Poplar Gas Works | >Re-PHOTO

Poplar, Bow, Leyton, North Woolwich & Silvertown: These pictures come from a number of visits to areas of London working on several different projects and are my final selection of colour panoramas made in 1995. There are a few more colour images, including some panoramas I made in 1995 in the images in the Flickr album as well as many I have not digitised; some very similar to those online, others that I now find of less interest. Some of these were taken as a part of my project on the Greenwich Meridian in London – you can see a set of 16 images from this on the urban landscape web site.

*Bow Locks, River Lea, Bow Creek, Bow, Tower Hamlets, 1995, 95p4-752*

Bow Locks separate the tidal River Lea from the Lea Navigation and the Limehouse Cut which offers an alternative route to the Thames to avoid the winding and dangerous Bow Creek. First built in 1850 they were remodelled in 1930. At the highest Spring tides water from Bow Creek would overtop the locks and raise the level of the canals here – the locks were modified in 2000 to stop this and avoid the silting it caused.

London Galvanizers, Leven Rd, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 5p4-743 — *London Galvanizers, Leven Rd, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 95p4-743*

The Poplar Gas Coompany built a local gas works here in the 1820s at the request of the Poplar Vestry after ratepayers lobbied them to provide gas street lighting. The site was cleared in 2011 and I was commissioned to photograph the removal of toxic earth from the site using barges on Bow Creek. Something around an eigth of the material was removed in this way, tides making the removal of more difficult. The original gasholders had to be built to special safety standards because of their proximity to the West India Dock wall. The last of the gasholders was removed in 2017.

London Galvanizers had modernised their galvanizing plant here in 1983-5 and were one of the most important jobbing galvanizers in London and the Home Counties.

*Langthorne Rd, Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p4-862*

This street corner is close to the Meridian and I had stood here for some time outside the Chinese restaurant which was having some joinery work done. I liked the contrast between its orange paint and the blue on the opposite corner and the warm brown of the Birkbeck Tavern at right. I think I had made at least one exposure when a young girl in a red coat on roller skates came to see what I was doing – and I made this exposure as a red car come around, filling an otherwise rather empty grey space.

St Patrick's Catholic Cemetery, Langthorne Rd, Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p4-841 — *St Patrick’s Catholic Cemetery, Langthorne Rd, Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p4-841*

The Meridian also passes through this cemetery and I chose a viewpoint which included the cemetery chapel with a fine group of monuments in the foreground, I think all for people of Italian origin.

Stratford Station, Great Eastern Rd, Stratford, 1995, 95p4-963 — *Stratford Station, Great Eastern Rd, Stratford, Newham,1995, 95p4-963*

I’m unsure what this railway building to the east of the station was, perhaps a 1930s signal box. Parts of this area have now been redeveloped, and this has been behind fences for more than ten years and could stil be there, as least in part.

*King George V Dock, Woolwich Manor Way, North Woolwich, Newham, 1995, 95p9-171*

Finally four pictures from a walk along Woolwich Manor Way, this taken looking westwards along the south side of the King George V Dock. You can see the bridge over the dock entrance at right and the City Airport terminal and Canary Wharf at the end of the dock.

*Royal Albert Dock Basin, Woolwich Manor Way, North Woolwich, Newham, 1995, 95p9-161*

At left is the old swing bridge that took the road over the dock entrance from the basin. To its right is the elevated DLR and the pumping station at the centre of the Gallions roundabout. Further on only two buildings were standing along the side of the Basin, the Gallions Hotel and the Royal Docks Pumping Station.

*Containers, Woolwich Manor Way, North Woolwich, Newham, 1995, 95p9-162*

Land to the south of the Royal Albert Dock Basin just east of Woolwich Manor Way.

*King George V Lock, Woolwich Manor Way, North Woolwich, Newham, 1995, 95p9-153*

This swing bridge across the dock entrance is still there.

*Royal Victoria Dock, Silvertown, Newham, 1995, 95p11-262*

This was taken from Silvertown Way, looking across the Royal Victoria Dock. There are still cranes along the dockside here but the foreground now has flats. The Millenium Mills are still there, but there is nothing in the picture where the Excel Centre now stands and none of the other new developments on the north side of the dock. The council flats at the right have been demolished.

You can see these and some other colour pictures I took in 1995 at 1995 London Colour.

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Barging on Bow Creek: On Wednesday 12 October 2011 I was pleased to get paid to go back to Bow Creek and take photographs of a working barge on Bow Creek in Poplar.

Bow Creek is the lower part of the River Lea, between Bow Locks and the River Thames. Bow Locks mark the southern end of the Lea Navigation and since London’s oldest canal, the Limehouse Cut opened in 1770, most canal traffic took advantage of this to take a more direct route to the Thames and avoid the dangerous and meandering tidal Bow Creek.

The River Lea remains tidal some miles above Bow Lock, but this tidal section is separate from the navigation, although there are various channels and locks such as City Mill Lock and Carpenters Lock on the Olympic site which link the two.

Bow Creek continued to be used for navigation, including for bring coal to West Ham Power Station and the huge Imperial Gas Light & Coke Company gas works at Bromley-by-Bow.

But the gas works closed in 1976 although its gasholders remain – they were still in use for gas storage until 2010. (I went inside the site to photograph them in 2022.) Planning permission has now been granted for 2,200 new homes on the site, retaining the seven gasholders. The gas works dock is now Cody Dock, a creative and community hub with moorings and a short walk from the DLR at Star Lane, hosting many intersting events.

West Ham Power Station ended production in 1983 and was then demolished to build a business park. In the lower sections of Bow Creek there were still a number of timber yards and a ship repair business still using the creek at least in the 1980s, but I think all all commercial traffic has now ended.

Much was made during the construction of the Olympic site of the use of barges to carry waste away from the area, and a new lock was built at great expense on the Prescott Channel at Three Mills Green, but I think barges were only used for PR photographs and the huge majority of waste was taken out by lorries.

So I was pleased to hear that “the people cleaning up the gas works site at Poplar … were using barges to carry out the highly toxic soil from the site* and “… “was delighted to be given a commission to go and photograph the barging.”

*This is what a rubbish recycling plant looks like*

On My London Diary I write more about my relationship with the River Lea which had begun in 1981 when “I heard a story on the radio that commercial barge traffic was about to come to an end on the Lea Navigation, and decided to travel across London to record its last days.” From then I carried out a major project on the river, but was disappointed to have a funding application turned down.

I returned to the River around ten years later and again in the early 2000s, with more frequent visits after the Olympic bid was successful – although access to the main site was soon impossible. In 2010 I published Before the Olympics, ISBN: 978-1-909363-00-7 with over 200 pictures from the source to the Thames.

The My London Diary post also describes my experience on the visit – how I had to dress up to take the pictures – and that although I’d been promised I would have half an hour to take photographs it actually ended up as 11 minutes.

After taking the pictures – both for the project PR and myself – I had the rest of the day to take a walk along Bow Creek again and made my way to the Thames on the Greenwich meridian, where I found “a new marker installed in the Virginia Quay estate next to West India Docks station, built since I carried out my ‘Meridian Project‘ in the 1990s and made an unsuccessful bid to create a’Meridian Walk’ to mark the new millennium.” Now there is a sculpture trail, The Line, which in part follows Bow Creek – and includes work at Cody Dock.

All pictures in this post are from Wednesday 12 October 2011. There are many more pictures from my walk as well as the barging at Barging on Bow Creek

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Tag: Poplar Gas Works

1995 Colour – Poplar, Bow, Leyton, North Woolwich & Silvertown

Barging on Bow Creek – 2011