Old London Bridge | >Re-PHOTO

Big Brew, Childrens’ Carnival & London Bridge: On Saturday July 11th 2009 I’d been commissioned to photograph a bishop at fair trade events in Finchley, then rushed to Newham for a children’s carnival procession. Gettingg back to London Bridge for its 800th birthday celebration was made difficult by the planned closure of both District and Jubilee lines and I only made it minutes before the event ended.

Big Brew

Finchley and Edgware

The Diocese of London had organised a day of ‘Big Brew’ events at Anglican churches across Greater London promoting fairly traded goods, particularly tea and coffee. Fair Trade is a movement and system that ensures the farmers and other workers get a fair return for their work, safe working conditions and ensures that money from their products gets invested into their local communities for healthcare, education and other development opportunities. Both I and my wife had been active supporters of the movement since our student days, long before the Fairtrade certification mark was first introduced in 1988.

I had been persuaded to photograph two events organised by the parish churches in Finchley and Edgware which the Bishop of Edmonton, the Right Revd Peter Wheatley, a strong supporter of the fair trade movement would be attending.

St Mary’s Finchley had tables and chairs on the pavement with tea, coffee and a large assortment of delicious looking cakes. As well as the bishop, Barnet Mayor Councillor Brian Coleman and the leader of the opposition were there too.

But for me the main attraction were the waitresses in caps and aprons and the ‘Mad Hatter’s Tea Party’ performed by children from the Church’s drama group.

Things were a little quieter at St Margaret’s Edgware, where I went on with the Bishop. We met the local MP Gareth Thomas and were offered the chance of ringing the church bells. Or at least they posed for a photograph pretending to ring them. It was very dark and needed a tricky bit of flash.

More pictures on My London Diary: Big Brew

Newham Childrens’ Carnival Procession

East Ham

Newham Carnival seemed rather smaller than when I photographed it in 2007, but it was still a lively procession, with lots of kids having fun. The Mayor, Sir Robin Wales, came and joined in, though I found his performance rather embarrassing.

Keir Hardie was the country’s first Labour MP, elected in West Ham South in 1892. The County Borough of West Ham, now a part of Newham, elected England’s first Labour-controlled council in 1898. And in 2009 every one of its 60 councillors was Labour. Robin Wales became council leader in 1995 and became its elected mayor in 2002. In 2018 he was de-selected as Labour’s mayoral candidate following a bitter dispute inside Newham Labour party and is now a leading member of Reform UK.

Wales seemed very much to regard Newham as a personal fiefdom and used events such as this very much as PR opportunities.

In the Wikipedia article you can read a little – in a very bland fashion about some of the controversies of his reign as local dictator. Under his leadership Newham gained large amounts of high cost private developments but failed to deal with the incredible housing problem in the area – telling people if they couldn’t afford to live in Newham they should move. As his critics said, we want social housing not social cleansing.

I walked some way with the carnival procession, but then took a bus, which was held up even more than usual by the traffic congestion the procession created. Normally I would have taken the District line, but this was closed for engineering work. And at Canning Town, rather than the Jubilee line (also closed) I had to use the much slower Docklands Light Railway, so I arrived rather late for my next event.

Newham Childrens’ Carnival Procession

London Bridge – 800

London Bridge

The Romans had built bridges across the Thames but these wooden structures did not survive. As I wrote (with minor corrections) in 2009:

“It was Peter de Colechurch who decided a stone bridge would be a better bet well over a thousand years after the first bridge, and started building one in 1176. It was a lengthy job, and was only finished 33 years later, and it was also very expensive.

To get back the cost houses were built on the bridge (as well as a chapel in the middle) and it soon became a thriving medieval shopping centre. There was actually very little space left for traffic to get across it, traffic moving in both directions on a 12 foot wide roadway (and in 1722 we got our first Highway Code, with the Lord Mayor laying down that carts coming from Southwark should stick to the west side, and those going south from the City drive on the east.)

*This was part of the roadway across the 1209 London Bridge*

You can get a good idea of its width from going to the church of St Magnus the Martyr, as its entrance porch is the only remaining part of the bridge, and if the church is open you can go inside and view (sometimes through a rather thick haze of incense) a large model of the whole bridge.

That bridge – with pretty well constant repairs and several major disasters – lasted until 1831 when a new bridge designed by John Rennie opened for business, around 100 ft upstream… The current bridge opened in 1971″

London Bridge – 800

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Bank, Victoria Park, Fish Island, Hackney Wick: In 1988 I was still teaching a full timetable at the sixth-form and community college where I worked, but because I took an evening class on Tuesdays I was able to finish the week’s teaching at noon on Friday. As a union rep I had persuaded my members against national union advice to some deviations from the national conditions that suited the peculiar circumstances of the college and made such arrangements possible.

Most of the pictures I made back in 1988 were either taken during the college holidays – we kept more or less normal school terms – or at weekends, but at noon on some Fridays I would rush down to the caretakers stores where I kept my bike, pedal home furiously, dump the bike, pick up my camera bag and rush to the station for a train to London. Until the clocks went back at the end of October there was then time for a few hours walking and taking pictures – in late October sunset is around 5.45pm. I think the pictures in this post were probably taken on the last occasion that year that my journey was worthwhile.

Doorway, Bank Station, Bank, City, 1988 88-10d-25-Edit_2400 — *Doorway, Bank Station, Bank, City, 1988 88-10d-25*

I didn’t make many pictures on this Friday afternoon – around 16 black and white frames and perhaps two or three in colour, perhaps partly because I broke my journey to make this picture. Rather than taking the train from Richmond to Homerton or Hackney Wick, I went up to Waterloo and took the Waterloo & City line to Bank. I’d some time earlier photographed this doorway at Bank station and had for reasons now unknown to me decided I needed another and different image. Possibly I’d been reminded of it when the earlier picture, a closeup of the three heads, was used on a bookjacket.

It perhaps took me a few minutes at Bank to find the doorway still there on King William Street on the side of the splendid Hawksmoor church of St Mary Woolnuth. Having make the single exposure shown here, I made my way to a bus stop for a No 8 bus to Bethnal Green and then walked up Grove Road to Victoria Park.

Old London Bridge, stone alcove, Victoria Park, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-10d-26-Edit_2400 — *Old London Bridge, stone alcove, Victoria Park, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-10d-26*

I’d realised when I got home from my previous walk that I had not photographed the shelters which were stone alcoves from the Old London Bridge. That bridge, built in 1176-1209 had until 1760 been cluttered with houses and shops, leaving only a narrow path across the river. These were cleared in 1760-63, more than doubling the width of the bridge, and seven stone alcoves were installed along each side.

The bridge was demolished in 1831, but these alcoves were sold and two found there way to Victoria Park when it was opened in 1845. Another is in a courtyard at Guy’s Hospital and two ended up on an estate in East Sheen along with some of the balustrade, though only one now remains in the grounds of some 1930s flats at Courtlands, close to the 1st Richmond Scouts HQ.

*Percy Dalton, Dace Rd, Hackney Wick, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-9h-46*

From Victoria Park I walked across the footbridge over the East Cross Route to Hackney Wick, then turning south and making my way down Wansbeck Road to the Northern Outfall Sewer on Wick Lane. Steps there took me down to Dace Road and along to Old Ford Locks. Unfortunately although I took a few picture on the walk, none are among those I’ve digitised. So here’s one I took in 1990 on Dace Road of Percy Dalton’s peanut factory.

Loading Bay, Lock, Old Ford, Lea navigation, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-10e-61-Edit_2400 — *Loading Bay, Lock, Old Ford, Lea navigation, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-10e-61*

I walked across the gates at Old Ford Lock and took a few pictures there, including this one of the loading bay at Swan Wharf.

Bridge, White Post Lane, Lea Navigation, Hackney Wick, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-10e-62-Edit_2400 — *Bridge, White Post Lane, Lea Navigation, Hackney Wick, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-10e-62*

The I walked north on the towpath. Now there are two new bridges on this stretch, from Stour Road and Monier Road, but in 1988 the next crossing was at White Post Lane.

Bridge, White Post Lane, Lea Navigation, Hackney Wick, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-10e-65-Edit_2400 — *Bridge, White Post Lane, Lea Navigation, Hackney Wick, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-10e-65*

At left is the splendid 1913-14 Queen’s Yard works, part of the Clarke, Nickolls & Coombs Ltd “Clarnico” sweet and chocolate factory, formerly the largest employer in the area. Much of their five works were damaged or destroyed by wartime bombing and this building needed some restoration. The company was bought by Trebor in 1969 and the works closed. The white building fronting the canal beyond the bridge was the cocoa bean roasting factory built around 1900.

I walked over the bridge and along to Hackney Wick station for a train to Richmond on my way home.

Tag: Old London Bridge

Bank, London Bridge, Fish Island, Hackney Wick