Dartford 1995 Again – Panoramas: Part 9 of my occasional series on colour pictures I made in 1995.
Victoria Industrial Park, Victoria Rd, Dartford, 1995, 95p5-252
I enjoyed another walk in Dartford on Sunday May 7th 1995, beginning by taking black and white pictures of buildings around the centre before walking out to the northwest along Victoria Road.
Philips Norman, Cash & Carry, Victoria Rd, Dartford, 1995, 95p5-251
I went on to photographing in the industrial areas between Burnham Road and the Dartford Creek – the tidal River Darent.
Here I was able to make my way down to the west bank of the river and make more pictures.
River Darent, Riverside Wharf, Dartford, 1995, 95p5-121
At this wharf there had once been a fairly small dock which had been filled in but its gates were still there. I think it had perhaps been a dry dock used for ship repairs,
Dartford, 1995, 95p5-133
I think this is a site cleared for the development of a large housing estate, now on Lawson Road and Eleanor Close.
Dartford, 1995, 95p5-153
This long, empty road was University Way, a northern by-pass for Dartford, named in hope of a university that never arrived. Bob Dunn had been a Tory junior education minister who had campaigned for this development. MP for Dartford from 1979 to 1997 when he lost his seat to Labour, he died in 2003, only 56, and the road was renamed in his honour.
The bridge that takes Bob Dunn Way across the Darent was not built with navigation in mind, and makes it difficult for boats of any size to proceed up to Dartford. There has been for some years work being carried out to encourage navigation here, but boats have to look carefully at the tide tables to pass under the bridge. The Dartford and Crayford Creek Trust was founded in April 2016 to work to improve the navigation.
Roundabout, Hythe St, Victoria Rd, Dartford, 1995, 95p5-363
I walked back much the same way to this roundabout and went up Hythe Street in the centre of this picture.
River Darent, Nelsons Row, Dartford, 1995, 95p5-243
Hythe Street tok me to Nelson’s Row where I was able to cross the River Darent. There is also a public slipway here, cleared in recent years by volunteers.
Pipe Bridge, Riverside Path, River Darent, Dartford, 1995, 95p5-232
A few houses on the opposite bank are in Kenwyn Road. Past them you can see the derelict half lock which keeps some water in upstream when the tide flows out. Volunteer have put in considerable work to improve this lock in recent years and to revive navigation on Dartford Creek. In the distance is the Dartford Paper Mills site – closed in 2009 the site has been redeveloped.
Half Lock, Riverside Path, River Darent, Dartford, 1995, 95p5-223
Boats can navigate through the lock when the tide is high enough for them to get over the cill of the lock which holds back sufficient water for the river to be navigable upstream to the centre of Dartford.
Dartford Fresh Marshes, Dartford, 1995, 95p5-361
I turned around here and walked back to Dartford and the station. I’d made an early start to the day on the first train into London and there was still time to stop off on the way home and take a few pictures in Woolwich where I intended to return the following week.
1995 Colour – More from Dartford: The eighth part of my series showing colour images I made in 1995 continues with panoramic and normal images around Dartford. An earlier post 1995 Colour Part 4 – Around Dartford looked at some of the panoramas I made on a walk in March 1995 when I walked along the Darent and Thames Path to Littlebrook and Crossways. I returned to Dartford in April and May and made some more pictures.
Bow Arrow Lane Footbridge, Dartford Tunnel Approach, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-1072
Bow Arrow Lane Footbridge, Dartford Tunnel Approach, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-1073
Crossways, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-1062
I think this picture was taken on Cotton Lane. You can see the QEII bridge clearly and there are two lines of pylons. The storage tanks gleaming in the distance are on the north bank of the River Thames. There is no longer a rail siding here.
Philips Newman, Cash & Carry, Victoria Rd, Dartford, 1995, 95c5-764
1995 Colour – Kent Landscapes: Part 7 of my posts on my colour work in 1995. In the early months of 1995 I continued working in both Walthamstow, Chingford and other areas of North London but also made a number of visits south of the river to St Mary Cray, Belvedere and elsewhere. But most of my work was in black and white, though I’ve already posted a few colour images in this series.
River Darent, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-342
I took far fewer colour pictures and at the time kept few records of locations and dates of these, relying on the annotations I made on my black and white contact sheets.
Brooklands Lakes, River Darent, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-472
On April 1st 1995 I took the train to Dartford, a town I had previously photographed and visited occasionally to visit a friend. Dartford is just outside the east edge of London in Kent and at the west edge of an area beside the Thames which had for many years been the home of the cement industry with huge chalk quarries and riverside cement factories, the largest of which was still operation in the 1990s and which I’d photographed fairly extensively.
Farm, River Darent, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-473
I made a long walk around the area south of Dartford, beginning along the river that runs through the town, the Darent, but then through some of the countryside to the south.
As well as photographing traces of the cement industry – including a no longer working mineral conveyor which had carried chalk from a quarry to the factory I also photographed the two major roads which have impacted on the landscape south of Dartford, the A2 Dartford By-Pass and the M25 motorway.
Mineral Conveyor, M25, Hawley, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-433
You can see larger versions of the images by clicking on them which will take you to my Flickr album 1995 London Colour. More colour pictures from Dartford in a later post.
1995 Colour Part 4 – Around Dartford: More of my panoramic images. These were taken in and around Dartford in Kent in March 1995 on a walk which took me from the centre of the town and along by the River Thames to an area close to the QEII Dartford Bridge. All these were taken on Sunday 19th March 1995. Dartford is a part of the Thames Gateway area around the Thames Estuary.
Dartford
Gasholder, Hythe St, Victoria Rd, Dartford, 1995, 95p03-531
I walked up Hythe Street and then turned right to a path that led me to a bridge across Dartford Creek.
Bridge, Dartford Creek, Nelsons Row, Dartford, 1995, 95p03-533
Dartford Creek is the tidal creek of the River Darent and was once important navigable creek to wharves in the centre of Dartford. Work has now been going on for years to restore the half-lock and make the creek navigable again. I made more panoramic images along the footpath beside the creek later in the year, but on my first visit was keen to get to the River Thames and left the Creek to walk up Joyce Green Lane and Marsh Street to the River Thames.
Littlebrook
Littlebrook Power Station, Dartford Bridge, QEII Bridge, River Thames, Dartford, 1995, 95p03-612
The first power station at Littlebrook was coal fired and opened in 1939 and was joined by a second in 1949 and a third in the 1950s with the final station Littlebrook D shown here opening in the 1980s. The earlier stations had been converted to burn oil by 1958 and were all decommisioned by 1981 when the final station began to be put into use. This continued to produce power until 2015 and was finally demolished in 2019. You can read much more detail on Wikipedia.
River Thames, Dartford Bridge, QEII Bridge, Dartford, 1995, 95p03-631
Google’s map now shows Littlebrook Beach as a ‘tourist attraction’ but I’m fairly sure I was the only person there on the day I made this picture.
Jetty, Littlebrook Power Station, Dartford Bridge, QEII Bridge, River Thames, Dartford, 1995, 95p03-643
National Power, River Thames, Dartford, 1995, 95p03-663
Crossways
As I walked along the path beside the river taking these and rather more black and white images I kept looking for a gate or gap in the fence betweent the riverside path and Crossways I could go through, but there was none. It was only when I got to Stone Marshes that I was able to leave the river and then walk along St Mary’s Road and into Crossways Business Park.
Warehouse, Crossways Business Park, Crossways, Dartford, 1995, 95p03-873
The area has been considerably expanded now, with a new major road to Greenhithe as well as new housing and commercial development.
Lake, Crossways Business Park, Crossways, Dartford, 1995, 95p03-733
The lake now has much new development around it, including a pub, The Wharf on Galleon Boulevard, close to where I made these pictures
Lake, Crossways Business Park, Crossways, Dartford, 1995, 95p03-721
Lake, Crossways Business Park, Crossways, Dartford, 1995, 95p03-723
Darent Valley Path & Thames, Dartford, Kent. On Saturday 4th July 2015 I went by train with my wife and elder son to Dartford for a day’s walking mainly beside the River Darent and River Thames.
It was a hot summer day and the sky was blue with just a few small patches of white cloud. It probably wasn’t the best day to have chosen, as this was a walk with relatively little shade, but as usual there was a little breeze by the rivers to cool us slightly.
I’d walked (and cycled) along the paths we took several times before, first in the 1980s, but they were new to my companions. After taking a short look at the Darent in Dartford we made our way to Hythe Street. Its name means a landing place or small port, and the Darent was once an important navigation at least as far as the mills in the centre of Dartford. The has been a pub here since 1764 and the Hufflers Arms gets its name from the men who guided and pulled the barges up the river to here.
A footbridge takes the path across the Darent here, and past the backs of some industrial sites on towards the half-lock which stopped the river above it drying out at low tide, long derelict. It was something of a surprise to see a narrow boat moored close to it.
There has been a huge change here since 2015, with volunteers working on and around the lock and the river. You can read more about the work of the Dartford and Crayford Creek Restoration Trust on the Facebook page of the Friends of Dartford and Crayford Creek, and see some of the changes in the pictures there.
Later in the day I photographed a yacht making its way through the flood barrier from the Thames and going upriver. I heard afterwards that it had reached the recent bridge under the Bob Dunn Way bypass when the tide was just a fraction too high for it to creep underneath with its mast lowered.
The Thames is pretty wide here and the channel deep enough to take fairly large ships, with the ferries including the ship in the picture operating regular contianer services to Rotterdam and Zeebrugge.
I made a few panoramic images, but the sky was a little empty and blue for it really to be a good day for that. This one which shows my two companions walking on ahead is interesting to me as I have managed to make use of the curvature inherent in these very wide angle views. The path on which I was standing to make the image was more or less straight, though in the picture it seems to bend at roughly a right angle.
The Littlebrook Power Station had only recently ceased operation, and we walked past some interesting structures there before making our way under the Dartford Bridge.
I was pleased that the ferry was leaving and I was able to take a series of photographs of it going under the bridge and sailing on downriver. Some of the pictures give a better impression of the relative heights of ship and bridge with an enormous amount of headroom for the passage.
By now I was getting tired, mainly from the heat and the lack of any shade, and I took few pictures on the rest of the walk to the station at Greenhithe. We didn’t see any sign of the path marked on the map which would have taken us up to the church at Stone as I had planned, but I think I was releived not to have had to climb up the hill, and perhaps didn’t look too hard. After all I’d been there and taken pictures on various occasions before. And if you are walking this way it’s worth the detour.
Ten years ago on Thursday 16th May 2013 I was pleased to attend the opening of the exhibition Estuary, held to mark the 10th anniversary of the Museum of London Docklands at West India Quay, a short walk from Canary Wharf. I was delighted to be one of the dozen artists in various media to be included, with ten of my panoramic images from my work on the north and south banks of the Thames.
I’d begun photographing the lower reaches of the Thames back in the 1980s, then working largely in black and white and my work concentrated on the then fast disappearing industrial sites along the river. At first I worked on the Kent bank on the south of the river, having a particular interest in the cement industry that occupied and had radically changed much of area between Dartford and Gravesend. Later I also worked along the north bank.
Cement works, Northfleet, 2000
Estuary is a term that has various definitions, and both its upstream and downstream limits have, as Wikipedia states, “been defined differently at different times and for different purposes.” For my own purposes it has been rather elastic, usually beginning at the Thames Barrier and going east as far as it was convenient to travel by public transport, on foot or by bicycle from convenient stations. In earlier years I went further along the Kent bank by car in some outings with friends including Terry King as far as Sheppey.
Cement works, Northfleet, 2000
The exhibition had come as a surprise. The ten picture in it were from around a hundred images the Museum of London had bought from various of my projects for its collection a few years earlier and I think the first I knew about it was when I received the invitation to the opening, or perhaps by an email a couple of weeks before that.
Greenhithe, 2000
These pictures all dated from the early years of this century, those from Kent in 2000 and from Essex in 2004 and all were in panoramic format. In 2000 I was working with two swing lens cameras, a Japanese Widelux F8 and a much cheaper Russian Horizon 202. Both work with rotating lens and a curved film plane, invented by give Friedrich von Martens in his Megaskop-Kamera in 1844, but instead of the daguerrotype plates he worked with use standard 35mm film, producing negatives around 56x24mm.
Chafford Hundred, 2004
The two cameras have a similar field of view horizontally around 130 degrees and have a cylindrical perspective which renders lines parallel to the film edges straight but gives an increasing curvature to horizontal lines away from the centre of the image. The image quality of the two is very similar but the cheaper camera has a rather more useful viewfinder.
Dagenham, 2004
By 2004 I had two further pieces of equipment which extended my panoramic photography. One was a new camera, the Hassleblad X-Pan, which had generally received rave reviews. I found it rather disappointing at first and it was only after I added the 30mm wideangle lens that it became useful for me. The X-Pan is a standard rectilinear camera design but gives negatives 65x24mm rather than the normal full-frame 36x24mm. The horizontal angle of view it produces with the 30mm is at the limits of rectilinear perspective, before stretching at the edges becomes too apparent, and is considerably less than the swing lens cameras at 94 degrees. The lens comes with a separate viewfinder that fits on the top of the camera, but does make operation a little less convenient.
West Thurrock, 2005
The second, and very important for working along the north bank was a Brompton folding bicycle, which enabled me to travel the greater distances needed there. Of course I also used this and the X-Pan for later pictures elsewhere.
Mucking, 2005
You can see more of these pictures in two sections of the Urban Landscapes web site, which also includes work by other photgraphers, both British and overseas. Some of the pictures I’ve chosen for today’s post were in the Estuary show, but others were not – I have a rather larger body of work to select from than the Museum, some of which appears in my book Thamesgate Panoramas.
Northfleet, 2000
The site has separate sections on the Thames Gateway in Essex and Kent, as well as from my Greenwich Meridian project in 1994-6 and a wider selection of panoramic work from around London from 1996-2005, though there is much more that I still have to put on-line. Some is also now on Flickr.
In 1984, I more or less came to an end of my work on the River Lea (though I returned to it later) and the major focus of my photography shifted to London’s Docklands, and I’d photographed the West India and Millwall Docks as well as the Royal Docks, pictures from which I’m currently posting daily on Facebook. And later in that year I also went to the Surrey Docks, where work by the London Docklands Development Corporation was well advanced.
I was very aware of the political dimensions of the redevelopment, with the LDDC taking over from the elected local authorities and imposing its own largely business-led priorities which although accelerating the development distorted it away from the needs of the local area, and particularly away from the still pressing need for more social housing and for better employment opportunities for local people.
In those years I read every book in my local library on the history and geography of London, and began to build up my own collection of older works bought from secondhand bookshops and by post. Before the days of on-line listings I used to receive a monthly duplicated list of books on offer from a dealer I think in Brighton, and found many topographic and photographic items of interest, often very cheaply, and would look forward to receiving heavy parcels wrapped in several layers of newspaper. Yes, there was mail order before Amazon, and it was rather more exciting.
It was reading one of the books, Donald Maxwells ‘A pilgrimage of The Thames’, published in 1932 with his imaginative text and evocative drawings (some originally printed in the Church Times) that prompted me to walk in 1985 as he did from Gravesend west through Northfleet and Greenhithe exploring what he christened ‘the Switzerland of England’. As a rather more down-to-earth guide I also had the more academic ‘Lower Thameside’ picked up for pennies in a secondhand bookshop, which included a chapter on its 1971 cement industry by geographers Roy Millward and Adrian Robinson.
My series of walks traversed what was an incredible industrial and post-industrial landscape, altered on a huge scale by quarrying and industry, continuing past Gravesend along the riverside path past Erith and Woolwich to Greenwich and Deptford (areas also covered in my 1985 London Pictures), as well as walking further east to Cliffe and Cooling.
It was a project that I returned to for several years – and I went back to the area more recently when the Channel Tunnel Rail Link was being built as will as the occasional walk or bike ride over the years.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
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