London Photos | >Re-PHOTO

Cable Street, Fish Island & Hackney Wick

On Sunday 2 October 2011 a march and rally celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Cable St, when when Mosley’s fascists were prevented from marching into London’s largely Jewish East End.

Over a thousand trade unionists and anti-fascists came to march along Cable St remembering the day, including the then TUC Deputy General Secretary Frances O’Grady, and the marchers were led by Max Levitas who had been at the battle in 1936, then aged 21, and remained active as an anti-fascist until his death in 2018, including serving for a total of 15 years as a Communist coucillor in Stepney.

At the rally close to the fine Cable Street mural we were reminded that official bodies including the Board of Deputies of British Jews had advised people to stay away from Mosley’s march and that the local opposition was organised largely by the Communist Party of Great Britain, led by Phil Piratin, who nine ears later became Communist MP for Mile End. As well as large number of local people, both Jews and others, thousands of others opposed to fascism flocked in to defend the area.

An estimated 1-300,000 people gathered at all the roads leading into the East End, determined to stop the march on October 4th by 3,000 uniformed fascists. The fascists waited outside the Royal Mint while 7,000 Metropolitan Police, including their entire mounted section and an autogiro (a primitive form of helicopter with an unpowered rotor) overhead, attempted to clear a route for them.

When the anti-fascists heard the police were trying to force a route along Cable Street, Irish dockers, Jewish tailors and other anti-fascists built three barricades across the street with thousands arriving to stop the police clearing the street. Eventually Mosley abandoned the march and took his supporters back towards Hyde Park.

There were around 175 people injured, men, women and police and around 150 arrests. Most were charged with obstructing the police and received fines, typically of £5, but some thought to be ringleaders were sentenced to three months hard labour.

The event raised public awareness of the British Union of Fascists and led to the passage of the 1936 Public Order Act which prohibited the wearing of political uniforms in public except for ceremonial occasions, outlawed paramilitary organisations, banned offensive weapons at public meetings and gave power to the police to impose conditions on marches and arrest unruly counter-demonstrators. It also allowed the Home Secretary to ban protests in a area where serious disorder was likely and made it an offence to use “insulting words likely to cause a breach of the peace” in public speeches.

Mosley continued to have many supporters in the East End after the battle, and Bethnal Green was one of his strongholds. There were gangs of fascist youths in Mile End who assaulted Jews on the street and smashed the windows of Jewish homes and shops.

Levitas was not the only veteran of the 1936 battle at the event, and there were other veteran antifacists taking part too. The oldest was was 106 year old Hetty Bower, still looking extremely well, and walking with the aid of a stick. Rather younger at 94, Beattie Orwell was still looking very sprightly and had been at the battle at the age of 19.

There were also banners from the Spanish Civil War which was also taking place 75 years ago, as well as those from many trade unions and political groups including those representing the newer communities of the area, with local activists reminding those present of the continuing need to fight against fascism and racism, and in particular the need to oppose the English Defence League, who just a few weeks earlier had attempted to march into Tower Hamlets but had been stopped by a popular mobilisation.

A short distance away in Grace Alley Wilton’s Music Hall, the oldest surviving Grand Music Hall in the world, was hosting a four day programme of events commemorating Cable St with various performances, book launches, exhibitions and stalls, street theatre and music along the alley outside.

Battle of Cable St – 75 Years.

Fish Island, Olympic Views & Hackney Wick

I left Cable Street and took a bus to Bethnal Green, then walked along the Roman Road and and on across the motorway to Fish Island, on my way to visit the gallery space on the top floor of Forman’s, salmon smokers and one of the few local businesses that seems to have done well out of the Olympics.

*Footbridge across the Hertford Union Canal to Hackney Wick*

They had been moved from a factory more or less where the Olympic Stadium was being built to new modern premises on the opposite bank of the Lea navigation, designed and painted salmon pink to look like a lump of salmon and appropriately in the area known from its street names as Fish Island. As well as the smoking plant it also houses a restaurant and a large art space, with views over the Olympic site both from the front of the gallery and the adjoining roof terrace.

After viewing the exhibition and taking some photographs there I walked from Fish Island over the footbridge to Hackney Wick, visiting a lively street market there and then walking along the Lea Navigation towpath to the Westway and back into Hackney Wick for a bus back though the City and on the Waterloo.

More pictures at Fish Island, Olympic Views & Hackney Wick.

Southall – Britain’s Holy City – 2005

Seventeen years ago I was fortunate to be able to go on a tour of the Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara, opened in 2003 and said to be the largest Sikh temple (Gurdwara) in Europe and the fourth largest in the world, led by one of the Sikh volunteer guides and the architect, Richard Adams of Architects Co-Partnership.

The tour had been organised by art and urban historian Mireille Galinou for the group London Arts Café, and was one of a series of interesting events and exhibitions between 1996 and 2007, which you can still read about on the rather messy London Arts Café web site that I was responsible for, though the front page of this makes very clear that the London Arts Café is no more. The site remains on line as a record of its activities.

Architects Co-Partnership had won an open competition to design the building, and Adams had worked fully with the Sikh community to produce a building suited to their needs. It does so impressively: clean simple surfaces, powerful colour in the windows and light streaming into the central stairway and lobby from the large window and glass roof areas.

The Gurdwara has a vast prayer hall officially capable of seating up to 3,000 people, a fine marriage room (and two years later I photographed one of my wife’s colleagues getting married here), and various other facilities including a Langar (dining hall). This free community kitchen can serve over 20,000 vegetarian meals on a festival weekend.

The building had a powerfully religious atmosphere, and on entering we removed our shoes, covered our heads with scarves provided and washed our hands before continuing into the temple.

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

The building was extremely impressive, and there was a great atmosphere to in the community kitchen where volunteers, mainly women, were working together to prepare the free vegetarian meals. Although normally I would have sat to eat on the floor in the traditional way, a rather painful knee made it easier for me to stand and eat at one of the tables along with most of our group.

The food is free, but in return people are expected or welcomed to perform some service to the temple in thanks or give an donation which we gladly did. The meal was delicious and made a good end to a most interesting visit.

I ended my account on My London Diary:

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

We didn’t on this occasion visit any of these others, but did go for a short walk before catching our bus home, going into the Christian cemetery opposite the Gurdwara and some streets around for some views of the building’s exterior, as well as some local views.

I’d visited Southall before to photograph some of the religious festivals – both Sikh and Hindu – in the town and there are pictures of some of these on My London Diary, as well as pictures from Vaisakhi celebrations here and in Hounslow, Slough, Woolwich, East Ham, Gravesend and Sikh protests in central London. You can find these by searching on My London Diary.

More pictures on My London Diary.

Kew, Brentford, Syon & Isleworth Walk

Part 2 Syon and Isleworth

A public footpath, now also on the Thames Path, leads from Brentford across Syon Park to Isleworth. Its a longish stroll with parkland on one side and at times just a high wall on the other, but does pass several historic buildings, though you would need to pay the entrance fee to the gardens and great conservatory to see most of them well. The estate is still privately owned and permission is needed for any filming and photography within the park.

Entry is free to the garden centre, and we went in to look at some of the buildings inside as well as to use the toilets. They also have a cafe and restaurant but we didn’t stop. Much of the garden centre was once the Riding School.

I wasn’t feeling well as we walked though here – still perhaps suffering from the virus which I’d had a couple of weeks earlier. So I didn’t feel much like taking pictures as we walked though. But I hadn’t found much I thought worth photographing on previous walks through here, expect for the view of Zion House. This is on the flight path into Heathrow, and there is an aircraft in my picture coming in to land there.

In my teens I was a Sea Scout in Isleworth, or rather a Senior Scout, and we theoretically went boating in the Thames here, though I think rather rarely. But this was also another route into Kew Gardens, with Church Ferry going across the names from by the corner of Parke Street and Church St. I also remember coming here to paddle and possibly even swim in the river, though it was pretty polluted back in the 1950s.

Isleworth was also the place where I drank my first pint of beer, which I think cost 1s/5d or around 7p. Not at the London Apprentice, which we thought of as a rather snooty place for the nobs, but at a small pub further down Church Street which had few problems with serving under-age drinkers. It’s no longer there.

We made it into the London Apprentice, sitting outside by the river for a drink, though still feeling ill I stuck to tonic. One of my colleagues found an excellent real ale, which I looked at longingly. It was a very pleasant place with a good atmosphere and friendly bar staff, so we stayed for another, and then thought the menu seemed fine and had a meal.

Finally we made it out of the pub and continued along Church St to the Duke of Northumberland’s River, perviously known as the Isleworth Mill Stream. There were several mills which relied on the stream, including one close to here said in 1845 (by which time there were also a couple of steam engines on site) to be the largest flour mill in England, Kidd’s Mill. This section of the river was built in the late 15th century for Syon Abbey, before the Northumberland’s built their house on the abbey site, and brought water from the River Crane at Whitton to augment a small stream which ran into the Thames at Isleworth.

But the River Crane couldn’t provide a sufficient and reliable supply of water, and in 1530 a new section of the river was dug from Longford to take water from the River Colne. This merges with the Crane close to Baber Bridge on the edge of Feltham, though there are then separate channels across Hounslow Heath and through Crane Park before the eastern section of the river diverges. I played around, paddled and fished in much of this as a boy.

The walkway beside this small river on its last few yards into the Thames was closed, but a nearby alley took us to to the riverside opposite Isleworth Ait. At Swan Street we made a brief detour to admire the Grade II listed Old Blue School built in 1842 and now converted into expensive flats, before returning to the riverside. The tide was low and there was almost no water in places here, and we watched as a man left work at the boatyard and walked across the mud to his works van parked by the river.

We continued through a small park area, once part of the grounds of the Catholic Convent Nazareth House, until the Thames Path we had been following took us out onto Richmond Road. Here we left the Path, turning right onto Richmond Road and then going down Queen’s Terrace to Kings Terrace, walking north to turn down Byfield Road.

Where this turns to the left we stopped to admire the small 1885 Elizabeth Butler almshouses, almost missing behind us the finely decorated May Villas from a similar era before taking the alley to Twickenham Road. Here next to the bus stop where our walk ended was the house with its blue plaque informing us ‘VINCENT VAN GOGH the famous painter lived here in 1876.” The bus came before I had time to make a photograph. It will still be there the next time I’m in Isleworth.

Kew, Brentford, Syon & Isleworth Walk

Part 1 – Kew Bridge and Brentford

My walk a few days ago in September 2022 began at Kew Bridge Station. I’d come half an hour before I was due to meet my two companions to take a short walk around one of the newer parts of the area before meeting them for a longer walk to Isleworth.

Lionel Road runs north of the railway up to meet the Great West Road. It used to be a rather run down area with railway sidings on one side and a few old commercial buildings and works to the north. The last time I’d walked down here on my way to Gunnersbury Park in 2018 the whole area had been a building site, but now is home to Brentford FC, currently doing pretty well in the Premier League.

Brentford was my local team when I was a kid, and several members of the award-winning under-11 team I played for at left back on went on to play for them at their old ground (and at Chelsea.) One of the other patrol leaders from my scout group stayed there until he retired, though I never met him after I hung up my woggle, but read his obit in the local rag.

Past there I came to the Great West Road, a 1930s dual carriageway with cycle tracks I sometimes used further west on my way home from school. In the 1980s or 90s I photographed most of the remaining Art Deco factories along it, though the bulldozers got to some first. Now it reminds me of J G Ballard’s novels, particularly ‘Crash’, set around the area we both lived in, with the elevated M4 above the older modern road.

A new Brentford of tall blocks has sprouted here, though more land remains to be built on. A little-used rail line goes through it, the Kew Curve, with Brentford’s stadium replacing the sidings and cattle pens to its west, with new building on the east in what was Brentford Market. It moved to this site in 1893 after the Brentford Local Board had bought the 2 acre site from the Rothschild estate because market trading in the area around the Express Tavern immediately south of the station which had developed informally away from Brentford’s traditional market in Market Place had become a public nuisance. The site was extended in 1905 and then covered land now part of the Chiswick Roundabout. The market moved to the edge of Southall in 1974 as the new Western International Market and the Fountains Leisure Centre was built on part of the site, with the rest staying derelict for years.

My maternal grandfather, then a market gardener in Feltham, would drive his cart with produce to Brentford Market in the early years of the last century, past the house in Hounslow where my father, then a young boy, used to see him driving past. Around twenty years later when he became engaged to my mother he found out who he was.

I met my two colleagues and we walked together down by the west side of Kew Bridge to the Thames. To our right was where the Kew Bridge Ecovillage had squatted from June 2009 until May 2010, now occupied by 164 flats, a business centre, gym and pub.

The Hollows runs west between riverside moorings and recent blocks of luxury flats, eventually returning us to Brentford High St, and a park beside the river now called Watermans Park. This was the site of Brentford Gas Works which straddled the High Street here and was a great attraction when we took the bus through it in my childhood, usually on our way to Kew Gardens. Entrance then was only an old penny, and it was a cheap outing for families in the area. My father would have his scissors in his pocket and perhaps take the odd small cutting to grow in our garden. Rather cheaper than garden centres.

But if you were lucky as the bus drove slowly down the usually congested street, one of its Intermittent Vertical Retort would open sending a wall of red hot coke to the ground, quite an amazing site as we peered from the top deck. It almost made up for the smell.

A gas works had been set up here and began production in 1821, first supplying has for lighting the turnpike to Kensington, but later serving large areas around. Later other gas works were set up in Southall and then elsewhere as demand continued to rise. in 1926 the Brentford gas company became a part of the Gas Light and Coke Co which later became British Gas plc. Brentford Gas Woks closed in 1963 and the riverside buildings were demolished in 1965 though the large gasholder remained until 1988.

All than now remains of the gas works are some of the substantial posts of the gas works jetty, where colliers once brought in coal. There has been a long battle over the rights to moorings here between boat owners and Hounslow Council with boat owners claiming that the foreshore here belongs neither to the council nor to the PLA but to the Bishop of London, and refusing to abide by various eviction notices. Most have now moved but some derelict boats remain.

Brentford Ait runs along the centre of the river here. It was bought in the late 19th century by the Crown who planted trees on it to hide the gas works from visitors to Kew Gardens on the opposite bank. A few yard upstream is Lot’s Ait, where the Thames Steam Tug and Lighterage Company Ltd set up a boatyard in 1920 – most of the Thames lighters were built there. The boatyard closed in the 1970s, but was reopened in 2012 when a new footbridge was constructed to it.

As well as the park, the Watermans Arts Centre was also built on the gasworks site. We walked between it and the river, and continued on the riverside path, past the bridge to Lots Ait and recent blocks of flats. There are new moorings around here too.

A small spit of land leads from the bottom of Ferry Lane (more new flats) to an artwork by the riverside. I’m not quite sure what to make either of Liquidity or another similarly decorated column not far away, but it could provide a useful windbreak in bad weather. This was where once a ferry ran across to Kew Gardens.

We followed the Thames Path around a small dock, on what was the site of the Thames Soap Works and then continued along the side of the River Brent which flows into the Thames here, continuing along this beside the winding river past another boatyard to Brentford High Street.

A few yards along we turned left down Dock Road to Thames Lock, past a huge mural and the other end of the boatyard, to Thames Lock, the southern end of the Grand Union Canal. Here we took the path beside the north side of the canal, leading across a bridge over the Brent to Johnson’s Island and Catherine Wheel Road.

The mural, on the side of a multi-story car park had included a giant kingfisher, and I’d joked saying this was the only kingfisher we’d see in Brentford. But as we walked across the bridge over the River Brent and stopped to take pictures, perched on the top of a post there was one, still only for a second before flying out of sight. By the time I’d raised my camera to my eye it was gone, though since I had and extreme wideangle lens it would hardly have been visible, just a few more colourful pixels.

I’d planned to walk along Brent Way and rejoin the canal towpath, but the whole of this area is now a huge building site, and instead we walk along the High Street to the canal bridge. I couldn’t bring myself to walk down to the Gauging Lock preserved there, though I’ve done so several times before, but the changes to the area, now with a marina, flats and hotel made me feel too sad; we simply stood on the bridge and looked for a while before moving on.

Part 2 will continue the walk from here to its end in Isleworth. You can see more pictures from the walk in a Facebook album.

People’s Health, Chapel Furniture, Sutherland Square & Groce Bros

This continues my posts on my walk in Walworth on 8th January 1989. The previous post was Heygate, Shops, English Martyrs & St John the Evangelist

Municipal Offices, Borough of Southwark, Larcom St, Southwark, 1989 89-1b-34 — *Health Centre, Borough of Southwark, Larcom St, Southwark, 1989 89-1b-34*

This building on the corner of Larcom Street and Walworth Road is now Larcom House and has a blue plaque for “Michael Faraday – 1791-1867 – Scientific genius and discoverer of electromagnetism’ put there by the London Borough of Southwark. It isn’t clear why they put it here as he was born in Newington Butts.

Built as a health centre in 1937 this Grade II listed art deco building is now office space and offers are invited for internal development behind the listed facades

*Health Services Department, Metropolitan Borough of Southwark, Walworth Rd, Larcom St, Southwark, 1989 89-1b-36*

This is the main frontage of the 1937 Grade II listed health centre, with statues of mother and children on the roof showing its association with family health, and the text ‘THE HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE IS THE HIGHEST LAW’. It appears to be still in use as the Walworth Clinic.

*Houses Cleared, Browning St, Walworth, Southwark, 1989 89-1b-22*

The building remained in use as a secondhand furniture business, Chapel Furniture, until it was demolished in 2016 and replaced by a new block. At 4 Downing St it was not actually a former chapel, but St Mark’s Church Hall, for St Mark’s Church in East Street, opened around 1874.

There was a much larger and well-known chapel a little further along Browning St, the York Street Chapel, an Independent or Congregational chapel built in 1790. It was renamed Browning Hall in 1895 after Robert Browning, the Victorian playwright and poet who was baptised here in 1812, and York Road was also renamed Browning St in the 1920s.

The church was very active in relief of poverty in the area and had a settlement on Walrworth Rd, opened in 1895 by Herbert Asquith. Charles Booth began a campaign here with a conference in 1898 and in 1899 Browning Hall became the headquarters of the National Committee of Organised Labour on Old Age Pensions, which eventually led to the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908. Browning Hall was demolished in 1978 when a council housing estate was built here.

*King & Queen St, Walworth, Southwark, 1989 89-1b-24*

Until the 1920s I think this street was simply one of many King Streets in London. Many London streets were renamed in the 1920s and 30s to try make their names unique in the city. There was at the time a Queen’s Head pub in the street, long gone.

Although my contact sheet suggests this was taken in King & Queen Street, there is nothing in the picture which allows me to confirm that. I’d walked some distance before I took my next pictures on the west of Walworth Road, and it could well have been another nearby street.

But this was certainly somewhere in Walworth and I think demonstrates the run-down nature of the area at that time. The rubbish on the grass here may have been in part because this was close to the busy East St Market which I avoided on this walk, though I did photograph there in later years.

*Sutherland Square, Walworth, Southwark, 1979 89-1b-26*

The oldest houses in Sutherland Square date from the early 19th century and most of the houses and railings are Grade II listed. The square was built on part of the former Royal Surrey pleasure gardens, but not long after it was completed the London, Chatham and Dover Railway line was opened on a viaduct across the east end of the square. The gardens continued as a the Surrey Zoological Gardens and Surrey Music Hall until sold for housing development in 1877, and a small area of them became a public park, Pasley Park, in the 1980s.

Southwark designated the Sutherland Square Conservation Area in 1982.

*Sutherland Square, Walworth, Southwark, 1989 89-1b-14*

The notice on the wall states ‘COMMUNITY GARDEN. PLEASE DO NOT STEAL PLANTS AND FLOWERS. THEY ARE PROVIDED FOR OUR ENJOYMENT by NO 12 the Sq’ . The notice has gone, but there is now a rather more healthy looking area of planting here on the corner just to the west of the railway viaduct.

*Macleod St, Walworth Rd, Walworth, Southwark, 1989 89-1c-61*

Macleod Street leads from Sutherland Square east to Walworth Rd, and this building on the corner is now a gym, with the ground floor on this corner being an Iceland store.

The building has a long frontage on Walworth Road, which now houses several shops. It was built around 1960 as a Co-operative store. Previously the site had been occupied by Grose Bros department store. This had started as a drapery business in the area by John Wellington Grose who was born in Padstow, Cornwall around 1840. He had two daughters and four sons, some at least of whom continued the business.

To be continued…

The first post on this walk was Elephant, Faraday, Spurgeon & Walworth Road.
Comments and corrections to these posts are alway welcome.

Veils, Ahava, Justice, Rentokill & A Walk

On Saturday 25th September 2010 I made a few pictures while travelling around London to photograph some rather varied protests and then took a walk mainly beside the Regent’s Canal in Shoreditch and Haggerston before going home.

Veils, Ahava, Justice, Rentokill & A Walk

My day in London began with a bus ride from Clapham Junction to Knightsbridge, where around 80 Muslim women from Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain had come with a letter to the French Ambassador protesting the French parliament decision to ban face veils.

Although the ban prohibits all face coverings, it is mainly aimed at Muslim women who wear the niqab or burkha. Both were then uncommon in France outside of Paris and some Mediterranean coast cities and some estimate they were only worn by around 2000 of France’s 2-3 million Muslim women, most of whom, like the great majority of women at the protest wear headscarves rather than face coverings.

Judging from the slogans, placards and speeches this was more a protest against ‘liberal values’ and “the objectification and sexualisation of women’s bodies in pornography, lap-dancing clubs, advertising, and the entertainment industry, all permitted under the premise of freedom of expression and driven by the pursuit of profit in Western societies.”

The French ban seems an unfortunate restriction of the rights of women to decide how they wish to dress, but is also a measure to oppose the power of clerics and others to limit the freedom of women by forcing them to wear face coverings, which seems to to be fully in line with the French tradition of liberty. And being a liberal and secular society doesn’t necessarily mean giving free rein to the exploitation of women or others for profit. We can oppose these without wanting to impose the kind of restrictions on others that groups such as Hizb Ut Tahrir advocate.

From Kensington I went on to Covent Garden where Pro-Palestinian demonstrators were holding another of their fortnightly demonstrations outside the Covent Garden Ahava shop which sells products manufactured in an illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

As on previous occasions their protest was met by a smaller counter-demonstration by supporters of the right-wing English Defence League (EDL) and Zionists. At previous protests there had been some attacks by the EDL on the protesters, but while I was present they were content with shouting.

The Ahava protests are part of an international ‘Stolen Beauty’ campaign organised by ‘Code Pink’, a women-initiated grass-roots peace and social justice movement which began when American women came together to oppose the invasion of Iraq. They say that Ahava “has openly flouted tax requirements by exploiting the EU-Israel trade agreement and violates UK DEFRA guidelines in respect of proper labelling.”

I walked down to the Embankment, pausing to photograph a rather fine Routemaster bus with vintage advertising, and a few boats taking part in the ‘Great River Race’. In Temple Place I met protesters from ‘Families Fighting For Justice’, members of families of murder victims, who were calling for tougher sentences for murder – with life sentences meaning life imprisonment.

Some of the stories I heard from them were truly heartbreaking and showed why many ordinary people have lost faith in our justice system. Although I don’t feel that their ‘Life 4 A Life’ campaign would actually do much if anything to solve the problem, clearly some action is called for, both in improving child protection by our social services and also in how we regulate behaviour on our streets. Part of this is better policing, but increased spending on youth services and community support is vital. Instead we got years of austerity cutting these and other essential services.

I left the march as it headed off towards a rally in Waterloo Place; it was smaller than expected and police insisted they march on the pavement rather than taking to the road, which reduced its impact.

I was on my way to Old Street where the RMT and other unions were holding a short demonstration outside the Initial Rentokil Offices in Brunwick Place as the start of a campaign against the company’s union-busting activities towards its cleaning staff.

The RMT say Initial Rentokil intimidates and bullies its members and deliberately employs workers whose immigration status is doubtful so that they can pay minimum wages and provide sub-standard working conditions, often requiring them to work without proper safety equipment or precautions. They allege that workers who question their rights or attempt to organise have been reported to the immigration authorities who have then raided the workplace. The protest was also supported by members of Unite and Unison.

It was still before 3pm when the rally ended and I decided to take a walk before going home. I walked roughly north to the Regent’s Canal.

On the Haggerston Estate I found flats bricked up as people have been moved out to redevelop the estate. They are said to be moving back when new social housing is built – along with some at market prices.

Shoreditch and Haggerston were both very much up and coming areas, with some expensive flats beside the canal.

One of the reasons to walk this way was to see a large art work on the long block of flats by the canal, ‘I am Here’, one of London’s largest art installations., with giant portraits of the residents.

But I was also keen to photograph other buildings in the area, including the Bridge Academy.

And, on Kinsgsland Road, the Suleymaniye Mosque.

Even when finally I got on the 243 bus I was still taking pictures, including a rather sad view of the former Foundry, a lively venue where I had been to a great photo show not long before, now boarded up and covered with a giant advertising hoarding,

More pictures from my walk and the protests on My London Diary:

Hizb ut-Tahrir Protest French Veil Ban
Protest Against Illegal Israeli Goods
Families of Murder Victims Call For Justice
Protest over Initial Rentokil Union Busting
Walking Around London

Druids, Paddington & Women March For Syria

On Sunday 22nd September 2013 Druids carried out their annual Autumn Equinox (Alban Elued) ceremony on Primrose Hill at noon and later in the day women from the radical fundamentalist Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain marched from Paddington Green in protest against the chemical attacks and massacres of women and children by the Assad regime in Syria. Between the two events I spent some time taking pictures around the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal.

Druids Celebrate Autumn Equinox – Primrose Hill

Every year for a little over 100 years the Druid Order have celebrated the Autumn Equinox on Primrose Hill, a site of historical significance in the history of Druidism and the re-invention of a Druidic tradition. Here on the Autumn Equinox in 1716 John Toland made a call for a meeting of Druids a year and a day later at the Apple Tree Tavern in Covent Garden, and on Midsummer’s day 1792 Iolo Morganwg (1747-1826) held the first meeting of the Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isle of Britain, the precursor of the modern Eisteddfod.

Morganwg was the bardic name of Edward Williams and his work “was a prime force behind the cultural revival that saw the birth of modern Wales” according to the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies whose web site describes him as “a profoundly complicated character: a struggling provincial poet in London, a manipulator and victim of the world of literary patronage, a radical, a medievalist, a forger of pasts, an opium eater and a forceful and opinionated critic.”

Most of the Druidic traditions we now have come from forged manuscripts he produced in particular the “Gorsedd Beirdd Ynys Prydain” (“The Gorsedd of Bards of the Isles of Britain”.) It was only in the twentieth century that the extent of his imaginative forgeries became clear. But although his work came almost entirely from his own extremely fertile imagination it had a dramatic effect in creating a new view of the Welsh nation.

The Druid Order made its first recorded appearance at the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge in 2021, though its founder, the remarkable George Watson MacGregor Reid, a trade union and Labour party activist with a great interest in oriental mysticism was probably there 3 years earlier. In 2014 he returned for the Solstice describing himself as a High Priest and “the direct successor of the Chief Druids who have been” and dressed in a very similar manner to that still adopted by The Druid Order.

I’ve photographed the Equinox ceremonies of the Druid Order, Spring at Tower Hill and Autumn on Primrose Hill on several occasions and have been impressed by the solemnity and spirituality of those taking part. Whatever its origins, it is a movement which respects the Earth and is peace loving and free-thinking with the apparent aim of developing themselves through being rather than through intellectual learning.

My account on My London Diary gives quite a detailed description of the event both in pictures and text so I won’t repeat that here.

Druids Celebrate Autumn Equinox

Paddington Basin – Paddington

The main line of the Grand Union Canal enters the River Thames at Brentford, from where it was possible for goods to travel along the river to London, but a direct canal route was obviously desirable and only two years after the Act of Parliament for the main route to Brentford was passed a further Act to allow the construction of a canal joining the this to a canal basin at Paddington, then on the western edge of London. This opened in 1801.

Unusually there are no locks on the 22km of the Paddington Arm – and you can travel a total of around 43 lock-free miles along the pound made up by it the Grand Union and Regents canal.

The area around the final length of the Paddington Arm from Little Venice to Paddington Basin has been the site of huge redevelopments in the past thirty or so years. A few older canalside buildings remain. Much of the land and paths open to the public in the area are on private land.

Paddington Basin

Hizb ut-Tahrir Women March for Syria – Paddington Green

Over a thousand woman gathered on Paddington Green for a march to the Syrian Embassy to show solidarity with women and children in Syria and to condemn the chemical attacks and massacres being carried out by the Assad regime.

Hizb ut-Tahrir oppose Western military intervention in Syria but call for the replacement of the current corrupt rulers in Islamic states by a Khilifah (caliphate), a state that will truly implement Islamic values and end the corruption and oppression of the current states. They call for Muslims to rise up and get rid of corruption, and in particular of “the criminal regime of the butcher Bashar Al Assad” in Syria, and for “Muslim armies to mobilise and replace the rule of the dictator with the rule of Allah.“

At the front of the march children carried a small coffin and other children and women carried bundles representing dead children. There were a few young boys taking part, but I saw few men – just one small group with a banner and a heavy public address system – and the event was clearly led by the women, almost all of whom were wearing headscarves, with very few in niqabs or burqas which covered the whole face.

At most other Hizb ut-Tahrir protests I’ve photographed there have been clearly separate groups of men and women, and I’ve sometimes had problems with male stewards for photographing the women, though not from the women themselves. At this event most seemed keen to be photographed to help get their message across. I left the march which was going to the Syrian Embassy in Belgrave Square at Edgware Road.

Hizb ut-Tahrir Women March for Syria

Duck Race, Climate, Zimbabwe & Clean Air

Saturday 21st September 2019 was an even more varied day than usual for me in London. I began by travelling to Bow Creek for a duck race, moved to Trafalgar Square for a climate protest, then visted the weekly Zimbabwe vigil before going to Catford for a march against air pollution.

Bromley-by-Bow to Star Lane & Cody Dock Duck Race

Duck Race, Climate, Zimbabwe & Clean Air

It was a fine day and still warm for the time of year as I walked from Bromley-by-Bow District Line the short distance to Tweletrees Crescent and Bow Creek.

I’d decided to come to see the Duck Race along Bow Creek being organised by the people at Cody Dock, but had arrived early to give myself time to revisit the gas works memorial site nearby.

Bow Creek is the tidal section of London’s second river, the River Lea, and the duck race was a part of the ‘Lighting Up the Lea’ festival for ‘Totally Thames 2019’. It was meant to start at 11.00 but this was delayed as the people in canoes who were to shepherd the ducks were a few minutes late in arriving.

It was close to low tide, and there was little water in the creek when the ducks were dropped from the bridge, and a westerly breeze soon blew the ducks onto the mud on the east side of the creek.

Cody Dock’s Simon Myers had beached his kayak on the gravel bank a hundred yards or so downstream and strode through the shallow stream and mud to rescue the ducks and through them back into the middle of the stream. But the breeze soon returned them to the mud and he had to get them again.

I decided I had to move on to complete my walk and get back to central London for my next event and walked on towards Cody Dock, past several small groups of people waiting to see their ducks. At Cody Dock there were a small line of catchers waiting hopefully in the stream, but they were in for a rather long wait.

I’d hoped to be able to continue my walk by the riverside to Canning Town, but this further section of the Bow Creek path has yet to be opened, and after taking a few pictures at Cody Dock I made my way to Star Lane DLR station.

Cody Dock Duck Race
Bromley-by-Bow to Star Lane

XR Youth International – Trafalgar Square

Members of Extinction Rebellion Youth International came to Trafalgar Square and held a brief protest for the UN Climate conference.

This was a rather more low-key event than I had expected and the group was ignored by heritage wardens as they sat in a circle in the centre of the square with posters while one member at the centre read the letter they are sending to the UN calling for real urgent action to avert the impending climate catastrophe.

XR Youth International

Zimbabwe protests continue – Strand

The weekly Zimbabwe Vigil every Saturday at the side of the embassy at 429 Strand began on 12th October 2002. I’ve joined it and photographed occasionally over the years, but mainly for special occasions. It’s hard to say something new about an event which happens every week.

Mugabe had been forced to resign in 2017 died earlier in the month and had died two weeks before my visit, but the vigils continue and little has changed in Zimbabwe. His successor Emmerson Mnangagwa was Mugabe’s right-hand man for 40 years, and is accused of the genocide of over 20,000 Ndebeles in the 1980s. Although he promised reform he has delivered state terrorism and protesters have been killed, beaten, tortured and raped by the security forces.

Zimbabwe protests continue

Clean Air for Catford Children

The South Circular Road brings large volumes of traffic through Catford, often pumping out fumes at standstill during peak hours. Particles from brakes, tyres and the road add significantly to the pollution – and won’t be reduced as we switch towards electric cars.

Although a major traffic route, the South Circular has always been more an idea than a planned route, going along many fairly narrow roads lined with houses which were never designed for the traffic. Fortunately major schemes which would have laid waste large areas of highly populated parts of South London have never come to fruition – the obvious environmental devastation of roads like the Westway having put paid to urban motorway schemes.

The answer has to be policies at both national and local level which reduce vehicle use and promote greener alternative transport including walking and cycling as well as public transport use. But although Lewisham Council are not responsible for the South Circular Road, remedial actions such as planting screens of trees and hedges can reduce local pollution levels, particularly the levels of harmful particulates.

I met local residents at the Corbett Library on Torridon Road in Catford, built with funding from Andrew Carnegie in 1907. It is now a Community Library run by volunteers and is on the Corbett Estate, 3,000 houses around Hither Green developed by Glasgow-born Archibald Corbett from 1896 to 1911.

They were busy finishing placards and posters for the march, which soon set off, marching up on the pavement to the South Circular at Brownhill Road, on their way to a rally at the council offices in Lewisham. Traffic on the South Circular made it a little difficult for me to take photographs as it was seldom possible to stand on the road. I left them before the rally to travel home.

Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, a nine-year-old girl who lived near the South Circular Road in Lewisham died from asthma in 2013. Following a 2020 inquest ruling she was the first first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as the cause of her death on her death certificate.

Clean Air for Catford Children

Heygate, Shops, English Martyrs & St John the Evangelist

This continues my posts on my walk in Walworth on 8th January 1989. The previous post was Wansey St, Larcom St, Peabody & Heygate

*Junior School, Heygate Estate, walkway, Rodney Rd, Elephant & Castle, Southwark, 1989 89-1b-53*

A bridge from the Heygate Estate took mothers and children across the busy Rodney Road to Victory Place and the entrance here to the Primary School. It was demolished around 2011, and I think the ‘GIRLS & INFANTS’ entrance has gone but a similar ‘BOYS’ entrance remains.

English Martyrs Parish Hall, Rodney St, Wadding St, Walworth, Southwark, 1989 89-1b-55 — *English Martyrs Parish Hall, Rodney Road, Wadding St, Walworth, Southwark, 1989 89-1b-55*

This building was just off Rodney St; its modern replacement is on the corner of Rodney St with Wadding St and Stead St.

Many Irish Roman Catholics had move into the area and in 1890 the Catholic Bishop of Southwark set up the Walworth Mission with a combined school and chapel just off Flint St and a Presbytery in Rodney Road with apermanent church next-door to this completed in 1903.

*Shops, Balfour St, Henshaw St, Walworth, Southwark, 1989 898-1b-56*

I walked north up Balfour St to the junction with Henshaw St. These buildings are all still there, but like so many small shops have been converted into residential use. Much of the area behind me when I took this picture has since been redeveloped.

There are adverts on the shop windows for Lyons Cakes, Tizer the Appetizer, Brooke Bond Tea, New Zealand Butter, Players No 6, Ty-Phoo Tea and Crown Cup Instant Coffee, but thhe curtains and boarding show the shop had already closed down.

*St John the Evangelist, Walworth, Charleston St, Southwark, 1989 89-1b-45*

I walked back, probably along Victory Place, to Rodney Road and then down Larcom Street, making my way to Charleston St, taking a photograph (not on-line) along this from its Brandon Street end looking towards the church before walking down to take more pictures around the church.

The Anglican Church of St John the Evangelist was built here when the estate was being developed in 1859-60. District Surveyor Henry Jarvis was architect for this gothic church in Kentish Ragstone, and its vestry was added in 1912 by Greenaway and Newberry. Both were Grade II listed in 1998, nine years after I made this picture.

There are two alleys on each side of the church, that on the left in this picture leading to Walcorde Ave and on at the right in the picture below to Larcom St.

*St John the Evangelist, Walworth, Charleston St, Southwark, 1989 89-1b-46*

This picture is looking down the alley leading to Larcom St and the building at right is St Johns Vicarage at 18 Larcom St.

St John's Walworth, Primary School, Larcom St, Walworth, Southwark 1989 89-1b-33 — *St John’s Walworth, Primary School, Larcom St, Walworth, Southwark 1989 89-1b-33*

The school buildings just to the west of the church date from around 1866. Falling rolls led to the closure of the school in August 2021.

To be continued. The first post on this walk is Elephant, Faraday, Spurgeon & Walworth Road.

Elephant, Faraday, Spurgeon & Walworth Road

On Sunday January 8th 1989 I returned to South London for my first photographic walk of the year beginning at the Elephant & Castle.

Faraday Memorial, Elephant & Castle, Southwark, 1989 89-1a-46-Edit — *Faraday Memorial, Elephant & Castle, Southwark, 1989 89-1a-46*

This building commemorates Michael Faraday (1791-1867), the English chemist and physicist celebrated for his ground-breaking research into electricity and magnetism who was born a short distance away on 22 September 1791. He invented the electric motor, transformer and generator.

The architect was Rodney Gordon (1933 – 2008) and this was his first job in the London County Council Architects department which was completed in 1961. Inside is the sub-station which converts the power for the Northern and Bakerloo lines, both of which have stations nearby.

When I took this photograph, it was at the centre of a large roundabout, with subways taking pedestrians across to the shopping centre descending at its side. The subways have now been replace by routes at ground level and the road layout changed, making this more easily accessible. But now the whole area is being redeveloped, and England’s first purpose-built shopping centre has been demolished.

Metropolitan Tabernacle, Stairs to Shopping Centre, Newington Butts, Elephant & Castle, Southwark, 1989 89-1a-35-Edit — *Metropolitan Tabernacle, Stairs to Shopping Centre, Newington Butts, Elephant & Castle, Southwark, 1989 89-1a-34*

Baptists began meeting in Kennington in 1650, when Baptist meetings were still illegal, but moved to a chapel near Tower Bridge in 1688 when they were allowed. It thrived over the years moving to larger chapels and becoming the largest Baptist congregation in England. Under the ministry of Charles Haddon Spurgeon which began in 1853 numbers became so large the services had to be moved to hired halls. The church bought a site on Newington Butts, both because of its prominent location and because it was thought to be the site of the burning of the Southwark Martyrs. The church with seating for 6,000, architect William Willmer Pocock was completed in 1861.

The shopping centre where I was standing was built as one of the first US-style indoor shopping malls in Europe with more than a hundred shops on three levels. Still popular with many, particularly for its market stalls, the centre closed in 2020 in the face of considerable opposition from locals and has been demolished.

Immediately to the south of the Elephant at the start of Walworth Rd, just past the railway bridge you can see at extreme right is this fine row of late-Victorian buildings, still there, although I think all have changed hands and there have been some subtle changes to the frontages as well as new shopfronts, and doubtless rather more change behind some of the facades. But it remains an impressive start to the road, while the other side has been depressing for many years.

Beyond Hampton Street at the end of the row, everything is new and perhaps one of London’s dullest new blocks, while viewing from a different angle across the road the scene is dominated by the 43 storey 487ft Strata Tower, completed in 2010 and decorated at its top by three wind turbines which were such a feature of its advertisement as a ‘green building’ but cause too much noise and vibration to actually be used. Appropriately for their location they are a real ‘white elephant’, and a potent example of ‘greenwashing’. The building was awarded the 2010 Carbuncle Cup for bad architecture as one of the “ugliest buildings in the United Kingdom completed in the last 12 months”.

*R R Boast, Walworth Rd, Southwark, 1989 89-1a-24*

One of the buildings in the row at 86 had formerly been home to R R Boast, Electrical Contractors and Engineers and Heating Specialists, with two other company names in much smaller letters on the left. A liquidator was appointed for the company in 1975 and the premises were I think still boarded up, though posters on the windows advertised keep fit and dance classes I think these were held elsewhere. Fly-posting across the lower frontage seemed very neatly done.

The building now has an extra floor as The Castle Hotel.

*Walworth Rd, Walworth, Southwark, 1989 89-1a-25*

Murrays Solicitors at 94-96 Walworth Rd is now a dentists at ground floor level but I think otherwise looks much the same, though it has lost its street nameplate.

At right of this picture you can just make out the top of the Hampton St side of 96 Walworth Rd, and this yard with its heap of tyres was on Steedman Street, just a few yards from its junction with Walworth Rd.

*Former Southwark Town Hall, Walworth Rd, Southwark, 1989 89-1a-12*

The Italianate Grade II listed Newington Vestry Hall by Henry Jarvis at the left opened in 1865, with a library added to the south east in 1892 and the two buildings joined the following year. In 1900 it became Southwark Town Hall for the Metropolitan Borough of Southwark and was further extended. But in 1965 the larger London Borough of Southwark borough moved its town hall elsewhere and renamed this building Walworth Town Hall.

In 2006 the Cuming Museum moved in, but the building was badly damaged in a fire in 2013. It is currently being restored to provide a space for educational activities, studio spaces and creative workshops.

My walk will continue in a later post. As usual you can see larger versions of any of the pictures by clicking on them which will take you to the picture in one of my Flickr albums.