Millwall | >Re-PHOTO

A Film Disaster – and the Isle of Dogs – 1990

A Film Disaster: From Hampstead I went on to Colindale where I took only a couple of pictures – not on line – and then on to Kingsbury. But the next time I developed a batch of film – fortunately only 4 films from a new 100 ft roll – I found there was a disaster. Every image was covered with speckled white spots and quite impossible to print.

I contacted the film manufacturer with a sample and while they accepted no liability, the did replace the roll with a new one, which I suppose was better than nothing. But the damage was so bad it was impossible to make acceptable darkroom prints from the negatives, and I kept them in my files with the message ‘DAMAGED FILM – REFERENCE ONLY’. And a month or so later went back to Kingsbury to retake those incredible 1930s houses by Ernest Trobridge again.

After scanning these damaged negatives it became possible -though very time-consuming – to digitally retouch most of these negatives, and I have done so with a handful of them. But I’ll come back to them later along with the replacement images I took in May.

Isle of Dogs – 1990

Isle of Dogs: The pictures I took a few days later on the Isle of Dogs were also on the faulty film, but again after scanning them I was able to painstakingly digitally retouch a few of them. You can still see a little unevenness in some areas of some of the pictures, most noticeably in some of the skies. These were retouched several years ago and I could do a better job now, certainly if I was prepared to use AI tools.

*West India Docks, Canary Wharf, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-4i-55*

This view was I think from a DLR West India platform. It gives some idea of the building work taking place in the area at the time.

Heron Quays, DLR, Station, Canary Wharf, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-4i-21 — *DLR, Station, Canary Wharf, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-4i-21*

I think this was the first Canary Wharf DLR station – replaced by the rather larger one now there which opened in November 1991.

*West India Dock Entrance, Westferry Rd, River Thames, Millwall, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-4j-64*

At left is the distinctive 20-storey residential block Cascades by Rex Wilkinson of CZWG. Across the River Thames in Rotherhithe is Lawrence Wharf, completed by the Danish developer ISLEF between 1986 and 1988 on the former Vitak Timber Imports timber yard and sawmill which closed in 1987

*West India Dock Entrance, Westferry Rd, River Thames, Millwall, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-4j-66*

An aggregate works supplying sand and gravel, still much in demand with the immense amount of building works in the area.

John Lemanton & Son Ltd, Regents Wharf, Westferry Rd, Millwall, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-4j-52 — *John Lenanton & Son Ltd, Regents Wharf, Westferry Rd, Millwall, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-4j-52*

One of the oldest businesses on the Isle of Dogs founded by timber merchant John Lenanton at Batson’s Wharf close by and it soon expanded to Regents Wharf. It was still trading in 1990. While for many years most of the timber came in to the yard by water to the wharf, including by barge from the Surrey Docks, in its later years most came by lorry from Tilbury Docks.

*John Lemanton & Son Ltd, Regents Wharf, Westferry Rd, Millwall, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-4j-53*

The company closed soon after I made these pictures and its buildings were demolished and replaced by a rather dreary apartment complex.

*Westferry Rd, Millwall, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-4j-55*

The two shops at the right of the picture are still there but the rest of the buildings have been demolished and replaced and are now part of the exclusive, gated Ocean Wharf development between Westferry Road and the River Thames completed around 2000.

*Westferry Rd, Millwall, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-4j-56*

More derelict former industrial premises in this section of Westferry Road – the windows at right are on the left of the previous picture

*Shops, 46-54, Westferry Rd, Millwall, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-4j-41*

There is still a row of shops here on Westferry Road and three of the original buildings remain along with some more modern infill, although the businesses in the are different. There is no longer a New Friends Chinese Takeaway or Golden Fish Bar. New Friends is a reminder that Limehouse, London’s first Chinatown is just up the road.

The Golden Fishbar at 46 Westferry Road was apparently a central location for the successful 1986 Channel 4 drama series Prospects about two young East End lads, Jimmy ‘Pincy’ Pince and Billy ‘Bill’ Pearson, played by Gary Olsen and Brian Bovell, trying to make a living on the Isle of Dogs. The shop is now Docklands Fried Chicken, a branch of Docklands Grill House.

More from the Isle of Dogs in a later post.

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Save the NHS – Lewisham 2013

Save Lewisham Hospital March & Rally – Saturday 26 January 2013

On Saturday 26th January 2013 an estimated 25,000 people marched through Lewisham to save their hospital from closure and to protect the NHS, showing south London united against the closure on pure financial grounds of its highly successful and much needed A&E and maternity departments.

Now the whole NHS is facing a crisis, and a similar united response across the country is needed to save it. It becomes clearer and clearer that this crisis has been deliberately engineered in order to destroy our health service and hand it over to private providers, particularly the US health giants.

Two years ago, US health insurance giant Centene Corporation took over 49 NHS GP surgeries and practices. Now as Jeremy Corbyn posted a couple of days ago on Facebook, “US health insurance giant, Centene, is the single largest provider of NHS primary care in England. Privatisation is the cause of — not the solution to — the NHS crisis. Stop wasting money on private contracts and start investing in a fully-public NHS instead.“

Unfortunately both Tory and Labour parties have taken part in the move towards privatisation of the NHS, though Tories have been more open in their support of such changes as suggesting the introduction of charges to see a doctor. But both parties have introduced changes which have brought private companies into providing NHS services, have taken large donations from private health companies, and have leading members who profit from them.

It was under Labour that the NHS took on poorly thought out Private Finance Initiative contracts that have landed many local health trusts with huge debt repayments, many of which extend to the middle of the century, and it was these which led to the crisis in Lewisham.

The PFI contracts were negotiated by civil servants and were and are a bonanza for private companies. Under them we pay totally ridiculous charges for simple jobs – such as Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals Trust paying £8,450 to install a dishwasher because they are locked into maintenance contracts. Changing a light bulb can cost a couple of hundred pounds.

Lewisham Hospital wasn’t directly affected by PFI, but it was in 2009 put into the South London Hospitals Trust, which had two hospitals at Orpington and Woolwich whose PFI contracts saddled the trust with debts of over £60 million a year until 2032.

Lewisham Hospital was successful both medically and financially, but Health Secretary Andrew Lansley appointed a special administrator to the trust with a remit to drastically cut the trusts costs. And Matthew Kershaw decided to do so by closing the highly successful and much needed A&E and maternity departments at Lewisham.

It was a decision that made no sense. There wasn’t the spare capacity at other hospitals to cope with those no longer able to get treatment at Lewisham – the system was actually working in the other direction, with these other hospitals having to send patients to Lewisham.

Financially it made no sense – the patients would still require treatment and this would cost more elsewhere. The small annual savings the closure would give would be more than offset by increases in costs elsewhere – though some of these might be in other trusts.

The proposal generated an incredible amount of local opposition, with the campaign to save the hospital supported by all local MPs and policitician both in the area and across south London. Community groups and organisations all came together to save the hospital – Millwall football club even changed their weekend fixture to Friday night so the team and supporters could join the march.

As I wrote back in 2013, “The fight to save Lewisham Hospital isn’t just a local issue, but very much a national one, with the provision of medical services that form the bedrock of the NHS under attack. If the government can close down services at Lewisham, no other successful hospital in the UK is safe in their hands.”

Nurses and ambulance workers are now striking not just for a better deal for themselves, but for the future of the NHS, which the Tories have deliberately run down with drastic underfunding and a deliberate failure to train and recruit staff. Perhaps their most obvious action was the removal of the bursary for nurse training, but as well there has been the continuing decrease in real salaries with below inflation wage rises over the years. Together with the failure to keep European staff in this country after Brexit and the impact of Covid the results have been disastrous – except for those private companies providing agency nurses and doctors, often at horrific cost to the NHS.

If the NHS is to be saved it will need the kind of public mobilisation that saved Lewisham Hospital, with the people as a whole getting behind the nurses and doctors and others who are fighting to save it. We need to fight the policies and greed of the Tories and of Labour and of the billionaire press to preserve the NHS as a national service free at the point of use and organised for the national good rather than for profit.

More pictures at Save Lewisham Hospital

Apocalypse, Cold Blow Lane, Millwall & Surrey Canal

The previous post on this walk is Evelina, Sassoon, Queens Road, Montpelier and Mazawattee. The pictures here come from the final film on my walk on 18th December 1988. I only finished the film and developed in it January 1989 so they appear in my Flickr album for 1989.

*Mural, Sanford Walk, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 89-1a-61*

‘Riders of the Apocalypse’ was painted by Brian Barnes on the end property of Sanford Housing Co-operative in 1983. Student Co-operative Dwellings (SCD) was founded in 1968 by John Hands and colleagues and campaigned for five years lobbying parliament and looking for land until the government and Lewisham Council agreed to allow them the build Sanford Co-operative Dwellings. This was the first purpose-designed co-op scheme for the young and mobile, and was completed in October 1974.

*Cold Blow Lane, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 89-1a-63*

Cold Blow Lane in the 19th century led to Cold Blow Farm, now long gone. In the 1850s the Croydon Railway built several tracks over it, and one of these went on the bridge whose two piers can be seen in this picture though the bridge has gone. Railway tracks still go over the lane, and I took this picture close to the exit of the long tunnel that goes under them. At the end of the lane is Mercury Way, and Cold Blow Lane turns at 90 degrees to go south.

Straight ahead, under another railway line, was ‘The Den’, then the home of Millwall Football Club, and I think the top of a stand is just visible in the picture. On the wall at left, among other graffiti is the message ‘Home of the Lions’

*Surrey Canal Road, New Cross, South Bermondsey, Lewisham, 1988 89-1a-51*

I think I made this and the next picture from a footpath just to the north of the Surrey Canal Road. The contact sheet gives a grid reference 356781 and this may show part of the area which is now Millwall’s ground in Senegal Fields.

Surrey Canal Road, New Cross, South Bermondsey, Lewisham, 1988 89-1a-52-Edit — *Surrey Canal Road, New Cross, South Bermondsey, Lewisham, 1988 89-1a-52*

You can still see this long range of buildings on Stockholm Road, just south of The Den. and parallel with Surrey Canal Road, occupied by a range of commercial companies. I imagine they date from when the Surrey Canal bed was filled in and the road bulit by Lewisham Council in the early 1980s.

Footpath, Senegal Rd, New Cross, South Bermondsey, Lewisham, 1988 89-1a-54-Edit — *Footpath, Senegal Rd, New Cross, South Bermondsey, Lewisham, 1988 89-1a-54*

Since 1993, the Millwall football ground has been on Senegal Fields. The footpath now runs next to the new Millwall Stadium and then under the railway lines which have some very impressive Victorian brickwork.

These are most of the lines out of London Bridge Station which begin to diverge in this area. You can see all three bridges in this picture. This was a very run-down area and the abandoned parts of a moped at right seemed an appropriate way to express this.

*Hill, Bridgehouse Meadows, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 89-1a-56-Edit*

I turned around here and walked back south across the Surrey Canal Road and to Bridgehouse Meadows.

This was the site of the former New Cross Stadium opened as an athletics stadium in the early 1900s but from the 1930s used for greyhound racing and speedway before its closure in 1969. For some years Millwall FC whose old ground was next to it used it for training. The stadium was demolished in 1975 and there were ambitious plans for it be part of the site of a new ground for the club – but these fell through and the new stadium was eventually built further north.

Factory, from Bridgehouse Meadows, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 89-1a-42-Edit — *Factory, from Bridgehouse Meadows, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 89-1a-42*

This factory has been demolished and new housing built in its place. I think this site was also part of the over-ambitious plans for expansion by Millwall who wanted to take over a huge area.

Path, Bridgehouse Meadows, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 89-1a-43-Edit — *Path, Bridgehouse Meadows, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 89-1a-43*

The path through the meadows crosses the Surrey Canal Road on a bridge you can see in the distance, no longer present. Both sides of the park area now have new housing.

Ilderton Rd, New Cross, Southwark, 1989 89-1a-44-Edit — *Ilderton Rd, South Bermondsey, Southwark, 1989 89-1a-44*

This is part of a site for travellers on Ilderton Rd and this house is still there, though there were no Christmas window decorations when I last walked past – but that was on a housing protest march in March 2017, where we stopped briefly at the Bermondsey Travellers Site. Behind is the railway line from South Bermondsey Station next door to the site where my walk ended.

This was the last picture from my walk on December 18th and completed a series of walks around this part of South-East London. My walks in 1989 began around the Elephant.

North Pole & Heron Quay

The North Pole, Manilla Street, Millwall, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-6b-22-positive_2400 — *The North Pole, Manilla Street, Millwall, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-6b-22*

Continuing my walk around the West India Docks I walked down from Marsh Wall to Manilla St, where I think you can still find The North Pole, a beer house built in the 1860s, on the corner at No 74. It closed as a pub in 2014, and I suspect the building’s days are numbered.

Cuba St, Millwall, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-6b-23-positive_2400 — *Cuba St, Millwall, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-6b-23*

Nothing, or almost nothing in this picture of Cuba St has survived the redevelopment of this street on the fringe of the West India Docks. In the far distance you can just make out the distinctive frontage of the building on the corner of Cuba St and Westferry Road, the first few feet of which have been incorporated into a modern red-brick block and is now an Indian Restaurant. It seems to be much more than the usual facade, with the older building integrated into the development, Regatta Point, which is on a rather smaller scale than much of the new building, only 5 storeys of shops with flats above.

Docklands Enterprise, Wendy Ann Taylor, Sculpture, Heron Quays, Marsh Wall, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-6b-24-positive_2400 — *Docklands Enterprise, Wendy Ann Taylor, Sculpture, South Dock, Marsh Wall, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-6b-24*

Wendy Ann Taylor, born 1945 claims to have been as one of the first artists of her generation to “take art out of the galleries and onto the streets”’ and has made a number of sculptures around London and in several of the new towns. This sculpture was commissioned by the LDDC and the Docklands Business Club and dates from 1987. It is still in place, although everything in the background of this picture has been replaced by newer and much taller developments. I took the shape emaphasised in my picture and repeated at right angles in her work as representing the river around the Isle of Dogs and the vertical as enterprise reaching for the sky.

Heron Quay, DLR, Middle Dock, West India Docks, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-6b-14-positive_2400 — *Heron Quay, DLR, South Dock, West India Docks, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-6b-14*

You can still just about see the DLR as it goes across South Dock here but Heron Quay station is now completely engulfed in tall office blocks, the water now looking enclosed rather than open as it was. The distant gasholder at right at Greenwich has also now gone, though long invisible from here.

Heron Quay, West India Docks, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-6c-63-positive_2400 — *Heron Quay, South Dock, West India Docks, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-6c-63*

I think it is a long time since any boats were moored here.

Heron Quay, West India Docks, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-6c-65-positive_2400 — *Heron Quay, West India Docks, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-6c-65*

This picture is looking along Middle Dock, with the north side of the buildings, long demolished, of Heron Quay at right.

I continued my walk to the North Dock – and a few pictures in a later post.

Click on any of the pictures to see a larger version in my album 1988 London Photos, from where you can browse the album. The pictures there are largely ordered by my negative reference numbers, which do not in detail reflect the order in which the pictures were taken used in the posts here.