Erith | >Re-PHOTO

More From the Riverside: More pictures from my walk by the River Thames at Erith and Belvedere on Monday 1st August 1994 to its end in Plumstead.

My previous post from this walk, Thames Riverside – Erith 1994 ended as I approached the Erith Oil Works jetty. The path here climbs up to go over the roadway from the jetty into the works which provided some good views of the jetty,

*Jetty, River Thames, Erith Oil Works, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-802-52*

Riverside Path, River Thames, Erith Oil Works, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-804-23 — *Riverside Path, River Thames, Erith Oil Works, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-802-42*

Looking upstream from the bridge over the roadway from the jetty to Erith Oil Works – the tanks at left are part of the oil works site.

*Jetty, River Thames, Erith Oil Works, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-804-21*

I continued along the path, looking back to take another view of the jetty

Bulk Carrier Tecumseh, Jetty, River Thames, Erith Oil Works, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-804-32 — *Bulk Carrier Tecumseh, Jetty, River Thames, Erith Oil Works, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-804-53*

This whole shoreline was once lined by industrial sites with their own jetties, by 1994 mainly like this now derelict and shortened.

*Riverside Path, River Thames, Belvedere, Bexley, 1994, 94-805-45*

*Riverside Path, River Thames, Belvedere, Bexley, 1994, 94-805-32*

Looking inshore there will still industrial sites, but much no longer relying on the river, though there were still some like the aggregate works that still had working jetties.

*Jetty, Riverside Path, River Thames, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-802-43*

Another disused jetty a short distance upstream from the Oil Works.

*Wharf, Mulberry Way, Riverside Path, River Thames, Belvedere, Bexley, 1994, 94-805-31*

Sheds and neat stacks of orange and green boxes at a wharf – now serviced by road – at Mulberry Way. This gets its name from the temporary portable floating harbours some of which were constructed here in 1944 by Nuttall Brothers and towed to the French coast after D-Day to land supplies for the Allied invasion. Two temporary harbours were constructed on the Normandy coast; one only lasted a few days before being destroyed by a storm but that at Arromanches remained in use for 10 months.

*Wharf, Mulberry Way, Riverside Path, River Thames, Belvedere, Bexley, 1994, 94-802-33*

A panoraamic view from the same viewpoint as the previous image. I had climbed up on the wide concrete flood defence wall here to make the picture. The sky was filled with clouds, perfect weather for panoramic landscapes.

*Remains of wharf, Riverside Path, River Thames, Belvedere, Bexley, 1994, 94-802-21*

I kept walking along the riverside path, coming to these timbers which would once have supported a long landing stage on a wharf with a short jetty into deep water. Across the river you can see Tilbury Docks at the left of the picture, with the blue hull of a ship there and some cranes, and further towards the centre the chimney and turbine hall of East Tilbury Power Station.

The horizon, dead centre in the picture is straight but as you move further down in the picture the curvature produced by the cylindrical perspective become more and more apparent. The path at left is straight and it remained straight to where I was standing to take the picture and beyond. Usually I tried to compose photographs so that this curvature was less apparent, but here I rather liked the effect.

I was working with two swing lens panoramic cameras (and two ‘normal’ SLR cameras.) Normal wide-angle lenses use rectilinear perspective become unusable with a horizontal angle of view of around 90 degrees as the distance from the centre of the lens to the film increases as light travels to the edges of the frame, increasing the size of image objects. The curved film plane in a swing lens camera keeps the lens centre to film distance constant so objects are recorded at the same scale across the image. Of course the wooden posts get smaller in the image the further away they are from the camera.

*Riverside Path, River Thames, Belvedere, Bexley, 1994, 94-802-23*

The curvature is much less apparent in this image taken a few minutes later and a few yards further upstream. But the shadow at bottom left as actually the shadow of the same straight flood wall as the larger shadow at the right.

Both of the panoramic cameras I had gave images with a horizontal angle of view of somewhere around 130 degrees.

I’ll post more pictures from this walk later. More pictures also in my Flickr album 1994 London colour – and you can see these images larger there by clicking on them in this post.

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

Thames Riverside – Erith: The Thames Path National Trail was only inaugurated on 24 July 1996 and then stopped at the Thames Barrier, but years before I had often walked along much of it in or near Greater London as well as much further east towards the Estuary.

It had taken a long time since 1947 when the towpath along the Thames was identified by the Hobhouse Committee on National Parks as one of six long distance and coastal recreational walking routes. Work began seriously in 1973 but there were many problems to be overcome, particularly in the upstream areas where much of the towpath had deteriorated, ferries closed and more.

The Thames Path still ends at Woolwich but it now joins the England Coast Path, but long before that it was possible to simply keep on walking beside the river – and I did along the south bank as far as Cliffe. Further on it became difficult to access using public transport.

*Sheds, Crescent Rd, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-801-52*

These pictures come from Monday 1st August 1994 when I took a train to Erith as my starting point. I began by taking black and white pictures of buildings in the town centre, then walked east out of the town as far as the saltings and Erith Yacht Club. The town has changed considerably since my visit. The first industry developed on this side of town, but I think there is now a large supermarket with huge car park in the almost all the former industrial area. In the 1930s the area in my picture above, on Crescent Road or ManorRoad was a part of the British Fibrocement Works.

*Erith Yacht Club, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-801-53*

I turned around and came back through Erith to the Riverside Gardens close to the centre of Erith and then walked upstream beside the river to Belvedere before turning around and coming back to take a few more black and white pictures on the west side of Erith before taking the train home.

*Crane, Riverside walk, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-801-32*

In the distance you can see the housing around Chandlers Drive, one of the first residential devolopmens on the river here, which had previously been highly industrial.

*Riverside Path, River Thames, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-803-33*

*River Thames, Flats, Chandlers Drive, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-801-22*

*Jetty, River Thames, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-805-53*

One of a number of jetties here, this more colourful than most, but I think no longer in use. On the opposite bank I think the hills are where rubbish has been brought out from London and tipped to build up what was previously marsh.

Jetty, River Thames, Erith Oil Works, Thames Path, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-801-13 — *Jetty, River Thames, Erith Oil Works, Erith, Bexley, 1994, 94-801-13*

The jetty of the Erith Oil Works, still in business. It was set up on Church Manorway in 1908 and is the the largest vegetable oil mill in the UK. My next post in this series will have more pictures of the Oil Works and other industry on the riverside, again mainly panoramas made with a swing lens camera.

All pictures here and more from this and other walks in 1994 are in my Flickr album 1994 London colour and you can view them larger by clicking on them in this post.

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

Tag: Erith

More From the Riverside – 1994

Thames Riverside – Erith 1994