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More From Brockley – 1990

More From Brockley: Pictures from my walk on 18th March 1990 in Brockley. The previous post on this walk was Nunhead and Brockley. The pictures in this post are all from a small area of Brockley.

*Mantle Rd, Brockley, Lewisham, 1990, 90-3f-31*

Two men walk around a street corner into the sun, their shadows clean on the pavement behind them. Like many who lived# in the area the two men are black.

This Brockley Cross at the north end of Mantle Road and it slopes down under a railway bridge to Brockley Station. Two railway lines cross here and I think the 4 aspect signal was on the line from London Bridge to Brockley. The other line, according to Edith’s Streets, was a goods line and the area behind the hoardings was Martin’s sidings with room for 36 coal waggons. This was on land belonging to Martins Dairy at 4 Endwell Road, leased to leased to the London North West Railway and sub let to coal merchant Charrington Warren Ltd.

The steps at right lead to the side entrance to Endwell Court, a block features in my previous post.

*Josies CAFE, Mantle Rd, Brockley, Lewisham, 1990, 90-3f-34*

Josies Cafe was next to the railway bridge on Mantle Road which is at the right of the picture. There was still a café here (no longer Josie’s) until around 2010, but since then this has been a small empty plot.

*Josies CAFE, Mantle Rd, Brockley, Lewisham, 1990, 90-3f-23*

Josies Cafe seen from the opposite side of Mantle Road with the grassy bank leading up to the goods line which crosses Mantle Road here.

*Brockley Paper Co, Mantle Rd, Brockley, Lewisham, 1990, 90-3f-35*

I think this building housing the Brockley Paper Co was next to Josies Cafe, and has been demolished and replaced by a block of flats with shops on the ground floor. One of these at 1a Mantle Road is now the London Print Shop.

O'Shea, Low Cost Flats, Mantle Rd, Brockley, Lewisham, 1990, 90-3f-36 — *O’Shea, Low Cost Flats, Mantle Rd, Brockley, Lewisham, 1990, 90-3f-36*

This small row was just south of Foxwell Road and you can see the railway bridge in the distance at right and the sign for Josies Cafe.

This block which included The Maypole Inn whose sign can be seen was demolished before 2008 – the pub closed in 2006. A block of flats was built on the northern part of the site around 2012, but I don’t know where the ‘low cost flats’ advertised here were located.

*Free Winston Silcott, Harefield Rd, Brockley Rd, Brockley, Lewisham, 1990, 90-3f-24*

I walked to the other side of Brockley Station over the station footbridge and along Coulgate Street to Brockley Road and into Harefield Road. The building in the centre background is the back of a house on the corner of Foxberry Street and Coulgate Street,.

This post began with two men, so I’ll end it with two women who walked in front of me to cross the road as I was looking at the graffiti on the wall at the read of the corner shop.

This had the message ‘FREE WINSTON SILCOTT’ above a lot of less legible scrawls. Silcott was one of the ‘Tottenham 3‘ convicted in 1987 for the murder of PC Keith Blakelock on the Broadwater Farm Estate in Tottenham in October 1985, but had been nowhere near the scened. All three convictions were quashed in 1991 after it was found the police had fabricated their confessions. He remained in jail as he was convicted for an unrelated murder of a boxer and nightclub bouncer and was only released in 2003.

Carnival, Political Prisoners & Naked Bike Ride – 2008

Carnival, Political Prisoners & Naked Bike Ride: On Saturday 14th June 2008 I called in at Hampton Hill on my way into London for the 30th annual Hampton Hill & Hampton Carnival Parade, but it turned out to be a rather small event. In Trafalgar Square there was a protest outside South Africa House calling for the release of political prisoners held in prisons around the world and after this I went to Hyde Park for the start of the London World Naked Bike Ride.

Hampton & Hampton Hill 30th Anniversary Parade

Hampton Hill

Carnival, Political Prisoners & Naked Bike Ride - 2008

In Hampton Hill I found cows on the High Street and a large rabbit as well as a few cars and some people on foot including a gardener with a wheelbarrow, but it was a small and rather disappointing parade and I left to continue my journey to London as it made its way towards Hampton.

Hampton & Hampton Hill 30th Anniversary Parade

Free Political Prisoners – Break the Chains

South Africa House

The protest here was also rather smaller than I had hoped but included a group of Kurds calling for the release of their leader, Abdullah Ocalan from a Turkish jail.

Others called for the release of the Miami Five, Cubans who came to Miami to disrupt terrorist raids made by right-wing Cuban exiles living there against Cuba and imprisoned by the USA.

There were also calls for the closure of the illegal US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay and for an end to the continuing torture there and release of refugees and asylum seekers locked in detention centres in the UK.

Break the Chains -Free Political Prisoners

World Naked Bike Ride

London

In 2008 the London World Naked Bike Ride began in Hyde Park, and I went there to photograph the riders getting ready and setting off. The start was very crowded mainly with tourists eager to view the spectacle.

When all had left I took the tube to Westminster to photograph the ride going over Westminster Bridge and then as the ride regrouped I rushed to the footbridge into Waterloo Station (now demolished) for pictures from above as it came down York Road. As the last cyclist passed below me I walked into the station to catch my train home.

As I commented “while bodies are very much on display environmental messages seemed at times to be rather well-hidden, leaving many of the public along the route bemused.” And on My London Diary I recount briefly the reactions of some of the people I talked to and heard as we watched the event.

Those organising the ride say it is a “peaceful, imaginative and fun protest against oil dependency and car culture. A celebration of the bicycle and also a celebration of the power and individuality of the human body. A symbol of the vulnerability of the cyclist in traffic.”

The annual ride continues to take place in London and in other cities. The 2026 London ride is today, Sunday 14th June 2026. Riders are starting from Clapham Junction, Croydon, Deptford, Hackney Wick, Kew Bridge, Regents Park, Tower Hill, Hyde Park Corner and all meeting up close to the south end of Westminster Bridge to ride together around Central London.

More on My London Diary at World Naked Bike Ride, London 2008.

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Gravesend and Northfleet, Kent – 2006

Gravesend and Northfleet, Kent: Twenty years ago on Thursday 8th June 2006 I took my folding bike by train to Gravesend and spent an afternoon cycling through the area on the Kent bank of the River Thames, long home to the cement industry – the manufacture of ‘Portland Cement’ began here in 1834.

I’d long had an interest in the area, both for its industrial history and for its sometimes spectacular landscapes created by this. I was first inspired when I borrowed an old book from my local library, Donald Maxwell’s ‘A Pilgrimage of the Thames‘, published in 1932. His accounts and sketches, some first published earlier in the Church Times present an interesting and romantic view of places and people along the river beginning at Gravesend and ending at Oxford.

Maxwell (1877-1936) reports a Thames pilot telling him as he sketched on a jetty, “The principal products of Gravesend are paper, cement and smoke – especially smoke.”

Later, writing about Northfleet he muses prophetically “One day, when the cement industry has left this valley, and centres of population have shifted, this district will be called the Switzerland of England, and weekend châlets, each with its aeroplane-landing on the cliff, will look down once again upon green shores and tree-embowered banks.”

It hasn’t happened quite like that, though the cement industry has gone and there are some luxury riverside flats and the new town of Ebbsfleet developing around a new station on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (which Eurostar trains whizz through non-stop at around the same speed as aircraft when Maxwell wrote.)

Of course Maxwell’s book was not my only source for information about the area. Particularly useful was the 1971 geography text ‘Lower Thameside‘ by Roy Millward & Adrian Robinson with its chapter ‘The Cement Industry of Lower Thameside‘ which gave some rather more precise information and a suggested itinerary which informed my first actual visits to the area in the 1980s.

A few years after I took these pictures in 2006 the vast cement works at Northfleet had gone.

The photographs on My London Diary are not captioned (and I wrote nothing about them) but a they are in order of my ride beginning in Gravesend and moving west, with views across the Thames to Tilbury. From Rosherville I moved on to Northfleet (where Gravesend & Northfleet FC is now Ebbsfleet United) and then on to take the train home from Swanscombe.

More pictures on My London Diary

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Leyton and a Puzzle – 1994

Leyton and a Puzzle: Pictures from walks around parts of Leyton in August or September 1994 and a puzzle from south of the river.

*New Spitalfields Market, Sherin Rd, Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1994, 94-901-53*

Traffic congestion, lack of space and outdated buildings led the City of London Corporation to relocate its wholesale fruit and vegetable market out of Spitalfields to a purpose-built 31 acre site in Leyton which opened in 1991.

*New Spitalfields Market, Sherin Rd, Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1994, 94-901-54*

Stratford Market, which had been founded in 1879 by the Great Eastern Railway as a competitor to Spitalfields also moved to the new site. According to Wikipedia, New Spitalfields Market “is Europe’s leading horticultural market specialising in exotic fruit and vegetables – and the largest revenue earning wholesale market in the UK.”

*New Spitalfields Market, Sherin Rd, Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1994, 94-901-43*

There were plans for this, Billingsgate Fish Market (in the West India Docks) and Smithfield Market to move to a new consolidated site in Dagenham Dock and planning permission was given in 2021, but in November 2024 the City decided this was no longer economically viable. New Spitalfields will remain in use while there are now plans to relocate the two other markets to Albert Island at the east end of the Royal Docks.

*Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1994, 94-901-45*

The market is on the east side of Hackney Marshes a short distance from the River Lea and I walked east along Ruckholt Road into Leyton. I think this building was probably in a side turning just off this road and I think has probably been demolished. But I was only interested in the colours an shapes.

*A E Cornell, Furniture, 363, High Rd, Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1994, 94-901-46*

This shop is now occupied by Woodland Estate Agents who opened here in 2005 and the building looks rather less run-down. Of course I was attracted by the Union Flags in the windows and door as well as the Churchillian poster with its pointing finger, though I’m unclear what we should DESERVE. Perhaps someone will have memories of this shop.

*Chinese Takeaway, Fish & Chips, London, 1994, 94-901-32*

I think this was also in Leyton as another almost identical image is on the next frame of film to the picture of A E Cornell’s furniture shop. The Chinese Takeaway seems to have been at 17D and had a name ending in GARDEN. But of course my interest was mainly in the peeling mural of two rather strange-looking jockeys and horses on the side of the neighbouring bookies.

*Frederick Place, Bloomfield Rd, Woolwich, Greenwich, 1994, 94-901-24*

And finally a little puzzle from the same film but taken south of the river on Bloomfield Road in Plumstead. The L and the S are clear and there are hints of two other letters, perhaps an I and a T. There could have been other letters, out of frame to the left. The building has been demolished and replaced by new housing, though some parts of the unusual paving remain. I can’t remember now if I knew what the site was, but have a vague feeling it may have been a garage and there is still a garage at the back of the new houses.

Please comment if you know more about this or any other of the pictures. More colour from 1994 to come.

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More Golden Jubilee Celebrations – 2002

More Golden Jubilee Celebrations: Monday June 3 2002 was the official Golden Jubilee Bank Holiday, and a number of events were taking place across the nation. And although I wasn’t myself celebrating I felt I should in some way document the events and picked a couple I felt might be of interest.

Here I’ll reproduce what I wrote in My London Diary in 2002 with the usual minor corrections, along with some of the pictures I posted back then, though the scans I made are sometimes rather primitive. I’ll also link to more pictures on-line, though there are still many from the day I’ve yet to digitise.

“June 3 I went to see how ordinary people were celebrating – first of all to a council organised even in Ilford, and then to a street party in the heart of the East End. “

Redbridge Jubilee Celebrations

Ilford High Rd, Ilford.#

Redbridge is in some ways one of the bleaker London boroughs, and the event seemed to lack any real centre or real conviction.

Perhaps the brightest point was the rain, which brought out a little of the true british spirit.

More pictures

Mile End – Bow Street Party

Mile End is also bleak when you emerge from the Underground, with too many lanes of road cutting through its centre.

To the north, and running up to the Roman and Vicky Park is one of the remnants of London’s East End, still with many of its Victorian terraces.

The street party was in full swing when I arrived and everyone was out to have a good time.

It was a great event for kids and for grandmas and everyone else, and the bar and the pub were doing good business too.

These were the real East-Enders – with a cast including a real Black Bishop in purple robes, two fancy dress Beefeaters, police who could almost have been from Dock Green (except for the hats), a fire engine and its crew and plenty of characters.

Not a single juggler, mime or performance artist in sight (sometimes I ask myself what did I do to father a unicyclist.) These were people who – like we all used to – could make their own entertainment.

Food, drink, chat, music, a bit of a dance, games for the kids. It was a street rather like the area I grew up in fifty years ago, where everybody knew each other, although now with a rather more multi-ethnic population.

People – apart from the odd shy kid – were happy to have their pictures taken and to talk. One man saw I was photographing the decorations on his house and came over to tell me how his father had decorated it for the Silver Jubilee twenty five years earlier and that he had been determined to do it better.

They hadn’t quite got to a real full-blown knees-up, but it seemed definitely on the cards but it was time for me to go. As I walked away three young women were walking towards the party on the other side of the street, “D’you wanna take our picture“, one shouted, seeing my cameras. “No film left” I replied.

The following day I meant to go out and take more pictures of other Jubilee events, but in the end I couldn’t make it, just feeling it would be too much of an anti-climax.

There are six pages with pictures from the celebrations in Bow. Back in 2002 we were still on dial-up connections and so images were spread out only a few on each page to give sensible loading times. Images were then shared on the web at much lower quality than we would use now. The links to the next page are usually above the final picture and the final page from the event is of black and white images.

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Jubilee Celebrations and Kurdish Protest – 2002

Jubilee Celebrations and Kurdish Protest: Celebrations were taking place on Sunday 2nd June 2002 for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee (and they continued the following day which was the Golden Jubilee Bank Holiday, with the Tuesday also being the Spring Bank Holiday – moved into Summer for more celebrations.) My main reason for going into London was to photograph a protest by Kurds but I also tried to photograph some of the celebrations. Quotes below are from what I wrote on My London Diary back in 2002 with some of the pictures and I took.

Sloane Square

Chelsea

“As a convinced republican I wasn’t too excited, but thought I’d go along and have a little look at how others were celebrating. Sloane Square seemed a good place to see how Chelsea was taking it as they were having a fair on Sunday 2nd June.”

At least while I was there the celebrations in Sloane Square were an extremely formal event and rather boring.

Kurds Call For Human Rights in Turkey

Westminster

“I was glad to leave and join the Kurds in their demonstration for human rights. Britain has a lot to answer for, having betrayed them at the Lausanne Treaty in 1923 which divided their country, giving most to Turkey which has since behaved with complete disregard for their human rights.”

*Kurds protest against banning of their organisations*

“More recently – again to keep the Turks onside – the US put the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on their terrorist list, despite it having abandoned terrorism to try and obtain justice. ” KADEK was the name the PKK changed to in 2002 when it said it was committed to non-violent activities and it was added to the PKK proscription in 2006.

“Turkey has continued a policy of brutal repression – as the European Court of Human Rights has confirmed.”

“Cynical support of US policy by Britain and other countries resulted in the PKK also being listed [in the UK] as a banned terrorist organisation last month. It’s the kind of politics that makes me ashamed to be British and loses our Labour government any respect.”

A few more black and white pictures

Southwark Celebrations?

“After the demo I went on to see how Southwark were celebrating. “

“The answer turned out to be very low key, though as usual there were some interesting food and drink stalls at Borough Market, and a steady stream of people walking along by the river.”

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Nunhead and Brockley

Nunhead and Brockley: Pictures from my walk on 18th March 1990 in Nunhead and Brockley.

*Beer and Wine Trade Homes, Nunhead Green, Nunhead, Southwark, 1990, 90-3e-25*

The Beer and Wine Trade Society decided in 1851 to provide an asylum for its elderly poor members and purchased land on the north side of Nunhead Green, launching an appeal to its members to build these almshouses. They were built at at a cost of around £3,000 as a terrace of seven dwellings to house 13 people. The Metropolitan Beer and Wine Trade Society almshouses, architect William Webbe, opened in 1853.

The accommodation was on a generous scale, with each having four rooms and a kitchen and a part of the garden behind to grow vegetables. As well as the accommodation the residents also received a weekly allowance.

The almshouses are Grade II listed and are now private homes.

*Nunhead Library, Gordon Rd, Nunhead, Southwark, 1990, 90-3e-26*

Nunhead Library was designed by Robert Whellock of Camberwell in an Arts and Crafts style and built in 1896. Since 1965 in the London Borough of Southwark where it is one of four libraries which were founded by philanthropist John Passmore Edwards and is still in use as a library. Edwards founded another 11 libraries in London, most no longer in use.

Nunhead had been a part of the ancient parish of Camberwell but became a separate parish in 1878 and became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell in 1900, which became part of the London Borough of Southwark in 1965.

Shops, Gibbon Rd, Nunhead, Soutwwark, 1990, 90-3e-16 — *Shops, Gibbon Rd, Nunhead, Southwwark, 1990, 90-3e-16*

Nunhead Railway station is in Gibbon Road and this Gents Hairdresser at 52 and Launderette at 54 (and the Fish & Chip shop at 50 whose frying times are in the corner of their window) are just past the bridge north of the station entrance. Rather to my surprise there is still Gents Hairdresser and a Fish and Chip shop here, though the Launderette closed around 2010 and is now two homes at 54 and 54a.

The two people sitting reading outside – before the age of mobile phones – are doubtless waiting for their washing to finish inside the launderette.

*Prefabs, Temporary Housing, Drakefell Rd, Brockley, Lewisham, 1990, 90-3f-51*

I went down Gibbon Road and turned left into Hathway Terrace, which turns into Kitto Road and leads on to Drakefell Rd. Somewhere here was this path with a broken-down fence leading to an area of prefabs.

In 201 Elisabeth Blanchet and Jame Hearn from the Prefab Museum photographed the interior of a prefab in Drakefell Road and posted a video of the resident, John De’Ath, who had moved in when these prefabs were new in 1948 and stayed there until his death in 2017, a very satisfied resident. You can read more about London’s prefabs and see a photograph of one of them in a GLIAS Journal, when in 2024 the two last prefabs there were awaiting demolition.

*Telegraph Hill Park, Brockley, Lewisham, 1990, 90-3f-55*

The 10 acres site the hill top on Kitto Road was created in 1894 thanks to George Livesey, chairman of the South Metropolitan Gas Company and a local philanthropist. It has good views to central London and south and east towards Croydon and Shooters Hill, which made it a great side for a semaphore station which was built around 1795 – as one of a series which formed an optical communication system from London to Dover and Southampton with large arms which could be moved to different positions to convey letters or codes.

The French had invented the system for their military and we copied it – and it was able to speedily deliver the new of Wellington’s victory at Waterloo (among many other messages over the years) back to London. The signal station was out of use by 1823, but the name it gave to what had previously been ‘Plowed Garlic Hill’ stuck.

Rather than take the views, I decided to make a picture that showed a hill. I don’t think it shows the part of the park which once had the telegraph station.

*Endwell Court, Mantle Rd, Endwell Rd, Brockley, Lewisham, 1990, 90-3f-45*

Mantle Road and Endwell Road meet at Brockley Cross, just to the north of Brockley Station, which is just down the hill which goes under the railway bridge at the left of Endwell Court. This rather isolated block appears to have been built as a mansion block with perhaps four flats and looks very similar now.

*Houses, 169, 171, Drakefell Rd, Brockley, Lewisham, 1990, 90-3f-46*

A small group of three semi-detached houses on the north side of Drakefell Road close to Brockley Cross have some rather unusually detailed ornamentation. This end of Drakefell Road was Penmartin Road until 1902, and I think these houses probably date from a few years before then. The houses are now flats.

As always, comments and corrections are welcome. More from Brockley in a later post.

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Hall Place & River Darent

Hall Place & River Darent: More from my walks by the River Cray and Darent in September 1994. Firstly a couple of pictures from Hall Place, Bexley where the River Cray runs through the grounds of a magnificent Tudor Hall.

*Park, River Cray, Bexley Hall Place, Bexley, 1994, 94-906-62*

The gardens are open free of charge all year round, and are well worth a visit – and dogs, footballs, BBQs or fishing are not allowed, making it very peaceful. I can’t remember exactly where in the grounds this was, perhaps at the north close to the A2 where there is a flood channel marked on the map.

*Hall Place, Bourne Road Bexley, 1994, 94-901-61*

Although you can see the exterior of the Grade I listed country house for free, you can only go inside on pre-booked guided tours. I once went on one of these and possibly these pictures were taken on the same day, but I took no pictures inside the house.

The main house was built in two stages, the first in 1537 for Sir John Champneys, a wealthy merchant and former Lord Mayor of London with the fine flint and rubble walls in my picture. Some of the stone used in its construction was recycled from the ruins of the former Lesnes Abbey not far away in Abbey Wood.

When the house was sold to a second wealth London merchant, Sir Robert Austen in 1649, he decided to double its size, extending it in red brick. Later buildings including a lodge were added in the Victorian era. In the 1920s the last tenant of the hall, then owned by her wealthy American son-in-law Stephen Cox Brady, was the eccentric Lady Limerick who added some mock-Tudor interior features.

Brady died in 1928 and the house and gardens were sold to Bexley Council, but the eccentric Lady Limerick lived there as a tenant until her death in 1945. During the war the house was also in use by US soldiers who were involved in the decoding of German messages, part of the operation centred at Bletchley Park and had the code name Santa Fe.

I think the next pictures were made a few days later.

*Darent Industrial Park, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-912-23*

I’ve walked around beside the River Darent and on to the Thames and to Erith a number of times, and more recently on my folding bike. Usually I’ve begun my walk either at Slade Green or Barnes Cray stations, though I think I may once have done it in the opposite direction.

*Darent Industrial Park, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-912-42*

The land here is on the edge of the marshes and was marsh and grass land until the 1879s when the Thames Ammunition Works, later part of VickersArmstrong, was established here. During World War I it employed thousands, many of them women, working long hours in hazardous conditions. The site officially closed in 1962, having been run down for some years and became home to a number of smaller companies.

*Darent Industrial Park, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-913-32*

*River Thames, Crayford Ness, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-913-42*

Taken from the low-lying ground immediately upstream of the confluence of the River Darent with the River Thames. At left is the QE2 bridge, with the chimney of Littlebrook Power station on the south bank – only finally demolished in 2019 though the plant had closed in 2015, and at right the Darent Flood barrier built in 1982. The riverside path runs along the top of the grassy bank at right.

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Beltane Bash – Pagan Pride 2005

Bloomsbury, London

Beltane was an ancient Gaelic Festival to mark the beginning of Summer and was celebrated in Ireland and Scotland on May 1st, but the whole month of May was the month of Beltane, and this London celebration on Sunday 29 May 2005 took place on the last Sunday of Beltane.

It was when cattle were taken to higher Summer pastures and various fires and rituals were performed “to protect cattle, people and crops, and to encourage growth.” There was also a great deal of feasting and merry-making.

Beltane was still celebrated in many places in the Victorian era and attracted the attention of folklorists recording its dying practices. But the mid twentieth century saw its revival in cultural festivals in some towns including in the Gaelic diaspora.

Celebrations have also been revived in Neopaganist events such as this annual event in London which I photographed most years from 2004 to 2010, but there are other celebrations in various venues across the country and wider, mainly around the start of May.

I’m unsure if the Pagan Pride Parade still takes place in London. The first was in 1998 and there was a parade in London in 2019, but I don’t know if there have been more since Covid.

Here’s the text I wrote in 2005 – and a link to more pictures from the day:

Beltane Bash – Pagan Pride

Bloomsbury

The Beltane Bash takes place annually in London during late May, and is a gathering of “pagans of all traditions, whether they be witches, wiccans, druids, odinists, asatru, shamans and Egyptian traditions” to celebrate the changing seasons of the year.

The event starts with a Pagan Pride Parade around Bloomsbury, with a dance and a certain amount of splashing around the fountain in the middle of Russell Square. The fountains have a number of jets which rise and fall, and some play is made of this in the proceedings.

The procession, led by the Green Lady, includes the Jack In The Green – a dancing bush – along with a whole band of Green Men, the Bogie drummers, Giants including Herne, Lord of the Forests, the Ravens and much more.

Beltane Bash is also a fund-raising event, helping to ensure the future of an area of 25 acres of ancient woodland, Raven’s Wood, near Tring in Buckinghamshire.

There are more pictures on My London Diary on most May pages from 2004 to 2010. Those from 2005 start here.

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Chelsea Flower Show – 2005

Chelsea Flower Show: Saturday 28 May 2005. I’ve never had a serious interest in photographing flowers, though I have occasionally pictured some of those growing in my garden, roses, apple blossom etc and turned my phone on plants and bouquets given to Linda so she can thank the donors. And although I’ve gone with students and family to Kew Gardens and elsewhere and taken the odd snap, I have never actually visited the annual Chelsea Flower Show.

But in 2005 I was persuaded by a photographer friend to go with him to Chelsea on the final day of the show, where t the end of the last day on Saturday a bell starts a frenzied sale of many of the plants on display.

It’s long been one of the events of the London season for photographers as men and mainly women stagger out onto the streets and onto buses and tube carrying huge pots of impressive specimens.

I did wonder how many of these fine and formerly cosseted plants made it back to their carrier’s homes, and if so how long they survived. Some marriages are rumoured to have been ended as husbands dropped pots, broke off stems getting on to buses or crowded tube carriages, and otherwise destroyed the prized and expensive loot on the way home to Putney and Wimbledon.

I suspect I mainly went along for a social pre- and post-event pint with my mates, and I don’t think I ever went again in later years – there are so many other things to photograph. I only wrote a short and hard to find paragraph for My London Diary to go with the over 50 photographs I put on-line – here in full with the usual corrections.

“Chelsea Flower Show is the biggest event of the gardening season, and the crowds are huge. This year an extra day was added to cut down on the jams, though I don’t know how effective it is.

Unless you are a gardening photographer, the most interesting part of the whole event is the end, when many of the plants on show are sold off and proudly carried home by their purchasers.

As you can see from the pictures, they carry them along the streets to the bus stop or car park or coach, providing a rather unusual spectacle”

The previous year, 2004, I had met the same friend close to Victoria Station where many of those getting onto buses with flowers from the show alight “to photograph them as they poured of the buses carrying their prizes. After a minor navigation error involving a Wetherspoons pub we made it, and managed to take a few pictures.“

More pictures from Taking Chelsea Home On the Bus- 2004

More pictures from 2005 start here on My London Diary.

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