Posts Tagged ‘Laleham’

Palestine, Nine Elms and London – Feb 1st 2020

Wednesday, February 1st, 2023

Three years ago on Saturday 1st February 2020 I went to London to photograph a protest against Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ plans which, according to the BBC,gives Mr Netanyahu all he wants – and offers Palestinians very little; a sort-of state that will be truncated, without proper sovereignty, surrounded by Israel’s territory and threaded between Jewish settlements.” When that finished I took a short walk along the Thames Path towards Battersea Power station before catching a bus back to Vauxhall for the train home.

Later in February I did quite a lot of walking and riding in buses and trains around London, and as in quite a few other months, gathered together some of the pictures I took on these journeys together with a link from the bottom of the page on My London Diary for the month.


Palestinians against Trump’s Deal – US Embassy, Nine Elms

Palestine, Nine Elms and London - Feb 1st 2020

Supporters of Palestine came to the US Embassy in Nine Elms in protest against Trump’s so-called peace plan, which they say aims to liquidate the Palestinian cause and minimise sovereignty for the Palestinian people across Palestine, marginalising them in isolated ghettos in a rigid implementation of the current apartheid regime.

Palestine, Nine Elms and London - Feb 1st 2020

The protest was supported by a wide range of organisations including the Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB), the Palestinian Community Association in London, the General Union for Palestinian Students/British Branch, The Palestinian Youth Foundation in Britain “Olive” and Stop the war and supported by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Friends of Al-Aqsa (FoA) and the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB).

Palestine, Nine Elms and London - Feb 1st 2020

There were quite a few protesters of Palestinian heritage living in the UK, as well as many supporters from the wider British left at the protest.

Palestine, Nine Elms and London - Feb 1st 2020

A handful of some of the usual anti-Palestinian Zionists came to oppose the protest, shouting at the protesters. Police moved in to protect them when the protesters began shouting back and kept the two groups apart. There were also Jews present protesting on behalf of Palestine.

Among the protesters was one dressed as Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman,holding a bone saw, like that used to dismember Saudi dissident and journalist for The Washington Post Jamal Kashoggi by the team he sent to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on 2 October 2018. He posed with a man in a Trump mask who was handing him fistfuls of dollars to support the plan. There was also a giant inflatable of the Saudi prince, with large black horns.

There were a number of speeches supporting the Palestinian cause as well as a great deal of chanting against the Trump plan, which had no chance of being implemented but was largely a propaganda exercise to enhance Trump’s support among the Jewish population of the USA.

More pictures at Palestinians against Trump’s Deal.


Nine Elms

Nine Elms is one of the largest developments in Europe. The bank of the River Thames here was once crammed with wharves and full of varied industrial sites, but by the 1970s these had either closed or were about to close. At the end of the protest I took another short walk around the area.

In this area much of the land was taken up by railway yards and depots, but the area closer to the River Thames also had a jam factory and some paint and engineering works. and at the Vauxhall end, a giant cold store.

In 1971 the New Covent Garden Market began to move here from central London on Land that had formerly been a railway goods depots and an engine shed, and two markets, one for flowers and the larger for fruit and vegetables, south of the railway, opened for business in 1974. Both markets have been redeveloped since and are planned to move out to a site in Dagenham in the next few years.

The largest area north of the railway was occupied by Battersea Power Station, a relatively late-comer to the area. It occupied a site which had previously been a waterworks, taking water from the Thames. At its south end was a large Great Western Railway Goods Depot, and to the east a gas works. Another gas works occupied the site roughly where the US Embassy now stands.

In the nineteen-seventies there were a few new blocks of riverside flats but development of the area only really got into gear in this century and is still continuing. The power station, which finally closed in 1983 and lay derelict for some years, particularly after its roof was removed by an early development which failed, was only finally re-opened as an up-market shopping centretourist attraction with luxury flats at the end of 2022.

More pictures Nine Elms


London Images – February 2020

Most of these pictures come from several bus journeys from or to the station, from Waterloo Bridge, in Holborn and some in the City of London. Also a few from closer to my home in Staines and Laleham.

Some of you may like to try to identify these locations before you go to look at more in London Images on My London Diary, where captions reveal them.


Swan Upping – River Thames

Friday, July 15th, 2022

Laleham 2001

I’d lived five minutes walk from the River Thames for around 35 years before I first saw the Swan Upping, as it takes place in the third week of July, a time when I was always at work.

The flotilla in Penton Hook Lock, 2001

The Uppers begin their journey in Sunbury Lock Cut in the morning and come along my stretch of the river around lunchtime, before they stop for lunch at the Swan Hotel close to Staines Bridge. In the afternoon they journey on towards Windsor, where in ROmney Lock they stand in their boats to drink a loyal toast. Their journey continues upriver for the next four days, ending at Abingdon Bridge on Friday.

It was on the 16th July 2001 than I was first free to view the event, and I got on my bike to wait for them to reach Chertsey Bridge around 11.30am. Back then I was still photographing on film, and most of the pictures I made were on a Hassleblad X-Pan.

2001

I think my pictures from that day give a pretty clear account of how the uppers work to surround the swans and their cygnets and then capture them, lifting them onto the river bank so the cygnets can be weighed and measures and given a quick health check. The swan upping is nowadays seen as “an important element of wildlife conservation” rather than seen as a mostly ceremonial event, though it retains some elements of the ceremony.

I talked to an elderly man with a bicycle who was an important part of the event, going ahead of the swan uppers to find swans with cygnets. Although there are hundreds if no thousands of swans on our stretch of river, there are seldom more than 3 or four breeding pairs. I think Eric was a retired public schoolmaster who took a week to cycle along the towpath with crushed digestive biscuits to lure these pairs into suitable spots on the riverbank where the uppers boats could bring them to land.

Measuring cygnets, Staines 2001

I cycled behind him following so always to be in the right spot, but in more recent years he hasn’t been around and the proceedings haven’t been quite so convenient to photograph. In more recent years it has been just the Queen’s Swan Warden in a little dinghy with an outboard a short distance ahead of the rowers who spots the cygnets and gives the traditional call ‘All up!’

Children from a local school wait for the uppers to arrive. Staines 2001

But things don’t really change much year to year and I think I’ve probably taken more pictures of swan upping than anyone needs to. Though when I began the afternoons were always a little less under control after a visit to The Swan, while a ban on drinking in the middle of the day came in a few years later. I might just stroll down to say hello to the uppers as they get to Staines, and if so I’ll have a camera with me, but I won’t really be bothering to take pictures of the event. The last time I did so was in 2013, but the last year I covered it seriously was in 2010 – when I went with them all the way to Windsor to photograph the loyal toast in Romney Lock and the Vintners and Dyers uppers saluting the Royal Uppers a little further downstream.

Digestive biscuits keep the swans by the bank as the boats surround them. Staines 2001

Back then I wrote a little about the history:

It was Henry II who first stole the swans in 1186, declaring that any birds found wild were his. Swans were too much of a delicacy for the common people; later laws prevented anyone except the wealthy from keeping them. These were further tightened in 1486, from when a licence was required from the crown to keep them, and special swan courts set up to administer harsh penalties for those who broke the swan laws.

A myth that Richard the Lionheart (Richard I, 1189-1199) had brought the first mute swans back from Cyprus (or Turkey) was used as a justification for these actions. Licence holders were required to identify their swans by special marks cut into their beaks – there were almost a thousand different marks in the sixteenth century. This became done in an annual ceremony known as ‘swan upping’ which was probably designed mainly to remind the people of the power of the swan owners and the penalties for those who killed swans – up to 1895 you could be sentenced to seven years imprisonment with hard labour, and earlier it had meant transportation and probable death.

The crown still claims all swans on open water, but only exercises this on the main part of the Thames above London. Two of the London livery companies, the Vintners and the Dyers also have licences on this water, and although the swan is no longer eaten at their feasts, having been ousted in public taste by the considerably uglier turkey. One Cambridge college, St John’s, retains the right to serve swan at its banquets though I don’t know if they still do so.

My London Diary – 2001

The 2001 account continues on another couple of pages. In other years I’ve taken more pictures, and the quality of the colour has greatly improved since I moved to digital.

If you want to see the upping this year you will find the approximate times on The Queen’s Swan Marker’s page. It begins on Monday 18th July.

Boxing Day Pictures

Sunday, December 26th, 2021

Boxing Day Pictures I took in earlier years – mainly on our normal annual walks from Staines to Old Windsor. It’s a family tradition, a walk we’ve made most yearssince we moved here in 1974, though not always taking the same route. This year is one of the few years we won’t be making it.

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

There are more pictures from all of these walks – except that in 2020 – on My London Diary. Click on the picture for any of the other years to go to more about the walks and more pictures.


Shepperton Ride

Wednesday, June 17th, 2020
River Thames, Church Square, Shepperton

June 4th I took it easy again on my ten-mile ride, forcing myself to stop and take pictures here and there. Of course the stopping and starting does actually add to the amount of energy expended and I find it hard to actually waste the effort I’ve made by braking, so the places I stop are sometimes more determined by where I need to slow down for other reasons.

Laleham

I’d changed my route slightly to go along a little of the River Thames towpath through Laleham village. I don’t like cycling along this bit of the towpath much, partly because its often quite busy with walkers, but mainly because the loose chippings on the actual path are a nuisance. Years ago, as a teacher hurrying along here on my way to an early morning in-service training meeting at the Runnymede Centre in Chertsey a stone flew up and into my chain, snapping the fairly chunky aluminium arm of my Campagnolo rear derailleur. I couldn’t ride the bike but rushed home pushing it, and picked up my wife’s bike to ride to the session. Fortunately I’d left home early to enjoy the bike ride, and ended up only a few minutes late. But I had to buy a new derailleur, opting for a rather cheaper model that seemed to work just as well.

This time I took the path in a leisurely fashion, keeping as far as possible to a narrow hardened mud area to one side of the chippings to arrive at the parking area where I stopped to take a photograph before proceeding.

One of many unfilled gravel pits in Spelthorne
Chertsey Lock and Chertsey Bridge

The narrow path soon becomes a metalled road, which would provide a pleasant ride beside the river to Chertsey Lock and Chertsey Bridge, though marred by the traffic humps and the occasional rather dangerous pothole.

The house where Zane died

Just before the bridge is the house where during the 2014 floods a tragic release from landfill of deadly hydrogen cyanide killed a seven-year-old and paralysed his father. Zane Gbangbola’s parents have continued the campaign to get the truth about the incident since.

Chertsey Lock

At the bridge I turned left towards Shepperton, along a busier road with a road surface curiously resistant to bicycle tires.

House, Dockett Eddy Lane
Pharoah’s Island can only be accessed by boat
Shepperton Ferry – not currently operating.

It was a pleasure to turn off down Docket Eddy Lane which leads back down to the river, and past the houses on the riverside and on Pharoah’s Island to Shepperton Lock and the ferry.

I turned off the route into Church Square and went down to the garden by the riverside, to find a pair of fancy ducks with a small group of chicks. I switched to my longer lens so as not to disturb them while taking pictures.

Back on my bike I rode up Shepperton High St, turning left at the top to go over the M3. It’s always just a little of a struggle up this bridge, perhaps because its usually against the wind and very open, but there is a long downhill stretch after it, with little need to pedal until just before the next traffic lights. I kept on and was soon cycling through Laleham on the road and up towards Staines, over some more resistant road surface and some really poor cracks and holes at the roundabout by the pub I still think of as the Lucan Arms, though it has changed its name several times since Lord Lucan went missing. Nowadays he could easily disappear through a Surrey pothole.


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.