Paddington Green | >Re-PHOTO

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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Paddington Green, Paddington, Westminster, 1987 87-3b-15-positive_2400 — Paddington Green, Paddington, Westminster, 1987

There is another side to Marylebone, particularly to the north of the Marylebone Road, around Lisson Grove and Edgware Road. The trees are still there on the Green, and I think my tilted camera was an attempt to maximise their effect. The tower blocks at right, Hall and Braithwaite Towers, both 22 stories were commissioned by Paddington Metropolitan Borough Council, more or less identical blocks by R A Jensen, completed in 1966 and still standing, each with 80 flats, but Paddington College, opened here in 1967 was replaced by a new building for what is now City of Westminster College in 2011.

Ralfe Electronics, Transept St, Marylebone, Westminster, 1987 87-3c-42-positive_2400 — Ralfe Electronics, Transept St, Marylebone, Westminster, 1987

Ralfe Electronics was indeed ‘The “Famous House” for Electronic Components‘ and a company of that name still exists, but is now in Watford. They were at 10 Chapel St, on the corner of Transept St, just a few yards from Edgware Rd (District) line station. Electronics geeks used to come from all over the country, if not the world, to shop here.

Bookmakers, Crawford Place, Paddington, Westminster, 1987 87-3c-15-positive_2400

The Christian Union Almshouses, Crawford Place, Paddington, Westminster, 1987 87-3c-26-positive_2400 — The Christian Union Almshouses, Crawford Place, Paddington, Westminster, 1987

The bookmakers was in Crawford Place, a short street off the Edgware Road in the rather plusher area south of the Marylebone Rd, close to the Christian Union Almshouses. This building is still there, and in very much better condition. Built as a small hospital for the elderly and inform in 1899 it was converted into a dozen self-contained flats a few years after I took this picture. It still provides housing “for older or retired people in housing need, who are of the Christian faith“, particularly those “who live in, or have a strong local connection to the Boroughs of Westminster, Camden, or Kensington & Chelsea.“

Ken's Junk Shop, Lisson Grove, Westminster, 1987 87-3b-21-positive_2400 — Ken’s Junk Shop, Lisson Grove, Westminster, 1987

87-3b-36-positive_2400 — Lisson Grove Cottages, Lisson Grove, Westminster, 1987

The date on the houses in this small street off Lisson Grove is 1855, and they were Grade II listed a few months after I took this photograph. I think I was aware of these artisanal dwellings and Bell St from the drawing and writing of Geoffrey Fletcher – these cottages are drawn on p51 of his London Souvenirs (1973).

It was easy to walk past the entry to them without noticing, and I think it is now behind a locked gate.

Bookseller, Bell St, Lisson Grove, Westminster, 1987 87-3b-23-positive_2400 — Bookseller, Bell St, Lisson Grove, Westminster, 1987

Bell St here now has a very different character, with most of the shops including this second-hand book dealer now converted to residential properties. Back in 1987 it was difficult to walk along this street without being diverted into browsing the extensive stock in search of a bargain, though these were hard to find.

The first Turkish Bath in London was opened in this street by Roger Evans in 1860, but the area was described at the time as being densely crowded with a population lower than the ‘decent poor’ on the east side of Lisson Grove, with Bell St “the main stream of a low colony, with many tributary channels.”

Stirling & Sons, Bell St, Lisson Grove, Westminster, 1987 87-3b-12-positive_2400 — Stirling & Sons, Bell St, Lisson Grove, Westminster, 1987

One of my favourite pictures from this area shows the street and pavement outside Stirlings at 54 Bell St, a junk and scrap metal dealer with an extensive range and whose premises appear to need scaffolding. But it is the group of people in the doorway that provide much of the interest, as well as their backdrop.

Numbers on the street now go direct from 52 to 56, with no 54. The space of this shop and that on its right are now the Lisson Gallery, built to the designs of Tony Fretton shortly after I made this picture. The concrete pillar at left, part of a run-down single-storey building, continued to deteriorate until around 2010 when it was refurbished and in 2015 had two storeys added in a late Victorian manner that could be original.

More pictures of various areas of London in 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.

Tag: Paddington Green

Druids, Paddington & Hizb ut-Tahrir – 2013

Druids Celebrate Autumn Equinox – Primrose Hill

Paddington Basin

Hizb ut-Tahrir Women March for Syria – Paddington Green

Another side of Marylebone