Kew Bridge Engines

Kew Bridge & Gunnersbury 1989

Kew Bridge & Gunnersbury 1989: I didn’t get our for a walk again in 1989 until the 10th of December, probably partly because of the weather with drizzle, mist, fog and some very cold days. But it was just a little warmer and I decided to go out. But at this time in London sunset is before 4pm and so I decided to take pictures fairly close to home so I could make an earlier start. Kew Bridge station is only around a half hour journey from my home.

*Brentford, from Footbridge, Kew Bridge Station, Kew Bridge, Hounslow, 1989 89-11i-42*

I made my first picture from the footbridge in the station taking me to the station exit. As you can see the station buildings were in pretty poor condition. The view includes the local landmark water pumping tower and the top of the engine house of Kew Bridge Engines, opened as a remarkable museum in 1975 (now renamed as London Museum of Water & Steam) and the tower blocks further down Green Dragon Lane. Six 23 storey blocks were built here as the Brentford Towers Estate in 1968 to 1972 by the London Borough of Hounslow.

Green Dragon Lane apparently got its name from a 17th century pub but there appears to be no record of where this was, though there are or were around 40 other pubs of that name elsewhere in the country. The name is usually thought either to have come from the Livery Badge worn by servants of the Herbert family, the Earl of Pembroke, which showed a bloody arm being eaten by a dragon or a reference to King Charles II’s Portuguese Catholic queen, Catherine of Braganza whose family badge was the Green Wyvern.

Kew Bridge station gets rather crowded at times now, as Brentford’s new football stadium is next door.

*Spenklin House, Gunnersbury Avenue, Gunnersbury, Hounslow, 1989 89-11i-46*

I walked up to Gunnersbury Avenue where on the north-east corner of the Chiswick roundabout was this magnificently derelict former works of Spenklin Ltd. They appear to have made Power-operated work clamping devices and other engineering tools including boosters, clamps, cylinders and hydraulic ram heads. The company name was a contraction of Spencer Franklin. I think the next factory along – demolished by the time I took this – had been Permutit water softeners.

I think this building probably dates from around 1925 when the Brentford Bypass – soon better known as the Great West Road – was opened. The roundabout here came later along with its flyover in 1959.

*Spenklin House, Gunnersbury Avenue, Gunnersbury, Hounslow, 1989 89-11i-31*

A closer view of the entrance with its boards showing it had been acquired by Markheath Securities PLC a London property developer, though 49 per cent owned by The Adelaide Steamship Co Ltd. They appear to have been responsible for several developments in the area and to have made Section 106 contributions to Hounslow Council for improvements to nearby Gunnersbury Park.

*National Tyres, Gunnersbury Avenue, Gunnersbury, Hounslow, 1989 89-11i-33*

My memory – often false – tells me that this was on the west side of Gunnersbury Avenue (the North Circular Road) to Spenklin House and I think is probably from the same era. At least it is clear what the business of the National Tyre Service was and the building has a rather fine squad of Michelin men.

*Chiswick Rd, Acton Lane, Chiswick Park Station, Chiswick Park, Houslow, Ealing, 1989 89-11i-36*

Quite a long walk along Chiswick High Road took me to Acton Lane where I took this picture on the corner of Chiswick Road. A station was built here in 1879 when the District Railway was extended from Turnham Green to Ealing Broadway, but clearly that in the distance here is from the 1930s.

On the corner we have a rather unremarkable post-war building but with some rather remarkable Christmas decorations. The long shop front is now divided into separate shops.

*Chiswick Park Station, Chiswick Park, Ealing, 1989 89-11i-23*

A closer view of Chiswick Park Station, one of many characteristic stations by architect Charles Holden for London Underground and built in 1931-2. Holden’s first complete Underground stations were built on the Northern Line southern extension from 1926, but he later designed many more. This station remains almost as it was built and shares its features with many of his others. It was Grade II listed in 1987.

*Chiswick Park Station, Chiswick Park, Ealing, 1989 89-11i-1*

The interior of the tall drum-shaped ticket hall with a shop, Midas Gold Exchange at right. Useful signs above the exit tell the way to buses and to Acton Green, while the lower advertising panels are all for Underground posters. The Underground were pioneers in various ways in advertising – not least in the tall tower at this and other stations whose main if not only purpose was to carry their branding with the trade-mark roundel and station name.

I think the brick building at left which I think housed the ticket office was perhaps a later addition to the building which otherwise has been altered little.

To be continued.

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Industrial Archaeology: Gloucestershire, 1988

Lock gates, Lydney Harbour, 1988 88-7a-62-positive_2400 — *Lock gates, Lydney Harbour, 1988 88-7a-62*

Some time in 1977 I visited Kew Bridge Engines in Green Dragon Lane, Brentford and was greatly impressed by the huge beam engines there, once used to pump water to the top of the tower. I had joined a local camera club, and they were running a photographic competition in conjunction with the site and allowed us free access. One of my pictures ended up with the second prize (rather to the surprise and disgust of many club members as I wasn’t really a ‘club photographer’) and also got printed in Amateur Photographer. You can see this and many other pictures on my web site London’s Industrial Heritage.

Blast furnace, Gunns Mills, Flaxley, Forest of Dean, 1988 88-7b-63-positive_2400 — *Blast furnace, Gunns Mills, Flaxley, Forest of Dean, 1988 88-7b-63*

But it was there, either on that visit or a later one when I took my young sons and friends to Kew Bridge Engines for a birthday treat that I picked up a leaflet about the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society, and I’ve been a member ever since. Though none of us to this day know how to pronounce GLIAS. And as I say on the web site set up for me by one of those two young boys 25 years on, “I’m not really an industrial archaeologist, but over the last twenty-five years I’ve photographed many things that interest industrial archaeologists.”

Gloucester Docks, 1988 88-7b-65-positive_2400 — *Gloucester Docks, 1988 88-7b-65*

At least one of those boys came with me on a coach trip organised by GLIAS in June 1988 to Gloucestershire where we visited Lydney Harbour, Gunns Mills at Flaxley in the Forest of Dean, Gloucester Docks, the Old Sharpness Canal entrance and Sharpness Docks. It was a long day out, and we arrived back in London only just in time to run for the last train to Staines.

Old Sharpness Canal entrance, 198888-7b-21-positive_2400 — *Old Sharpness Canal entrance, 1988 88-7b-21*

The weather wasn’t ideal, with some quite heavy rain at times, but I still took around a hundred pictures, and there are 29 of them in my album ‘GLIAS trip, Gloucestershire, 1988‘ some perhaps more interesting for their IA content than as photographs. I can’t tell you a great deal about the industrial archaeology, but I think some make interesting photographs, and others are welcome to make more technical comments either here or better on the album.

Old Sharpness Canal entrance, 1988 88-7b-24-positive_2400 — *Old Sharpness Canal entrance, 1988 88-7b-24*

Sharpness Docks, 1988 88-7c-51-positive_2400 — *Sharpness Docks, 1988 88-7c-51*

Sharpness Docks, 1988 88-7b-16-positive_2400 — *Sharpness Docks, 1988 88-7b-16*

More at ‘GLIAS trip, Gloucestershire, 1988

GLIAS 50

Last Wednesday evening I went on a short walk with members of GLIAS, the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society, from City Hall to Rotherhithe, one of a number of events marking 50 years of the society.

I’ve been a member of GLIAS for much of that time, first coming across it in 1977 when I visited Kew Bridge Engines, ostensibly for the benefit of my one-year-old son, and picking up a leaflet about it there. I’m not sure whether I joined it then, or after a second visit, when we took a party of slightly older boys on an outing for one of his birthdays.

Later that same son wrote a web site for me 20 years ago as a birthday present, London’s Industrial Heritage, a rather more professional site than my own various offerings, on which the black and white pictures here can be found, along with a couple of hundred others, dating from 1973-1986. Its a nice design which creates the site from templates, a database file and of course the images using a batch file which runs a Perl script, but in some respects it is now a little dated. Back then, 550 pixels seemed a sensible size for web images.

Although I have an interest in industrial archaelogy, I lack to engineering knowledge to be a true GLIAS member, and my one real attempt at site recording as a part of the organisation was frustrating. But then I’m not always very impressed by the standards of photography in many of their communications. ‘Record photography’ is sometimes used as a perjorative term, but the best record phography has a power and resonance that is undeniable, for example some of the work of Walker Evans.

St Saviour’s Creek, 2014. We walked around its landward end this week

Our walk the other night was a reprise of one made earlier by two leading GLIAS member back in the 1970s and published in a GLIAS walk leaflet. One is now longer with us, but Professor David Perrett, now Chairman and Vice-President was there to lead us. These published walks, sent free to members also sold well for a few pence at a number of tourist sites in the area. They prompted me to produce a similar leaflet, partly as an example for a desk-top publishing course I was then teaching, on West Bermondse y
in 1992, in part based on a walk led by Tim Smith for the GLIAS Recording Group :

“a downloadable illustrated leaflet for a walk that concentrates on the industrial archaeology of the former leather area of Bermondsey in South East London. I wrote this in 1992 largely to show how simple, cheap and easy it was to produce such things with Pagemaker and a laser printer. I sold around five hundred copies over the next five years, gave some to the church in Bermondsey St to sell, and gave away many more, before deciding to put it on the web rather than bother to print any more. Although the area has changed considerably, it it still an interesting walk to follow. “

The area has changed even more since I wrote this, but you can still download and follow the walk and find much of what was there in 1992.

West Bermondsey walk leaflet (PDF)

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