New Charlton in Colour – 1995. New Charlton has now been given the new and more descriptive name of Charlton Riverside and is the area between the River Thames and the main road from Greenwich to Woolwich, Woolwich Road. The major feature of the area other than the river is the Thames Barrier, but although I photographed this in black and white it does not appear in my selection of colour pictures. I had photographed it in black and white and colour on several occasions since 1984 from both sides of the river and so felt no need to visit it again in 1995.
Eastmoor St, New Charlton, Greenwich, 1995, 95c5-743
I did find a very different barrier on Eastmoor Street, with this monumental slab apparently cut out to leave a gateway through this reflective red wall. Whatever its original purpose – I think perhaps an art work – it seemed to have served for target practice probably for bricks thrown by local youths.
Classic Car Restorations, New Charlton, Greenwich, 1995, 95c5-733
And I did photograph Thames Barrier Classic Car Restoration with its texts and pictures of cars on its wall.
Carpet Kingdom, New Charlton, Greenwich, 1995, 95c5-732
The redevelopment of the area had begun when the Thames Barrier was opened, but much was still industrial or derelict but large parts are now occupied by large retail units. Carpet Kingdom was one of the first to open, though I don’t remember exactly where. There is now a rather larger Carpet Giant in the area,
You can still see this giant mural, details from which are in my two pictures. It was painted on the wall of this house in 1976 by the Greenwich Mural Workshop in 1976 and has now faded considerably.
Mural, Charlton, Greenwich, 1995, 95c5-725
Just south of the railway line close to Charlton’s ground at The Valley and so in Charlton rather than New Chalton, I had glimpsed it in my journeys past on the train and so went to photograph it.
Annette, Hair Stylist, Valley Grove,Charlton, Greenwich, 1995, 95c5-724
Annette Hair Styling was just around the corner from the mural in Valley Grove, so also in Charlton rather than New Charlton.
Salvation, Statuettes, a Sexy Model, Spendel & More: Continuing my walk on Sunday 5th November 1989 from Green Lanes where the previous post, Stroud Green to Grand Parade had ended I walked some way down West Green Road before taking my next picture.
Salvation Army, 2, Terront Rd, West Green, Haringey, 1989 89-11d-16
The Salvation Army building is still there on Terront Road though I think no longer in use by them. I was clearly attracted both by this building and by the car on a trailer to its left, rather dramatically marked with large Xs.
I wondered if this car might be connected with the clearance of the Harringay stadium site, about a kilometre away. Stock car racing and Banger racing were among the events held at Harringay Stadium from the 1950s on. The stadium had opened as Britain’s third greyhound racing stadium in 1927, adding speedway the following year. The stadium finally closed in 1987 and was acquired by Haringey council and some years later demolished for housing and a Sainsbury’s superstore.
It was only the 5th November so the Salvation Army were perhaps getting in rather early with advertising a Christmas Bazaar to be held on 18th Novemeber.
Shop window, West Green Rd, West Green, Haringey, 1989 89-11c-62
And perhaps this pair of Greek statuettes were the ideal Christmas Gift for someone, though I think it would have to be someone you didn’t like. But as you can tell from the price label they were quite small, and at £2.49 definitely a gift.
I decided not to make a great effort to correct the overall flare which renders their upper regions rather diffuse when making this digital copy from the original negative.
Shop window, Green Lanes, Haringey, 1989 89-11c-64
My walk was coming to an end and I walked back towards Turnpike Lane station finding another shop window which caught my interest on Green Lanes. There was something unusually real about this heavily made-up mannequin, wig, pose, and clothing, a sexual energy whose spell was only really broken by the clearly visible joint on her lower left arm and a rather porcelain quality to the highlights. I think this was probably in the window of a shop selling wedding dresses.
I took a number of pictures of this shopfront, which was I think part of the extensive station and bus station development. Most were in colour apart from this and a slightly tighter cropped black and white image. At least one of the colour images – also on Flickr – shows the the entire shopfront dominated at the top by the large word ‘HAIRDRESSER‘. In very small type at the top of the window it states ‘GENTS SALOON’ and scattered on the surface at the base of the windows in front of the shutters are boxes containing tubes of related products including Ingram shaving cream.
The window at left of the entrance contains two rather unhealthy looking pot plans and behind them is a poster for the pantomime Aladdin starring Michael Barrymore and Frank Bruno.
My walk on 5th November ended at Turnpike Lane, where I caught the Piccadilly Line to make my way towards home. But a week later I was back in the same area, returning first to Walthamstow – an easy journey on the Victoria Line before returning to Turnpike Road. I think I had gone back to Walthamstow to retake some colour images, hoping to find better light.
I’d photographed a large angel on my previous walk in the cemetery and this time I took a picture of a rather smaller one, but my main interest was in the shadows cast on a couple of the stones, one of my head and shoulders as I made the picture along with the fence and to the right a clear cross on a rather less clear fence shadow. I think I was probably standing outside the cemetery fence looking in.
The Shandar Take Away Restaurant at 65 on the corner of Queen’s Road and Lansdowne Road had a colourful mural along its Lansdowne Road side, and most of the pictures I took of it were in colour, but I stood a little further away on Queen’s Road to make this picture including a van with an open rear door parked on the pavement in front of a shop on the opposite corner.
Shandar is a name used by a number of Indian restaurants, a Hindi word implying excellence or high quality, which could be translated as ‘Splendid’ or ‘Grand’.
More from my walk on 12th November in a later post.
As a child I grew up in Middlesex, by then a rather truncated county on the north and west of London, though once it had included the cities of London and Westminster and many of London’s Metropolitan boroughs north of the Thames and west of the River Lea. Brentford, a couple of miles from where I was born, was the nearest thing the county had to a county town, though it had few if any of the normal attributes of one, with no town-hall or other public building.
Often on Bank Holidays our father would take us on a 237 bus from Hounslow to Kew Bridge Station, the route going through Brentford High Street where it was often held up as we gazed through the top deck windows at the sites. Under the railway bridge leading to Brentford Docks where we might see a steam hauled goods train, over the canal bridge where the locks and dock area were normally busy with barges,past the Beehive on the corner of Half Acre with its tower topped by a giant beehive and on through the noisy, smelly gas works to Kew Bridge.
We walked across Kew Bridge and then turned down the side of Kew Green to the gate of Kew Gardens, where a penny – an old penny, 240 to the pound led us into the extensive gardens where we could wander all day. This was before the days of garden centres and my father would always have a small pair of scissors in his pocket to take the odd cutting or pick up a seed or two on our walks.
Later, in the early and mid 1950’s I would ride my bicycle around much of Middlesex and Surrey – and that included Brentford, but I think it was only much later when I became a photographer that I really explored the area and found out what an important communication link it had been. Brentford is where the inland waterways system with the busy Grand Union Canal joined the River Thames, just a few miles upriver from the great Port of London.
In 1978 three of my photographs from Brentford were published in Creative Camera Collection: No. 5, a prestigious collection of contemporary photography published by Coo Press, the publishers of the monthly magazine Creative Camera and edited by Colin Osman and Peter Turner. It wasn’t the first time my work had been published but was great to be on the pages with some very well known photographers, including one who much later became a friend, John Benton-Harris.
Brentford has changed greatly since then, with much of the riverside now lined with expensive flats rather than commerce and industry. The gasworks site became a riverside park and an arts centre, where I took part in and helped organise a number of exhibitions. But there is still enough of the old Brentford untouched, though less each time I go there.
I first returned in the 1990s, when I was teaching a few miles down the road, bringing students to see shows there and to wander around the area taking pictures. Later I came back for walks on my own or with friends, such as this one on Saturday 26th March 2016 with my elder son. Brentford hadn’t been my first choice by railway engineering works that week end made travelling out further to the east of London impossible.
As well as making ‘normal’ pictures with lenses giving a horizontal angle of view of between 10 and 84 degrees (focal lengths 20 to 200mm) there were some pictures where I felt an even wider view was needed and I made some panoramss with a roughly 145 degree angle of view. The pictures above and below illustrate the difference.
We didn’t end our walk in Brentford, but continued on past Syon House to Isleworth where we ate our sandwiches in a relatively sheltered square before following the Duke of Northumberland’s River through Mogden Sewage Works to Kneller Park and then Whitton Station for the train home. You can see a much wider range of pictures online on My London Diary at these three links: Syon, Isleworth & Mogden Riverside Brentford Panoramas Riverside Brentford
I’m not sure which of the nine eleven-story slab blocks on the estate is shown in my picture; the estate was and remains a rather confusing area. Possibly this is Leicester House on Loughborough Road, or more likely Harpur House on Angell Road where I think I walked to next, but the lower buildings in front of the block appear to have gone.
The sign ‘NO HATS’ is not a reference to any headgear but to Housing Action Trusts, an important part of Margaret Thatcher’s marginalisation of local authorities. Having ochestrated the run-down of council estates by earlier restrictions on council spending and the right to buy schemes, the Housing Act 1988 aimed to transfer these estates to non-departmental public bodies which were to redevelop or renovate them so they could be transferred into private ownership.
Opposition to HATs was intense, with the Labour Part, local authorities and estate residents all fighting their imposition, and the first six areas intended to becom HATs managed to avoid implementation, though later six were formed, but none in south London.
I think this rather temporary-looking building as on Angell Road close to Harpur House, but no sign of it remains. I photographed it largely for the posters showing opposition to Housing Action Trusts in Broxton.
As well as a Luncheon Club for pensioners it also has a sign for the Loughborough Sports & Social Club.
Fence, St John the Evangelist, Angell Park Gardens, Angell Town, Lambeth, 1989 89-5d-32
Further along Angell Road – named like the area after the Angell family who had owned large parts of the Lambeth and developed this area in the 1850s. In 1852 Benedict John Angell gave a site here for the building of St John the Evangelist Church which was consecrated in 1853. Unfortunately trees along the edge of the site along Angell Road and Angell Park Gardens had too many leaves in May to clearly see the church.
These paintings on the fence around the church are still visible but rather faded. I took a few pictures of them both in black and white and in colour before walking on past the church and across Wiltshire Road into Villa Road and back onto Brixton Road, where I photographed the rather austere Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church (not yet digitised.)
Abeng Youth Community Centre, Gresham Rd, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-5d-22
I walked on down Brixton Road to the Police Station where I turned back east along Gresham Road, stopping to photograph what looked to me to be a former chapel. In 1877 this was the Angell Town Institution and later became Brixtons first telephone exchange.
In the 1970s the Rev Tony Ottey founded the Abeng Centre here to provide supplementary education and youth services to the local children. In 2003 it was relaunched with new management as the Karibu Centre, its Swahili name Karibu meaning welcome, with similar aims. It is also hired for weddings, funerals, birthdays and business meetings.
Soon I was walking through the Loughborough Estate again, going along Millbrook Road and through Wyck Gardens, a public open space which is thought to be the remnant of a larger wood knwon as Wickwood in the Manor of Lambeth Wick which had been cleared by the end of the 17th century.
The land had belonged to the Archbishops of Canterbury and was bought by the London County Council from the Church Commissioners for a new public open space, opened in 1959 and since extended and improved. You can see more pictures from the park on Brixton Buzz.
I think the large block here is Barrington Court, the first of three I walked past on my way through the park towards Loughborough Junction.
I left the park and walked along Ridgeway Rd, beside the railway line from Brixton which curves around to a junction just north of Loughborough Junction Station. The next station on this line is at Elephant & Castle.
Some extensive work seems to be in progress on what I am reliably informed (thanks to comments on Flickr) is a Ford Escort, while inside the garage a Renault 4 and a Rover P5 await their turn.
Arch 500 was empty for some years but later became home to the very Brixton Buzwakk Records Recording Studio a few years ago. The arches on both sides are still garages.
This is the final part of my walk around King’s Cross after the walk led by the Greater London Industrial Archeology Society finished on Saturday 8th April 1989. The previous post was Goods Way, Gasholders & St Pancras.
Stanley Buildings, Stanley Passage, Cheney Rd, King’s Cross, Camden, 1989 89-4h-61
I was clearly in no hurry to get home and spent some time wandering around the area taking pictures. In this post they are in the order that I made them, along with some others, mainly near duplicates, but I haven’t kept to this in posting them to the album.
This block of flats was built 1864-5 by the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company, architect Matthew Allen. They were grade II listed five years after I made this picture and have been retained in the fairly comprehensive development around them, being incorporated after considerable rebuilding around 2014 into a modern office development.
The listing text decribes them as part of a group with the “King’s Cross Gasholders, Goods Way and Barlow’s great shed to St Pancras Station, Euston Road” and “in addition an important part of a dramatic Victorian industrial landscape.” Unfortunately this is no longer the case, and it is now simply an addendum to a modern development.
Here and in the next picture we see a landscape and portrait view of a nearby part of that “dramatic Victorian industrial landscape”, now gone and replaced by modern blocks
I made the landscape format view first, but then decided that it was probably better to include the top of the gasholder.
German Gymnasium, Cheney Rd, King’s Cross, Camden, 1989 89-4h-65
The German Gymnasium on the south side of Clarence Passage was also built in 1964-5, paid for by the German Gymnastics Society and London’s German community and it had its front entrance on Pancras Road. It was one of the first venues used by the National Olympian Association for its first games in 1866.
My favourite mural in London, on the side of this block of flats. I don’t know when this disappeared. The ‘preserved’ building has a huge featureless brick wall facing Pancras Road which could do with something like this to liven it up.
German Gymnasium, Cheney Rd, King’s Cross, Camden, 1989 89-4h-42
Although this building was Grade II listed in 1976, part of its western end was demolished for the construction of St Pancras International, with a new end wall being built in matching fashion. The building is now in use as a restaurant and bar.
I had wandered here to the side of the Motorail terminal at King Cross, where you used to be able to drive your car onto a train and sleep in a bunk bed all the way to Edinburgh or Aberdeen. This was the first such service, I think dating from the 1950s by British Rail, who set it up as Car Sleeper Limited, but it was soon joined by a network of similar services serving other stations and distant destinations, with London terminals at Olympia, Paddington and Euston.
As the motorway network grew, demand for motorail decreased, and I think the service from Kings Cross ended around the time I made this picture.
Another image from somewhere around the north of King’s Cross Station where I had wandered.
Great Northern Hotel, Pancras Rd, King’s Cross, Camden, 1989 89-4h-45
Back on Pancras Rd I walked to the eastern side of the Great Northern Hotel facing King’s Cross Station to take this picture of the main facade. The area in front of the hotel is now covered by the extended station building from 2008. The building was a part of Lewis Cubitt’s plans for the station, built in 1854 and Grade II listed in 1984. The slightly less impressive convex rear of the building is still fully visible on Pancras Rd.
This rather threadbare beast was for some years a feature of Pancras Road, and although I’ve called it an Ox I think it was really a Bison. I think it was there simply to draw attention to the shop behind, or perhaps just to make it easier to find. Perhaps someone will be able to post more about it in a comment?
A short distance down the road was the Underground entrance at which my walk ended and my journey home began.
Stand Up to Lambeth Council – Windrush Square, Brixton
Rapper Potent Whisper with the Andrew Cooper’s four Lambeth villains
Lambeth is on some measures one of the most unequal boroughs in the whole of England, with some areas of high deprivation and others with well above average incomes. It is ethnically diverse, with almost two thirds not describing themselves as White British and schoolchildren coming from homes in which 150 languages other than English are the first language. There are large Portuguese, Spanish and Somali speaking communities and almost a quarter of the population identify as Black.
Lambeth Council is run by Labour who have almost 60 councillors, with just three Lib-Dems and two Green Party councillors (there were 3 Conservatives and no Lib-Dems in 2016.) It is dominated by right-wing Labour councillors and has many links with property developers, estate agents and others, and seems determined to follow policies which are not in the interests of the people of Lambeth, closing libraries, ending many vital services and getting rid of council estates and the people who live there.
Lambeth works with Savills, are a leading agency in social cleansing
Activists in the borough accuse the Labour council of financial waste and “destroying our communities, racial and social inequality” and “stealing the people of Lambeth’s future.” The borough’s motto is ‘Spectemur Agendo’, Let us be judged by our acts, and many in Lambeth have judged the council and found it guilty of selling out its people.
Police come to protect a Lambeth Labour stall supporting the council
The protest was planned to be ‘family friendly’, a ‘big, pink, determined’ event to ‘Stand Up To Lambeth Council’ and oppose its “destruction of services, homes, jobs and the rights of residents.” As well as speeches there was a small brass band. But the protesters were clearly angry and a Lambeth Labour stall in the square needed police protection after it refused to take part in the protest or move. There were Labour members taking part in the protest, but Lambeth Momentum later appeared to deny supporting it, hoping to avoid the kind of purges that have been highlighted in the recent truly shocking Al Jazeera ‘Labour Files’ documentaries.
Council business is largely decided by a small inner cabinet, and the four major villains were represented at the event by a large four-headed monster made by Andrew Cooper with the faces of Lambeth Labour leader Lib Peck, Cabinet Member for Housing Cllr Matthew Bennett, Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Business and Culture Jack Hopkins and Sue Foster, Strategic Director, Neighbourhoods and Growth.
Eventually the march set off for Clapham Common, though it came to a partial halt almost immediately for a protest outside Lambeth Town Hall opposite Windrush Square, before setting off slowly towards Clapham.
I walked with the march roughly halfway to Clapham Common before turning around and going back to Brixton to catch the Victoria Line to central London.
Both on my way to the protest and during the march along Acre Lane I took a few pictures of Brixton. One of the actions of Lambeth Council has been to cooperate with Network Rail to force out traders from the railway arches in the centre of Brixton.
Network Rail intend to refurbish the arches and will then re-let them at three or more times the current rents, which will mean the distinctive local businesses being replaced by chains which can be found on every high street across the country. The campaign to keep the businesses there received huge support in the area, but the council wasn’t listening.
I rushed a few yards away from the march to photograph the mural Big Splash, painted in 1985 by Christine Thomas and still looking well (details here), though I doubt if anything like this ever existed on Brixton’s river, the Effra.
Trafalgar Square
I’d left the Lambeth protest to come back to photograph a protest that was supposed to be happening in Trafalgar Square which quite a few people had said on Facebook they would be attending. But nobody had turned up, and I had time to wander around the square.
One of the four 18ft square square bas-reliefs on the base of the column was of particular interest as the picture showing Nelson’s death includes one clearly black face. These panels were supposed to be made with brass from captured French cannon, but one led to a court case with the makers being jailed for having added some much cheaper iron and it had to be completed by others. The builders of the column also got away with fraud, as when it was restored in 2006 it was found to be 16 ft shorter than it should have been.
Red Devils MC, Holland
There were problems with the lions too, as they were first commissioned to be sculpted in granite, but the sculptor had a disagreement with the architect and abandoned the job. took years for them to be re-commissioned in bronze from Sir Edwin Landseer and Baron Marochetti and they were only added in 1867. And like most large projects while the costs were intended to be covered by private finance (or rather public subscription) the government had to step in and cover much of the cost.
Iranian vigil on Anniversary of 1988 Massacre – Trafalgar Square
I’d stayed in Trafalgar Square to photograph a vigil by the Iranian People’s Fadaee Guerrillas in London and the Democratic Anti-imperialist Organisations of Iranians in Britain on the 27th anniversary of the massacre of an estimated 18,000 political prisoners held in Iranian jails by the Iranian regime following its defeat in the Iraq/Iran war in the Summer of 1988.
The 3 months of killing by the Iranian regime of communists, progressives, patriotic activists and intellectuals of all ages ended at the beginning of October 1988 but details only began to emerge years later. The protest also called for the release of the many political prisoners still held in Iran and called for a society there were all would be free and equal.
My walk a few days ago in September 2022 began at Kew Bridge Station. I’d come half an hour before I was due to meet my two companions to take a short walk around one of the newer parts of the area before meeting them for a longer walk to Isleworth.
Lionel Road runs north of the railway up to meet the Great West Road. It used to be a rather run down area with railway sidings on one side and a few old commercial buildings and works to the north. The last time I’d walked down here on my way to Gunnersbury Park in 2018 the whole area had been a building site, but now is home to Brentford FC, currently doing pretty well in the Premier League.
Brentford was my local team when I was a kid, and several members of the award-winning under-11 team I played for at left back on went on to play for them at their old ground (and at Chelsea.) One of the other patrol leaders from my scout group stayed there until he retired, though I never met him after I hung up my woggle, but read his obit in the local rag.
Past there I came to the Great West Road, a 1930s dual carriageway with cycle tracks I sometimes used further west on my way home from school. In the 1980s or 90s I photographed most of the remaining Art Deco factories along it, though the bulldozers got to some first. Now it reminds me of J G Ballard’s novels, particularly ‘Crash’, set around the area we both lived in, with the elevated M4 above the older modern road.
A new Brentford of tall blocks has sprouted here, though more land remains to be built on. A little-used rail line goes through it, the Kew Curve, with Brentford’s stadium replacing the sidings and cattle pens to its west, with new building on the east in what was Brentford Market. It moved to this site in 1893 after the Brentford Local Board had bought the 2 acre site from the Rothschild estate because market trading in the area around the Express Tavern immediately south of the station which had developed informally away from Brentford’s traditional market in Market Place had become a public nuisance. The site was extended in 1905 and then covered land now part of the Chiswick Roundabout. The market moved to the edge of Southall in 1974 as the new Western International Market and the Fountains Leisure Centre was built on part of the site, with the rest staying derelict for years.
My maternal grandfather, then a market gardener in Feltham, would drive his cart with produce to Brentford Market in the early years of the last century, past the house in Hounslow where my father, then a young boy, used to see him driving past. Around twenty years later when he became engaged to my mother he found out who he was.
I met my two colleagues and we walked together down by the west side of Kew Bridge to the Thames. To our right was where the Kew Bridge Ecovillage had squatted from June 2009 until May 2010, now occupied by 164 flats, a business centre, gym and pub.
The Hollows runs west between riverside moorings and recent blocks of luxury flats, eventually returning us to Brentford High St, and a park beside the river now called Watermans Park. This was the site of Brentford Gas Works which straddled the High Street here and was a great attraction when we took the bus through it in my childhood, usually on our way to Kew Gardens. Entrance then was only an old penny, and it was a cheap outing for families in the area. My father would have his scissors in his pocket and perhaps take the odd small cutting to grow in our garden. Rather cheaper than garden centres.
But if you were lucky as the bus drove slowly down the usually congested street, one of its Intermittent Vertical Retort would open sending a wall of red hot coke to the ground, quite an amazing site as we peered from the top deck. It almost made up for the smell.
A gas works had been set up here and began production in 1821, first supplying has for lighting the turnpike to Kensington, but later serving large areas around. Later other gas works were set up in Southall and then elsewhere as demand continued to rise. in 1926 the Brentford gas company became a part of the Gas Light and Coke Co which later became British Gas plc. Brentford Gas Woks closed in 1963 and the riverside buildings were demolished in 1965 though the large gasholder remained until 1988.
All than now remains of the gas works are some of the substantial posts of the gas works jetty, where colliers once brought in coal. There has been a long battle over the rights to moorings here between boat owners and Hounslow Council with boat owners claiming that the foreshore here belongs neither to the council nor to the PLA but to the Bishop of London, and refusing to abide by various eviction notices. Most have now moved but some derelict boats remain.
Brentford Ait runs along the centre of the river here. It was bought in the late 19th century by the Crown who planted trees on it to hide the gas works from visitors to Kew Gardens on the opposite bank. A few yard upstream is Lot’s Ait, where the Thames Steam Tug and Lighterage Company Ltd set up a boatyard in 1920 – most of the Thames lighters were built there. The boatyard closed in the 1970s, but was reopened in 2012 when a new footbridge was constructed to it.
As well as the park, the Watermans Arts Centre was also built on the gasworks site. We walked between it and the river, and continued on the riverside path, past the bridge to Lots Ait and recent blocks of flats. There are new moorings around here too.
A small spit of land leads from the bottom of Ferry Lane (more new flats) to an artwork by the riverside. I’m not quite sure what to make either of Liquidity or another similarly decorated column not far away, but it could provide a useful windbreak in bad weather. This was where once a ferry ran across to Kew Gardens.
We followed the Thames Path around a small dock, on what was the site of the Thames Soap Works and then continued along the side of the River Brent which flows into the Thames here, continuing along this beside the winding river past another boatyard to Brentford High Street.
A few yards along we turned left down Dock Road to Thames Lock, past a huge mural and the other end of the boatyard, to Thames Lock, the southern end of the Grand Union Canal. Here we took the path beside the north side of the canal, leading across a bridge over the Brent to Johnson’s Island and Catherine Wheel Road.
The mural, on the side of a multi-story car park had included a giant kingfisher, and I’d joked saying this was the only kingfisher we’d see in Brentford. But as we walked across the bridge over the River Brent and stopped to take pictures, perched on the top of a post there was one, still only for a second before flying out of sight. By the time I’d raised my camera to my eye it was gone, though since I had and extreme wideangle lens it would hardly have been visible, just a few more colourful pixels.
I’d planned to walk along Brent Way and rejoin the canal towpath, but the whole of this area is now a huge building site, and instead we walk along the High Street to the canal bridge. I couldn’t bring myself to walk down to the Gauging Lock preserved there, though I’ve done so several times before, but the changes to the area, now with a marina, flats and hotel made me feel too sad; we simply stood on the bridge and looked for a while before moving on.
Part 2 will continue the walk from here to its end in Isleworth. You can see more pictures from the walk in a Facebook album.
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
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
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
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
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, 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.
Brixton has been in the news again recently, with various analyses published on the 40th anniversary of the 1981 Brixton uprising (aka Brixton riots) which began on 10th April. Official reports put the 3 days of unrest which caused £7.5m of damage and left almost three hundred police (and an impossible to estimate number of the local community) injured down to poor housing, unemployment, and police harassment.
It was largely the actions of the police that led to the events. Their failure to effectively investigate the arson attack on a party in New Cross which killed 13 young black people in January 1981 scandalised much of the nation and the racist reaction of the mass media to a protest march about this raised tension, exacerbated by the police arrests of the march organisers who were charged with riot – and later acquitted. But the final straw was when police at the beginning of April began ‘Operation Swamp 81’ with large numbers of officers coming into Brixton and stopping an searching almost a thousand people – almost entirely African-Caribbean – under the ‘Sus law’, the 1824 Vagrancy Act which allowed police to stop and search anyone they believed was acting suspiciously.
Little changed after the official reports came out, and it was only 19 years later, following another scandalous police failure to properly investigate the murder of Stephen Lawrence in April 1993 that the Macpherson report found that the Metropolitan Police was institutionally racist. Although some changes have been made, there are still plenty of signs that this continues to be deeply embedded in the ethos of the force.
The publication of ‘The report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities’ on 31st March this year (2021) came at perhaps a particularly insensitive time for a report that is widely seen as a whitewash by a commission set up to reflect particular views. Set up in opposition to the protests by the Black Lives Matter movement over the death of George Floyd (and three weeks before the trial of his killer ended in three guilty verdicts) it evoked fury from many experts in the field as well as the millions who still experience discrimination.
More recently is has been condemned in remarkably forthright terms by the independent experts of the Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council who state “In 2021, it is stunning to read a report on race and ethnicity that repackages racist tropes and stereotypes into fact, twisting data and misapplying statistics and studies into conclusory findings and ad hominem attacks on people of African descent” and call on the British government to categorically reject its findings.
Brixton has changed since 1981 and some of those changes are very much for the worse for the local population. There were further riots, and there have been deaths at the hands of police – such as those of Ricky Bishop in 2001 and Sean Rigg in 2008 – but the main threat facing the local communities is gentrification as Brixton is changing from a working class area home particularly to migrant communities to a trendy up-market suburb. Its a change which is in part inspired by the vibrant communities which it is displacing, but also driven by the excellent transport links the area enjoys.
25 April 2015 saw Reclaim Brixton, a day long protest against gentrification which saw several thousands gathering at various events in what is still so far as I’m aware the largest protest of its kind. One major blow to local people has been the decision by Network Rail, backed by Lambeth Council to redevelop the railway arches in the centre of the town, home for many years to some of Brixton’s best loved – and cheapest – businesses. The current tenants, one of which came here in 1932 – are being evicted and after renovation the rents will be triple and their places largely taken by the same chains and franchises that we see in so many other high streets.
Soon after I left Brixton – in what seemed like a quiet period and I thought things had probably ended, activists took direct action against some of the major players they hold responsible for gentrification, breaking a large window Soon after I left Brixton – in what seemed like a quiet period and I thought things had probably ended, activists took direct action against some of the major players they hold responsible for gentrification, breaking a large window at Foxton’s estate agents, going into Brixton Village with their banners and briefly occupying Lambeth Town Hall.
I think that Paull was one of the places we may have walked to during one of our stays in Hull, taking a bus to somewhere outside the city to a suitable starting point. There were a couple of time I hired a car, but I think only to go for holiday weeks elsewhere in Yorkshire. The last time I hired one I managed to drive it off the road into a ploughed field at some speed somewhere near Meaux (which despite the name is on the outskirts of Hull) and decided the time had come for me to give up driving.
Strangely given that back in 1965 when I first visited Hull was a city full of bicycles it was over 35 years before I ever cycled around the city. And when I did in 2003, I visited Paull for a second time, though actually riding there from Hornsea.
Paull is a riverside village on the north bank of the Humber a few miles south-east of Hull, just beyond Hedon Haven. Neither Paull nor Hedon grew as ports because sandbanks in the Humber made them unsuitable for larger ships, while a deepwater channel led towards the mouth of the River Hull.
Navigation in and out of Hull was tricky, and in 1836 Trinity House built the lighthouse at Paull for ships leaving Hull to steer towards, before picking up other lights on the south side of the estuary. Unfortunately the channel soon moved and by around 1870 this lighthouse was obsolete and was replaced by two ‘leading lights’ a little further downstream at Thorngumbald Clough.
This extensive Grade II listed property was offered for sale in 2013 for £169,950 though it is unclear if it was sold and a rather lower bid was considered. For those of us used to London prices it seems excessively cheap.
This picture amused me after photographing the Humber Bridge and I think I captioned it at the time as “Not the Humber Bridge” . The view is actually of both the River Hull, coming in from the left and the Humber across the top of the image, and the spit of mud and sand is Sammy’s Point, where Hull’s major tourist attraction, ‘The Deep’ now stands, a little back from the point here.
This was a short gangway leading out to a iron-sheathed concrete dolphin at the mouth of the River Hull from the end of Nelson St. The dolphin, designed as a temporary mooring in deep water for vessels waiting for the tide to go up the River Hull (and perhaps to protect the bank from vessels off course) is still there, but the promenade has been rebuilt to stretch to the dolphin, and a footpath now leads north from it beside the Hull.
Alley in Old Town, Hull 1981
I can’t remember precisely where this was, but the view through it is to the wholesale fruit and vegetable traders, probably on Humber St, though possibly on Wellington St. I think this may have been an alley leading from Blanket Row, but the area has changed too much for me to now be sure.
Clearly I was attracted by both the atmosphere of the alley leading to the street and by the colour, particularly the three areas of blue against the muted yellows. Blue mixed with yellow in my paintbox to make greens and green is the only other colour in this image.
Barge R57 moored at wharf north of Ferry Lane, Hull 1981
The last time I was in Hull I sat eating a lunchtime snack beside the River Hull here, though the scene had changed a little.
There was actually a barge moored a little downstream, though looking rather derelict, but I was surprised to find that there were still a couple of buildings from the earlier image remaining.
East Hull Ladder Works, Hull 1981
I don’t know the name of the dog or the name of the street where the East Hull Ladder Works then stood, but am fairly sure that it and the houses along the street either fell down or were demolished not long after I made the picture.
Probably this was a side-street off of Holderness Rd, well-placed for timber which came into Hull’s Victoria Dock. The rapid growth of Hull during the 19th century with its tremendous boom in house building will have created considerable demand for ladders.
Holderness Rd, 1977 – East Hull
And there were certainly plenty of them for sale on the Holderness Road as this picture from my web site ‘Still Occupied – A View of Hull‘ shows.
Sisson’s Paints were another famous brand from Hull, and their advertising often used their 1910 trademark of two painters carrying cans of paint and a plank. Sisson’s won a court case against a far-eastern company that copied it, replacing the plank with a ladder, but now Sissons Paints Malaysia, one of several foreign companies that continue its name, uses it with a ladder. In the early years adverts using it had the plank carrying the text ‘Hall’s. Distemper’, a product responsible for many gloomy hallways across the world, which over the years I’ve cleaned laboriously from several walls.
Sisson’s extensive works were beside the River Hull at Bankside and had this mosaic installed in 1953 (their 150th anniversary) when they were rebuilt after wartime bombing. The company was bought by Reckitt and Colman in 1964, sold on to the Donald Macpherson Group in 1968 and taken over by Finland’s largest paint manufacturer Tikkurila Oy in 1984, though production in Hull had I think ceased before this and the plant looked derelict when I took this picture. It was demolished in the early 1990s and the mosaic lost. All that remains is the gates.
Part of the large area occupied by the factory is now more colourful than ever as a part of the Bankside Gallery which sprung up following Banksy’s addition ‘Draw The Raised Bridge’ on Scott Street bridge in January 2018.
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.
