Ratcliff Highway and Limehouse Basin: My first photographic walk in 1990 came at the end of the Christmas and New Year season on 6th January 1990 when I returned to Limehouse for another walk. I’d taken quite a few pictures there back in 1984 and I thought it was time for another extensive visit. Getting there was easier now that the DLR ran to Limehouse. I left the station and walked down Branch Road.
Obviously not built as a Scout HQ, but something rather more official, and this was built in 1898 as the Stepney Borough Coroner’s Court.
Branch Road was apparently earlier called Horseferry Branch Road and led to a ferry across the Thames here – and Branch Road still leads to a road called Horseferry Rd. An ancient ferry ran from Ratcliff Cross Stairs and would have taken horses and carts as well as people across to Rotherhithe. You can still go down to the foreshore here from Narrow Street down the Grade II listed stairs but of course there is no ferry. The listing is probably more for the historic interest of the site – the stairs themselves are are relatively modern concrete replacement and the ancient causeway here apparently disappeared around 2000.
Tubular Barriers, The Queens Head, The Highway, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 89-12d-34
At 491 The Highway – formerly known as Ratcliffe Highway – close to the corner with Butcher Row – the Queens Head pub to the right of this view – was demolished soon after I made this picture in 1990, along with the rest of these buildings. At the left is a sign for the Limehouse Link tunnel, built between 1989 and 1993 and I think this was a storage yard for the work. The western end of the tunnel is a short distance to the east.
Another part of the Tubular Barriers site on The Highway which I think I photographed mainly for the graffiti ‘ELECTROCUTE MURDOCH’ on its wall. I think this was at the corner with Butcher Row. Though the company name also made me think of the Mike Oldfield album Tubular Bells.
There had been a particularly bitter and hard fought (sometimes literally) fight over the opening of Murdoch’s News International print works at Wapping in 1986, following the dismissal of all 6000 of the print workers at the previous Fleet Street hot metal print plant.
Works, 503-9, The Highway, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 89-12d-25
Control of the development of the Docklands areas was in 1981 taken away from the local authorities and given to the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) a quango agency set up by Margaret Thatcher’s Secretary of State for the Environment, Michael Heseltine. Although this resulted in a faster regeneration of the area this was largely driven by the interests of global capital and often went against the interests and needs of the local communities. This whole area was demolished around 1990. I did wonder if the three-storey building might be a former pub.
Works, 503-9, The Highway, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 89-12d-12
Notices on the shop-front at right read
‘DOCKLANDS LOCAL PLUMBERS & ELECTRICIANS
CAN THE LDDC LEGALLY STEAL OUR LAND? 57 MEN TO LOSE THEIR JOBS’
The LDDC had wide ranging powers and legalised thefts such as this. It was an area in need of redevelopment and the LDDC got this moving at pace, but it would have been far better to have found ways to retain former businesses and provide more social housing and other community assets.
Considerable building work was taking place around the lock linking Limehouse Basin to the River Thames.
This is the ship lock and there had once been two narrower barge locks a short distance west. The ship lock was built slantwise to make for and easier entry by larger ships (up to 2000 tons) from the river and was a part of its enlargement in 1869. The lock had two compartments with three gates. In 1990 the outer gates to the Thames were still in place (in pictures not yet digitised) but no longer in use and the other two replaced by this much narrower single lock, suitable for the smaller vessels now using the Basin as a Marina.
A building for Limehouse Waterside and Marina on the corner of the 1869 Ship Lock and Limehouse Basin. Running across on the opposite side of the water is London’s third oldest railway viaduct, built in 1840 for the London and Blackwall Railway and now in use for the DLR.
Guantanamo, National Gallery, Elephant, Aylesbury & Lisa; Ten years ago Thursday 5th February 2015 was a long and interesting day for me, with a couple of protests, a short walk around London, an estate occupation and a memorable book launch.
Close Guantanamo – 8 Years of protest – US Embassy
A small group from the London Guantánamo Campaign was celebrating 8 years of holding monthly protests at the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square.
Among those protesting were four people who had been taking part in the protests there for 8 years.
No Privatisation At National Gallery – Trafalgar Square and DCMS, Whitehall
The National Gallery had told 400 of its 600 staff who are responsible for the security of the paintings and the public, provide information about the collection, organise school bookings and look after the millions of visitors each year that they are no longer to be employed by the gallery and will instead become employes of a private company.
They knocked at the door but management did not answer
A private company had already taken over “temporarily” to run services in a third of the gallery.
Workers at the gallery had staged a 5 day strike against the privatisation and were incensed when Candy Udwin, one of the senior PCS union reps and a member of the team taking part in negotiations with management at ACAS, was suspended, accused of breaching commercial confidentiality, and they demanded her re-instatement.
Candy Udwin
The National Gallery was then the only major museum or gallery in London still not paying the London Living Wage. Staff were already living on poverty pay and the privatisation would threaten pay and worsen the conditions – sick pay, holiday pay, pensions, hours of work etc – of these loyal and knowledgeable staff.
When nobody came to the door as they tried to deliver their 40,000 signature petition against privatisation a group went into the Sainsbury Wing to tray and deliver it. Security tried to get them to leave. Nobody from the gallery would come down to recieve the petition and eventually the strikers handed it over to the Head of Security who promised to deliver it to management personally.
Jeremy Corbyn joins the marchers
The strikers and their supporters then marched through Trafalgar Square and Whitehall to the Dept of Culture, Media and Sport, then in Parliament Street, where the minister concerned had agreed to receive a copy of the petition and three of them were allowed to take it in. Here there was a short rally with speakers including Jeremy Corbyn MP.
I made a few pictures as I walked from the Bakerloo Line station at Elephant & Castle to the Aylesbury Estate and afterwards on my way back to the station. The shopping centre has now been demolished and new buildings have sprung up on its site,
This strange building is an electricity substation which is still there, although there is no longer a roundabout around it. It was built as a memorial to Michael Faraday, ‘The Father of Electricity’ who was born a few hundred yards away in 1791.
Chartridge occupied since the previous Saturday in a protest for housing in London
Southwark Council’s Aylesbury Estate was one of the UK’s largest council estates, built between 1963 and 1977 with over 2,700 homes. Lack of proper maintenance by the council and its use by them as a sink estate had led to it getting a reputation for crime, exaggerated by its use in filming TV crime series and films there not least because of its convenient location.
Access to the occupied block – I didn’t attempt it
It was on the Aylesbury Estate that Tony Blair got in on the act making his first speech as Prime Minister promising to fix estates like this and improve conditions for the urban poor through regeneration of council estates.
‘Respect Aylesbury Ballot – Stop the Demolition Now!’ Residents voted overwhelming for refurbishment not redevelopment
The buildings were actually well-designed and structurally sound on a well-planned estate with plenty of green space, but having been built in the sixties and 70s needed bringing up to date particularly in terms of insulation and double glazing. Southwark Council had also repeatedly failed to carry out necessary maintenance, particularly on the district heating system which they had allowed to become unreliable. But many residents liked living on the estate and when given the choice voted by a large majority for refurbishment rather than redevelopment. I visited several homes on other occasions and was quite envious, and the residents clearly loved living there.
Southwark Council responded by claiming the refurbishment would cost several times more than independent estimates suggested and went ahead with plans to eventually demolish the lot. Given the large number of homes involved the process was expected to last 20 years (later increased to 25 and likely to take even longer.) The first fairly small phase was completed in 2013, and the homes that were occupied in 2015 were in Phase 2.
I wasn’t able to access the flats that were occupied as it would have meant a rather dangerous climb to the first floor which I decided was beyond me, but I did meet some of the occupiers and went with them and some local residents to distribute leaflets about a public meeting to other flats in the estate.
Many residents support the occupiers and knew that they would lose their comfortable homes in a good location when they are finally forced to move. Some will be rehoused by Southwark, though mainly in less convienient locations and smaller properties, but many are on short term tenancies which do not qualify them for rehousing and will have to find private rented accommodation elsewhere. Those who have acquired their flats will only be offered compensation at far less than the cost of any similar accommodation in the area and will have to move much further from the centre of London.
While the volunteers were posting leaflets on one of the upper floors of the largest block on the estate, Wendover, I took some pictures to show the extensive views residents enjoyed. This was hindered by the fact that the windows on the walkways were thick with dust, possibly not cleaned since the block was built and not opening enough to put a camera through. Then fortunately I found a broken window that give me a clear view.
Getting By – Lisa’s Book Launch – Young Foundation, Bethnal Green
Ken Loach, Jasmine Stone and Lisa McKenzie, author of ‘Getting By’ talk at the book launch
Lisa McKenzie’s book ‘Getting By‘ is the result of her years of study from the inside of the working class district of Nottingham where she lived and worked for 22 years, enabling her to view the area from the inside and to gather, appreciate and understand the feelings and motivations of those who live there in a way impossible for others who have researched this and similar areas.
Jasmine Stone speaks about Focus E15 and Lisa and others hold a Class War banner
On the post in My London Diary I write much more about the opening – and of course there are many more pictures as well as a little of my personal history.
Southwark Housing, Bermondsey & Rembrandt: On Thursday October 16th 2014 I photographed a march from the Elephant to Southwark Council Offices over the borough’s housing scandals, took some time off in Bermondsey to take some panoramic images and then covered a protest at the National Gallery against sponsorship of art exhibitions by companies such as Shell, G4S, BP and Serco.
Compulsory Purchase Orders for Southwark Councillors
Housing campaigners from Southwark marched from the Elephant and Council to Southwark Council Offices to serve ‘People’s Compulsory Purchase Orders‘ on the homes of the Council leader and other councillors who they say have accepted gifts from developers to sell off council estates at knockdown prices.
The shameful demolition of over 1200 homes in and close to the well-designed and largely popular Heygate estate has cost the borough dearly, with the costs to the council of ‘decanting’ the residents exceeding the knock-down price it charged the developers.
Of course the estate residents suffered more, losing their homes and being forced to move further out into the suburbs. Leaseholders were only offered roughly half the true market value of property in the area.
The demolition and redevelopment has meant the loss of over a thousand social homes, and the new properties on the site had already been advertised to overseas buyers in Singapore and elsewhere as second homes, investment properties, homes for wealthy overseas students studying here, buy-to-let etc. There are just a few so-called affordable units at 80% of market rates, still well above what most Londoners can actually afford.
The protesters met at the base of the Strata Tower, an ugly development of largely luxury flats with three wind turbines built into its roof for show – unable to produce electricity as when running they produce excessive vibration in flats at the top of the building. Facing them ‘One The Elephant‘ was going up, a 44 storey block of luxury flats with no social housing, and is being sold abroad, with ‘studio flats’ starting at around £320,000 or 640,000 Singapore dollars.
Southwark campaigners were joined by members of the Focus E15 ‘Housing for All campaign’ and their first stop for a brief protest was the Elephant Park Sales Office on the Walworth Rd. They then walked through several council estates to the north of the New Kent Road which are also attractive targets for developers who can make huge profits by demolishing them and building high price flats at much higher densities.
They continued through other council estates in the area to London Bridge Station and on to the council offices in Tooley Street, where they were stopped by security from entering the Council offices. Police were called and after much argument two of the campaigners who were Southwark residents were allowed in and waited to present letters containing ‘People’s Compulsory Purchase Orders’ for their homes to council leader Peter John and two other councillors.
They asked at reception to see the councillors and were told to take a seat and wait. They waited and waited. Eventually someone from the council came to tell them that all three named councillors were unavailable but took their letters promising to hand them over personally to them.
Bermondsey Thames Panoramas – City Hall to Angel Wharf
I had some time before my next protest and took a short walk by the River Thames,
beginning in Potters Fields where ‘One Tower Bridge’ was going up close to City Hall.
Past Tower Bridge I took a short walk on the foreshore in front of Butler’s Wharf before continuing along Shad Thames and across the footbridge over St Saviour’s Creek.
I continued along the Thames Path past the moorings, and got as far as Angel Wharf before I realised I needed to catch a bus to get me back to Trafalgar Sqaure in time for my next event.
Art Not Oil Rembrandt Against Shell – National Gallery
The Art Not Oil coalition had gate-crashed the press launch of the National Gallery’s Rembrandt exhibition to give a brief performance protesting against oil sponsorship of the arts and privatisation of gallery staffing.
On the evening of 16th October they met on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields before marching the few yards to give a repeat performance outside the gallery which was then holding a gala evening for special guests and highly ranked staff.
The National Gallery was making plans to privatise up to two thirds of the gallery staff and this exhibition was being guarded by a private security firm rather than the gallery’s own staff.
Art Not Oil held banners and placards and handed out flyers agains the sponsorship by Shell stating:
"The presence of unethical sponsors like Shell and the contracting of external security firms shows the growing influence the private sector is having over our arts and culture. With its meagre contribution to the gallery, Shell is buying social legitimacy for its dodgy deeds worldwide, including:
- its failure to clean up its multiple spills in the Niger Delta
- its reckless plans to drill in the Arctic for yet more oil
- its tar sands projects in Canada that are undermining Indigenous people's rights"
They sang a number of specially written songs and performed the short playlet they had previously given inside the gallery during the press launch.
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
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.
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.
Grenfell Councillors Visited – Five and a half months after the terrible fire at Grenfell tower the local council responsible seemed still to be doing little to rehouse those displaced and there had been no criminal charges brought. A small group of local residents and supporters from the Revolutionary Communist Group took to the streets of North Kensington to try and call on councillors and ask questions. Of course six years later they are still waiting for justice – and it seems unlikely ever to happen. The British establishment has long practised ways of looking after its own.
Protesters visit Grenfell councillors – North Kensington
The group gathered at Latimer Road station in the early evening where they held a short rally. They then set off to march to the addresses of several councillors in the area, though most of the council come from the wealthier end of the borough rather than North Kensington.
I could have told them (and probably did) that they were wasting their time at the first address, that of Councillor Rock Feilding-Mellen, former deputy leader of Kensington Council and their cabinet member for housing in charge of the installation of the dangerous cladding which caused the fire to spread disastrously. He had urged the consultants in 2014 to cut the cost of the cladding leading to the safe zinc cladding specified being replaced with flammable panels – and he only worried about whether they were the right colour. Those making them were labelled as troublemakers (and worse.)
Other councillors were also involved in various decisions and lack of action, including deciding against an inspection of fire doors in properties in the borough that the London Fire Brigade had made a few months before the fire.
Seven major complaints made about safety by residents to through the Grenfell Action Group were detailed in evidence to the Grenfell inquiry; these were simply dismissed by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea officers and councillors and in particular by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) responsible under the council for the management of Grenfell and other properties in the borough.
Feilding-Mellen, elected as a councillor in 2010 was made Deputy Leader of Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC) and Cabinet Member for Housing, Property and Regeneration in 2013 with no obvious qualification or experience for either position and began a campaign of social cleansing, to, in his words, “wean people off” living in social housing in the borough.
He cut the council’s housing waiting list in half, removed the right of residents forced out of the borough in redevelopment schemes to return and began an aggressive campaign of removing social assets from North Kensington. Both North Kensington Library and Westway Information centre were sold at cut price to Notting Hill Prep School and the Isaac Newton Centre to Chepstow House Prep School.
Both Feilding-Mellen and council leader Nicholas Paget-Brown were forced to resign from their posts weeks after the fire, though both remained councillors. Feilding-Mellen moved out of his house not far from Grenfell Tower at the end of June, claiming there had been threats against him and vandalism. He was thought to have retreated to the safer climes of Chelsea Harbour, though his wealthy family have quite a few properties around the country and doubtless abroad. Feilding-Mellen’s evidence to the inquiry sickened many as it seemed greatly concerned with getting free publicity for his business interests in psychoactive substances, which includes offering supervised, legal psilocybin retreats in Jamaica and The Netherlands.
David Lindsay speaking
The protesters were more successful in their visit to councillor David Lindsay, a locally born Conservative councillor who is said to be genuinely community minded and respected in North Kensington and was elected as Mayor of Kensington and Chelsea for 2022-23. He came out from his home and talked with them, explaining he had no connection with housing before the fire and had gone down to Grenfell at 4am on the morning of the fire to open up a centre for those affected. He told them that the council were trying hard to find suitable accomodation for the survivors and had spent considerable sums in doing so. The local residents told him they felt the council had been and still was failing in its duties and were not satisfied with his answers.
Finally I went with them some way further south into to rather wealthier areas, stopping outside the house of a third councillor in Portland Road. If they were home they were in hiding, but a neighbour came out to to complain that the protesters were waking his children up, and saying that they shouldn’t protest here and shouldn’t protest at night, but should do so in the daytime when no one would be at home and affected by it. He was met with some very angry and rather rude responses – and the protest continued rather longer and much more noisily that it would otherwise have done.
The group then turned around to make its way back towards Grenfell Tower, but I left them. The Royal Borough doesn’t seem to spend a great deal on street lighting and the batteries in my LED light were failing. I’d taken enough photographs and I was cold and tired and needed to eat and get home to work on the pictures.
Saving the Whittington A huge campaign in 2010 led to Andy Burnham, then Health Secretary stopping the Whittington hospital board’s plans to close its maternity and A&E Departments. A major event in this campaign was the march I photographed on Saturday 27 February 2010 from Highbury Corner to a rally at the hospital at Archway.
Later in 2013 when the board announced plans for more cuts another successful campaign stopped these, and in 2016 there was yet another campaign over redevelopment plans in concert with a private contractor.
Many people tell me that protest never works and that campaigners are simply wasting their time, but in 2022 the hospital announced a £100 million refurbishment of Whittington Hospital’s maternity and neonatal facilities, which still deliver over 3,600 babies a year, and the A&E department is still open for business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
I counted almost 2000 people walking past me a short distance from the start on the two mile march to the hospital, and more arrived for the rally, swelling the numbers to around 3-5,000. Or as the BBC at the time called it, in their usual way of minimising protests, ‘hundreds’ of protesters. But at least, unlike most protests, they did report on it.
Among the marchers and speakers where almost every local politician, including David Lammy, MP for Tottenham and then Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, who pledged his support for the hospital and all its services, revealing that he had been born there. Frank Dobson MP who was Secretary of State for Health from 1997 to 1999 also gave a powerful speech in support, as did Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey and Wood Green. MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry were also at the event, as well as Terry Stacy, the leader of Islington Council.
The proposals for the cuts and downgarding of A&E had come from a rationalisation programme initiated by Lord Darzi, a surgeon and national adviser in surgery to the Department of Health and a Labour Peer from 2007 until he resigned the whip in 2019. His report suggested moving much care from hospitals to GP-led polyclinics and to greater centralisation of trauma, stork and heart attack services to centralised specialist services.
Frank Dobson
Polyclinics remain rare, but although the greater specialisation of acute services made clinical (and financial) sense it failed to take into account the problems of London’s congested streets which would have led to long delays in treatment for many patients. Those inevitable delays would have meant deaths. And the selection of Whittington for closure neglected its good road and public transport connections which make it an ideal location for emergency cases as well as other patients and visitors.
Why Whittington was chosen as suitable for closure probably came down to two factors. One was certainly the age of the buildings, but perhaps more important was that the same factors of location and transport links made it an exceptionally valuable site for property developers. Had the cuts gone ahead in 2010, the rest of the hospital would probably by now also had been closed, with the site developed, including some of those old buildings converted into luxury flats.
Many more pictures from the march and rally at Save the Whittington on My London Diary.
It’s perhaps misleading to call this a ride, since I spent most of the day on Wednesday 3rd February 2010 actually off my bike, parking it neatly to take photographs. Although a bicycle has been my main personal transport now for over 70 years (when I’m not using public transport or walking) I’m not really a cyclist. Or at least just a pragmatic cyclist, using a bike just to get from A to B (and on this day to C,D and most of the letters of the alphabet.)
Memorial to firewatchers of Stepney Gas Works
And just very occasionally for a bit of exercise. I have used exercise bikes and always thought why bother when you could use the real thing, though I suppose when its pouring with rain or below zero there might be some point in them. And though one wouldn’t help me to take photographs I would be less likely to be killed by careless or dangerous drivers.
Bromley-by-Bow gasholders, Twelvetrees Bridge
Back at the end of 2002 I bought myself a Brompton folding bike, and a year or three later when I was undergoing a Q & A interview for an amateur photography magazine it became my answer to ‘What is your most useful photographic accessory’. It had replaced the answer to a similar question from another such magazine which was ‘a good pair of shoes’.
Eternal flame, West Ham Memorial Gardens
Once you have practised a few times the Brompton folds (and unfolds) in a few seconds into a fairly compact package, which has the advantage you can take it at any time onto our trains and underground system. It’s too heavy for me to comfortably carry any distance, but I added the tiny wheels which mean you can pull it rather like a suitcase, only actually lifting it when necessary. And I bought the bag which fits on in front of the handlebars which was about the right size for my camera gear and essentials like a bottle of water or a flask of coffee and sandwiches.
The end of the ‘Fatwalk’
I can’t know remember exactly how I got to the start of my ride, though I think I probably rode from Waterloo to Fenchurch Street for a train to Limehouse station, crossing the Thames on Southwark Bridge. But from there on the pictures make my route fairly clear.
Bow Creek and Bow Locks
I cycled roughly along the Regents Canal up to the former Stepney Gas Works site north of Ben Johnson Road. There had been a fight to save more elements of the former gas works including gas holders which were some of the oldest surviving in the world; although some were said by English Heritage to be of national importance an attempt to get one of them listed failed. Eventually the area was redeveloped by Bellway Homes with only token ‘public art’ residues of the works.
From there I headed east to the bridge at Twelvetrees Crescent across Bow Creek and the Lea Navigation to visit another gas works site, the West Ham Memorial Gardens where war memorials, a permanent flame and a statue of Sir Corbett Woodhall are in a small wooded area close to the remarkable group of gas holders for the former Bromley-by-Bow Gas Works.
Three Mills
From there I went down to the recently opened path beside Bow Creek, part of a planned riverside walk which had been landed with the ridiculous name of The Fatwalk. As I commented then, most of the walk, meant to lead from Three Mills all the way to the Thames was still closed (and is still closed 13 years later) and by the time they were open the “nincompoop who thought that ‘The Fatwalk’ was a good name for this route will probably have retired or died or moved to another job for which he (or she) is equally incapable and common sense will prevail as we walk or cycle along the Bow Creek Trail.”
New Lock, Prescott Channel
The walk still only goes as far south as Cody Dock, now a thriving community resource and hub with events and exhibitions and worth a visit, but in 2010 still undeveloped. The silly name has gone and this path is now also a part of London’s sculpture trail, The Line, making its way from the Greenwich Peninsula to Stratford.
Three Mills Wall River
At the end of the Fatwalk, I had to turn around and go back to the Twelvetrees Crescent bridge, where I once again photographed the locks from the Lea Navigation to Bow Creek. Now there are new steps leading down from this bridge to the towpath, but then I had to go across and join the fast-moving traffic on the Blackwall Tunnel Northern Approach to make my way to Three Mills.
Stratford High St
Three Mills is home to one of Newhams only four Grade I listed buildings and the House Mill, a tide mill, was built in 1776, though there had been tide mills here at least since the Domesday book.
Olympic stadium
The film studios here were converted from a gin factory where Chaim Weizmann developed a new biochemical process to produce acetone needed for explosive production in the First World War – which led to the Balfour Declaration and later to Weizmann becoming the first president of Israel.
Bridge over City Mill River
Past the studios I visited the new lock on the Prescott Channel, opened in 2009. Supposedly this was to be used by barges to carry away waste and bring in material for the development of the Olympic site instead of lorries, but was in practice only used for photo-opportunities. The Prescott Channel was built in the 1930s, part of a large flood relief programme, that was also largely to provide jobs at the height of the depression.
I get interviewed for a student film
Finally I cycled up to the Olympic site, a building site with little or no public access, but parts of the ‘Greenway’ – the path on the Northern Sewage Outfall – were still open and gave extensive views. The reason I was in London on this particular day, when the weather wasn’t at its best was to be interviewed and filmed by a group of students at the View tube on the Greenway. I can’t remember ever seeing the video. After the interview I made my way to Stratford to fold the Brompton and start my journey home on the Jubilee Line.
Bow Creek – right click to open at a viewable size in a new tab
As well as taking single images I also produced a number of panoramas, taking a series of pictures from the same position to be stitched together. These include some 360 degree views, produced by software from 6 or 8 individual images. The pictures were taken on a Nikon D700 and are each 12Mp, but the combined files are huge. It isn’t easy to display these on the web, and they fit even less well on this blog. I’ll post one here on a rather smaller scale and invite you to double click on it to see it larger, though still much reduced. You can find more online here.
Benhill Road runs north from Camberwell Church St opposite St Gile’s Church and includes the site of the former vicarage and St Gile’s Parish Hall. These houses are I think mid-Victorian and I admired the slender decorative pillars at the doorways.
Opposite the Parish Hall just inside the property is a small building with a blue plaque which I photographed but have not put online as the lighting was rather poor. It now has a London Borough of Southwark blue plaque with the totally misleading message ‘The Parish Church of St Giles Porch and Doorway Relocated to its current site in the vicarage garden where it was used as a summer house after the church was accidentally burnt down on 7th February 1841.’
While the church was burnt down in 1841 this was never its porch and doorway, though it was largely built with material from the burnt out church and was probably not used as a summer house – and more recently has been used for rubbish bin storage. An article in the Camberley Quarterly by Donald Mason, Old St Giles: blue plaques and history, reveals its true nature and has some excellent illustrations.
British Lion, pub sign, Elmington Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1e-12
On the corner of Benhill Road and Elmington Road I photographed a bicycle and the British Lion pub sign. The pub itself at 112 Benhill Road was a rather boring 1960s building rebuilt at around the same time as the flats around it. But there had been a pub on the site since at least 1871, The Prince Of Prussia, a name that probably became rather unpopular in the First World War.
Edmund St, Elmington Estate, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1e-14
I think the’ London County Council’ built the first flats on the Elmington Estate shortly before WW2, but there were four of these large blocks desgned by the LCC Architects department and built around 1956. The winter sun produced a rather elegant repeated pattern of light and shade on the frontage.
Edmund St, Elmington Estate, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1e-15
I think this large eleven floor slab block and its neighbours on the Elmington Estate, dating from around 1960 were demolished in 1999-2000. The flats passed to Southwark Council, formed in 1965 who lacked the cash to maintain them properly and they were in poor condition by the time I photographed them, and many flats were squatted in the 1990s.
Edmund St, Elmington Estate, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-1f-01
In 1999 Southwark Council decided to demolish the whole of the Elmington Estate and these blocks were a part of the first phase of the redevelopment. Southwark Notes gives a great deal of detail about how this progressed.
In the first phase, most of those who lived in the flats were rehoused in council housing built on the site, but not all were too happy with their new homes. The article quotes one: ‘You will never know what privacy is like again. You will hear your neighbours and everything they do. And they will hear you. Your rooms will be smaller. You’ll be paying more for it. One day you’ll wake up and realise that you’d give anything to be back in your old home’.
The council for Phase 2 adopted “a whole new regeneration model premised on partnership with either corporate developers” or housing associations. Their partner here was the large and aggressive Housing Association Notting Hill Housing Trust who would offer zero social rented homes in the scheme (social rent being the equivalent rent of a council home). Some flats were available at so-called “affordable” rents, roughly twice those of council properties in the area, and unaffordable for most previous tenants. It was a process of ‘social cleansing’, forcing most of the poorer residents out of the area.
I walked throught the Elmington Estate and on through Burgess Park to Camberwell Road, turning south where a few doors down on the east side I photographed the railings and doorways of 119 and 121. Numbers 117-129 and attached railings are Grade II listed.
From 1863 to 1887 photographer and portrait painter Henry Death (1820-1900), born in Moulton, Cambridgeshire, had his studio at 119 Camberwell Road, having moved there from nearby Addington Place where he set up a studio in 1856. He sold the house when he had to give up his business through ill health in 1887 and died in Camberwell thirteen years later. In !989 it was the offices of Bradleys Solicitors.
No 121 was the premises of the charity IAS, Independent Adoption Service, first registered in 1982 and voluntarily removed in 2009. I think both properties are now private residences.
No 147 Camberwell Road is a part of a terrace of around ten houses directly south of Cambridge House on the corner of Addington Square. These house look in rather better condition now and the tree here was removed a couple of years ago. Most of these houses are now divided into flats.
On Sunday 22nd September 2013 Druids carried out their annual Autumn Equinox (Alban Elued) ceremony on Primrose Hill at noon and later in the day women from the radical fundamentalist Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain marched from Paddington Green in protest against the chemical attacks and massacres of women and children by the Assad regime in Syria. Between the two events I spent some time taking pictures around the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal.
Druids Celebrate Autumn Equinox – Primrose Hill
Every year for a little over 100 years the Druid Order have celebrated the Autumn Equinox on Primrose Hill, a site of historical significance in the history of Druidism and the re-invention of a Druidic tradition. Here on the Autumn Equinox in 1716 John Toland made a call for a meeting of Druids a year and a day later at the Apple Tree Tavern in Covent Garden, and on Midsummer’s day 1792 Iolo Morganwg (1747-1826) held the first meeting of the Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isle of Britain, the precursor of the modern Eisteddfod.
Morganwg was the bardic name of Edward Williams and his work “was a prime force behind the cultural revival that saw the birth of modern Wales” according to the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies whose web site describes him as “a profoundly complicated character: a struggling provincial poet in London, a manipulator and victim of the world of literary patronage, a radical, a medievalist, a forger of pasts, an opium eater and a forceful and opinionated critic.”
Most of the Druidic traditions we now have come from forged manuscripts he produced in particular the “Gorsedd Beirdd Ynys Prydain” (“The Gorsedd of Bards of the Isles of Britain”.) It was only in the twentieth century that the extent of his imaginative forgeries became clear. But although his work came almost entirely from his own extremely fertile imagination it had a dramatic effect in creating a new view of the Welsh nation.
The Druid Order made its first recorded appearance at the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge in 2021, though its founder, the remarkable George Watson MacGregor Reid, a trade union and Labour party activist with a great interest in oriental mysticism was probably there 3 years earlier. In 2014 he returned for the Solstice describing himself as a High Priest and “the direct successor of the Chief Druids who have been” and dressed in a very similar manner to that still adopted by The Druid Order.
I’ve photographed the Equinox ceremonies of the Druid Order, Spring at Tower Hill and Autumn on Primrose Hill on several occasions and have been impressed by the solemnity and spirituality of those taking part. Whatever its origins, it is a movement which respects the Earth and is peace loving and free-thinking with the apparent aim of developing themselves through being rather than through intellectual learning.
My account on My London Diary gives quite a detailed description of the event both in pictures and text so I won’t repeat that here.
The main line of the Grand Union Canal enters the River Thames at Brentford, from where it was possible for goods to travel along the river to London, but a direct canal route was obviously desirable and only two years after the Act of Parliament for the main route to Brentford was passed a further Act to allow the construction of a canal joining the this to a canal basin at Paddington, then on the western edge of London. This opened in 1801.
Unusually there are no locks on the 22km of the Paddington Arm – and you can travel a total of around 43 lock-free miles along the pound made up by it the Grand Union and Regents canal.
The area around the final length of the Paddington Arm from Little Venice to Paddington Basin has been the site of huge redevelopments in the past thirty or so years. A few older canalside buildings remain. Much of the land and paths open to the public in the area are on private land.
Hizb ut-Tahrir Women March for Syria – Paddington Green
Over a thousand woman gathered on Paddington Green for a march to the Syrian Embassy to show solidarity with women and children in Syria and to condemn the chemical attacks and massacres being carried out by the Assad regime.
Hizb ut-Tahrir oppose Western military intervention in Syria but call for the replacement of the current corrupt rulers in Islamic states by a Khilifah (caliphate), a state that will truly implement Islamic values and end the corruption and oppression of the current states. They call for 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.“
At the front of the march children carried a small coffin and other children and women carried bundles representing dead children. There were a few young boys taking part, but I saw few men – just one small group with a banner and a heavy public address system – and the event was clearly led by the women, almost all of whom were wearing headscarves, with very few in niqabs or burqas which covered the whole face.
At most other Hizb ut-Tahrir protests I’ve photographed there have been clearly separate groups of men and women, and I’ve sometimes had problems with male stewards for photographing the women, though not from the women themselves. At this event most seemed keen to be photographed to help get their message across. I left the march which was going to the Syrian Embassy in Belgrave Square at Edgware Road.
Holloway, Nakba, Refugees & Topshop – Six years ago, the 14th May 2016 was also a Saturday, and like today there was a protests for Nakba Day, the ‘day of the catastrophe’, remembering the 80% of Palestinians forced to leave their homes between December 1947 and January 1949, but also several others on the streets of London which I covered.
Reclaim Holloway – Holloway Road
Local MP and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn spoke outside London Met on Holloway Rd at the start of the march by Islington Hands Off Our Public Services, Islington Kill the Housing Bill and the Reclaim Justice Network to HMP Holloway demanding that when the prison is closed the site remains in public hands, and that the government replace the prison with council housing and the vital community services needed to prevent people being caught up in a damaging criminal justice system.
A group of around a hundred then marched from there to Holloway Prison, apparently already largely emptied of prisoners, and held a long rally there with speeches by local councillors, trade unionists and campaigning groups. Islington Council would like to see the prison site and adjoining housing estate then owned by HM Prisons used for social housing rather than publicly owned land being sold for private development.
The Ministry of Justice sold the site to housing association Peabody for £81.5m in 2019 and their plans include 985 homes and offices, with 60% of so-called affordable housing as well as a women’s building with rehabilitation facilities reflecting the site’s history. The development stalled in February 2022 with Peabody saying they were unable to afford the money needed to fit out the women’s centre.
Protesters made their way along Oxford St from their regular Saturday picket outside Marks & Spencers, handing out leaflets and stopping outside various shops supporting the Israeli state for speeches against the continuing oppression of the Palestinian people and attempts to criminalise and censor the anti-Zionist boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
Nabka Day, the ‘day of the catastrophe’ remembering the 80% of Palestinians forced out of their homes between December 1947 and January 1949 is commemorated annually on May 15th, but the protest was a day earlier when Oxford Street would be busier. The Palestinians were later prevented by Israeli law from returning to their homes or reclaiming their properties, with many still living in refugee camps.
The protesters included a number of Jews who are opposed to the continuing oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli government. A small group of counter protesters shouted insults and displayed Israeli flags, accusing the protesters of anti-Semitism but the protest was clearly directed against unfair and illegal policies pursued by the Israeli government rather than being anti-Semitic. The counter-protesters tried unsuccessfully to provoke confrontation, standing in front of the marchers and police had at times to move them away.
Vegan Earthlings masked video protest – Trafalgar Square
Vegans wearing white masks stood in a large circle in Trafalgar Square holding laptops and tablets showing a film about the mistreatment of animals in food production, bullfighting, etc. The protest was organised by London Vegan Actions and posters urged people to stop eating meat to save the environment and end animal cruelty.
Refugees Welcome say protesters – Trafalgar Square
Another small group of protesters stood in front of the National Gallery held posters calling for human rights, fair treatment and support for refugees. Some held a banner with the message ‘free movement for People Not Weapons’.
Finally I was back on Oxford St where cleaners union United Voices of the World (UVW) was holding one of protests outside Topshop stores around the country following the suspension of two cleaners who protested for a living wage; one has now been sacked. Joining them in the protest were other groups including Class War, cleaners from CAIWU and other trade unionists including Ian Hodson, General Secretary of the BWAFU and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, MP and Ian Hodson, Baker’s Unions General Secretary outside Topshop
The Oxford Street Topshop was heavily defended by police, as well as by illegal extra security guards wearing no ID. Several hundred protesters held up banners and placards and with the help of the police blocked the entrance to the shop, though the protesters made no serious attempt to enter the building.
Jane Nicholl of Class War poses on a BMW as they block Oxford Circus
After a while some of the protesters, led by the Class War Womens Death Brigade, moved onto the road, blocking it for some minutes as police tried to get them to move. The whole group of protesters then moved to block the Oxford Circus junction for some minutes until a large group of police arrived and fairly gently persuaded them to move.
UVW’s Petros Elia argues with a police officer outside John Lewis
They moved off, but rather than going in the direction the police had urged them, marched west along Oxford St to John Lewis, where they protested outside the entrance, where cleaners have a longstanding dispute. The cleaners who work there are outsourced to a cleaning contractor who John Lewis allow to pay low wages, with poor conditions of service and poor management, disclaiming any responsibility for these workers who keep its stores running.
There were some heated exchanges between protesters and police but I saw no arrests and soon the protesters marched away to the Marble Arch Topshop branch to continue their protest.
