blocked. Parts of the road were no longer open to cars too.

From there I moved on to Hackney Wick and Waterden road, and I finished the day as the light was getting low on Hackney Marshes, one of the areas in which locally important sporting facilities will be lost at least for a few years, perhaps for good.

Original text on the February 2007 page (you will need to scroll down.)

My article back then ended with the paragraph above, but my ride didn’t – I had to get back home. It had previously taken me to a number of places just outside the condemned area, including some that were to be demolished for Crossrail, and it didn’t actually end on the Hackney Marshes, as the pictures on My London Diary demonstrate.

I decided to ride back to Stratford to get the train home, and that ride took me back past Clays Lane, where the estate was to be demolished for the athletes’ village and I stopped several more times on my way to take more pictures in the gloom. Even when I arrived at Stratford around sunset there was still enough light for a few final images.

You can see many more pictures from the entire ride on My London Diary

Thames Path – Pangbourne to Cholsey

I grew up not far from the Thames, though rather more of my young days were spent playing in and around one of its tributaries, the River Crane both in the wilder areas of Hounslow Heath and to the north and in the rather tamer Crane Park, where I caught tiddlers, sticklebacks which were destined to die in jam jars, and learnt that small boys on bicycles were faster than irate whistle-blowing park keepers.

But the river was there, a formidable barrier protecting us in Middlesex from the wilds of Surrey, though we occasionally crossed it on bridges and ferries, perhaps to go to Kew Gardens in search of plant specimens. This was before the days of garden centres, and my father, a keen gardener carried scissors in his waistcoat pocket and would occasionally take a small cutting from gardens as we walked past or visited, or find seeds. Gardeners where we lived didn’t buy seeds – they saved them and swapped them with others.

And the Thames was the river where I learnt to swim, if only badly, with a paddling pool and a swimming area with a springboard in the riverside park, The Lammas. Later I learnt to row at Isleworth, in a heavyweight Sea Scout boat – and we swam there too, despite the filthy oily state of the mud and water.

Older and wiser I kept to the riverside paths, walking them both in Middlesex and Surrey and also out to the east of London, sometimes taking my family with me, but also on walks with other photographers and on my own. And when plans were being made in the 1980s for a Thames Walk I made a few suggestions on the proposed path of what in 1989 became the Thames Path.

Far more of the river in London is now accessible to the public than back in the 1970s and 80s when much of the riverside was still a working area, though many of the wharves were derelict. But as I found when I joined a small group led by a Tower Hamlets official with responsibility for footpaths, parts of the path on the north bank were still not always easy to access, with developers and residents erecting gates and barriers and making some parts appear private. Some years later The Guardian in 2015 published Privatised London: the Thames Path walk that resembles a prison corridor which showed that little had changed.

But like many others, my family has now walked the Thames Path, from the Thames Barrier at Charlton to the source in Gloucestershire, as well as some way to the east along both shores. Most of the path proper is readily accessible by public transport and can be done as a series of one-day walks, travelling and returning from from our home in Staines or from London. But for the final three days of walking we had to spend a couple of nights in hotels on the route.

*At Streatley the path goes through a small lake*

At the start of 2010, we spent both New Years Day and January 2nd walking two short sections of the walk, from Reading to Pangbourne on Friday 1st and returning to Pangbourne on the Saturday to walk to Cholsey. Both Cholsey and Pangbourne have stations with trains to Reading, so access was easy, although Cholsey station is over a mile from the Thames Path.

The pictures here are all from Saturday 2nd January, on what is perhaps the most scenic stretch of the Thames Path. It was a bitterly cold day, which was perhaps as well, as the parts of this section would have been very muddy and a little flooded. But the mud was frozen and most of the ice on the flooded parts was thick enough to take our weight. It was more pleasant walking across the ice than it would have been wading through the few inches of mud and freezing water, almost certainly just deep enough to overtop my walking boots.

At the start of the walk from Pangbourne, after crossing the river the path climbs a little up a ridge, with occasional views through the trees across the valley. It then goes down to the riverside again, passing under one of Brunel’s fine brick bridges for the GWR to the Goring Gap, where the Thames runs between wooded hills. Goring itself is the kind of place I like to avoid, though I’m sure it has its charms, but I’ve always seen it as a kind of playground for the self-satisfied rich. We crossed the river to Streatley on the south side, a village owned by Oxford Brewery owners the Morrell family until they sold it in in 1938. They had protected it from development.

It was here that we found the worst flooding on the path, and almost took one look at a gate leading on to a lake and turned round – we could have ended our walk here and returned to Reading from Goring station. But eventually we decided the water couldn’t be too deep and perhaps the ice might hold our weight and we went on. I think we all got wet feet.

There were more icy bits on the rest of the walk, but nothing quite so bad, and we continued our walk along the Thames Path. Unfortunately at Moulsford the path leaves the river – the towpath switches to the opposite bank, and although this is a Ferry Lane, the ferries are long gone. Moulsford would be a pleasant enough village were it not on the A329, and the one kilometre trek along this relatively busy road was tedious, though we did make a short diversion to see the parish church.

Our walk along the Thames Path ended when this left the road to return to the river, but we had further to go before turning off onto a footpath on our way to Cholsey station, adding another mile to our walk.

More on My London Diary at Thames Path including our walk on the previous day from Reading to Pangbourne.

Aldgate, Class War Rich Door, Poor Door

Aldgate, Class War Rich Door, Poor Door – On 30th July 2014 I went to London to cover another in the long series of protests by Class War over the ‘social apartheid’ of separate entrances to large blocks of flats for the wealthy and poor people who live in them. I went up early and walked around the area beforehand.

Class War – Rich Door, Poor Door – 1 Commercial St, Aldgate

Class War, including three of their candidates for the 2015 General Election the following year, protested at 1 Commercial St in Aldgate which has a separate ‘poor doors’ for the social housing flats they had to include to gain planning permission for the development.

The front entrance on Whitechapel High St (One Commercial St is the name of the block) has a hotel-like reception desk, and is staffed 24 hours. It leads to the lifts for the expensive flats, many owned by overseas investors. Like most such buildings, some of them are empty and seldom used, while others are short term holiday lets.

Flats like these are advertised to overseas investors particularly in the far East as providing a high return on capital. Buy a flat now and you will be able to sell it for much more in a few years as London housing prices continue to soar – some publicity suggested that people could get the equivalent of a 13% interest rate. It’s easier to sell if you keep the flats empty, though you can use them for the occasional visit to London, or even let them over the web for a few days or weeks as holiday lets to generate a little actual income.

As I commented:

The web site for One Commercial St (studios, apartments and penthouses specified to exceptional levels, with exclusive services for residents – or rather those residents allowed to use the rich door) suggests that the average rent in the area is £1,935 pcm and investors can expect a 32% increase in property value by the time Crossrail opens. It’s all a part of the madness that means London is being developed not for the people of London but for investors in China, the oil states and elsewhere.

The building owners claimed there was no internal connection between the part of the building with expensive privately owned flats and that occupied by social housing tenants, although that was simply a lie – and on a later occasion I was taken through by one of the private owners from her flat to the ‘poor door’ which she used when walking her dog.

The owners give the social housing in the block a different name and only allow the tenants to access their flats through a side door in what was when Class War began their protests a dark alley often full of dumped rubbish, smelling of urine. A card entry system let them into a long bare corridor with some mail boxes on one side, quite a contrast to the large foyer with a reception desk, concierge, comfortable seating and art works enjoyed by the rich.

The protests had by then resulted in some small improvements, the alley now having been cleaned and new lighting installed, though the card entry system was apparently often out of order. And the alley still had that nasty smell.

The protesters came with a banner featuring the radical US labour activist Lucy Parsons (1853-1942) with her quotation “We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live” and posters – with their skull and crossbones – and the message “We have found new homes for the rich” with long rows of grave crosses stretching into the distance – which at one time police tried to arrest them for. They stuck posters on the windows on and around the ‘Rich Door’ using Class War election stickers with their promise of a 50% mansion tax. The building manager came out and pulled the posters off and screwed them up, but they held up others beside the door.

Most of the protest took place in front of the ‘Rich Door’, where they chanted calling for an end to the social apartheid and attempted to talk with the few people who left and entered the building. They held the door open to make their protest more easily heard inside, and there was a brief brief tug of war as security and a resident tried to close it. Eventually they let the door be closed, probably when they saw police arriving.

Police only arrived around 15 minutes after the protesters and they went directly inside the building to talk to the building manager and concierge. Then the police came out and argued with the protesters, trying to get them to move further from the doorway, but they insisted on their right to protest where they wanted on the pavement. Class War kept up the protest for around an hour before they decided it was time to leave – and come back for another protest there the following week. This was just one of a series of around 30 ‘Poor Doors’ protests, most of which I photographed – and published a ‘zine’ of the pictures, still available from Blurb.

Class War – Rich Door, Poor Door

Aldgate & Spitalfields

I was early for the protest at One Commercial St, and took a short walk around the area while I was waiting, going up Commercial St and then back down Toynbee St. I was astonished at the amount of new buildings since I was last here a few years back, and with a great deal of work currently going on. At night all the red lights on the tops of the cranes make London look like a Christmas tree.

It is of course a prime site just on the edge of the City of London, an easy walk to the city, and with plenty of buses, underground stations and both Liverpool St and London Bridge stations not far away. London City Airport is a short taxi ride too, or under half an hour by public transport, and Brick Lane’s curry houses just around the corner. Crossrail will cut journey times to Canary Wharf to 4 minutes when Whitechapel station opens in 2018.

In fact Crossrail only opened in 2022, four years behind schedule, but investors still did pretty well, and much more of the area has been demolished and replaced by investment flats. Our government still counts these as a part of our meagre housing programme although they make no contribution towards easing the housing crisis. We need strong laws to limit overseas ownership of property and financial encouragement to build homes for people, particularly homes at social rents.

Aldgate & Spitalfields