Syria and Ukraine Protests Against Putin: On Saturday 22nd February 2014 Syrians and supporters at one of their regular protests opposite the Russian Embassy were joined by hundreds of Ukrainians also protesting against Putin.
Protests had been taking place in Ukraine since the previous November against Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych and Russian soldiers in unmarked combat gear were already operating in parts of Ukraine and five days after this protest Russian forces seized control of strategic sites in Crimea. In April 2014 militants backed by Russia took control of some towns in the Donbas region in the east of Ukraine and declared two independent states in the area which were then covertly supported by Russia with soldiers, tanks and artillery.
The Syrian Revolution against the brutally dictatorial Assad regime had begun in February 2011, part of the wider Arab Spring. By the middle of 2012 it had become a military civil war, with Assad’s forces being supported by Iran and Russia, and supporters of Free Syria were holding regular protests opposite the Russian Embassy across the main road from the private street where the embassy is.
Several hundred Ukrainians had come to call or an end to Russian interference in the Ukraine, for an end to violence, and for Yanukovych to go.
While there they heard and cheered loudkt the latest news from the Parliament in Kiev, that the speaker of the parliament, attorney general and interior minister had been replaces and jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko freed.
After an hour of protest I went with the Ukrainians as they marched east along Holland Park Avenue to the statue of St Volodymyr, ruler of Ukraine 980-1015, erected by Ukrainians in Great Britain in 1988 to celebrate the establishment of Christianity in Ukraine by St Volodymyr in 988.
Here around the base of the statue were hundreds of lighted candles, along with flowers and other tributes to the many pro-opposition protesters who have been killed in Kiev and elsewhere in the Ukraine and more photographs of them were added.
Two Ukrainian Orthodox priests led a service in memory of those who had died in the protests to establish a free and independent Ukraine and people held up Ukrainian flags.
Virgin NHS & Mock The Opera: My work on Tuesday 2nd June 2015 began outside the London HQ of Virgin Care where campaigners were protesting at the continuing private takeover of the NHS by companies including Virgin. Then I joined a group under Notting Hill’s Westway who were marching to Holland Park. While making deep cuts to social services, homelessness prevention schemes, nurseries and the Westway urban stables the council was giving £5m to Holland Park Opera, underwriting its losses.
Virgin Health hide behind NHS Logo – Tavistock Square
The protest outside Virgin Care was part of a National day of action against private healthcare companies who are hiding behind the NHS logo, using the NHS Logo when delivering private care.
The People’s NHS, a community-led campaign to help defend the NHS from private companies, point out that many MPs including some cabinet ministers and members of the House of Lords are profiting from private medical companies which are taking over our NHS in a bit-by-bit privatisation.
These politicians have backed legislation in which they have a personal private interest forcing the NHS to put services out to tender, with private companies taking on the more straightforward routine services which are relatively cheap to run and make profits from, leaving the trickier aspects of the health service to be run by the public NHS.
The campaign’s petition pointed out the huge corruption involved stating:
We are outraged that politicians with financial interests in the private healthcare sector, totalling millions of pounds, voted on the Health and Social Care Act that has led to a massive expansion in private sector involvement in the NHS and created a profits bonanza for the same companies these MPs and Lords are linked to.
No party stood on a platform of privatising the NHS. It is a scandal that politicians who can personally benefit financially voted for this wave of privatisation, when the general public have had no chance to cast our vote.
We demand that these parliamentarians give the money they have received from their private healthcare interests to NHS charities, and that the Government halts all sell-offs and conducts an urgent review of the Health and Social Care Act.
and it demanded that these parliamentarians give the money they have received from their private healthcare interests to NHS charities, and that the Government halts all sell-offs and conducts an urgent review of the Health and Social Care Act.
‘Mock the Opera protest at Kensington cuts – Notting Hill to Holland Park
Two years after this protest the Grenfell Tower fire made clear to the nation the lack of concern of the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea for its less affluent residents in North Kensington, but it was already clear in 2015 to those who lived in this part what was called the “richest borough in the Universe” and which had reserves of over £280m. And among the groups taking part was the Grenfell Action Group, already pressing for action to be taken to make its building safe in case of fire, but labelled by the council as troublemakers.
Years earlier the working class north of the borough had become one of the worst environmental disaster areas in UK history, with the building of a stretch of London’s inner urban motorway ring through it creating devastation. The outcry caused by local groups here eventually led to the abandonment of the disastrous road scheme with this being one of few sections completed, and the setting up of a community land trust, the Westway Trust to manage 23 acres of land under the Westway, supposedly for the benefit of the local North Kensington community.
The protest was organised by Westway23, a direct action umbrella group of concerned local residents, traders, artists and organisations of all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds, united to defend the community rights formed as a result of a growing concern that the local community were being excluded from key decisions that were responsible for shaping the area’s future by the Westway Trust, council and developers.
The film The Westway: four decades of community activism, produced in 2017 gives a good account of how the area, including the Westway has been treated and the fight against this by various community groups.
The protest was supported by local organisations including the Maxilla Nursery and the stables based under the Westway which had for almost 20 years been providing affordable and subsidised riding and equine therapy for inner city residents, including disadvantaged and disabled children which were threatened by the cuts, as well as other local groups and wider groups including Radical Housing Network and Unite Community.
They marched from outside the Westway Trust to Holland Park Opera which the council had recently announced it was giving £5 million to underwrite its losses, and placards and posters stated ‘Take Action. Stop Kensington & Chelsea Council from Squeezing our Services as they splash out on Sopranos.’
At a rally outside the Opera building where people were sitting on the outside gallery enjoying a drink before the performance, one of the speakers made clear that they were not against opera or the people who listen to it, but against the council and its cutting of services. The protest with its loud drumming and shouting ended before the opera was scheduled to start to avoid spoiling the event for those who had paid a part of the cost to hear the highly subsidised performance.
“But“, as I pointed out, “perhaps it isn’t a sensible ordering of priorities to subsidise those who were able to stand on the gallery drinking champagne while cutting essential support to the poorest and most vulnerable in the community.”
Anti-Putin protests over Ukraine and Syria 2014. On 22 Feb 2014 the small regular protest opposite the Russian Embassy in Kensington was joined by several hundred Ukrainians supporting the Maidan coup in their country and calling for an end to Russian interference in the Ukraine.
Ukrainian Orthodox priests lead a service of mourning for those killed in the Maidan revolution
President Yanukovych was removed from his post by a vote in the Ukraine parliament on the 22 Feb, although he called the vote illegal as it did not follow the procedures of the Ukrainian Constitution. He fled as the new government raised criminal proceedings against him.
Syrians were also protesting against Putin opposite the Russian Embassy
There were Antimaidan protests in Ukraine, particularly in the southern and eastern areas, and there was considerable public support in the Crimea for the invasion by Russian troops which began on 26th February. There appears to have been considerable public support in the Crimea for the Russian action and a referendum, declared illegal by the EU and USA, on Crimea joining the Russian Federation had an official turnout of 83% and resulted in a 96% vote in favour.
Ukrainians march from a nearby cultural centre to the Russian embassy
On 22 Feb 2014, deputies at the Congress of the Southern and Eastern regions declared, accordint to Wikipedia, they were “ready to take responsibility for protecting constitutional order in their territory” and they rejected the authority of the Ukraine government. Demonstrations and clashes followed with opinion polls showing most people rejecting both the regional and national governments as illegitimate but fairly equally divided as to which they supported and separatist militia took control of large areas.
The Minsk summit in February 2015 brought a ceasefire between the Ukraine government and the militias but has failed to unite the country. When I drafted this post a few days ago Russian forces were massed on the borders of Ukraine and it seemed inevitable some would soon cross the border to come to the aid of their comrades in the breakaway areas as they now appear to be doing.
Fortunately I don’t suffer the same hawkish advisers as NATO – or at least like to add a pinch of salt as they more or less monopolise the BBC airwaves. This isn’t a second Cuba missile crisis (and I remember that vividly) but may possibly bring some resolution to an unsatisfactory situation in the area which the West has failed to properly grapple with since Minsk. At least I hope so. Nobody – not even the Russians – wants another war, and it would be disasatrous for the Ukraine.
Russia has interpreted (probably correctly) the large flow of arms and training by the west into the country as a build up for a Ukrainian government attack to retake Eastern Ukraine – where apparently over 600,000 people are of Russian heritage and still have Russian passports. It still it seems most likely to me that the Russian action will be confined to establishing clear borders for the breakway republics rather than a full-scale invasion of the country, and the end result will be a smaller but more united Ukraine in the remaining areas.
If Russia remains inside the new republics it has recognised, the Ukraine that remains, like the protesters in 2014, will be a strongly Orthodox country. After the protest opposite the Russian embassy they left and marched to the statue of St Volodymyr, ruler of Ukraine 980-1015, erected by Ukrainians on the corner of Holland Park in 1988 to celebrate the establishment of Christianity in Ukraine by St Volodymyr in 988.
The statue was surrounded by flowers, photographs and tributes with hundreds of burning candles to the many pro-opposition protesters who have been killed in Kiev and elsewhere in the Ukraine. Two Ukrainian Orthodox priests presided at a service to remember all those who have died to establish a free and independent Ukraine.
Helpfully a street sign and a number inform me that this is 180 Shepherds Bush Rd, at the western edge of Brook Green. The road at one time used to wander around here but long ago traffic was routed straight through the grassy space, with both new and old road remaining as Shepherds Bush Road. There are no properties on the new section of the road, just a bus stop, traffic signs and traffic lights.
Without the information on the photo it would be hard to place this picture, as nothing visible remains of this part of the factory which housed Express Lifts and was I think part of the large Osram works which had began making carbon lamps here in 1881. It went on to produce many other types of lamps until around 1955, continuing only to produce argon and electronic valves until 1988 and was demolished the same year, with only its tower with the famous Osram Dome elsewhere on the site being saved, incorporated into the Tesco Superstore that took its place
You can still find this pair of houses on Sinclair Rd, part of one of many conservation areas in Hammersmith & Fulham. There are a number of houses with impressive paired porches on the street, substantial four storey houses dating from around 1880. This pair is one of relatively few to have retained the stucco urns under the porticos, and this is a particularly impressive example with slender columns and capitals, but I think the real attraction for me was the incredibly morose bearded and moustached crowned head at the base of a finial.
In the same conservation area as Sinclair Rd is a small section of very different housing. This small block which contained around 24 late Victorian terraced houses with a small Radiator Factory at its north end had been replaced by these modern buildings by 1988. The picture is taken from the road at the south side of this small estate.
St John the Baptist, Church, Holland Rd, Holland Park, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988
Crossing the railway at the bridge on Addison Gardens took me from Hammersmith & Fulham into the Holland Park area of Kensington & Chelsea and St John the Baptist Church in Holland Rd, a remarkably exuberant Grade I listed building by the distinguished Victorian church architect James Brook, “cathedral-like in scale and ambition, combining Brooks’s devotion to severe early Gothic models with a degree of material opulence not seen in his better-known East End churches”. Begun in 1872 it was completed in stages when the parish had the money and only finished after Brook’s death with finishing touches (perhaps unfortunate) by his successor John Standen Adkins in 1910.
The well-illustrated feature on the history of the church on the church web site states “St John’s is a distinguished and integrated time-capsule of the Anglo-Catholic movement. It is regularly in use for that traditional form of worship today.”
15 Holland Park Gardens, Holland Park, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988
The London School of English is still in this imposing building in Holland Park Gardens. Perhaps surprising I avoided the wide sweep of steps leading up to its door, probably in order to emphasise the nest of balloons tied to its railings.
Addisland Court, Holland Villas Road, Holland Park, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-1a-11
Addisland Court is a prestigious block of flats that screams 1930s Art Deco and its site design also very much reflects the golden age of motoring (when it was only for the rich.) A three bedroom flat here has an estimated value of around £2million. It was apparently used as a location in a couple of episodes of a TV series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot. It was built in 1936, designed by William Bryce Binnie whose other works include the East Stand at Arsenal’s old Highbury ground and who after distinguished war service had been assistant architect at the Imperial War Graves Commission for which he designed a number of memorials in France and Belgium.
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.
Holland Park Ave, Holland Park, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988
I made these pictures in January 1988, on one of many walks around various areas of London. At the time I was working on two photographic projects, one in black and white and the other in colour. In black and white I was largely concerned with recording the physical infrastructure, photographing both buildings and streets I felt were exceptional and also examples that I thought were typical. My colour project was more difficult to explain, but both were linked to the changing nature of London.
Holland Park Ave, Holland Park, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988
January was a good month to take pictures of the streets. One of the smaller projects I’d undertaken was about trees in London, and in the Summer months they hide many of the buildings. Google Streetview is a great resource, but almost all the images around London appear to be from late Spring or Summer, and for some streets almost all you can see is trees. My project on the buildings of London tailed off around 1999 to 2000 because it then seemed to me that it would not be long before we would have something like Streetview with more comprehensive coverage, though it hasn’t entirely replaced the kind of pictures I took.
Holland Park Ave, Holland Park, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988
Holland Park Avenue is an ancient route to the West from London dating back to before the Romans. In later years until the nineteenth century it was known here as the Uxbridge Road. Land to the south of it was a part of the Holland House estate and from the middle of the 18th century land to the north became owned by the Ladbroke family of wealthy bankers. In 1819 after he inherited the land James Weller Ladbroke began to develop it, beginning with the parts along the Uxbridge Road.
The first houses along the road were built in 1824, but proved difficult to let or sell being so far from the centre of London. Building on the Ladbroke estate halted in the mid-1830s but began again in the following decade. When built, each terrace had its own name and house numbers, but in 1895 this section of Uxbridge Road was renamed Holland Park Avenue and the houses renumbered. You can read more about them on the Ladbroke Association web site.
Holland Rd, Holland Park, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988
Holland Road is a rather busy street that leads up from the south to the Holland Park roundabout at the western boundary of Notting Hill and was a part of the Holland estate whose development was carefully overseen by Lord and later Lady Holland. Just to its west is the railway line- now part of the London Overground network as well as carrying National Rail trains and the Underground service as far as Kensington Olympia.
The original plans for the railway in the mid 1830s had it going on a viaduct a short distance to the east close to Addison Road and new houses already built on the Holland estate, and an objection by Lord Holland moved the line to the edge of his estate and largely hidden in a cutting – as well as enabling him to see a few acres to the railway company for £5,000 and get them to largely finance a new covered sewer that ran along Holland Road enabling its development.
Kiln, Walmer Rd, Notting Hill, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988
Walmer Road is the oldest street in Notting Dale, an old footpath which became the main street of the area and was renamed James St in the early 19th century and Walmer Road in the 1850s. Much of the area was dug for clay and bricks and tiles were made here and the area became known as the Potteries – and also because of the pigs kept in the area, the Piggeries. It became a notorious slum area with high levels of cholera, lacking proper sanitation until a new sewer was dug around 1850. The worked out brickfield ‘Ocean’ was filled in in the 1860s, part becoming Avondale Park in 1892. The kiln, a designated Ancient Monument, is opposite the park.
House, 106, Princedale Rd, Notting Hill, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988
Walmer Road is one of those that was cut short by the building of the Westway and it used to go north to meet Latimer Road. It now comes to an end just south of Grenfell Tower. It’s southern end is also confusing, with a junction with Princedale Road, Kenley Street, Hippodrome Place and Pottery Lane. I think Princedale Rd (formerly Prince’s Rd) along with Pottery Lane may well also have once been part of the old footpath which became Walmer Rd. The two roads run closely parallel and Pottery Lane rather looks like a mews – and its opposite side was once the stables for the racecourse.
Prince’s Road was developed piecemeal between 1841-1851. It became Princedale Road in the late 1930s to remove the confusion with several other Prince’s Roads in London. There are no listed buildings in the road which in 1978 became part of the Norland Conservation Area.
This shop on the corner of Portland Road and Clarenden Cross is still there with its half pots and name ‘Fired Earth’ a reminder of the origin of the area as the ‘Potteries’, about a hundred yards from the remaining kiln in a picture above.
My introduction to this area came in the book ‘Absolute Beginners’ by Colin MacInnes published in 1959 which I read when I was a teenager and which is loosely based around the Notting Hill race riots of 1958, later filmed. It has rather gone up in the world since then.
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.
Holland Park, Holland Park, Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988
Holland Park is a street in London as well as an actual park and the name of a tube station which has transferred to an area of Kensington to the west of Notting Hill. Virtually every house in the street is listed – I think 88 of them. The exception is the Greek Embassy at No.1. This had been the most interesting house in the street. Built in 1860 it was bought in 1864 by banker Alexander C. Ionides (1810-1890), who had been Greek Consul General in London from 1854 to 1856. He and his son who inherited the house were wealthy Greek business men and patrons of the arts – and from 1864 and they transformed the property, commisioning external work leading Victorian architect Philip Webb, who also gave it a grand staircase and other fine public rooms, with internal decorative work by the leading figures of the day, including Willliam Morris who supervised much of the work and whose company provided much of it. It became a meeting-place for all London’s leading artists coming to its Sunday open house in the 1880s and 90s. The family moved out in 1898 and the house was sold a few years late.
Holland Park, Holland Park, Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988
The interior of 1 Holland Park was meticulously recorded by the leading architectural photographer of the day, Henry Bedford Lemere as well as in the work of others. But the new owners – who were also the owners of nearby Holland House – did not treat it well, whitewashing over the William Morris ceilings. The house was badly damaged by bombing in WW2 and was sold with Holland House and the park to the London County Council in 1952, when it was reported that little worth preserving remained and the house was demolished. The building which now houses the Greek Embassy was built in 1962 by architects Playne & Lacey and bought by Greece in 1973. An article available online gives muuch more detail on the Ionides family and the house
Holland Park Mews, Holland Park, Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988
Holland Park is actually two parallel streets, each stuffed with listed houses, built under the watchful eye of Lady Holland who saw to it that they met her standards, though at the time they were not felt to be anything special – typical houses for the wealthy. And the wealthy needed carriages which required to be kept at hand, along with the horses to draw them. They and the men who looked after them lived in the mews between the two streets, and would be drive the carriages around when required to the front doors – and the rich would emerge from those iron and glass porte cochères to ride in them.
Stoneleigh Place, Notting Hill, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988
A short distance north of Holland Park, some housing is on a less grand scale.
Freston Rd, Notting Hill, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988
Another picture from Freston Road. The London City Mission built The People’s Hall on Latimer Road in the Kensington Piggeries in 1902, when parts of the area were one of the worst slums in London. This part of Latimer Road was renamed Freston Road when the construction of the Westway and the West Cross Route cut it in half. The hall on the corner of Olaf St became the centre of the Free and Independent Republic of Frestonia in 1977. Probably it’s best known now as the place where much of The Clash’s album Combat Rock was recorded.
Royal Crescent, Notting Hill, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988
Royal Crescent is at the western edge of Holland Park/Notting Hill, just to the north of Holland Park Avenue, just east of the Holland Park roundabout. It was one of the earliest parts of the Norland Estate to be developed in the 1840s, to the estate plan of Robert Cantwell and is Grade II* listed. It took a long time to rent these properties, which were thought to be too far out from London in the days of horse-drawn traffic for the wealthy.
St Ann’s Villas, Notting Hill, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988
St Anne’s Villas leads north from the centre of the Royal Crescent, and is on one of the routes I’ve sometimes walked more recently from Shepherd’s Bush station to join the silent walks remembering Grenfell.
St Ann’s Villas, Notting Hill, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988
St Anne’s Villas were built as a part of the Norland Estate, mainly around 1845. The area was developed by by Charles Richardson with barrister Charles Stewart taking building licences from him for these Tudor Gothic revival semi-deatched houses, now Grade II listed.
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.
The London I grew up in, on the outskirts of the capital was an area of small late Victorian terraces and Edwardian and inter-war two or three-bed semis, interspersed with the occasional factory, church and municipal buildings, with few or any sizeable private houses of any age. It was largely working class, poor and largely honest but not particularly deprived. And back then we had the NHS, free education and the welfare state.
Walking around Holland Park and other wealthy areas of Kensington is a completely different world; another country of large detached house and large blocks of mansion flats, an opulence based both on the exploitation of the British Empire and of the exploitation of the workers in the mass of England. I wrote first “our country”, but I think it was never really our country, but their country, “England” or “Great Britain” a deception that sent many working people to toil in factories or die in the trenches – as well as profiting from slavery and working in mines and plantations across the world.
Looking at these pictures now, it’s hard not to think of the times I have walked past some of these and similar places more recently, often on my way to Grenfell Tower or to join the monthly silent marches in memory of those who died there, some of which have passed through this area, walking from Kensington Town Hall.
The Addison Road area was the first to be developed, on 200 acres of farmland belonging to Lord Holland, beginning in the 1820s. The estate was sold off in parts for development from 1823 to 1930.
Royal Crescent, Holland Park, Kensington & Chelsea, 1987
Royal Crescent to the north of Holland Park Avenue was built in 1846, and the whole crescent of houses is Grade II* listed. The picture shows the eastern corner of the crescent with Holland Park Avenue.
St Anns Villas, Notting Hill, Kensington & Chelsea, 1987
The road leading north from the centre of Royal Crescent is St Ann’s Villas and is lined with substantial houses. After a few in stucco and a road junction it is lined with a development of 12 similar but not identical semidetached houses in a red brick Tudor style, with attractive stonework and blue brick diapering, built in 1852 and Grade II listed. The blue plaque here is for music hall artist Albert Chevalier, born here and best remembered for one of his many songs “My Old Dutch”. Although he wrote and performed in cockney as a costermonger and was called ‘the coster’s laureate’, he was from a rather more middle-class background, his father being the French master at Kensington School, Jean Onésime Chevalier, and Albert was christened Albert Onésime Britannicus Gwathveoyd Louis Chevalier. His mother was Welsh, which accounts for the Gwathveoyd, more usually spelt Gwaithfoed.
Debenham House, Peacock House, Addison Rd, Holland Park, Kensington & Chelsea, 1987
Debenham House, also known as Peacock House, is the only Grade I listed building in the Addison Rd, designed by architect Halsey Ricardo for department store owner Ernest Ridley Debenham and completed in 1907. it became known as Debenham House after it was sold following Debenham’s death in 1952. The exterior, designed to retain its appearance despite the ravages of London’s soot with coloured tiles and glazed bricks is in an Italianate style, but the interiors are Arts and Crafts, with work by some of the leading designers of the time. Unfortunately we can only see them in photographs and in several films made using it as a location.
Holland Rd, Holland Park, Kensington & Chelsea, 1987
Holland Road is a long straight street largely lined with 4 storey terraces of substantial houses like the one in this picture. Expect to pay something around £4m for one of them – or perhaps £700,000 for a 1-bed flat.
Addison Rd, Holland Park, Kensington & Chelsea, 1987
This house at 77 Addison Road is opposite Debenham House and I rather prefer its more restrained manner.
Addison Rd, Holland Park, Kensington & Chelsea, 1987
One of a row of similar houses on Addison Rd, in a neo-Gothic style dating from around the 1850s. The next door house is listed but for some reason this one is not.
Addison Rd, Holland Park, Kensington & Chelsea, 1987
And this is the house next door, rather hidden behind its more impressive gate
Grade II listed 18 Melbury Road is now distinguished by two blue plaques, neither of which appear in my picture. Like many houses in this street in Holland Park it was home to a noted artist, in this case William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. The house was built in 1877, but Hunt only moved here in 1903 and it was here that he died. His widow was still living here when the plaque to him was added to the front of the house in 1923.
Cetshwayo (c.1832-1884) King of the Zulus enjoyed a rather shorter stay, arriving in August 1882 after his defeat and capture in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, an entirely uncalled for attack on Zululand by British forces, who at first suffered an ignominious defeat at Isandhlwana before finally winning the war and taking Cetshwayo prisoner. He was brought to London together with his chiefs, where he was welcomed by inquisitive crowds and met with both the Prime Minister and Queen Victoria, and they agreed to re-instate him as King of Zululand, to where he was secretly returned the following January.
His reinstatement did not go well and he returned to a bloody civil war and had to seek refuge in a British reserve. He died, officially of a heart attack, but possibly poisoned in February 1884 and two months later his heir became king. The English Heritage blue plaque commemorating his stay, just above that of Hunt’s was only unveiled in 2006, long after I took this picture.
In 1875 noted architect William Burges began the building and furnishing of the Tower House in a French Gothic Revival style as his home, but died as it was more or less completed in 1881 and was inherited by his brother-in-law, who later sold it. After several owners and tenants, and Grade I listing in 1949 John Betjeman inherited the remaining lease in 1962, but found the property needed expensive repairs and moved out without extending the lease. He claimed that after this it was deliberately left empty and left it to rot and be vandalised, hoping to be allowed to demolish it and develop the site.
Lady Jane Turnbull bought the house in the mid-60s to save it and began its restoration, selling it to actor Richard Harris for £75,000 in 1969 who continued the work. Three years later he sold it to Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin (who outbid David Bowie for the property) for £350,000 and Page still owns it and has in recent years carried out a long legal battle with his neighbour Robbie Williams over his plans for underground excavations to develop his property that might threaten the structure of Tower House.
Pineapples, brought to Europe by Christopher Columbus soon became a symbol of wealth and status – and were apparently available for hire to be displayed (but now consumed) at posh dinner parties in the 18th century. Only the incredibly rich could afford to eat them at around the equivalent of £5,000 a fruit. And although they are now commonplace in supermarkets and market stalls, back in my working-class youth they only came in tins as rings or chunks. They can be seen on many buildings across London from St Paul’s Cathedral down – and here on the gateposts of Moscow Mansions.
Hoarding, car, West Cromwell Rd, Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1987
The queues of traffic dawdling into London on the A4 were greeted by a car in an unusual parking place on this hoardiing.
Railway, West Cromwell Rd, Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1987
Looking over a wall or fence you can still see these railway lines, at left is now the London Overground going down to West Brompton Station, but in 1987 this line was only in use for goods trains, with passenger services only being resumed in 1994 and the Network Rail platforms at West Brompton only coming into use in 1999. At lower level is the District Line of the London Underground, coming from Olympia behind me and West Kensington at right. Behind that is the Lillie Bridge Railway and Engineering Depot; missing now from the right of centre is the large bulk of Earls Court Exbition Centre, but the Metropolitan Police tower at right is still present.
Ashfield House, London Underground, West Cromwell Rd, Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1987
Out of the previous picture to the right is Ashfield House in West Kensington, a block of offices for London Underground, which now includes a mock Underground Station, West Ashfield, used for training purposes. The building was purpose-built for London Underground and opened in 1983. It is likely to be demolished as a part of the redevelopment plan for the area.
Clicking on any of the pictures above will take you to a larger version on my Flickr album 1987 London Photos from where you can browse through over 750 black and white pictures I made that year – these are all on Page 8.
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.
Apart from my obsession with doorways which will have become obvious to regular readers of my posts, there are various other sub-themes in my work on London, some explored in black and white, others in the colour work and some in both.
One of these was the various different representations of the human body, both two and three-dimensional, as in the robot, dress forms and corsetry advertising in these pictures.
I think I also photographed two of these in colour, and certainly my colour pictures at the time include a remarkable number of shop windows containing heads without bodies.
Urns and other sculptural detail and ornaments were also something I felt worth recording.
One of the photographers whose work I greatly admire is Eugène Atget and his work contains many such images particularly those in grand gardens such as the Parc St Cloud, and in 1984 I had spent several weeks photographing Paris in a homage to his work which you can see in my book In Search Of Atget – the preview there includes many of the best images.
These pictures are from page 5 of my Flickr album 1987 London Photos and clicking on any of them will take you to a larger version there which will also tell you where they were taken.
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.
