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Muslims, Our Railways & Little Venice – 2005

Muslims, Our Railways & Little Venice: Twenty years ago I published this post on My London Dairy about my day taking pictures, but it isn’t easy to find. So here it is again with the usual minor corrections and a few pictures, with links to the others already on-line.

Muslims United Against Oppression – Marble Arch

Muslims, Our Railways & Little Venice - 2005 — *Mozzam Begg reads his poem. War on Terror = War on Islam*

Saturday 30th April 2005 was a busy day. I started at Marble Arch where a number of Muslim organisations were showing their unity in protesting against the anti-terrorism laws and the way the ‘war on terror‘ was used to detain prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Bellmarsh, to carry out increased stop and searches on Muslims in the UK, and threaten them with extradition, and to label the liberation struggles in Palestine, Kashmir, Iraq and Chechnya as terrorism.

The ‘Muslims United Against Oppression’ march and rally was organised by ‘Stop Political Terror’, the ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission’, ‘Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain’, ‘Cage Prisoners’, the ‘Islamic Party Of Britain’, ‘Muslim Directory’ and other organisations, and representatives of many of these spoke at Marble Arch. There were also two former Guantanamo detainees who spoke, Martin Mubanga and Mozzam Begg, who read a moving poem.

Ashfaq Ahmad spoke about the detention of his son, Babar Ahmad, who was born and brought up in south London. On December 2nd 2003, anti-terrorist police broke into his house in the early hours, and assaulted him brutally in front of his wife before taking him away. Six days later he was released without charge. He had over 50 injuries to his body, two potentially life-threatening, but despite this the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute any of the officers involved.

Babar Ahmad was again arrested on 5th August 2004 following an extradition request by the US government. In 2005 he was still in prison awaiting a final verdict on whether he will be sent to the USA, although a fair trial there seems unlikely.* The allegations against him appear to be that he emailed a US sailor on two dates (one was Babar’s wedding day, the other in the middle of his honeymoon on a remote island without internet access), that he had a brochure from the Empire State Building (true, his father had got it on a visit there in 1973) and that he had travelled on a false passport, despite the fact that his real one has the appropriate entry and exit stamps.

Unfortunately our extradition agreement with the USA apparently does not allow Britain to refuse requests on the grounds of evidence.

Having failed to treat Babar with any justice in this country following his arrest – almost certainly a case of mistaken identity that too many would lose face over to readily admit – it now looks as if we will hand him over to our American allies for further mistreatment.

Around 5000 Muslims made there way from Marble Arch and along the Edgeware Road towards Paddington Green Police Station for a further rally.

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* Babar Ahmed spent 8 years in a UK prison before eventually being sent the the USA for trial. Although there was huge pressure to try him in the UK the CPS decided there was “insufficient evidence to prosecute” him. In 2009 he was awarded £60,000 compensation for the “serious gratuitous prolonged unjustified violence” and “religious abuse” during his arrest; the four officers who were accused of this and dozens of other assaults on black and Asian men were tried but acquitted in 2011. After his extradition in 2012 he spent two years in solitary confinement in pre-trial detention in a Supermax prison. Eventually he came to a plea bargain which led to his release in July 2015.

RMT march to Renationalise the Railways – Bloomsbury

I made my way to the Charing Cross Road to meet the RMT march against rail privatisation, a two-week, 14-city national mobile demonstration from Glasgow to London to make the case for re-nationalising the rail network.

As someone who travels frequently by rail, I’m fully convinced of the need for some action. On my line to London, services are less frequent and less reliable and slower than when I moved here thirty years ago. The latest trick has been to write yet more ‘spare minutes’ into the timetables so that more trains will arrive on time. Journeys that a few years ago took 28 minutes are now timetabled for 34 minutes. [Now in 2025 this has increased to 37 minutes.]

There certainly seem to be a great problem over signalling on the lines, with trains that should have a clear run on green with miles of clear track in front of them continually finding amber or double amber and occasionally red. Either systems are not working or there are not the signallers to work them.

The whole fare structure is also a nonsense, far too complex for anyone to understand. None of the enquiry services ever seem to be able to tell you anything other than standard fares (if that) and journeys covering more than one operator are a nightmare. Try several online systems and you are likely to get several different answers as to fares and availability. As a first move back to a sensible system why not set up a national fare structure, with train operators paid for running trains from a central body?

It was a good-natured demonstration making a real point, but unfortunately not one any likely government wants to hear.

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Canalways Calvacade – Litttle Venice

Finally I went off to Little Venice, where the Inland Waterways Association was having a three day Canalway Cavalcade celebrating the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar. In 1805, canals were growing as the main form of inland transport, and it was the year two of the major civil engineering structures of our canals, the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and the Blisworth Tunnel were completed.

I’m not a great canal person, though I often cycle along the towpaths. But the first time I ever drove a narrowboat, I found myself in charge of 70 feet of steel hull through the dark narrow length of Blisworth, and later the same year also took the marginally overwide craft across Pontcysyllte, where there was considerable resistance to its movement through the narrow channel. Getting through some of the locks on the way there and back was harder, and we learnt some less conventional locking techniques, opening the upper gates for the water to force the marginally over-wide hull through, scraping its sides past the brickwork.

However I’d not come to see the boats, even though the navy were taking part, with one of our smaller ships, a crew of three and commander from the Royal Naval Reserve.

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London Isn’t Venice, Yet! – Mutiny Arts, Little Venice

Mutiny Arts from Brixton were to perform an ecological drama, London Isn’t Venice, Yet!, warning of the dangers of global warming and rising sea levels.

The play went down well with the audience in the Sheldon Square ampitheatre, part of a new office development in Paddington.

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Druids, Paddington & Hizb ut-Tahrir – 2013

Druids, Paddington & Hizb ut-Tahrir: This year the Autumn Equinox is on Sunday 22 September at 12.44pm GMT (1.44pm BST), and the Druid Order will again be holding their ceremony on Primrose Hill in London as they have for many years. They meet earlier to get things ready but the ceremmony begins around 12.30 The pictures here are from the event in 2013, and afterwards I took a walk around Paddington Basin before going to photograph the start of a march by the women and children of Hizb ut-Tahrir against the massacres of civilians being committed by the Assad regime in Syria.

Druids Celebrate Autumn Equinox – Primrose Hill

Druids, Paddington & Hizb ut-Tahrir - 2013

The Druid Order celebrated the Autumn Equinox (Alban Elued) with a ceremony on top of Primrose Hill in London at 1pm on Sunday 22 September 2013 in their traditional robes. They have been organising similar celebrations for just over a 100 years.

In My London Diary you can read a description of what takes place at this event, which marks the start of the Druid year.

On their web site they write “The harvest festival, when the power of heaven is infused into the fruits of the earth, and you reap what you have sowed. You see the full reality, what you made of your dreams, projects and plans, the actual reality, the truth that gives understanding and wisdom.”

The pictures on My London Diary are in the order in which I took them and I think include all the key moments in the ceremony, together with some commentary in the captions.

I had photographed this and the Spring Equinox ceremony at Tower Hill on a number of previous occasions and you can find pictures on the March and September pages for most years from 2007 to 2013.

By 2013 I was beginning to feel I had little more to say about the event and the following year, 2014 was the final time I went to take pictures.

A few of the pictures were taken with the help of a monopod which enabled me to hold the camera several feet above my head and take pictures with the help of a remote release. But although I could control the moment of release it was tricky to keep the lens pointing in the right direction.

Also on My London Diary is a brief history of the Druid Order, which although it has ancient roots in the Druidic tradition was founded a little over a hundred years ago.

There are a number of other Druid orders, some with very similar names, and members of the Loose Association of Druids including the Druid of Wormwood Scrubbs watched for a while before leaving for their own ceremony in the nearby Hawthorn Grove.

More on My London Diary at Druids Celebrate Autumn Equinox.

Paddington Basin

I had some time after the end of the Equinox ceremony before a protest I was to photograph and decided to take a walk around Paddington Basin, close to where that was to start.

Paddington Basin is the London end of the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal and was opened in 1801 to bring goods by canal into Westminster and to the start of the New Road, a toll road across the north of London, now the A501. The Paddington end is now Marylebone Road and further on it becomes Euston Road.

Paddington Basin lost some of its traffic a little over twenty years later with the opening of the Regent’s Canal, which led from the Paddington Arm at Little Venice directly to the edge of the City and on to the River Thames at Limehouse.

Development of the area around the canal began in 1998 in one of London’s larger development areas under the Paddington Regeneration Partnership, later the Paddington Waterside Partnership.

Hizb ut-Tahrir Women March for Syria – Paddington Green

Women of Hizb ut-Tahrir appalled by the chemical attack and other massacres of women and children in Syria marched in London to show solidarity and called for Muslim armies to mobilise to defend the blood of their Ummah.

Hizb ut-Tahrir protests are always segregated and often seem to marginalise women, but this was clearly their show, with only one small group of men with a banner and a heavy public address system and around a thousand women and children.

The call to the march stated “rows upon rows of dead children in their burial shrouds have no doubt brought us to tears as Muslim women, for this is our beloved Ummah that is being killed.” They called on women to “Stand in solidarity with your sisters in Syria and speak out against the shedding of their blood and that of their families and children.”

Hizb ut-Tahrir oppose the current corrupt rulers in Islamic states and call on Muslims to rise up and get rid of corruption, and in particular of “the criminal regime of the butcher Bashar Al Assad” in Syria, and for “Muslim armies to mobilise and replace the rule of the dictator with the rule of Allah.”

I left the marchers as they went down the Edgware Road on their way to the Syrian Embassy in Belgrave Square.

Hizb ut-Tahrir was banned in the UK as a terrorist organisation in January 2024 after protests in London in which it praised attacks on Israel.

Hizb ut-Tahrir Women March for Syria

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1987: Paddington & Maida Vale

Paddington Arm, Grand Union Canal, Paddington Station, Bishop's Bridge Rd, Paddington, Westminster, 1987 87-7l-32-positive_2400

The view from the bridge on Bishop’s Bridge Road is now rather different with the building over the canal having been replaced by a footbridge and an new entrance to Paddington station now obscuring the front of the station. You can still see the GWR Hotel and the canal, but the empty towpath has been much tidied and is now often thronged by people.

Paddington Basin and the area around the canal leading to it has been fairly dramatically redeveloped with tall blocks and leisure activities. There were few boats moving back when I took this picture and I think the rescue one in this picture was the only one I saw, though there may have been a few kayaks. Now the canal is rather busier, with small electric boats a popular but not cheap hire.

The bridge I was standing on was replaced by a wider modern bridge in 2006; shortly before it had been discovered that Brunel’s original 1839 iron bridge was still in place hidden under the 1906 structure – though its cast iron beams were clearly visible below. It was Brunel’s first iron bridge and of important historical and engineering interest but English Heritage agreed not to list it as it would have considerably affected the replacement plans; instead it was carefully dismantled and put into store on the understading it would be rebuilt for use as a footbridge across the canal around a hundred yards to the north.

Although planning permission was granted for this it never happened and the parts remain in a rather messy heap at English Heritage’s store at Fort Cumberland in Portsmouth, probably because the developers of the area preferred a nice modern and probably much cheaper design. Other former canalside artifacts removed at the same time with similar promises appear to have simply been lost, but the bridge was perhaps too large for that to happen.

Bishop’s Bridge Road only got its name after the Second World War, before which it had been simply Bishop’s Road, developed around the time the railway was built in 1836, replacing an earlier footpath. The Bishop was rather earlier, the manor of Paddington being given to Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London by Edward VI around 1550.

Pentecost, Assembly of God, Harrow Rd, Maida Vale, Westminster, 1987 87-7l-33-positive_2400 — Assembly of God Pentecostal Church, Harrow Rd, Maida Vale, Westminster, 1987

The Assembly of God Central Pentecostal Church on Harrow Road survived until 2015 on the edge of a huge area of high-rise development in North Paddington, but has now gone. It had moved to the ground floor of this building from the Edgware Road in 1946, and was relocated at a temporary site in Tresham Crescent in 2015 while Westminster Council built Dudley House, completed in November 2019. This provides 197 homes at ‘intermediate rent’ as well as new premises for the church, a secondary boy’s school and shops.

North Wharf Rd, Paddington, Westminster, 1987 87-7l-34-positive_2400 — North Wharf Rd, Paddington, Westminster, 1987

You can see the curiously ugly QEQM (Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother) building of Paddington’s Queen Mary’s Hospital towering above these simple but rather elegant buildings on North Wharf Road. That is still there but these buildings are long gone, replaced by towering glass fronted structures which now line Paddington Basin.

The redevelopment of this area, part of ‘Paddington Waterside’ began in the late 1990s and is now more or less complete, filled with high rise buildings. You can now stroll along beside the canal on both banks, while back in 1987 access was very limited. But the whole atmosphere of the area has changed. Although open to the public I think most or all of the open space is privately owned and some photographers, myself included, have been stopped taking pictures by security officers around Paddington Basin.

Warwick Avenue, Maida Vale, Westminster, 1987 87-7l-43-positive_2400 — Warwick Avenue, Maida Vale, Westminster, 1987

Green Lane was named Warwick Rd on a plan made in 1827 and later became Warwick Avenue. There were some houses on it by 1840 and most of the rest were built shortly after, all rather grand and in an Italian style and covered in stucco. Many like this one which overlooks the canal basin at Little Venice are listed. The name ‘Warwick’ came from Jane Warwick of Warwick Hall, in Warwick-on-Eden in Cumbria, who in 1778 married the great-grandson of Sir John Frederick who had leased the land from the Bishop of London.

Just a few yards from the more industrial area around the canal at Paddington, this is at the southern edge of Maida Vale, an area which attracted many of the wealthier members of London’s Jewish population in the late nineteenth century.

Clifton Gardens, Maida Vale, Westminster, 1987 87-7l-51-positive_2400 — Clifton Gardens, Maida Vale, Westminster, 1987

In the twentieth century parts of Maida Vale became one of London’s more respectable red-light areas. Large houses which were too expensive went into multi-occupation, let out as single rooms, usually sharing kitchens and bathrooms, and often became very run-down. Disruption of families by war and high levels of unemployment forced some women onto the streets where they would walk along keys dangling from their hands and invite passing gentlemen to take tea with them, though tea was apparently seldom served. But more recently the area has gone up in the world considerably again, and semidetached houses in the area sell for £5m or more.

Blomfield Rd, Maida Vale, Westminster, 1987 87-7l-55-positive_2400 — Blomfield Rd, Maida Vale, Westminster, 1987

In 1805 Napoleon had defeated both Austrian and Russian armies at Austerlitz and forced Austria to sign a peace treaty and he had also made peace with Prussia. This left him free to try to conquer more of Italy and in particular the Kingdom of Naples, which despite a treaty of neutrality with France had allowed both Russian and British troops to land. Napoleon rapidly advanced and conquered much of that kingdom, with the King and government fleeing to Sicily along with the British troops. A British expeditionary force returned at the end of June to Calabria where there was an insurrection against the French occupation and on 4th July engaged with French forces at Maida.

Warrington Crescent, Maida Vale, Westminster, 1987 87-7l-63-positive_2400 — Warrington Crescent, Maida Vale, Westminster, 1987

The battle was was on a relatively small scale with around 5,000 troops on each side and only lasted a few hours before the French who had suffered heavy losses during a cavalry charge against superior British guns and muskets were forces to retreat in considerable disarray. The British commander, John Stuart, was given the title Count of Maida by the Italians and a pension of £1000 a year by the UK parliament as well as being made a Knight of the Bath.

Clifton Gardens, Maida Vale, Westminster, 1987 87-7l-65-positive_2400 — Clifton Gardens, Maida Vale, Westminster, 1987

The victory on land against Napoleon’s forces who had been so successful elsewhere gave Britain a much-needed boost in morale, and gave both Maida Vale and Maida Hill their names.

There is now a pub in Shirland Rd named for Stuart, The Hero of Maida, but it was not built until 1878 and was then The Shirland Hotel, later becoming Idlewild and in 2014 the Truscott Arms. Opened under new owners in 2018 it was re-named ‘The Hero of Maida’.

You can see more of my pictures of London in 1987 on Flickr.

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.

More Bayswater etc 1987

Bayswater, Westminster, 1987 87-7d-66-positive_2400 — Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Divine Wisdom (Hagia Sophia), Moscow Rd, Bayswater, Westminster, 1987

It’s hard to know where Paddington ends and Bayswater begins, or where Bayswater become Notting Hill. There are two Westminster borough wards called Bayswater and Lancaster Gate which I think most would consider Bayswater, and Notting Hill comes under Kensington & Chelsea, but popular perceptions usually don’t follow local government boundaries – and estate agents have remarkably elastic definitions of areas.

Brunel House, Westbourne Terrace, Orsett Terrace, Bayswater, Westminster 87-7e-22-positive_2400 — Brunel House, Westbourne Terrace, Orsett Terrace, Bayswater, Westminster, 1987

My walks by 1987 were generally planned in advance, obviously with a starting point from some Underground or Rail station, but also with an intended destination, and places that looked to be of interest from maps and books marked on an enlarged copies of A-Z pages. But the actual routes I took were subject to considerable deviation from plan, with decisions made at crossroads as to which direction looked more interesting – and I didn’t always end up at the planned destination. I kept notebooks to record my routes and some details of what I photographed, transferring the route to the map copies when I got home and some details to the contact sheets after I developed the films.

Brunel House, Westbourne Terrace, Orsett Terrace, Bayswater, Westminster87-7e-55-positive_2400

When putting the pictures on-line I have tried where possible to verify the locations from the pictures themselves. Some include street names and or house numbers, shop names. My contact sheets usually also have street names and grid references and web searches and Google Streetview or Bing Maps usually enable me to positively identify buildings which are still standing.

Prince of Wales, pub, Cleveland Terrace, Bayswater, Westminster, 1987 87-7e-32-positive_2400 — Prince of Wales pub, Cleveland Terrace, Bayswater, Westminster, 1987

But where my pictures show only small details, it has sometimes proved impossible to be sure of the exact location, and this is often also the case in those areas which have undergone extensive redevelopment. But for areas such as Bayswater, where many of the properties have been listed and relatively little has changed it is generally possible to find exact locations.

Bishops Bridge Rd, Bayswater, Westminster, 1987 87-7e-52-positive_2400 — Bishops Bridge Rd, Bayswater, Westminster, 1987

During the 80s and 90s I sold several hundred pictures to the National Building Record, including of a number of buildings that were either already listed when I took their pictures or had been listed after I photographed them. I think there were just a few that I brought to their attention which had previously been unnoticed, mainly in the outer suburbs.

Gloucester Terrace, Bayswater, Westminster, 1987 87-7e-66-positive_2400 — Gloucester Terrace, Bayswater, Westminster, 1987

But my work in London came at a time when the worth of many buildings was being recognised both by me and those responsible for listings, which had previously largely concentrated on genuinely ancient structures and some public and ecclesiastical buildings, largely ignoring commercial buildings and those from late Victorian, Edwardian and more modern times. It was a prejudice even reflected in great works such as the many volumes of Pevsner’s The Buildings of England.

Dawson Place, Notting Hill, Kensington & Chelsea, 1987 87-7f-13-positive_2400 — Dawson Place, Notting Hill, Kensington & Chelsea, 1987

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.

Paddington Arm 1987

Paddington Arm, Regents Canal, Westway, Paddington, Westminster, 1987 87-4a-23-positive_2400 — Paddington Arm, Regents Canal, Westway, Paddington, Westminster, 1987

You can just see the canal through the open hatch and across the galley area of the narrow-boat Crystal closest to the camera, but the view struck me as a remarkable interlocking of the boats, roads and buildings, different eras of construction and transport. The Westway here sits on top of the Harrow Road bridge over the canal, the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union which was opened in 1801. (Confusingly there is a separate Harrow Road bridge across the canal a hundred yards northwest and yet another a kilometre further on.) At right we have the concrete architecture built for the road operations of British Rail in 1968-9, around the same time as the Westway which opened in 1970. Its building made very clear the tremendous damage that building urban motorways caused to the city.

Footbridge, Lord Hill's Rd, Westbourne Green, Westminster, 1987 87-4b-12-positive_2400 — Footbridge, Lord Hill’s Rd, Westbourne Green, Westminster, 1987

There was just something zany about this view that appealed to me, with the smooth curve of the metal lamp support and the jagged line of the concrete bridge., and the two circular objects, lamp and mirror and that dagger of a church spire with its cross.

Regents Canal, Little Venice, Westminster, 1987 87-4b-23-positive_2400 — Regents Canal, Little Venice, Westminster, 1987

A rather more conventional view of the canal and a canal bridge, though I did deliberately include in the foreground those rails and slope leading to nowhere. This is the bridge at the west end of Little Venice, and takes Westbourne Terrace Road across to Blomfield Rd at the right of the picture. Google Maps names this place as the Little Venice ‘Ferry Terminal’.

Footbridge,Blomfield Rd, Maida Vale, Westminster, 1987 87-4b-26-positive_2400 — Footbridge,Blomfield Rd, Maida Vale, Westminster, 1987

The north end of the footbridge in a picture above, which linked Lord Hills Road and Blomfield Rd. Here I took a simpler approach to its concrete edge, making it a jagged diagonal, emphasized by the handrails. On one side of it the graffiti, to its right the regularity of the houses, probably dating from around 1850, in Blomfield Rd. The footbridge has since been replaced by a rather less interesting metal bridge.

The Blomfields came over with William the Conqueror in 1066, their name deriving from the village of Blonville-sur-Mer in Calvados, Normandy. There were many of them by the 19th century when this road was named, and among them several bishops, well-known architects etc. I suspect it was named after Charles James Blomfield (1786 – 1857) who was Bishop of London from 1828 until he resigned due to ill health in 1856.

Regents Canal, Blomfield Rd, Little Venice, Westminster, 1987 87-4b-43-positive_2400 — Regents Canal, Blomfield Rd, Little Venice, Westminster, 1987

Regents Canal, Blomfield Rd, Little Venice, Westminster, 1987 87-4b-44-positive_2400

This area next to the Westbourne Terrace Road bridge and opposite the Canal Offices used to be home to a strange collection of stone works, but these were removed and for some years this was just an empty patch of grass. It is now a ‘wildlife refuge’, not for big game like those here, but, thanks to Edward Wilson Primary School, is The Bug Hotel, Bloomfield Garden.

Regents Canal, Blomfield Rd, Little Venice, Westminster, 1987 87-4b-45-positive_2400 — Regents Canal, Blomfield Rd, Little Venice, Westminster, 1987

Westway, Regents Canal, Westbourne Grove, Westminster, 1987 87-4c-22-positive_2400 — Westway, Regents Canal, Westbourne Grove, Westminster, 1987

Finally my young assistant takes a rest (and a photograph) by the canal underneath the Westway.

All pictures were taken in April 1987 and are from my Flickr album 1987 London Photos which now contains over 700 photographs.

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.

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April 1987 – Around Paddington

Junk Shop, Lisson Grove, Westminster, 1987 87-4b-62-positive_2400

Recycling is nothing new and we did a lot of it in the past, with many larger household items being re-sold in particular after house clearances in shops such as this. Of course it still goes on today, particularly in the poorer areas of large cities, but much more modern stuff is built to self-destruct after a relatively short lifetime. We now also have car-boot sales and charity shops that hardly existed back then, though we have more or less lost the jumble sales which used to be a big fund-raiser.

Broadley St Gardens, Ranston St, Lisson Grove, Westminster, 1987 87-4b-65-positive_2400 — Broadley St Gardens, Ranston St, Lisson Grove, Westminster, 1987

The formal qualities of this view amused me – the apparently pointless circular raised area in the foreground set against the resolutely rectangular and square repetitions of the housing in the top half of the image. And between the two a kind of transitional phase with the arched doors a rectangle with a curve emerging at the top. The fence along the side of the road seems to link the brick wall below with the row of buildings behind and gives a kind of spatial dissonance which interested me. In photography we are almost always dealing with the two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional space.

Henry & Farthing,Bell St, Lisson Grove, Westminster, 1987 87-4c-32-positive_2400 — Henry & Farthing,Bell St, Lisson Grove, Westminster, 1987

You can still find this cubic building should you walk along Bell Street in Lisson Grove, though Henry & Farthing Ltd are long gone, and their entrance at the right is now fenced off. It and the shop to its left are now one of several spaces in the area which make up the Lisson Gallery, a leading gallery specialising in British and Contemporary art.

According to Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History, Henry & Farthing were ” Manufacturers of: “Ternex” Brand Quality Precision Woodwork and Joinery; Reproduction Mantels and Panelling; Painted Small Piece Furniture; Table Woodware. Old Rooms Reconstructed. Precision Woodware Machine Turned and Fabricated. Joinery, Staircases, Built-in Fitments, Custom Built and Fixed.” The company is now dissolved., but there is a company Ternex Ltd still making similar products in Hertfordshire.

87-4d-23-positive_2400 — Orchardson St, Edgware Rd, Lisson Grove, Westminster, 1987

This view from Ochardson St across the Edgware Rd is dominated by the 20 storey Parsons House on the Hall Park Estate in Paddington Green. The 56m high tower which contains 120 flats was built in 1969 using a concrete panel system which provided poor insulation. In 1984 the windows were in danger of falling out and were replaced, and the outside clad with a non flammable Rockwool insulation behind powder coated aluminium panels. The bright red ‘fascinator’ on the top of the building is a maintenance cradle rail which was also added, along with other improvements. Fortunately Westminster used reputable architects for the refurbishment.

Rotunda, Harrow Road, Paddington, Westminster, 1987 87-4a-15-positive_2400 — Rotunda, Harrow Road, Paddington, Westminster, 1987

The Rotunda is still there next to the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union. Designed by Paul Hamilton it was built as a maintenance depot for British Rail’s road vehicles in 1968-9 and is Grade II listed. It was renovated around 20 years ago and opened as Nissan Design Europe in 2003.

Harrow Road, Paddington, Westminster, 1987 87-4a-14-2-positive_2400 — Exhibition, Harrow Road, Paddington, Westminster, 1987

And finally, a small mystery. Though the location of these images just off the Harrow Road close to the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal and the Westway is clear, with the ‘Battleship Building’, like the Rotunda designed by Paul Hamilton for British Rail and built in 1968-9, inning the Concrete Award in 1969. Again like the Rotunda it became very dilapidated in the 1990s (raves didn’t help) and was refurbished in 2000.

But I can no longer remember what the ‘Exhibition’ was about, though I think as the text on the image suggests it was for one weekend only. It may have been connected with the Notting Hill Carnival, as the ‘Carnival Party’ was here, I think in 1986. I have a vague (but very vague) recollection of having been to something here, perhaps the exhibition advertised, but more likely in later years, mainly to look inside the building, but if so I don’t appear to have taken any pictures.

Exhibition, Harrow Road, Paddington, Westminster, 1987

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.