Southwark, Bermondsey & Rotherhithe: On Thursday 3rd May, 2007 I took a walk “south of the River” in Southwark, Bermondsey & Rotherhithe.
I was going to meet a few photographer friends in the evening, but when I’d finished lunch the weather looked so good and I had nothing vital to work on that afternoon so I took an early train to Waterloo, and then started to wander for the nexy three hours or so, taking a few pictures as I went.
Most of the area had been familiar to me since I began photographing London seriously back in the 1970s – some of my earlier pictures then were along parts of the riverside walkway much of which later in 1977 became part of the Silver Jubilee Walkway or later the Thames Path.
But I started away from the Thames on Southwark Street, turning down Redcross Way to the gates of Crossbones Graveyard, decorated with ribbons and strips of fabric in memory of the ‘Winchester Geese’, young women licensed by the Bishop Of Winchester to work within the liberty of the clink, where activities such as brothels, theatres (including Shakespeare’s Globe), bull and bear baiting were permitted to entertain gentlemen who were rowed across from the City.
The graveyard closed for burials in 1853, by which time there were thought to have been as many as 15,000 buried there, graves for those the church would not bury in consecrated ground, including many of the prostitutes and their young infants, but latterly many too poor to afford a proper burial. In 2007 much was still a building site but now there is a memorial garden there.
I continued in Southwark past the Charterhouse-in-Southwark Mission, on the corner of Crosby Row and Porlock St – demolished in 2011 to build affordable housing and along Long Lane to Bermondsey.
Years earlier I had written and published a folded A4 leaflet for an industrial archaeology walk around here, printing and selling several hundreds of copies on my dot-matrix printer which were used for a number of guided local history walks around the area, particularly those led by now the late local historian Stephen Humphrey. You can still download a free PDF, West Bermondsey – The leather area though parts of it are now out of date and the dot-matrix pictures are primitive but still recognisable.
I found quite a few buildings of interest in Bermondsey Street, I think all I’d photographed on previous visits, but some only previously in black and white. And some other things I had photographed, particularly in some of the alleys off the main street were either gone or changed completely, now tidily gentrified.
I came back to the river – or one of its creeks, St Saviours Creek at Dockhead, often said to be the mouth of the River Neckinger. It was probably never that though possibly of a very minor destributary with the main course of the river running alongside George Row several hundred yards to the east. The creek is simply that, a tidal creek, which possibly may have been used as a landing place for Bermondsey Abbey and the tide mill in this area.
Any connection with the Neckinger was lost when London’s sewers were reorganised by Bazalgette and the trickle sometimes visible into the creek is local drainage.
Going down Mill Street took me to the Thames and Bermondsey Wall West where I joined the riverside path, though mostly on the land side of warehouses, going past the huge Chambers Wharf on Chambers St with a huge cold store on the land side of the street before reaching the river again.
The path then runs beside the river to Rotherhithe, with view across the river to the City and Wapping as well as downriver to RRotherithe and Canary Wharf.
Near the well-known Angel pub was Diane Gorvin’s 1991 three part sculpture “Dr. Salter’s Daydream” which showed the doctor, his daughter Joyce who died as a child of scarlet fever, and their cat. Salter became the local MP and ran a pioneering local health service 20 or more years before the NHS. He died in 1945.
His wife Ada became the first woman mayor in London and the first Labour mayor in Britain in 1922. In 2011 the statue of Dr Salter was stolen for the metal in it. A local campaign raised £60,000 to replace it and a new statue of Ada was added to the group.
On the grass south of the riverside path are the low ruined walls a small of a small then moated manor house built by King Edward III around 1350. After his death the house was given to the abbey of St Mary Graces by the Tower and in 1399 it passed to Bermondsey Abbey.
A few yards east is the Angel pub, one of only two buildings standing on this long section of riverside. A short distance along is the second, sometimes called ‘The Leaning Tower of Rotherhithe’, four storeys tall and only around 11 foot wide. Once part of a long row of adjoining buildings it was more or less the only one left standing by bombing during the Blitz. It was the offices of lighterage firm Braithwaite & Dean, where lighters would pull in to get their orders and, importantly, their pay. They sold it in the early 1990s.
Finally I arrived in Rotherhithe where there were more pictures to be made – including several buildings and another sculpture, this showing Brunel driving a staem engine which now appears to have disappeared.
Ellen MacArthur, Brian Haw & Ashura. On 20th February 2005 I froze on the riverside in Bermondsey waiting for Ellen MacArthur’s catamaran to come up-river to Tower Bridge after her 71 day voyage had made her the fastest solo sailor to sail around the world. Five years later “she set up the Foundation in her name to accelerate the transition to a circular economy“. I didn’t get any very good pictures as I was far to far away as she raised here arm to acknowledge the crowd that had gathered to welcome her – I needed a much longer telephoto than I’ve ever had.
Afterwards I took a little walk around the Bermondsey riverside before making my way back to Parliament Square where I took a pictures of the display there by Brian Haw’s Peace Campaign, now joined by promotional flags for the 2012 Olympic bid. There was more of this in Trafalgar Square too, where I dropped in briefly to see some of our pictures and warm up.
Finally at Marble Arch I photographed the start of the Ashura procession by Shi’ite Muslims. I didn’t stay too long as I was still cold and I was keen to get home and warm.
Here – with the usual minor corrections – is the piece I wrote in 2005 to go with the pictures on My London Diary:
Sunday was another bitter day, and I froze on Butlers Wharf waiting to see Ellen MacArthur aboard her catamaran as it was driven up to Tower Bridge and back from Greenwich, disappointingly not a sail in sight.
Ellen MacArthur is just visible, arm upraised in the centre of the picture
The crowds were not huge, but respectable, but like me, few could be bothered to go to Greenwich. The various press boats buzzing round the catamaran added a little interest, but made me glad I wasn’t on one.
I was more interested in taking some pictures along the riverside, then took the tube to Westminster to call in on Brian Haw, still in Parliament Square since 1st June 2001, with the government now cooking up a personal law against him.
The signs on the square are no augmented by a line of mute London 2012 flags, and along in Trafalgar Square (on my route to the National Gallery) was a giant tent and Olympian figure. Nobody can accuse London 2012 of not spending money on promoting their cause. more pictures
Shi’ite Muslims in London were celebrating the stand of the grandson of the Prophet, Imam Hussain, who died a glorious martyr along with his small band of supporters at Karbala in Iraq, choosing death rather than dishonour, in the year 680. Ashura represents a key point of difference between Sunni and Shi’a traditions and Saddam Hussein rigidly prevented its observance in Iraq during his years in power.
Southwark Housing, Bermondsey & Rembrandt: On Thursday October 16th 2014 I photographed a march from the Elephant to Southwark Council Offices over the borough’s housing scandals, took some time off in Bermondsey to take some panoramic images and then covered a protest at the National Gallery against sponsorship of art exhibitions by companies such as Shell, G4S, BP and Serco.
Compulsory Purchase Orders for Southwark Councillors
Housing campaigners from Southwark marched from the Elephant and Council to Southwark Council Offices to serve ‘People’s Compulsory Purchase Orders‘ on the homes of the Council leader and other councillors who they say have accepted gifts from developers to sell off council estates at knockdown prices.
The shameful demolition of over 1200 homes in and close to the well-designed and largely popular Heygate estate has cost the borough dearly, with the costs to the council of ‘decanting’ the residents exceeding the knock-down price it charged the developers.
Of course the estate residents suffered more, losing their homes and being forced to move further out into the suburbs. Leaseholders were only offered roughly half the true market value of property in the area.
The demolition and redevelopment has meant the loss of over a thousand social homes, and the new properties on the site had already been advertised to overseas buyers in Singapore and elsewhere as second homes, investment properties, homes for wealthy overseas students studying here, buy-to-let etc. There are just a few so-called affordable units at 80% of market rates, still well above what most Londoners can actually afford.
The protesters met at the base of the Strata Tower, an ugly development of largely luxury flats with three wind turbines built into its roof for show – unable to produce electricity as when running they produce excessive vibration in flats at the top of the building. Facing them ‘One The Elephant‘ was going up, a 44 storey block of luxury flats with no social housing, and is being sold abroad, with ‘studio flats’ starting at around £320,000 or 640,000 Singapore dollars.
Southwark campaigners were joined by members of the Focus E15 ‘Housing for All campaign’ and their first stop for a brief protest was the Elephant Park Sales Office on the Walworth Rd. They then walked through several council estates to the north of the New Kent Road which are also attractive targets for developers who can make huge profits by demolishing them and building high price flats at much higher densities.
They continued through other council estates in the area to London Bridge Station and on to the council offices in Tooley Street, where they were stopped by security from entering the Council offices. Police were called and after much argument two of the campaigners who were Southwark residents were allowed in and waited to present letters containing ‘People’s Compulsory Purchase Orders’ for their homes to council leader Peter John and two other councillors.
They asked at reception to see the councillors and were told to take a seat and wait. They waited and waited. Eventually someone from the council came to tell them that all three named councillors were unavailable but took their letters promising to hand them over personally to them.
Bermondsey Thames Panoramas – City Hall to Angel Wharf
I had some time before my next protest and took a short walk by the River Thames,
beginning in Potters Fields where ‘One Tower Bridge’ was going up close to City Hall.
Past Tower Bridge I took a short walk on the foreshore in front of Butler’s Wharf before continuing along Shad Thames and across the footbridge over St Saviour’s Creek.
I continued along the Thames Path past the moorings, and got as far as Angel Wharf before I realised I needed to catch a bus to get me back to Trafalgar Sqaure in time for my next event.
Art Not Oil Rembrandt Against Shell – National Gallery
The Art Not Oil coalition had gate-crashed the press launch of the National Gallery’s Rembrandt exhibition to give a brief performance protesting against oil sponsorship of the arts and privatisation of gallery staffing.
On the evening of 16th October they met on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields before marching the few yards to give a repeat performance outside the gallery which was then holding a gala evening for special guests and highly ranked staff.
The National Gallery was making plans to privatise up to two thirds of the gallery staff and this exhibition was being guarded by a private security firm rather than the gallery’s own staff.
Art Not Oil held banners and placards and handed out flyers agains the sponsorship by Shell stating:
"The presence of unethical sponsors like Shell and the contracting of external security firms shows the growing influence the private sector is having over our arts and culture. With its meagre contribution to the gallery, Shell is buying social legitimacy for its dodgy deeds worldwide, including:
- its failure to clean up its multiple spills in the Niger Delta
- its reckless plans to drill in the Arctic for yet more oil
- its tar sands projects in Canada that are undermining Indigenous people's rights"
They sang a number of specially written songs and performed the short playlet they had previously given inside the gallery during the press launch.
Bermondsey Equinox: Spring, or rather Astronomical Spring, officially starts today, 20th March, though meteorologists see things differently and start it on March 1st and the weather has its own ideas. Botanists too make up their own minds by looking at plants.
Today is the Spring Equinox, which I always assumed meant equal lengths of day and night, but checking the tables I find that today we get 24 minutes more day than night.
The actual definition of the Equinox is apparently the moment when the Sun is directly above the equator and the Earth’s rotational axis passes through from being tilted towards the southern hemisphere to the north. So it really is just a moment, this year at 3.06 am UTC 20th March. Most years it falls on 20th March, but in 2007 it was on the 21st in the UK, and this year will be on the 19th across the USA.
But watch out for Druids, particularly should you be near Tower Hill, where in some previous years I’ve photographed their celebrations which begin at noon, I think Greenwich Mean Time.
It’s an interesting event to watch, and doubtless important for those taking part, and also good to photograph at least once or twice, but when you’ve done it a few times difficult to find anything new to say.
So I won’t be there today. And I won’t write about it here, as last year I posted Druid Order – Spring Equinox at Tower Hill and you can still read all about it there as well on the various other posts here and on My London Diary.
Back in 2015 I didn’t go to Tower Hill but was instead on the opposite side of the River Thames in Bermondsey, out for a walk around one of my favourite areas of London with a few photographer friends.
As I wrote then, it was “really just an excuse to meet up, go to a couple of pubs and then end up with a meal” and though it was a fine afternoon I don’t think any of us took many pictures. I’d photographed the area fairly extensively in previous years and had even written a leaflet with a walk for part of it.
The leaflet came about back in the dark ages of computing, when Desk Top Publishing had more or less just been invented and I was teaching an evening class in the use of Aldus Pagemaker, bought up by Adobe in 1994 who then killed it and brought out Indesign, more powerful but far more difficult to use. West Bermondsey – The leather area was an industrial archaeology walk which I made use of to illustrate some of my lessons.
Over the next few years I printed hundreds of copies on my Epson Dot-Matrix printer – which accounts for the crude illustrations – and sold them at 20p a time – hardly a money spinner but it covered my costs. They were bought and given out by local historian Stephen Humphrey (1952-2017), chief archivist at Southwark’s Local Studies Library for 30 years on his local history walks and sold at the Bermondsey festival. I met Stephen who wrote a number of publications on the history of the area a few times – and had visited him in the Library when researching the leaflet, which also relied on information from a walk led by Tim Smith for the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society where it is one of a very long list of interesting walks in London.
The area has changed considerably since I wrote it, but most of what is mentioned remains despite considerable gentrification. You can find several hundreds of my older images of Bermondsey in colour and black and white on Flickr – including those used in illustrating the leaflet in much better reproduction.
There are a few more images from my 2015 walk on My London Diary at Bermondsey Walk.
EDL Stopped, Musicians at Arms Fair, Silvertown: On Saturday 7th September 2013 after photographing the EDL attempting to march into Tower Hamlets and the people coming out to stop them I went on to the Excel Centre in Newham where East London Against Arms Fairs were holding a Musical Protest against next weeks DSEi arms fair. And on my way home I took more pictures.
EDL Try To March Into Tower Hamlets
Whitechapel says ‘Take Your HATE Elsewhere’
I started the day in Bermondsey were around a thousand EDL supporters were gathering for a march across Tower Bridge to Aldgate High St.
Police had laid down very strict conditions for the march, specifying the exact route and timings and more, which where specified on A4 sheets they handed out to protesters and were also broadcast every few minutes from a loudspeaker van where the marchers were gathering.
There was a very strong police presence on the streets with police on all sides around the marchers and some mingling with them. The EDL were also on their best behaviour, with many posing for photographs. A couple who arrived in pig’s head masks were forced by police to remove them and hand them over.
There was still a great deal of racism and hate in the comments that were being made and when the march got under way the majority took up the usual Islamophobic chants including “Allah, Allah, who the f**k is Allah“.
There were a small number of anti-fascist protesters in the area, and police tried to keep them well away from the march, although EDL stewards who led away one man with a bleeding face from the crowd alleged he had been hit by a bottle thrown from across the road.
As the march set off, police moved photographers well away, and police handlers with dogs walked in advance of the marchers. Later I was able to get a little closer.
After crossing Tower Bridge I saw red smoke in the distance coming from the ground in front of a row of police vans in Mansell St and rushed there to find a group of around 50 anti-fascist protesters, mainly dressed in black, with red and black flags and a few with Unite Against Fascism placards.
The EDL march stopped for a couple of minutes opposite them and the two sides shouted insults at each other with the police keeping them well apart before the march moved on to Aldgate High Street without further incident. I later heard that the anti-fascists here had been kettled for some hours before many of them were arrested.
I photographed Tommy Robinson addressing the rally, then made my way to where a counter-protest was being held by the community of Tower Hamlets, united in opposing the EDL. I had to go through several lines of police, showing my Press Card. A few officers refused to let me through, but I was able to walk along the line and make my way through.
As I commented, “It was a remarkable change in atmosphere from the feeling of hate and Islamophobia that filled the air with gestures and chanting from the EDL to the incredible unity and warmth of the several thousands largely from the local community who had come out to oppose them and make a statement based around love and shared experience of living in Tower Hamlets with people of different backgrounds and religion.”
There was clearly a determination in Whitechapel, as there was in the 1930s at the Battle of Cable Street which had taken place not far away of a community that had decided that ‘They shall not pass’. And although most had come to protest peacefully, had the police not kept the two sides well apart, the EDL would have been heavily outnumbered by local youths angry at their presence.
I’d left the EDL rally before Tommy Robinson was arrested for incitement, apparently for suggesting that people break some of the restrictions that police had imposed on the EDL march and rally. The police presence had prevented any large outbreaks of public disorder and although the EDL were up in arms over the arrest of their leader had protected them from a severe beating.
Musical Protest against Arms Fair – Excel Centre, Custom House
I didn’t stay long in Whitechapel but took the tube and bus to Custom House where on the walkway leading the the ExCel Centre East London Against Arms Fairs (ELAAF) were holding a Musical Protest against next weeks DSEi arms fair with a big band and singers and others handing out leaflets opposing the event.
THe DSEi arms fair, held every other year at the ExCel Centre in London Docklands attracts buyers from all over the world, including those from many countries with oppressive regimes. It’s a showcase for the weapons they need to continue to oppress their populations and to wage war on their neighbouring states and others.
There were more and larger protests in the following week against the arms fair.
Although the DLR wasn’t running on the branch leading to Custom House, there were trains running on the branch through Silvertown and I walked to there across Victoria Dock on the high-level bridge, taking a few photographs.
The gates to the London Pleasure Gardens which had closed recently only a few weeks after its opening were locked but I was able to take pictures through the gates. I walked on to the elevated Pontoon Dock DLR station and made some panoramas from there before catching a train.
For once the DLR train had a very clean window and I took advantage of this to take some more pictures on the way to Canning Town where I changed to the Jubilee line.
Gardens, Neckinger, Silver Sea, Special Girls & Deaf Boys – 1988
We have the Luftwaffe to thank for Leathermarket Gardens, opened to replace a bombsite where formerly there had been a tannery and a warehouses in 1958. Kids at that time had long been making their own adventure playgrounds on derelict sites such as this, it was then opened by the council as a public garden with a rather tamer children’s play area. Perhaps the wooden posts on the mound here are the remains of parts of this. The shed-like building at left is Bermondsey Village Hall, a community centre run by a trust and I think fairly recently erected when I made this picture.
To the right of the hall is the Guiness Trust’s Snow Fields Estate block, and towering above that Guy’s Hospital. Now I think the Shard would be higher still.
Morocco St, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-11b-54
Mastermail House was the home of Direct Addressing Ltd at 8 Morocco St, and has I think been completely replaced by more recent buildings. It is now at the back of the White Cube Gallery on Bermondsey St, and the street leads on to City Walk developed around 2007, its blocks of flats including Antonine Heights. Properties here have been found to have similar cladding to Grenfell Tower.
Back in 1988 Morocco Street was a dead end, but you can now walk through along City Walk to Long Lane.
These two arches on the entrance to a council estate reminded me of whalebone arches I had walked under in Whitby. At the left you can see the word SHELTER on the wall, a residue from World War 2. These flats were typical of the large council blocks built in the mid-1930s by Bermondsey Borough Council.
Although my contact sheet confidently states this was the Aylwin Estate, I now recognise it as Neckinger House on the Neckinger Estate, on Neckinger, named after the river now long underground, close to the end of Grange Walk. This large estate was completed in 1938 on the site of old tanneries.
Abbey St, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-11b-33
I turned up Neckinger, taking a picture (not on-line) of the row of Victorian houses leading to the distinctive Victorian pub on the corner with Abbey Street. The Fleece was here from 1869, but closed in 2000, and was then converted to residential use. The buildings next door to the pub are in my picture above and have also survived and been converted. The Silver Sea restaurant was fairly comprehenisively rebuilt around 2009 and the rest, which early had become a garage and hand car wash, shortly after.
The Silver Sea Chinese Restaurant there in 1988 had replaced an earlier eating establishment there in 1940, Mrs Emma Florence Evans Dining Rooms, but 156 was still the premises of W R Jewiss, described in the street directory as a chain tester – but you can read rather more in my picture. Also at 156 in 1940 were Broadbent & Mobbs, motor engineers, but a sign at the end of the building in the picture suggests that Jewiss was by then the only business.
Maltby St, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-11b-24
Maltby St leads up to run alongside the long railway viaduct coming from London Bridge station that divides the area in two. The viaduct is still there, but both sides of the street have been completely redeveloped.
Pope St, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-11b-12
There are still two school gateways on Pope Street, one with the legend SCHOOL-KEEPER and this one for SPECIAL GIRLS. The building behind them is now Old School House but most of the rest of the large school site has been redeveloped.
Pope Street gets its name not from the Vatican but from Sir Thomas Pope (c1507-1559) who was one of those responsible for confiscating the properties of religious institutions and somehow managed to end up owning around 30 of them. One was Bermondsey Abbey, and he demolished most of it to build himself a grand mansion, Bermondsey House, where Queen Elizabeth came to visit him in 1570. Later he sold it to the Earls of Sussex. It was in a rather unsavoury area, particularly with the smells from the tanneries and the house was neglected, eventually became a ruin which was demolished in 1820.
Almost the whole block between Tanner St, Riley Road and bounded on two sides by Pope St was occupied by Riley Street Schools, with a fine tall four floor building from 1874 on the corner of Tanner St and Riley St. Later this became part of Southwark College and was then demolished, I think in the 1990s. Part of the site in the early twentieth century was Riley Street Mentally Defective Council School – and it may be this was what made the girls “special”.
Deaf Boys, Old Kent Rd, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-11c-41
I think I walked back down Tower Bridge Road to the Bricklayers Arms and then along to the junction with Albany Street without taking any more pictures, though I may well have taken a bus. I wandered around a few streets then walked back west to where I found another school gate, this one reading DEAF BOYS.
This gate is still there just off the Old Kent Rd in Mason St, but it has lost its legend and the upper parts of the wall, and now leads into the back of Charlotte Court on the Old Kent Road, a gated Victorian school conversion.
This was the site of the innovative Asylum for the Support and Education of the Deaf and Dumb Children of the Poor, and Mason St takes its name from the Rector of Bermondsey Henry Cox Mason who joined with the Dissenting Minister of Bermondsey John Townsend (whose street is on the east of the site) to found the Asylum in 1792 in a smaller rented building on Grange Rd. The school moved to its own building on this site in 1809,
The asylum was rebuilt in 1886 and most of the activities moved to a larger site at Margate and the Old Kent Road building again remodelled, with the ground floor used for physically handicapped children and the second floor for the deaf. It was taken over by the LCC in 1904 and finally closed in 1968.
Central Hall, South London Mission, Methodist Church, Bermondsey St, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-11a-53
A Mission, More Bermondsey St & Guinness
Bermondsey Central Hall, BCH has been on the corner of Bermondsey Street and Decima Street since 1900 and still boasts a thriving congregation. The Methodist South London Mission has been in the area a little longer, beginning in 1889 and still providing vital services for the community, supporting mothers and children and runnning a 32 room hostel offering low cost accommodation to both working people and students.
Central Hall, South London Mission, Methodist Church, Bermondsey St, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-11a-54
Back in 1988 it was offering ‘Free Beef and Butter’ to those in need and it now is a partner and distribution center for the Southwark Foodbank PECAN, a local charity, based in Peckham.
I walked again up Bermondsey St. It was earlier in the day than my previous visit and the low sun was shining obliquely on the properties on its west side, among them George, a hairdressers at 126 and The Three Day Service Ltd, Printers and Stationers at 124. A stone higher up on these buildings has the initials PD and date 1828 and they are Grade II listed. The gate at the right of the picture led to Black Eagle Yard with several workshops, but the gap in the street was filled in 2015 with a passable imitation of the listed frontages and is now called Renaissance Court, though seven years later the wide gate area still looks unfinished.
The corner of Morocco St, leading off to the left of the picture and Bermondsey St, with the Grocery shop of M & K Co Ltd, trading as R E Dawson. On the left you can just see one of the horses heads on the frontage of the garage on Morocco St. This is another place where a gap has been filled in with a new building in a very similar styl. The two brick-filled windows are now actual windows – Window Tax ended in 1851 and this building, now called Lantern House, may date from before this. The hoarding, then with a cigarette advert, has also of course gone.
I couldn’t resist taking more pictures of these fine listed properties – my favourite building on the street which I’ve written more about on an earlier walk.
Ash & Ash Ltd are still listed in trade directories on the web at this address, and appear to have been printers, later moving into the sale of computer peripherals. But other companies have their offices in these buildings.
A little way along are these fine tenement blocks. There is an extensive history of the Guiness Trust online. In 1889, philanthropist Sir Edward Cecil Guinness, the great grandson of the founder of the Guinness Brewery, gave £200,000 to set up The Guinness Trust in London as well as another trust in Dublin. This was a huge sum of money, the equivalent of around £20 million allowing for inflation.
The money enabled them to build eight tenement estates in the first 11 years, providing 2,597 homes for London’s working class, or at least those working men who were earning around 20 shillings a week, although they wanted to make homes that even the poorest families could afford.
Their Snows Fields estate opened in 1898, with 355 tenements including 830 rooms and by 1900 there were almost 1600 people living here. They had cost around £78,000 to build, including tht cost of the land. The South Eastern Railway provided £4,000 as presumably some of its workers were to live there. The flats were modernised in the 1950s and 1970s.
The Tanners Arms, pub, Willow Walk, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-11d-36
Fellmongers, Kennels, Snakes and Thomas A’Becket 1988
The Tanners Arms at 61 Willow Walk on the corner with Crimscott Street was closed in 2003 and demolished the following year. There had been a pub here since at least 1822 under its previous name, The Fellmongers Arms. Fellmongers were dealers in fells – animal skins – who scraped the hair or wool from the pelts and then sold or passed over to the tanners who continued to process of cleaning and preparing them for the final tanning to produce leather.
The building in the picture is a rather attractive ‘streamlined’ design, presumably dating from around 1930, and is far more interesting than its replacement, essentially a large storage shed.
Pet Shop, Old Kent Rd, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11d-22_2400
I think this pet shop and the next door tailor were on a site which is now a part of the Tesco car park, unless the numbering on the street has changed since 1988. I think the tailor’s Ben Beber was closed and empty and the shop unit on the extreme left was clearly derelict and flyposted.
I was impressed by the display of kennels of different sizes as well as the other goods on the pavement outside the shop.
Old Kent Rd, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11d-23
My reason for making this picture was clearly the bust about the shopfront with its ‘WE ARRANGE HOUSE CLEARANCES’ sign, but I also liked the sign to the left above ‘ANTIQUES WANTED’ which has a snake wriggling around the name MANTLE.
There is still a Blue Mantle Antiques on the Old Kent Road, but now in the Old Fire Station at 306-312 rather than this shop, and the history page on its site shows a picture of this shop where the business began in 1969. It is the UK leading supplier of antique fireplaces also selling modern replicas.
Old Kent Rd, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11d-25
I think these poster were on the empty shops not far from Blue Mantle Antiques, possibly some of those later taken over by the company before they moved to the former Firestation. I thought these were an interesting selection of imagery in various styles.
The Old Kent Road here is perhaps the dividing line between Bermondsey and Walworth.
Thomas A’Becket, pub, Old Kent Rd, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11d-26
The Thomas A’Becket on the corner of Albany Street is a fine Victorian pub and became famous for its gym on the first floor where among many others Henry Cooper trained and Mohammed ALi visited – and the floor above was the rehearsal venue for David Bowie and the ‘Spiders from Mars’. The building dates from 1898, replacing an earlier 19th century building on the site, but probably it had been a pub since long before that was built. It photograph shows ‘Established 1757’ on its Albany Street frontage.
But its iconic stature failed to save it from closure, at first briefly in 1983 after boxing promoter and landlady Beryl Cameron lost her fight with the brewery to keep it open, and more permanently after ex-boxer and promoter Gary Davidson ran it for 4 years from 1985. It became an estate agents, an artists studio, and the upper floors were converted to flats. It reopened briefly in 2017-8 as the Rock Island Bar & Grill, and then in 2019 as Vietnamese restaurant Viêt Quán. There is much more about the pub and its boxing history on the web, so I won’t bother to add more.
Beyond the pub at the right of the picture is the Old Fire Station, then looking in poor condition, now considerably restored by Blue Mantle Antiques
Grange Rd, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-11a-64
Another picture of the Grade II listed 8 Grange Road. Unfortunately the listing did not include the striking wheels and part of a car body which- together with the fine doorway made it impossible to pass without me taking another picture.
My walk on Sunday November 13th 1988 in Bermondsey will continue in a later post.
This is the first post about my walk in Bermondsey and other parts of south London on Novermber 13th 1988. My previous walk at the end of October ended with the post Around the Abbey in Bermondsey.
Rothsay St, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-11d-41
Bricklayers Arms, Page’s Walk and Birds of the World 1988
Rothsay Street is not far from the Bricklayers Arms roundabout on the New Kent Road to where I think I probably got a bus from Waterloo to start my walk.
This long block of council housing is still there, part of the Meakin Estate managed since 1996 by the Leathermarket JMB which manages around 1500 homes in Borough and Bermondsey. The block was built in 1935 to high standards for the time by the Metropolitan Borough of Bermondsey.
The building at left on the corner with Alice St is also still there, but there is now no sign of a door at this corner. It was a public house, The Jolly Tanners, dating from before 1851, though renamed in 1985 as Uncles and later as Sherwoods, finally closing in 1997. A couple of storeys were added when it was converted into Tayet Towers
The Victoria, pub, Page’s Walk, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-11d-42
Not far away I photographed another pub on the other side of Tower Bridge Road on the corner of Page’s Walk. The Victoria is still there, still very much open and still looking much the same except for a paint job and a large climbing plant on its right corner. The pub was built in 1886 when workers from the Bricklayers’ Arms railway depot across the street probably supplied much of its custom.
CAMRA gave the pub a good write-up in 2008 and in 2017. Of course Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co no longer supply the beer – they stopped brewing in 1989 though various mergers had set them on a downhill path since 1971.
You can see The Victoria pub at the right of this picture on Willow Walk, where in 1988 Balfour Beatty and Jones Lang Wooton were busy on Tower Bridge Business Park, “Business, production and warehouse units … available from August 1988”.
Bricklayers Arms began life as alternative terminus opened by the London and Croydon Railway and the South Eastern Railway in 1844 to London Bridge, but was soon converted to a goods station which closed in 1981. The sidings are now built over for housing but the former stables remain in place on Page’s Walk.
Grange Rd, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-11d-32
Birds of the World was at the read of a shop, possibly a pet shop which my contact sheet states was on Grange Road, and probably either on the corner of Pages Walk or Fendall Street. I liked the paintings of the birds and was amused by the shadow which put them on a tree.
Sapphire Laundry Ltd still own the buildings at 29-31 Page’s Walk and are still an active company, though they are their business is now registered with the classification ‘Buying and selling of own real estate.’ This building is next to a rather more substantial one, Sultra House.
The “roadline” premises at the corner of Willow Walk and Page’s Walk were part of the former British Road Services Parcels Ltd which had been created as a nationalised road haulage industry in 1948. This was one of the first of Thatcher’s privatisations in 1982 when the company was sold to its employees changing from the National Freight Corporation to the National Freight Consortium. I think it probably went out of use after the Bricklayer’s Arms goods depot closed in 1981.
Another picture showing more of the Bricklayers Arms stables with their roofs with clerestory windows which were also a common feature on some early railway carriages, highly useful when coach lighting – if any – was provided by oil lamps, but not needed once carriages had electric lighting.
I will continue this walk from Sunday 13th November in a later post.
Around the Abbey in Bermondsey 1988 Railway arches have played an important role in the economy of London and other cities, but particularly in London south of the river, where from the start around 1840 lengthy viaducts were built, beginning with this long one east from London Bridge which cut a gap through Bermondsey. The arches provided relatively low cost premises for small businesses, giving something back to the area in compensation for the damage the railways caused.
This particular business had closed and despite the fence had become a hand area for fly-tipping, with many houses in the area being cleared as gentrification was setting in. Furniture and other items that once would have gone to secondhand shops was simply being disposed of as cheaply as possible.
Unfortunately railway arches are now being refurbished as Network Rail sees them as a real opportunity to profit from its large estates, with often long-term tenants being forced out and the refurbished arches being let at three or more times the previous rents. A long battle was fought against this recently in central Brixton, where most of the previous businesses were forced to close.
Abbey St, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-10r-23
Former warehouses are boarded up and awaiting demolition on Abbey Street close to the junction with Maltby Street.
Maltby St, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-10r-24
All these buildings in Maltby Street have been demolished and it is hard to locate the exact location which I think was on the part of the road leading from Abbey St to Grange Walk. The sign on one of this range of commercial buildings was for ‘DIAMOND GLASS-FIBRE’.
Bermondsey United Charity School for Girls, Grange Walk, Grigg’s Place, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-10r-11
The BERMONDSEY UNITED CHARITY SCHOOL FOR GIRLS was, according the the text on its side, ERECTED A.D.1830 and was more recently used as St Mary’s youth centre. It and the terrace along Grange Walk to the east remain and the school has been converted into flats.
This row of late seventeenth century houses on the right hand side of the street are all Grade II listed and Nos 5-7 at right of picture apparently include in their structure part of one side of a late medieval stone gatehouse to Bermondsey Abbey. However I don’t think any of this is visible, and despite various accounts elsewhere they are not the abbey gatehouse, though they show its position.
The more modern structure at the extreme right was recently demolished. On Tower Bridge Road it used to advertise itself as ‘The Bermondsey Indoor Antique Market’ on the Tower Bridge Road frontage withe the message ‘Open Every Friday’ on a board above its Grange Walk side.
Walter Coles, Tanner St, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-11d-65
Although these last two pictures are filed in my contact sheets under November, my note on the sheet says they were taken earlier than the first November sheet and I think they were taken on this walk.
Walter Coles & Co Ltd sold polythene bags from this warehouse at 47-9 Tanner St, just a few yards east of Tower Bridge Road. Since 2012 it has been an arts venue, Ugly Duck.
The buildings to the right of the warehouse were all on Tanner Street, which turns round towards the north, and have all been demolished and replaced.
Abbey St, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-11d-51
Two notices had once been here but both had gone. One was replaced in 2019 letting us know this was St Saviours Estate and Purbrook Estate. This is Attilburgh House on the corner of Abbey St and Riley Road, a seven storey council block built on the site of five large houses on the street as a part of the St. Saviours Estate and I think dates from the 1960s. Its name probably comes from the old name for Attleborough, a market town in Norfolk not far from Thetford which gave its name to a neighbouring block.
Like most council housing, many of the flats here have been bought by tenants under Thatcher’s popular but disastrous ‘right to buy’. Many who did buy were unable to keep up with mortgage repayments and repair costs, and so many were fairly quickly sold, often to ‘buy to let’ investors who let them out at several times the council rents, enough to more than pay the costs of the mortage or bank loan, the new tenants buying the flats for those investors. A few years ago this estate featured in a court case after Southwark Council found that fire doors required replacement and tenants too them to court over the charges they imposed.
I think this was probably the end of my walk on 30th October 1988. Two weeks later I was back in Bermondsey taking more pictures, the subject of my next series of posts.
