No New Coal Rally and March: On Sunday 3rd August I took a train to Rochester in Kent to photograph a rally in the town of Rochester from which people were marching to the Climate Camp was at Kingsnorth on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent where E.ON were intending to build the country’s first new coal-fired power station in 30 years.
I wasn’t able to attend the Climate Camp itself as I was leaving for Glasgow early the following morning so I left the marchers on their way to the site, seven miles away.
There was a large police presence at the rally and for the march, and later at Kingsnorth a number of protesters were arrested, with others assaulted by police who carried out a repressive action against the campers.
Press who had gone to cover the event were stopped and searchers, some multiple times and were subjected to both obvious and secret filming, as well as being pushed and shoved by police who demanded unnecessary personal information. Months later Kent Police admitted they had been wrong to film journalists, but claimed it was hard to tell them from the protesters – despite the fact that they all wore or showed the police-recognised UK Press Cards.
E.ON’s proposals to build a new and highly polluting power station at Kingsnorth had gone largely unnoticed in the media until the Climate Camp brought the issue to national attention. The over-reaction by the police helped to raise its profile, as did the trail of the Kingsnorth Six, activists arrested for causing an alleged £30,000 damage to one of the chimneys of the existing coal-fired in October 2007 and charged with criminal damage.
The activists claimed they had “lawful excuse” for their actions in that they carried it out to help prevent the much greater damage that a new coal-fired power station would cause by accelerating climate change.
Their trial heard evident from five defence witnesses, one of them Professor James Hansen, a former climate change adviser to the US White House, who stated that the social cost of emitting a tonne of CO2 was around £50. He estimated that a new coal-fired power station would cause around £1 million worth of damage per day it ran.
In truth the activists had not actually damaged the chimney significantly, but had simply painted the word ‘Gordon‘ on it, but they were acquitted in September 2008 because the jury found the damage they did to the smokestack was outweighed by the harm done to the planet by emissions from the power station.
E.ON was forced to abandon its plans largely because of the substantial public protests and criticism much of it arising from the publicity given to the Climate Camp and the trial.
The UK establishment were appalled by the verdict, and we have recently seen part of their reaction to this in the recent trial of Just Stop Oil activists who were judged to have committed contempt of court for attempting to introduce similar issues in their defence and then given draconian sentences for their peaceful protest. The law is meant to protect the interests of the rich and powerful not the planet.
You can read more about the rally in Rochester and the march towards Kingsnorth on My London Diary. One Climate Camp Caravan had started from Heathrow a week ago and another, the Stop Incineration Climate Camp Caravan had been travelling from Brighton, both demonstrating at various related sites along their routes and they met on Sunday morning in the middle of Rochester for a ‘No New Coal’ Rally attended by around 300 people.
After the rally the protesters set off to march to Kingsnorth and I went with them across the Medway and up the long hill in Strood before leaving them and returning to Strood station.
AxeDrax Wood Burning & Student Housing: Today, 19th October, is the International Day of Action Against Big Biomass (IDoA) calling for an end to climate-wrecking tree burning in power stations, and I hope to be attending a protest in London at Barclay’s Bank in Canary Wharf at noon calling for an end of the £billions in subsidies given to the world’s biggest tree burner, Drax, for burning trees and polluting communities. In 2016 I photographed a protest against Drax and another against providers of high cost (and high profit) housing for students.
AxeDrax protest against Biomass & Coal – Westminster
Back on Wednesday 19th Oct 2016 protesters came to the newly formed Dept of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to urge the government to end the green subsidies to Drax as scientific research had make it clear that producing electricity from Biofuels is harmful to the climate, forests, biodiversity and people.
Biofuel Watch and London Biomassive, both part of the Axe Drax campaign had brought with them posters, banners and a cooling tower and were accompanied by the Draxosaurus dinosaur.
They demanded the government end the £600million a year subsidy Drax gets for its polluting activities and spend the money on measures such as building insulation to cut demand for electricity and to support the use of real low-carbon renewable electricity generation.
Drax is an old and inefficient power generator, built for coal, still used in two of its six boilers in 2016, though in April 2023 they announced using coal had come to an end. The four boilers converted to wood pellet use waste 60% of the energy created in waste heat to the atmosphere and into the cooling water taken from and discharged into the nearby river Ouse. Without the huge annual subsidies it gets from our electricity bills it would not be viable. It should be closed as soon as possible and its workers trained for new green jobs which the huge subsidies currently spent on keeping this highly polluting facility open could provide.
As well as being generously awarded for adding excessive amounts of carbon and thus increasing global temperatures, Drax also creates large amounts of highly dangerous particulates, releasing over 400 tons a year into the environment in the UK. And Drax also creates environmental havoc in the areas which supply its wood – and until 2023, coal.
Much of the wood comes from destroying forests in the Southeast of the United States, and Drax also supplies wood to be burnt in other countries. It has mills to turn freshly cut trees into wood pellets in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Planting the monoculture pine forests needed to supply these has been at the expense of the clear cut felling of older diverse forests and replacing them with sterile plantations with little undergrowth and wildlife.
Drax also buys wood pellets from the world’s largest pellet producer Enviva which cuts down large areas of highly diverse coastal hardwood forests in the US with an incredible loss of bio-diversity. Similar environment degradation and destruction of habitats is taking place in other countries around the world where Drax sources pellets. Their transportation to Drax also produces large amounts of carbon dioxide.
The pellet plants which produce wood largely from whole trees and complete felling of large forest areas to be burnt at Drax also generate huge amounts of air pollution both at Drax in Yorkshire and Drax at the US pellet plants were Drax has had to pay large fines for this. Most of these plants are in deprived, majority-Black communities.
At the protest at the BEIS we heard a from a Colombian woman about the calamitous effect of open-cast coal-mining at the giant open-pit Cerrejón coal mine in La Guajira, northern Colombia. jointly owned by Anglo American, BHP Billiton and Glencore Xstrata.
Drax may now have ended burning coal and imports ended in 2020, but following the closure of UK mines all of the coal burnt there came from abroad, including from Colombia.
The Cerrejón mine is in Wayúu indigenous territory and the local people were not consulted when mining began there 30 years ago. Their land was simply seized and communities forcibly displaced in violation of their constitutional land rights and there was no proper compensation. Pollution and dust from the coal mine continues to contaminate the air and water supplies badly affecting traditional lifestyles; soil pollution leads to failed crops, and fishing areas have been contaminated.
Drax also had a carbon capture and storage project for its biomass plants, but this is only based on very limited trials and seems highly unlikely to ever have a significant effect, not least because the necessary infrastructure for the removal and storage of any carbon dioxide captured seems unlikely ever to be available. And by the time both the removal and disposal could possibly be implemented on any scale there will be absolutely no economic justification for retaining expensive sources of power such as wood burning rather than very much cheaper renewable generation.
I went on from the BEIS protest to Russell Square where students were meeting to discuss student housing. Once halls of residence were largely an at-cost service provided by universities, but have now become big business for private developers.
After some speeches they marched behind the #RENTSTRIKE banner to briefly occupy the nearby office of Unite Students, a FTSE 250 company housing around 50,000 students in the UK.
The event was a part of a nationwide series of protests taking place as investors and developers were discussing the rich profits to be made from students at the MIPIM conference, the world’s largest real estate market event in Cannes.
Many of the large new blocks of student housing have flats with rents larger than the entire student loan, higher than all but students from very wealthy families can afford, and are largely for letting to rich overseas students studying here.
River Thames – Battersea Riverside: Tuesday 14th August 2012 was a nice day with blue sky and some interesting clouds in the sky and I had an hour or two to spare.
So I took a walk from Battersea Bridge to Wandsworth along the Thames Path.
Battersea Bridge crosses the river to Chelsea and I photographed the views over the river towards Lots Road Power Station and Chelsea Harbour.
This is a stretch of the river I’ve walked quite a few times over the years. It’s an easy journey for me to get there but it is also one of the more interesting and varied to walk.
When I first walked this way in the 1970s this was an industrial area, with factories and wharves and limited access to the river. Now the Thames Path takes you along the riverside with just some short diversions.
Most of the riverside is now lined with blocks of expensive flats rather than the flour mills, oil depots and a power station at Fulham I photographed back then.
Silver Belle Flour, mill, Battersea, 1991
There are still a few traces of that industrial past, though some were being demolished on both sides of the river back in 2012.
Demolition at Fulham Wharf
The sand and gravel works immediated upstream from Wandsworth Bridge was still there and still working when I last visited the area a few months ago, although I expect before long it will also be another luxury block of flats.
I think the best images I made that day before catching a train at Wandsworth Town were probably some panoramic images I’ve not included in this post as they don’t fit well in its format. You can see these and others from the walk on My London Diary at Battersea Riverside.
Fukushima Anniversary Questions Nuclear Power Safety – London, 9th March 2013
On 11th March 2011 Japan suffered its most powerful recorded earthquake. The Fukushima power plants fusion reactors were immediately shut down and diesel generators started to pump the coolant needed to keep the reactors safe.
But the earthquake generated a tsunami, with giant 45ft waves which swept over the sea walls of the power plant, flooding and disabling the emergency generators. As Wikipedia states “The resultant loss of reactor core cooling led to three nuclear meltdowns, three hydrogen explosions, and the release of radioactive contamination in Units 1, 2 and 3 between 12 and 15 March.“
Around 110,000 people were evacuated from a 12 mile exclusion zone around the plant because of airborne radioactive contamination, with many losing their livelihoods as well as their homes. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) who owned the site are still carrying out necessary cleanup of the site and removal of the radioactive fuel debris is expected to take until around 2040 or 2050.
A TEPCO report in 2000 had recommended improved safety measures against seawater flooding, designed to stop tsunami waves greater than those that caused the 2011 disaster, but these and several other warnings were dismissed by the company as unrealistic. Earlier scientist had expressed concerns about the dangers of building nuclear power plants in Japan because of the earthquake problems.
Japanese expatriates in London began a series of weekly protests against nuclear power at the Japanese Embassy on Piccadilly and also protested outside the TEPCO offices in Berkeley Square. The protest on Saturday 9th March was was organised by ‘Japanese Against Nuclear UK’ together with ‘Kick Nuclear’ and CND.
I went to photograph the protesters as they met up for the march at Hyde Park Corner. They intended to make brief protests at several locations including the Japanese embassy, the EDF office and Downing St before ending with a rally and final protest opposite Parliament in Old Palace Yard.
Many of them had come with sunflowers, a symbol of renewable clean energy, particularly solar energy. There were several banners with the smiley sun symbol and the message ‘Nuclear Power? No Thanks’ and a group of people encased in fluorescent yellow barrels with a radioactive danger symbol and labelled ‘Radioactive Waste.’
Some of the Japanese protesters had brought Japanese masks used to hide faces at protests in Japan against Fukushima, although many preferred to have sunflowers painted on their faces.
Among those who had come to protest were some who had come on a coach from Somerset, where they were opposing plans by EDF to build a new power station at Hinkley Point. The plans for the first new nuclear reactor in Britain for over 30 years were approved by the EDF board and the UK government in 2016. The first reactor arrived there last month though the project is several years behind time and is now expected by EDF to be completed in 2028.
Although some environmentalists have backed nuclear as a necessary part of our energy supply if we are to cut carbon emissions, it seems likely that increases in the efficiency and the continuing drop in costs of renewable alternatives will make the new power station a huge white elephant, producing electricity at a much higher cost guaranteed by the UK government to the developers.
I left the protesters as the march was about to start to go to the Million Women Rise march which was taking place at the same time. You can see more about that at Million Women Rise.
My next opportunity for a walk in South London was on Sunday 5th February 1989 a week after my previous walk. I returned to Camberwell, getting off the bus from Vauxhall on Peckham Road at Camberwell Green and walked down Grove Lane.
The Grove House Tavern, Mary Boast Walk, Camberwell Grove, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1i-12
At the end of an alley leading to Camberwell Grove I found the Grove House Tavern, then a Taylor Walker pub. I liked the way its chimney seemed to complement the spire of St Giles’s Church on the other side of my frame and the rather elegant pair of houses facing the end of Mary Boast walk at 53 and 55 Camberwell Grove, both Grade II listed along with many other houses on that street.
Mary Joyce Boast (1921-2010) was a local history librarian, and became a great expert on the history of Southwark. She was the borough’s first Local Studies Librarian, but had retired a few years before I first visited the John Harvard Library on Borough High St. I think this passage was unnamed when I took this picture and only got a name after her death in 2010.
The fence at left stops the balls for a tennis club. There was a pub on this corner in 1826, though the building in my picture dates from around a century later and has a rather unusual Mansard roof. For a while it became the Grand Union, but was renamed Grove House in 2017 and was taken over by new management in 2021.
The curved building reflected in the glass here is the former Odeon Cinema on the corner of Coldharbour Lane. I had walked back up Grove Lane and then along Daneville Road to here. The handwritten sign ‘CLOSED EARLY – Gone Fishing’ seemed to me to reflect a very healthy attitude to life.
Looking back up Daneville Rd from the corner with Denmark Hill I photographed the faded wall sign for DAREN, the Best Brown Bread. Only faint traces of this ‘ghost sign’ now remain. The ‘lower ‘Great Expectations’ section was painted over in white and then around 2010 with a colourful graffiti mural, perhaps related to the GX Gallery to its right down Daneville Road. Later this too was painted over, and became ‘Muhammad Ali’ after his death in 2016, only to be over-painted again more recently.
‘Daren The Best Brown Bread’ was a non-wholemeal brown loaf baked from flour ground at the Daren Mill at Dartford in Kent, at the time it was painted as big a brand as Hovis. The mill went bankrupt in the 1930s and the brand merged with Hovis. Personally I think their loaves are rather like eating sawdust and stick to proper wholemeal, fortunately home-made.
Former Odeon cinema, Denmark Hill, Coldharbour Lane, Camberwell, Lambeth, Southwark, 1989 89-2a-01
Looking across Denmark Hill with Coldharbour Lane and Valmar Ave visible at right. The Odeon here was the largest Odeon built in London and opened in 1939, seating almost 2,500. It had entrances on both Denmark Hill and Coldharbour Lane, and had shops on the corner here. It closed in 1975 and was empty until taken over briefly in 1981 by Dickie Dirt selling cut-price jeans and other clothing. But they went bust and the former cinema was empty for another ten years until demolished in 1993, when a block of flats for homeless young people was built on the site.
Tony’s Corner Shop, 108a Denmark Hill, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-2a-61
Tony’s is still there on the corner of an alley off Denmark Hill, though the former cinema which housed the Camberwell branch of Dickie Dirts which can be glimpsed at top right has been replaced by a block of flats. The alley, Coldharbour Place, leads through to Coldharbour Lane. There are no longer windows on the side of the shop which is covered other and now painted with graffiti.
House, Grove Lane, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-2a-63
I think I may have been attracted by the name to walk down Love Lane, though I took no pictures on it. On Grove Lane I photographed Cliftonville at No 83, a Grade II listed early 19th century villa with rather unusual ogge or ogive curves on the door and windows.
William Booth College, Salvation Army, Champion Park, Denmark Hill, Southwark, 1989 89-2a-66
I walked down Grove Lane and turned right into Champion Park to admire the Salvation Army’s William Booth College. Designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the college opened in 1929 and is a memorial to William Booth who died in 1912. It was completed in 1932 and has a similar monumental impressiveness to Scott’s power stations at Battersea and Bankside (now Tate Modern.)
The simplicity of this building was not by design but because of budget cuts which fortunately meant that originally planned Gothic stone detailing could not be afforded. This resulted in the Grade II listed building becoming a spiritual power station. It has recently been renovated and is still in use by the Salvation Army.
Catherine Booth statue, William Booth College, Salvation Army, Champion Park, Denmark Hill, Southwark, 1989. 89-2a-41
Mrs Catherine Booth was the wife of William Booth and co-founder with him of the Salvation Army. Known as ‘The Army Mother’ she died – or rather was ‘Promoted to glory October 4th 1890’. This sculpture by George Wade was erected in front of the new college in 1929.
This picture shows more of that Gothic stonework details that were meant to be rather more widely applied.
Here is my diary entry for the day, now 14 years ago, reproduced from the My London Diary web page. I’ve included the headings for the four events which in the original are separated from the text in a different column, and a few more of the pictures, but there are many more on the linked pages. The original format makes it more difficult to associate pictures with text, particularly on mobile phones.
Stop Kingsnorth – No New Coal
E.ON Office, Pall Mall, London.
Police kept demonstrators back against the wall and refused me permissio to work sensibly
Friday was a busy afternoon for demonstrations in London. I started in Pall Mall, outside the E.ON offices. This power company is a massive producer of pollutants, and its latest plans, recently approved by Medway Council, are for a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth.
Currently this is awaiting government approval, but since it entirely contradicts their stated environmental policies it seems almost inevitable it will be given the go-ahead. When I left soon after the start of the demo there were perhaps 50 people present, but more may have come later.
Police were being rather officious in keeping the pavement clear, impeding myself and another photographer trying to cover the event. My reminder that police were supposed to allow the press to do their job was disregarded and I was told I was not allowed to stand on the edge of the pavement in the gaps between the police, although I would clearly not have been obstructing the pavement or getting in the way of the police carrying out their duty. So much for cooperation. more pictures
Kenyans protest against Ugandan President
Ugandan High Commission, Trafalgar Sq, London.
The demonstration was just starting as I ran by
From there I headed up to Whitehall, on my way passing the start of a demonstration by Kenyans against the Ugandan President Museveni, who has lent support to the fixing of the elections in Kenya. more pictures
Pakistanis protest at Musharraf London Visit
Whitehall, London.
Waiting for Musharraf to arrive
In Whitehall, a number of Pakistani protesters were waiting the arrival of President Musharraf who was expected to arrive by car at the Banqueting House. I took a few pictures and then left, deciding that I was unlikely to be able to get a decent picture when he arrived given the level of security.
One of the other photographers present mentioned that he had no difficulty in photographing Musharraf in Leicester, where he was allowed to be close enough to be able to reach out and touch him. It wasn’t clear to us why photographers are thought to be so much more of a risk in London more pictures
Feminist Fightback protest CMF Abortion lies
Christian Medical Fellowship, Southwark, London
Hanging washing on Marshalsea Street outside the CMF office
Finally I headed for the Borough, where Feminist Fightback were demonstrating outside the offices of the Christian Medical Foundation. The CMF gave misleading evidence to the Parliamentary Committee which was considering possible reforms of the abortion act last year, and a number of its members with little direct scientific knowledge also gave evidence as if they were expert witnesses. They also support (and host) the minority report, which is in part based on their unreliable evidence.
In particular the CMF is still pressing the government to reduce the current 24 week time limit on abortions. FF fixed up a washing line outside the CMF offices on which to hang cloth pieces with a number of their slogans and demands.
The CMF issued a press release stating that they welcomed the demonstrators and supported their right to protest – and also offered soft drinks and biscuits, as well as coming out to talk to the demonstrators (and film and photograph them.)
I think most of us would welcome a lowering in the number of abortions, but the way to do this is not by stricter laws on abortion. Similarly, the best approach to reducing the already small number of late abortions is to reduce some of the procedural bottlenecks that lead to delay in the system.
The practical arguments seem almost entirely on the side of the measures proposed by the feminists in simply being more effective and less hypocritical. But I also felt very much more at ease talking to the feminists than the christians, who somehow seemed to exude a self-righteousness that rather made my flesh creep. I’m with Charlotte Bronte when she wrote “self-righteousness is not religion.”
For various reasons the pictures in my albums online are not always in the order that they are taken, but it often makes more sense to write about them in the same order as I walked around taking them – which I can normally see from the contact sheets I made at the time. Usually too these contact sheets identify at least the rough locations of the images, though I often have to resort to maps and sometimes Google Streetview to find the precise spot. Chelsea hasn’t changed radically since I took these pictures but in some other areas this can be impossible. How I wish we had GPS on cameras back in 1986 – and I’m surprised so few cameras incorporate it now.
Westfield Park, Tetcott Rd, Lots Rd Power Station, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5j-16
Most people know Lots Road because of the power station of the same name which was built to power the District Railway (now the District Line.) Completed in 1905, it enabled the line, most of which in central London is underground, to convert from steam to electric traction, which must have made it very much more pleasant to use.
The power station, which has Chelsea Creek on one side and Lots Road on the other finally closed in 2002 and the area on both sides of the creek was developed as Chelsea Waterfront. The development only began in 2013, delayed both by having to get planning permission from both Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham and then by the financial crash and was finally due to be completed in 2021. The power station should by now be “193 highest quality luxury loft-style apartments together with high-class restaurants, bar, cafes, boutique shops and a health & fitness club.”
As the pictures show, I wandered a little around the area before returning east along Cremorne Road and Cheyne Walk to Battersea Bridge where I took a bus back to Clapham Junction.
I had wandered perhaps up Tadema Road to Cremorne Road some way west from its junction with Lots Road to get to Cornwall Mansions at left of this picture, which is looking east past the junction with Edith Grove with a small part of the World’s End Estate towering in the right half of the picture.
I walked back east on Cremorne Road to the junction with Lots Road and back down on to the riverside Cremorne Gardens. A house was built here around 1750 and later became home to the 1st Viscount Cremorne, an Irish peer from County Monaghan who gave it his name – which came from the Irish for ‘Mountains of Morne’. Charles Random De Berenger, Baron De Beaufain, (actually a fraud called Charles Random) bought the house and grounds here in 1831, turning into a sports club and adding some popular attractions including balloon ascents. The business failed in 1843 and was reopened in 1845 by James Ellis as the Cremorne Pleasure Gardens, with entertainment including concerts, fireworks, balloon ascents and galas. It closed in 1875, losing its licence with accusations that it was a “nursery of every kind of vice”. Much of the gardens were then built over then and later in the 20th century by the 1960s Cremorne Estate. A small riverside garden was re-established and opened in 1981, and the gate which had originally been at the King’s Road end of the Cremorne gardens was re-erected here, having spent the interim at Watney’s Brewery.
Chelsea Wharf, River Thames, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5k-53
I think this view was taken looking upriver from one of the two landing stages at Cremorne Gardens.
Houseboats, River Thames, Chelsea Embankment, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5k-55
I think this view is from Old Ferry Wharf, which is actually on Cheyne Walk. The bridge is Battersea Bridge.
Houseboats, River Thames, Chelsea Embankment, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5k-42-positive_2400
These houses at left are on the corner with Blantyre St. The blue plaque at No 120 marks where Sylvia Pankhurst (1882-160) lived as an impoverished art student from 1906-09.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s house at 98 Cheyne Walk. Some of his best-known pictures show the Thames at Cremorne Gardens. The house next door to the right, hardly visible from the road, was the home of both Sir Marc Isambard Brunel and his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Click on any image to see a larger version in the album 1988 London Photos, from where you can browse the whole album.
Bow Creek, West Ham Power Station, East India Dock Rd, Tower Hamlets, Newham, 1989
Bow Creek truly became magical as it passed under the East India Dock Road, and although it has now lost much of the interest on its banks, the incredible flattened S-shape as it curves before reaching the Thames remains impressive.
Bow Creek, West Ham Power Station, East India Dock Rd, Newham, 1989
The creek bends almost 90 degrees to flow roughly south under the road at Ironbridge Wharf (the iron bridge long replaces by more modern concrete structures) only to take a hairpin 180 degree bend to return almost back to the road before sweeping another 180 degrees down to go over the elevated Lower Lea Crossing. From there its convolutions continue with a 90 turn to the east and another to the south before entering the Thames as Leamouth, around 900 metres away as the gull flies, but 1900 by boat.
Bow Creek, East India Dock Rd, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, Newham, 1982
Its course defines two very different peninsulas; to the west on largely undeveloped and now a nature reserve, with the DLR crossing to it on a viaduct and running up it, and on the east an industrial site, then occupied by the edible oil company Pura Foods (earlier Acatos & Hutcheson) and now the site of the City Island development.
Timber yard, Essex Wharf, Bow Creek, East India Dock Rd, Newham, Tower Hamlets, 1989
On the eastern bank of the river south of Canning Town station is another so-called peninsula, the Limmo Penisula, which became a major Crossrail works site and is now a housing development. The name was previously used for the whole area around this part of Bow Creek and the nature reserve, now the Bow Creek ecology park was first called the Limmo Peninsula ecological park. It is an area of confusing names, with the new development south of the Lower Lea Crossing taking its name, Goodluck Hope, from the area now called City Island. It was also easy to get a little confused by the area itself with the wandering of the river, and even when writing this post I had problems sorting out pictures just from the appropriate area.
Pipe Bridge, Bow Creek, Tower Hamlets, Newham, 1989
The pipe bridge possibly carried gas from the nearby Poplar Gas works to Canning Town; downstream was a disused railway bridge. A new ‘blue bridge’ was later erected between these two (it appears in my 1992 pictures) and the pipe bridge was taken down though its brick piers left in place – now only the eastern one remains.
Timber Yard, Bow Creek, Tower Hamlets, 1989
The pictures in this post were all taken on or close to the East India Dock Road where it crosses Bow Creek, beginning with a couple looking up river and with the rest looking towards the south. In later posts I’ll cover the area further down Bow Creek which played an important part in the industrial (and footballing) history of the nation, and return with the creek back almost to the road.
Bow Creek, Leamouth Rd, Leamouth, Tower Hamlets, Newham, 1982
The pictures here are from visits to the area in 1982 and 1989, but I also took some in 1983, and returned again in 1992, mainly to make some panoramic views, which I’ll write about in a later post. You can see more of my pictures in my Flickr album – this area is on page 4 – and clicking on any of the above pictures will also take you to the larger version there.
Back in the 1980s it wasn’t possible to walk beside Bow Creek from Bow Locks south to the East India Dock road, as the banks were occupied by various industrial and commercial sites, including two gas works and West Ham power station. And although there have been plans by the councils for many years, even today you can only walk down on the Newham bank as far as Cody Dock, on a path opened to the public some years ago with the ridiculous name of the Fatwalk, but since renamed. There is a tantalising walkway visible continuing past the dock along the former power station bank, but this is still closed to the public.
While this was a limitation, it was also an opportunity to explore the two areas where roads ran close (or not too close) to Bow Creek to both the east in West Ham and west in Bromley and Poplar, and I was rewarded by some images I found interesting, though parts of my walks were along fume laden streets with heavy traffic.
Tweed House, a tall block of council flats on the Blackwall Tunnel Approach Road next to the Limehouse Cut enabled me to take some pictures which I more recently stitched together to create two panoramas of the area – the individual pictures are also in the Flickr album. Click to see the larger versions on Flickr.
From various places both on to the east and west of Bow Creek I found rather satisfyingly bleak views of the distant power station, including one with a young mother with a small baby in a pram.
Others were emptier still, like this
or more minimal and just occasionally rather threatening; some streets around here featured in crime films and TV dramas of the era, gangster London.
But there was also a little chance for fun, with a cafeteria with two giant cooling towers to take away the cooking fumes and the unlikely name of Oasis.
Poplar Gas Works was on a rather smaller scale to Bromley-by-Bow, but its gas holders still dominated the working class housing around it. Two young girls playing on the grass came to see what I was doing and insisted on being photographed, though I perhaps should have stepped back a foot or two to avoid cropping their feet to get the gasholder in the frame.
At East India Dock Road I was able to return to Bow Creek – and things got even more interesting (and although very different they still are) as I hope to show you in the next installment of my work from the Flick album River Lea – Lea Navigation – 1981-92 – the pictures above are all on Page 4.
Clicking on any of the images above should take you to a larger version on Flickr, and you can also go on to explore the album from there.
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.
I suppose for many people Marylebone is the name of a station (though some will connect it more with its cricket club.) The station was the last London terminus to be built, opened in 1899 and never completed, with only four platforms of eight ever built. It lost most of its express services in 1960 and was only saved from closure and demolition by a thriving commuter service from Aylesbury. I think the train here must be one of those used on that route. Marylebone provided one of the few successes of the privatisation of British Rail, generally a triumph of dogma over sense, with the setting up in 1996 of Chiltern Railways. Among other services they provide a pleasant route to stations to Birmingham with comfortable trains and some very cheap tickets, part of the old ‘Great Central’ Network which could probably have been revived much more sensibly and at far lower cost than the ridiculous HS2 project.
I had wrongly captioned this image earlier, thinking it showed the mouth of the Maida Hill tunnel, but although it was taken very close to there it is actually looking away from it, and the black hole at the end of the water is the bridge under Lisson Grove. The tunnel is hidden from my view here, some way down and a few yards to the right of where I was standing.
I went down the steps leading to the canal towpath and took a picture of a boat entering the tunnel. The previous image shows the top of the structure crossing the canal over the mouth of the tunnel which carries electrical cables from the nearby Grove Road power station in St. John’s Wood which closed in 1969 – with the site now housing two major National Grid sub-stations.
There is no towpath in the 249m long tunnel, which is only wide enough for a single narrow boat; boats have to wait at the entrance until the tunnel is clear.
Here you see the canal under the cable bridge.
And this is the long wall of the power station site in Lodge Road. Although it looks very forbidding I’m told it was – at least in the old days – a very pleasant place to work. Coal used to come to the power station from a siding off the lines into Marylebone Station, though possibly at some time it also came by canal.
The Volkswagen workshops were opposite, and a little further west on the south side of the canal were the works of the confusingly named Thames Bank Iron Company, Iron Founders and Heating Engineers who made radiators and other heating equipment, and, according to their lorry parked in front of the building next to some pipes, Drainage Systems.
The pictures show a rather different side of Marylebone – and indeed London – than we now normally think of. They are a stone’s throw from the leafy streets of St John’s Wood with its billionaire oligarchs and from Lords Cricket Ground. But until a few years before I made these pictures, London was very much a manufacturing city. Things had been changing for some years, but it was Thatcher that really put the boot in, moving the country away from manufacturing and into services. And this de-industrialisation was one of the themes behind my pictures of a post-industrial London.
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.
