Two unconnected events on Thursday 29th January 2015.
SOAS Cleaners demand Dignity & Respect – SOAS, London University
‘Justice for Cleaners – Bring us in House – Dignity and Respect’ – Unison Branch Rep Sandy Nicholl
Cleaners working at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies – SOAS – held a rally calling for improved conditions of service and an end to being treated as a second-class workforce. Supported by students and staff they continue their campaign to be employed by the University rather than cleaning contractor ISS.
SOAS is a university with an international reputation for its progressive views on political issues around the world and exposing the detrimental effects of neo-liberalism, but its management had failed to acknowledge the beam in its own eye, its disgraceful treatment of cleaners.
Most of those who keep the SOAS building clean and working smoothly are immigrants to the UK, mainly with Spanish as their first language. Instead of putting these people on the SOAS payroll and treating them as employees with similar rights to all the others who work in the same building, SOAS contracts out its cleaners. This denies them care and protection and leaves them open to exploitation and abuse by cut-price cleaning contractors.
Even worse in June 2009, SOAS management collaborated with the Home Office by calling a 6am “emergency meeting” of the cleaners which was in fact an immigration service raid, resulting in the deportation of nine cleaners. The raid came shortly after the SOAS Justice For Workers (J4W) had a successful campaign to achieve union recognition and the London Living Wage and was widely seen as a spiteful retaliation by the SOAS management following this victory.
The immigration raid is remembered at SOAS every year on its anniversary in June. The J4W campaign led by the SOAS Unison Branch continued and on 29th of January their protest for direct employment under the slogan ‘One Workplace, One Workforce’, supported by students, teaching and administrative staff as well as other trade unionists and organisations.
Eleven long years of protest, as well as work to show SOAS the advantages to the organisation of employing the cleaners directly finally resulted in a victory in 2018, when SOAS sent a letter to all staff, unions and support staff stating, ‘Our current staff in central facilities teams will be directly employed by the university. This means that they will be on equal pay and conditions with existing SOAS employees’.
‘Tin Pan Alley’ 12 Bar club faces eviction – Denmark St
Denmark Street is a short street linking St Giles High Street with Charing Cross Road, first developed in the late 17th century and named after Prince George of Denmark. When I first went down it in the 1970s it was a one-way back-street with little or no traffic, and both sides were lined with shops, offices and studios connected with the music industry.
Squatters outside the Royal Courts of Justice on 28th January 2015
This was Britain’s “Tin Pan Alley” where session musicians and artists gathered, meeting each other and looking for work. The Rolling Stones recorded their first album here and David Bowie recruited his first band in a bar. The Sex Pistols lived in the street and recorded their first demos here – and so much more. It became a huge centre for musical instrument sales; I came here to look in windows full of guitars and saxophones I couldn’t afford and later came her to buy a professional Roland keyboard for my sons.
Outside the club in Denmark St, 29 January 2015
But above the mainly early 20th century shop fronts were the houses, some dating from from the original buildings of 1686-9, and others not much later. Eight were Grade II listed, two as early as 1951 and the others in 1974. The street is one of very few, if not the only, one in London with such early facing terraces on both sides.
In the alley at the side of the club was a free musicians noticeboard
Listing ensured that the redevelopment of the street as a part of the Crossrail development around Tottenham Court Road would keep the facades, though much behind them is now new, and most of the old businesses have gone – many moving earlier as the music business changed and rents had rocketed. A petition with 10,000 signatures opposed the redevelopment asking for the street to be given full heritage status.
Redevelopment had already begun behind the bar
The 12 Bar Club had been running as a small live music venue since 1994 at 26 Denmark Street, in a listed building that began life in 1635 as stables but had in the early 18th century become a terraced house. The club closed in January 2015, and was then squatted by a group of musicians and supported opposed to its loss.
Everyone on the music scene at some time played at the 12Bar
I went there on 29th January when the squatters, #Bohemians4Soho had called for a street festival of resistance against their expected eviction the following day, having met and being invited by some of the squatters on the 28th as they demonstrated at the Royal Courst of Justice where a court case over their eviction was taking place.
Live music in the club
Shortly before I arrived to take pictures they had been served with an IPO (interim possession order) giving them 24 hours to leave before they were committing a criminal offence. They left as the bailiffs arrived the following lunch time.
The Ligaments – Nicola ‘Nitro’ Itro, Jake Maxwell & Zel Kaute – had played the last night of the 12Bar and came back to play during the occupation
The listed building was stabilised, then lifted by crane for redevelopment to take place below it, after which it was lowered back into place. The old 12 Bar club room is now a part of a larger venue at the site.
Nude, South London Gallery, The Passmore Edwards South London Art Gallery, Peckham Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1g-26
A bronze nude by Karel Vogel was at the entrance to the gallery, and in 1989 seemed under threat by the tree emerging behind. I think both the sculpture and the tree behind it have gone although a large tree closer to the road remains. Vogel, (1897-1961) was a Czech sculptor who came to England fleeing the Nazis in 1938 and taught at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts from 1948, and became in charge of the School of Sculpture there.
Perhaps his best-known work in this country is his 1959 Leaning Woman, Grade II listed in 2016, situated close to the A4 by St Peter’s Church in Hammersmith.
The London Institute, Camberwell College of Arts, Peckham Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1g-11
The Art School and gallery designed by Maurice Adams was built in 1896-8 is Grade II listed. It’s extravagantly baroque exterior includes a number of caryatids in supporting roles. ‘The Buildings of South London’, page 620, describes the 1960 addition at left by Murray, Ward & Partners as “totally unsympathetic” and it is certainly and doubtless intentionally a complete contrast. But it deserves to be seen and judged on its own.
Guardians Offices, London Borough of Southwark, Havil St, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1g-14
The Havil Street frontage of the Poor Law Guardians building whose frontage on Peckham Road featured in the previous post in this series. It was built in an vaguely Art Nouveau style in 1904. I found the octagonal building with the rectangular blocks behind with its rhythmic patterns of windows and odd towers, together with the odd street wall, its curves echoed by the hood around the doorway quite enchanting.
St Giles’ Hospital, Havil Street, Camberwell, Southwark 1989-1g-15
In 1889-90 a new 4-storey ward tower fronting onto Havil Street was opened for the Camberwell Workhouse Infirmary, later St Giles’s Hospital. Circular in design (which was fashionable at that time), it had cost about £14,500. Each storey contained 24 beds radiating around a central shaft, in which heating and ventilation services were located. This Grade II listed building is now flats. The pile of rubble behind the wall is from the demolition of unlisted hospital buildings.
St Giles’ Hospital, Havil Street, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1g-16
Another view of the hospital tower seen from Havil Street. Designed by Robert P Whellock it is Grade II listed. This was the last picture I took on Friday 27th January 1989, but two days later, Sunday 29th I came back here to begin another walk, beginning with more pictures here and a little further along Havil Street and I’ll include these here.
St Giles’ Hospital, Havil Street, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1h-65
Much of the former St Giles Hospital was in 1989 a demolition site with just the listed buildings being left standing. The area is now filled with rather dreary housing with two and three storey solid-looking blocks around ‘St Giles Tower’. I think this picture was taken from the corner of Brunswick Villas, just after I had made a picture (not on-line) of the Grade II listed Bethel Asylum for aged women founded by William Peacock in 1837 at 159-163 Havil Street.
I walked up Havil Street to the corner with Brunswick Villas, formerly Brunswick Road as the stone pillar still asserts. These houses are presumably a part of W J Hudson’s Brunswick Park development begun in 1847, though rather less grand than some.
From here I made my way towards Peckham – where my next series of posts on my walk on 29th January will begin.
My walk on Sunday December 18th 1988 began on Lewisham Way in New Cross, where I think I must have got off a 172 bus from Waterloo and begun by walking a short distance south-east down Lewisham Way.
Lewisham Way, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-41
A Mattress, Pub, Cinema, Listed Pipe & Naval Baroque: This shop was on the corner with Malpas Road, and there is still a shop there, looking a little different but still selling second hand furniture the leaning post was seeking, though that post is gone, with a street sign in a fairly similar position. And the pavement is now often crowded with secondhand furniture.
This was the second of two frames made here as my first picture on the walk.
New Cross Rd, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-42
I turned around and walked back up Lewisham Way to New Cross, taking no more pictures until I came to the junction with New Cross Road, where I found this fine group of buildings on the north side of the street. At left is the New Cross Inn at 323 New Cross Road. There was a pub on this site at least by 1783 but this impressive but unlisted building dates from 1890. It does appear to be an area where the worst prejudices of Nicolaus Pevsner prevented many fine late Victorian buildings getting a mention.
Next to the right is the site of the former New Cross Kinema built in 1925 to seat 2,300. You can read more about the building on Arthur Lloyd’s Musical and Theatre History Site. It closed as a cinema in 1960, and much of the building behind the facade demolished for an office building. It was empty for some years but when I made this picture was a furniture store. Its first floor dance hall became an Irish dance hall, the Harp Club which also hosted an indie music venue lower down. In 1989 the nightclub The Venue opened there, soon becoming a leading music venue with groups including Oasis and Radiohead playing there as well as Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine – you can find some long lists on the web. The exterior was restored in 2006 and The Venue took over the ground floor as well. It had to close for Covid and I think has yet to re-open.
At the right is the former Midland Bank, built in 1903 and Grade II listed, probably the least interesting of the three buildings.
New Cross Rd, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-43
The door and window of a shop on the New Cross Road, cluttered with advertisements and fliers which reflect the large local population of African and Afro-Caribbean heritage. I’m only sorry that the ISO 100 Kodak TMX tabular fine grain film I was using has failed to record the finer details, lost in its grain pattern.
Part of the problem may have been that it was a rather dark corner, and I probably made the exposure with the lens at fairly wide aperture where the resolution would not have been as good as usual. I think it’s another example of where a larger format or digital would have done better.
New Cross Rd, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-44
Pagnell Street drops steeply down from New Cross road and this slightly odd window is actually on the first floor of a block of flats, probably council-built in the 1950s or 1960s with shops on the New Cross Road frontage. Empty when I photographed it, in recent years this has been a restaurant. At right you can see the ground floor of the building.
New Cross Inn, pub, New Cross Rd, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-31
In the foreground is the decorated ventilation pipe which is a listed building while the New Cross Inn behind is not. The pipe and lamp post, made in 1897 by MacFarlanes of Glasgow apparently derives from a design by noted Glasgow architect Alexander “Greek” Thomson for Glasgow’s Egyptian Halls. This column once stood on top of underground public toilets nearby on the junction with Lewisham Way. The pub is another noted music venue in the area.
This is at the top of Clifton Rise, where supporters of the Socialist Workers Party gathered to oppose the National Front march on 13th August 1977. Police stopped them here and used horses to try to push them down the hill away from the march route. The SWP had refused to cooperate with other anti-fascists in the various London Anti-Fascist Committees who together with many local residents were able to oppose the march more effectively, preventing it reaching its destination of the centre of Lewisham. Unfortunately I was away from London at the time or I would probably have been there. Camerawork magazine – I was a subscriber – devoted the whole of its Issue 8 to it, and you can see it in the Four Corners Archive if you don’t have a copy.
Deptford Town Hall, New Cross Rd, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-32
Deptford Town Hall was designed by Lanchester, Stewart & Rickards in 1905 for the Metropolitan Borough of Deptford which existed from 1900 until 1965. Its baroque style includes various figures on the frontage including a ship’s prow and a depiction of a naval battle as well as statues by Henry Poole of four naval figures including Drake and Nelson, appropriate to the naval history of the area.
After 1965 it was used for various purposes by Lewisham Council and was acquired by Goldsmiths College in 2000.
Deptford Town Hall, New Cross Rd, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-22
Apparently according to the Grade II listing these are “Tritons as corbels supporting large oriel bay with carving of ship and marine symbols at its head.”
My walk in New Cross will continue in a later post.
I turned into Leathermarket St and a few yards down photographed this four storey building at No. 20-22 – this was the warehouse of leather factor, for once not a typo. Factors were agents who sold goods on commission, actually storing them in their properties, on behalf of the actual manufacturers of the goods. When I made this picture it was home to some studios and a couple of other businesses, each with a floor, though the basement was vacant, and you can see the lights are on through the second floor window.
The frontage can still be seen, looking a little tidier on Leathermarket St, and standing back you can also see the stepped back two-flor loft extension. The bricked up windons on the wall just visible at the left have now been covered with false black doors and at the centre of this wall is now an artwork by Joseph Kosuth, ‘A Last Parting Look (for C.D.)’ which consists of a quotation from Dicken’s Pickwick Papers, unveiled in 2006.
Taken from Morocco Street and looking across to 103 and 105 Bermondsey St the overall view at first glance remains now much the same as in 1988. The Grocer’s shop is now a café. But the lower building to the right, No 105, has mysteriously grown to be a replica of its neighbour, complete with fake crane on its upper storey.
And the pub at 99-101, of which only a small sliver is visible, was then the Yorkshire Grey – and a pub of that name had been there since at least the 1820s, though the building dates from 1908. For a while it became The Honest Cabbage restuarant and since around 2003 a Michelin rated gastropub, The Garrison.
78 Bermondsey Street with its jutting out first floor window and attic was one of the buildings in the area I photographed most, and was Grade II listed. It dates from the late 17th century though the shopfront is a twentieth century alteration. Just beyond are more offices of Ash & Ash, printers suppliers who occupied these premises and later became sellers of computer printers.
Although still listed at this address in web trade catalogues the offices their name is long gone from the shopfronts and there are other companies housed here including a dedicated Pilates studio. These buildings from the mid-18th century are also Grade II listed.
A more frontal view of 78 Bermondsey St. There are two logos on the plates by the right-hand door, one of which appears to be for IBI and another which looks familiar but I can’t for the moment place.
The notice states that these premises have been acquired for development. Thomson Bros Ltd, established in 1857 were packaging specialists and shared the gateway with Tempo Leather Co Ltd at 55 Bermondsey St. Thomsons had move to Bermondsey St in 1952. Their sign at right of the picture is still there and the fine Victorian facade has been restored, and this is now the entry to ‘The Tanneries’.
This frontage with an ornamental frieze about its first floor at 63 Bermondsey St is now an estate agents, established in 1998. To its right, Bramah House at 65-71 was in my pictures. It is said to be a former tea warehouse but recently renovated as offices for a number of companies, including architects. In 1988 the building was occupied by Turner Whitehead Industries Ltd, polythene converters.
I’m not sure what connection the building has with Bramah, who were one of the most famous names in tea, and in 1992 a Bramah Tea & Coffee Museum was opened not far away on Butler’s Wharf, later moving to Southwark St and closing in 2008 after its founder, Edward Bramah, died. Various of his ancestors invented the modern lavatory, the tea caddy and the Bramah lock and also include Sir Joseph Banks, who in 1788 suggested that tea could be grown in North East India, not just in China – with obvious advantages to the British Empire. The building in Bermondsey St was bought by life assurance company Canada Life in 2016 for £14.25 million.
Guideline Stores on the corner of Morocco St and Leathermarket St , just a few yards from Bermondsey Street is a rather strange building with its windowless rounded corner tower. A former spice warehouse said to date from the it was converted to luxury flats in 1997. No signage was visible on the white painted area but as a part of its gentrification, a painted sign ‘THE MOROCCO STORE’ was added by the developers, who also obliterated its previous name ‘Guideline Stores’. Its address is now 1 Leathermarket Street. The building is said to be Victorian, though some sources suggest it is older. Although several buildings around were listed this remained unlisted despite – or perhaps because of – its distinctive character.
My walk was now almost complete, but 2 days later on Sunday 30th October I returned to Bermondsey for my next walk, and I will end this one and continue in Bermondsey in a later post.
Independent Living Ends, Robin Hood Gardens. On Tuesday 30th June 2015 I joined disabled people at Downing St marking the ending of the Independent Living Fund before going to Robin Hood Gardens, a brutalist estate in Poplar doomed for demolition.
DPAC’s ILF Closing Ceremony – Downing St to Old Palace Yard
Disabled people and supporters of DPAC, Disabled People Against Cuts, met outside Downing St to bring a petition with over 25,000 signatures calling for a continuation of this essential support for the disabled.
Sophie Partridge, disabled Actor, Writer & Workshop artist
The Independent Living Fund which was coming to an end on that day had given them to money to employ support to enable them to live with dignity and for many to continue in work and make a contribution to society. Without it they fear they will simply be shut away and left to rot, many fearing they will now be left for many hours at a time in incontinence pads.
Paula Peters
Outside the gates of Downing Street they wrote slogans on incontinence pads; Paula Peters of DPAC had a message for Iain Duncan Smith, then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions responsible for the ending of support, ‘I want dignity – I want to be treated as a human – You wear one of these I. D. S. They are awful’.
A campaigner dressed as Brittania was among those who had come to hand in the petition which had gained support from a video by the stars of Coronation Street and the Graeae Theatre Company’s 2014 UK Tour of The Threepenny Opera. One of those stars spoke in front of the gates of Downing Street.
John Kelly as Schimmel leads the march
From Downing Street the campaigners marched the quarter mile or so to Old Palace Yard opposite the Houses of Parliament, led by John Kelly as Schimmel, the equine star and proud battle horse of the Threepenny Opera.
Here they were joined by others including Labour MP John McDonnell who spoke at the rally marking the end of the Independent Living Fund, at the end of which a wreath with the message’s ‘RIP ILF’ was laid.
The ILF protest had ended a little before 1pm and it was a fine day and I decided to take another visit to Robin Hood Gardens in Poplar, where demolition had begun after the refusal to list the site. Listing had been recommended for listing by the advisory committee of English Heritage in 2009, but the then Minister of Culture Andy Burnham had issued a certificate of immunity against listing which expired in 2014.
These are large and desirable properties, but often have been used to house difficult residents
A further attempt was then made to have the site listed, supported by almost every well-known British architect, but Historic England, now responsible for listing buildings rejected this.
A wall at left screens the estate and there is a lower service and parking area
An open letter signed by many leading architects including Richard Rogers made clear the value of the site, and I quoted from this in My London Diary.
“The buildings, which offer generously sized flats that could be refurbished, are of outstanding architectural quality and significant historic interest, and public appreciation and understanding of the value of Modernist architecture has grown over the past five years, making the case for listing stronger than ever.”
The end of the ‘street in the sky’
The refusal to list on both occasions was clearly a political one, almost certainly driven by the huge profits demolition and rebuilding on the site would make for the developers.
As with the award-winning Heygate Estate in Southwark, and the fine Central Hill Estate at Gypsy Hill, Lambeth, the local council, Tower Hamlets, was keen to get rid of the estate and had carried out what I described as “a well funded campaign of vilification“, seeing it “only as a large area with potential for redevelopment at a higher density“, working with “developers who see any area of social housing in London as rich pickings for redevelopment and sale to the rich.”
A large enclosed playground at the south end of the site
By the end of June 2015 most of the west block seemed empty and boarded up and I was unable to gain entry. But I could roam the large garden in the centre of the estate, now let to grow wild, and went inside the still occupied east block, going up to the highest public level, a ‘street in the sky’ built rather less wide than the architects had originally intended, overlooking the Blackwall Tunnel approach. From there I took a number of pictures of the views from the block looking towards the east.
The south end of Robin Hood Gardens was on Poplar High St
As on a couple of previous visits I talked briefly with some of the residents who all told me they were pleased to be living in the block and sad they would have to leave – though some did complain about the lifts (I think only one of the two at the entrance I went in was working.)
Knocking down buildings like these which are structurally in good condition is inexcusable in terms of the huge carbon footprint involved in their construction, demolition and rebuilding. The estate could and should have been refurbished at relatively low cost and would have continued to provide good quality homes for many years. Its replacements – the west section already built – are of lower quality and will almost certainly not last as long as this could have done. The advantage of their roughly three times higher density is at the expense of possible amenity.
As well as walking in and around the estate I also took some pictures of it from the surrounding area, and some other pictures you can see on My London Diary, including a few when I stopped at Canning Town station and took a few pictures of people on the new footbridge across Bow Creek.
Paragon, Fashion, Morning Lane & Nautilus 1988 is the third and final post on my walk in on a Sunday in late September 1988. The first post was South Hackney Walk 1988 and it continued with the equally unimaginative title More South Hackney 1988. So I could have called this ‘Yet More South Hackney’. But the end of the walk took me further north towards the centre of Hackney – and I felt readers deserved something more interesting for a change.
79-83 Paragon Rd, Hackney, 1988 88-9d-34
At 69-83 Paragon Road are four linked pairs of early-mid C19 houses with a Greek key pattern above the ground floor windows. My picture shows the east end of the row. They are Grade II listed as 71-83. The Buildings of England London 4 North states they were built in 1809-13 and suggests as the land was owned by St Thomas’s Hospital the design, which they suggest was inspired by Blackheath’s Paragon, may have been by the hospital’s surveyor Samuel Robinson or its builder Robert Collins
I’m not sure that these same industrial units are still in Ram Place or have been replaced. The block closed to Chatham Place became AquaScutum when the area on Morning Lane was funded as a fashion quarter following the 2011 riots. But a few years later most of the stores had closed down. Aquascutum was one of the last to go, selling off £750 macs in its final sale for £75 – still more than I’d want to pay.
Hackney has strong links with fashion – but not so much with the higher end as with street and sweatshop, and many doubted the project from the start.
The sewing machine shop at 99 Morning Lane was still in business, though from what we can see mainly dealing in more industrial than domestic machines, though a sign in the window does state ‘DOMESTIC MACHINES SERVICED & REPAIRED’. But next door at 101 the High Class Shoe Repairs have closed and the windows above are bare of glass, looking blind.
By 2008 the Sewing Machine shop was selling car spares, but next door was even more derelict and for sale. It was being refurbished in 2011 and was part let as residential the following year. By 2012 the ground floor was coffee & tea and car spares had given way to Morning Bedzzzzz and then fashion took over with The Hackney Shop and brew for two. But fashion changed and moved from Hackney with 2021 seeing the corner shop be transformed into ‘Beauty by Saima’. Brew for two branched out to sell garden plants as well as being a café.
Mini Cab Office, Morning Lane, Hackney, 1988 88-9d-12
The Mini Cab Office was on a short road leading north from Morning Lane, and along with another property I photographed, Doreen’s Pet Centre (not online) this land was bought by Tesco in 1997 and is now underneath their store and car park.
Security Centre, Mare St, Hackney, 1988 88-9d-14
H & S Security Centre at 232 Mare St claimed to be specialists in all forms of security and had some rather fancy wrought iron railings, though would weld in rather plainer forms of protection. They had left a rather wide open area for some misguided youth to chalk in the word Sex, though there was something desperate in that last letter as if the culprit had been caught in the act.
You can still see the railings on the steps leading up to the front door but there is no sign of any business operating from here, part of a Grade II listed early 19th century terrace.
Diver, Mare St, Hackney, 1988 88-10a-61
Inside a shop window on Mare St I found a diver, or a least a diving suit with a rather realistic hand and hanging up to the left a selection of Solent divers neoprene dry suits. This was Collins & Chambers Ltd at 197-199 Mare Street with a shop named Nautilus immediately south of Cyntra Place, demolished in 2012, listed as supplying Scientific Equipment, Divers Equipment Supplies, Diver Equipment. Mare St Star Night supermarket opened there around 2018 supplying all your pan-Asian grocery needs.
I turned around somewhere near here and walked back up towards Hackney Central Station and the end of my walk, pausing briefly to photograph the side of the Hackney Empire (not on line) on my way.
Bromley-by-Bow Gasholders: A week ago on Monday 28th March I was invited to go with a team from Cody Dock on a site visit to the gasholders which are a prominent feature of the local landscape, seen by many thousands every day from the Underground and National Rail lines as they travel in and out of London as well as local residents and walkers along the Lower Lea and Bow Creek, including those following The Line sculpture trail. We were there invited to study the heritage, history and ecology of the Bromley-by-Bow Gasworks site which has just been sold by its future developers.
The seven gas holders, all to a similar design were built between 1872 and 1882 and are all Grade II listed. Nine were built on the site but two are no longer there, the base of one now forming a large circular lake in the site. Holder No 1 was given an extra upper tier in steel in 1925-7 to more than double its capacity. All were taken out of use in the 1980s.
The real value of the site is not in the individual holders although these were some of the “most aesthetically distinguished and finely detailed gasholders ever built” (according to the listing text) but in the ensemble, thought to be “the largest group of Victorian gasholders known to remain in the world, which is testament to the scale of Britain’s pioneering gas industry and its contribution to the Industrial Revolution.” It is a heritage site not just of national importance but of world importance.
Given their importance the group, together with the adjoining memorial garden with its Grade II listed memorial lamp and statue of Sir Corbett Woodall surely deserves both Grade I listing and preservation, and the former gas works offices could form a heritage centre for the area. The offices were for some time a gas museum.
The circular pond is the base of a former gasholder
Just across the Channelsea river from the site is the Grade I listed Three Mills and a little to the south the former gas works Dock at Cody Dock, now a thriving creative and community hub, the sites linked by a riverside path which currently stops at Cody Dock but which should long ago have been opened as planned to lead to the Thames at Trinity Buoy Wharf, passing on the way the Bow Creek Ecology Park. Many sites along here played an important part in Britain and the world’s industrial history, but unfortunately little evidence remains, making it essential to preserve what does.
We were shown around the site in the morning by two of those responsible for planning the development who expressed their wish for the development to retain these elements which make the site unique and to open them up to the public, but good intentions are not enough, particularly for company accountants.
Given what has happened at other sites greater protection is required to make sure that any development in the area leaves the gasholders intact and preserves their landscape value, in particular the views of the ensemble from the railway and Underground lines, from Three Mills and the riverside footpaths by the Channelsea River and River Lea and the navigation. We do need more housing, or at least more social housing rather than luxury flats many of which remain largely unoccupied as investments, but we also need to preserve important monuments such as these which record and could celebrate our history.
Many more pictures from the day, mainly inside the holder site in my album Bromley-by-Bow Gas Holders. You can click on any of the images above to see a larger version in the album – and browse from there. Most of the images have an horizontal angle of view of approximately 145 degrees. There are more pictures of the area in various posts on My London Diary including Bow and The Fatwalk, Bromley-by-Bow to Star Lane and Gasworks Dock Revived.
This gem of a building is just around a corner from the BBC on a few yards down Duchess St, on the opposite side of Portland Place was built to the plans of Robert Adam in 1769-71 as the stable-coach house to Chandos House, Queen Anne Street, and was altered – according to its Grade II listing text “quite sympathetically” around 1924 by Arthur Bolton. The text states it is now part of the British Medical Association.
The lean of the lamp post emphasises the rectangular formality and symmetry of the building as does the man walking past. I’m not sure if I would have preferred not to have a taxi speeding into the picture. The 35mm shift lens enabled me to keep the verticals upright and get the whole building in frame from the opposite side of a fairly narrow street.
Mansfield St, Marylebone, Westminster, 1987
Just around the corner from the previous picture is this magnificent fence with its baskets of flowers. I felt the out of focus bush made a suitable contrast between natural vegetation and its representation.
I think this is the garden screen mentioned in the listing text and probably like the house behind dates from 1914.
Hinde St, Marylebone, Westminster, 1987
Doorways are one of the most important architectural features of buildings, and this one very clearly gives an impression of the luxury of the flats inside Hinde House.
Hinde St, Marylebone, Westminster, 1987
A similar doorway next door (London streets sometime number in odd ways) is a little plainer, perhaps suggesting that inside are flats for less important people. Though it is certainly not a ‘poor door’ leading to any social housing in the block.
The Royal Society of Medicine, Henrietta Place, Marylebone, Westminster, 1987
My theme of doors continues with the grand entrance for The Royal Society of Medicine in Henrietta Place.
And another door is a prominent feature in this building with its series of semi-circles on Marylebone Lane. It’s a building with the window at the centre of the picture set a little lower, so it seems to be winking at us.
Again a taxi has crept in. There are far too many of them, often simply cruising around empty in the centre of London, a significant cause of both pollution and congestion. They are slowly changing from diesel to electric which will help with the pollution, but wont ease the congestion. Ridiculously they are exempted from the congestion charge while minicabs have to pay it. We don’t need ‘ply for hire’ when cabs can be summoned by smartphone and its time for change.
Rimmel, Wigmore St, Marylebone, Westminster, 1987
There are a few more pictures of doors in the area in this section of my 1987 London Photos, but this at Bessborough House on the corner of Cavendish Square is perhaps the most impressive. According to the Grade II listing the house dates from 1770s with c.1800 and early C20 alterations. About this entrance it states “Blind return to Wigmore Street has neo-Adam style pilaster treatment to ground floor with shallow relief modelled “graces” between pairs of pilasters under entablature – all in stucco.”
When I took this picture it had the circular message at left that it was the premises of Rimmel, the cosmetics house founded in 1834 by French-born perfume chemist Eugène Rimmel and often known as Rimmel London. He put on sale a product for darkening eyelashes using the newly invented petroleum jelly and black pigment, marketed under the name mascara which was hugely successful both in the UK and internationally – and mascara is still called ‘Rimmel’ in a number of languages.
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 pictures on the final page, Page 14 of my 1986 London Photographs, were taken in November and December of the year, mainly in Camden, though they have a wider aspect than that might suggest, including Cosmos Radio Cars and the Night bell for the Universe. Few people really realise how far the London Borough of Camden actually stretches, almost down to Fleet St and up to Hampstead Heath, though the pictures here are from the sourthern part of the borough, along with a few over the boundary into the City of London
PsaroTaverna Ta “Varelia”, Pratt St, Camden
There are still many shops in the area which show the presence of the Greek and Greek Cypriot community in Camden. I particularly liked the barrels outside the PsaroTaverna (Fish tavern) Ta “Varelia” in Pratt St, their shapes echoed by the balconies to the right of the picture.
In the window you can see the reflection of what appears to be one of the blocks of the Curnock St Estate, but both this taverna and those balconies seem to have disappeared without trace. There is still a taverna on Pratt Street, but now it competes with food from Italy, Japan and possibly elsewhere.
Car Park, Herbrand St, Bloomsbury, Camden
Relatively few car parks enjoy listed status, but the Frames Coach Station and London Borough of Camden Car Park in Herbrand Street, close to Russell Square certainly deserves its Grade II listing, made in 1982. It was built in 1931 to the designs of architects Wallis, Gilbert and Partners for Daimler Car Hire Ltd. After they were taken over this building became used by the London Taxi Centre and Frames Coaches. The sign in my picture above the entrance to the spiral ramp which took cars to the upper stories calls it a ‘London Borough of Camden Official Car Park.’
Some may be familiar with the building from their childhood as it was the basis for the Fisher Price toy garage. The building deteriorated badly over the years and has been sensitively and extensively renovated to provide 60,000 sq foot of office accommodation, currently occupied by what claims to be the most powerful advertising agency in the world, McCann Erickson.
Urinal, Star Yard, Holborn
As a then un-diagnosed diabetic, facilities such as this were of great interest to me and I made use of this on numerous occasions when I was in the area.
It is still in place but was closed when I last walked past, necessitating a visit to the basement of a nearby Wetherspoons pub.
Lyme Terrace, Camden
The Regents Canal runs through the centre of Camden and I’ve often enjoyed a walk beside it. Lyme Terrace is a narrow pedestrian street that runs above the towpath. This view towards Royal College St is rather different now, although the white-painted small terrace is still there (now pale blue) but Lawford and Sons builders materials is long gone with an oval modern block tacked on to the wall at the end of the terrace on Royal College St.
Traveller Camp, Kentish Town
The large building in the background is the HQ of the Transport Police beside the canal on the corner of Camden Rd and Camden St.
I think this encampment was on land that had been cleared for the building of Camden Gardens. At left you can see a heap of scrap, but overall the site which went up to the railway arches seems relatively tidy. Another picture (not on line) shows rubbish by the railway arches, but this could be fly-tipping not connected with the travellers.
Kent House, Ferdinand St, Chalk Farm
Another of Camden’s many Grade II listed buildings, Kent House on Ferdinand St in Chalk Farm. These two blocks of model low-cost flats and shop were built in 1935 for the St Pancras House Improvement Society. Designed by Colin Lucas with Amyas Connell and Basil Ward they provided features better than many private developments of the era for cheap social housing – as the listing text comments: “staircase access, room layouts, generous useable balconies and total use of electricity for servicing put Kent House at the forefront of contemporary flat design with the quality of detailing expected from a private commission. ”
This was however the only development of its type by Connell, Ward and Lucas.
This ends my series on work in the album 1986 London Photographs, although I may at some point add more pictures and more descriptive text. But you can also add comments to the pictures on Flickr. I hope shortly to begin to put some of my work from 1987 on line.
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.
