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More City Panoramas – 1994

More City Panoramas: I spent several days wandering around the City of London – the “Square Mile” in July and August 1994, I think in prepaation for a group show in which I had decided this would be my contribution.

Bubb’s Le Restaurant Francais with the address Central Market, Farringdon Street is long closed, but a listing states that they served “a variety of traditional French dishes at their restaurant and can cater for private parties of up to 30 guests upon request.” There are still several French restaurants in the area.

A little further down West Smithfield was the London Central Market with on the corner a wholesale Cash and Carry and Harry’s Drinks and in the distance a covered way across the road between market buildings.

I photographed this corner on several occasions, making a similar panorama here in 1992, perhaps why I have not put this on Flickr.

Looking west along the river to Bull Wharf, Queenhithe and beyond. Bull Wharf proudly states it was REBUILT 1980 and it looks to me exceedingly ugly, probably why I didn’t upload this picture to Flickr. My picture perhaps makes the red brickwork event more virulent – the building looks much better to me in a black and white non-panoramic image I made at the same time from more or less the same spot.

*Car Park, Smithfield St, City, 1994, 94-704-51*

Slightly out of focus in the distance I can just make out Lady Justice on the roof of the Old Bailey and to her right more clearly the tower of Holy Sepulchre Church at the east end of Holborn Viaduct.

I think this car park probably extended to Hosier Lane and is now filled with the shops and offices of 12 Smithfield Street, built in 2004 and now described on Buildington as “an outdated office block that has suffered from poor environmental performance, limited architectural merit, and inefficient servicing. Its ground floor lacks engagement with the surrounding public realm, and its dated façade no longer reflects the character of the conservation area” and being refurbished and extended.

*St Mary Somerset Church, Upper Thames St, City , 1994, 94-704-13*

A rather dark rendering of this high contrast scene with deep shadow the block of St Paul’s Vista (or 1 High Timber St, now One Millennium Bridge) straddles Upper Thames Street with the bright sky above. My picture was made from the footbridge of Fye Foot Lane carrying a section of the CIty’s Highwalk across Upper Thames Street and Castle Baynard Street and on to Queen Victoria Street.

St Mary Somerset Church was one of those destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and like 50 others rebuilt by the office of Sir Christopher Wren. The tower remains between Lambeth Hill and Castle Baynard Street but the rest of the church was demolished in 1871 when like other redundant churches the land was sold to build churches in the rapidly expanding suburbs of London. The tower was a Ladies toilet before the Second World War, Damaged by bombing, it was restored by the city in 1956 and has now been converted into a private residence.

A fruit and vegetable stall on the pavement in Front of St Mary Aldermary (another rebuilt by Wren after the Great Fire) on busy Queen Victoria Street which you can see at extreme left. I think the extremely low stone wall on the pavement and the railings mark the former edge of its churchyard.

I liked the range of architectural age and style across the upper half of this image, and particularly admired the ornate Victorian block in the centre of the picture. As well as a bus and a coach there are 5 London taxis in the picture, an aspect of London’s traffic congestion long overdue for reform.

Highwalk, Footbridge, Queen Victoria St, City, 1994, 94-705-31 — *Highwalk, Footbridge, Huggin Hill, Upper Thames St, City, 1994, 94-705-31*

This was taken from a now-closed section of Highwalk across Upper Thames Street and the church at left is St Mary Somerset. The alley at right is Huggin Hill with a view of the distinctive building on the block between Queen Victoria St, Bread Lane and Cannon Street, 30 Cannon St built for Crédit Lyonnais between 1974 and 1977.

*Highwalk, London Wall, City, 1994, 94-706-51*

So many buildings have changed around here since 1994. The building right of centre is Standard Chartered on the corner of Aldermanbury and Aldermanbury Square and was remodelled around 2010 and the building left of centre is Brewer’s Hall, now with a roof extension. I think this section of the highwalk led up at Brewers Hall Gardens

Limehouse and the City – Panoramas 1994

Limehouse and the City – Panoramas 1994: I made one panorama at the end of my trip to Limehouse in June which is on a film processed in July which I overlooked when posting pictures to Flickr.

DLR Viaduct, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1994, 94-701-51

This was taken from the top floor of John Scurr House on Ratcliffe Lane where there are open balconies leading to the flats it shows both the National Rail and DLR Limehouse stations with the DLR viaduct leading east, with the white tower of St Anne’s Limehouse just visible at extreme right before the top of the brickwork of the stairs.

You can also just see the north side of Limehouse Basin on the other side of Branch Road, and lower right of centre is a small but packed garden centre. A bus goes along Commercial Road and you can see the houses and flats of Limehouse and Bow beyond. Like all the other pictures in this post it was taken with a swing-lens panoramic camera with a horizontal angle of view of over 120 degrees.

Blackfriars Rail Bridge, Blackfriars Bridge, River Thames, Southwark, 1994, 94-701-42

Early in July I took a train to Waterloo and walked into the City from there, pausing before I crossed Blackfriars Bridge to make this panorama. This is the only place where the City comes ‘South of the River’ and where I was standing in Rennie Garden I was already in the City of London, though the wall at right and half the rail bridge past it is in Southwark.

While the City boundary for the other bridges is in the centre of the river, for some reason the Blackfriars and Southwark Bridges Act 1867 put the full length and its southern end within the city’s borders, in the parish of St Anne Blackfriars.

The garden here Rennie Garden is named after John Rennie (1761 – 1821) the engineer who built several of London’s bridges but not this one, which was by by Joseph Cubitt, also responsible for the dismantled railway bridge whose red piers remain.

This was the site of the Albion Flour Mills designed by Samuel Wyatt on this site in 1786 to house the machinery of Matthew Boulton and steam engine of James Watt – and it was this steam-powered corn mill, the first major factory in London, which is thought to be the inspiration for William Blake’s ‘dark satanic mills’.

The Albion Mill died by its own hand, burnt down in 1791 by a fire probably caused by poor maintenance when a bearing overheated, but four years earlier Robert Barker had sent his son Henry Aston Barker to sit on the roof of the building to make the sketches for his ‘London from the roof of the Albion Mills‘ which he then added detail, “greatly enlarged and painted in distemper on canvas.” He coined the name ‘panorama’ and in 1787 patented the idea. His panorama, first shown at the Albion Mill shortly before it was burnt down and then shown in various galleries in London.

Sets of aquatints were made by Frederick Birnie which toured Europe and went to the United States and while these survive in various collections the original panorama is lost.

Puddle Dock, Queen Victoria St, City, 1994, 94-701-33

Puddle Dock was a dock and also a sewer outfall and was filled in during the comprehensive reclamation and redevelopment of the area between 1962 and 1972 which created Upper Thames Street as a major road and Puddle Dock linking this to Queen Victoria Street underneath part of Baynard House, a Brutalist office block built for BT and completed in 1979.

As a part of plans to separate vehicle and pedestrian movement in the City it included a walkway leading to Blackfriars Station from which I made this panorama. The dome of St Paul’s can be seen just to the left of the tower of St Andrew by the Wardrobe.

Sculpture, Farringdon Rd, Holborn Viaduct, City, 1994, 94-702-51

Holborn Viaduct was London’s first flyover, connecting the City with Holborn over the deep valley of the River Fleet, which had be culverted here in the 18th century, in part for the building of New Bridge Street. Built in 1863-69 it links Holborn Circus with Newgate Street and was a major redevelopment ‘”the most ambitious and costly improvement scheme of the [nineteenth] century” (White 47), and it involved some outstanding feats of Victorian engineering.‘

Over the years I’ve made quite a few panoramas on and of the viaduct and written about it at some length – here are a few from 1994. You can read a detailed account on the Victorian Web site.

*Sculpture, Farringdon Rd, Holborn Viaduct, City, 1994, 94-702-52*

*Sculpture, Farringdon Rd, Holborn Viaduct, City, 1994, 94-703-11*

Darfur and the Mayor’s Thames Festival – 2007

Darfur and the Mayor’s Thames Festival: On Sunday 16th September 2007 I went to London to photograph a march on an International Day of Action over the genocide which had been taking place on a large scale in Darfur since 2003, with around 300,000 civilians killed. My comments at the time are in italics below. After the end of the march I went to walk along the riverside wher the Mayor’s Thames Festival was taking place, though I found little actually happening.

Protect Darfur – International Day of Action

“Several hundred marched from the Sudanese Embassy in St James
to Westminster where a protest rally was held opposite Downing Street over the continuing failure of the international community to take effective action over Darfur.”

“Among the mainly African demonstrators were groups of Jews, concerned that, as in the 1930s, too many are happy to turn a blind eye to what is going on.”

The Sudanese government had earlier co-opted and armed the Arab Janjaweed militias against those opposed to it in Darfur and they created what the UN described as one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.

In July 2007 the UN and the African Union approved a the largest joint peacekeeping mission in the world UNAMID to the area, and over the years there were various peace agreements, but despite this conflicts continued and in 2023 a civil war broke out in Sudan between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) (which developed from the Janjaweed) and the government’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) – and genocide returned to Sudan.

The BBC has an article, ‘Sudan war: A simple guide to what is happening’ about the renewed genocide and famine in Darfur and across the country which again the United Nations has called the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

At the rally opposite Downing Street, demonstrators were asked to put on their blindfolds as a reminder that leaders around the world are refusing to see the problem in Darfur.

“I didn’t stay to hear all the speakers. The position of the rostrum made it hard to photograph, working directly into the sun behind the speakers’ heads from any available close positions, and photographs were not going to be of great interest.

The message on Darfur is clear, and the international community needs to take action.”

Many more pictures (too many) on My London Diary at protect darfur.

River Thames and the Mayor’s Thames Festival

“We were promised that Sunday was the end of our short, late summer, and I took a walk along the south bank of the River Thames from Westminster to Tower Bridge, among the crowds who had turned up for the Mayor’s Thames Festival.“

Nothing much exciting seemed to be happening while I was there (it seemed mainly a commercial opportunity for the very large number of stalls along the riverbank), but I then didn’t hang around for the procession and fireworks promised later.

I did take quite a few pictures which you can see at river thames and the mayor’s festival – and it looks as if I found it a little more interesting than my account suggested.

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Greenhithe, Swanscombe & Broadness – 2006

Greenhithe, Swanscombe & Broadness: On 25th August 2006 I travelled by train with my Brompton for a day riding and photographing this area on the River Thames in North Kent. A few days later I posted the following account on My London Diary, along with quite a few pictures from the ride.

Greenhithe, Swanscome & Broadness - 2006 — *Broadness moorings – in 2025 now under threat* *– see the bottom of this post*

My London is a pretty flexible area, and takes in all of the Greater London area and everywhere else within the M25, as well as obvious extensions including the area covered by the Thames Gateway plans for a mega-city covering a much wider area than the present boundaries. One of the growth axes is the high speed rail link from France, with stations at Stratford and Swanscombe (as well as Ashford, Kent close to the tunnel mouth.)

The areas around Stratford and Swanscombe are both places I’ve photographed at intervals since the early 1980s, and I made a couple of visits to them again close to the end of August 2006. Swanscombe, best known for the early human remains – Swanscombe Man – found there, is in the centre of what was a major cement industry (a little of which still remains) with some dramatic landscape formed by quarrying.

I started my visit there at Greenhithe, still a Thames-side village at its centre, but now dwarfed by new housing developments and the huge shopping centre in a former quarry at Bluewater. This time I gave that a miss and took a look at the housing development on the riverfront. This is a prestige scheme that has retained ‘Ingres Abbey’ and the core of its fine grounds, where there is now a heritage walk.

The grounds, in a an old chalk quarry with high cliffs, were provided with follies and landscaped in the 18th century by Sir William Chambers and later by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, but the 17th century house at their centre was demolished in 1815 when the navy had plans for a huge riverside dockyard. After these plans were dropped, it was sold to a London alderman and barrister, James Harman who built a large ‘gothic revival’ private house there in 1833.

Harman had hoped to attract other wealthy Londoners to develop parts of the extensive grounds for their own villas in this scenic area, hoping it would rival riverside developments as those in Chiswick and Richmond, but failed to attract any takers.

Part of the site to the east was later sold for the building of the Empire Paper Mills, and the Navy again took an interest in the area, mooring the training ship HMS Worcester in front of the abbey in 1871, and also acquiring some of the estate. The Thames nautical training college continued in use until 1989, and had some large concrete buildings from the 1970s.

Harman’s dream has been partly completed now by the developers, who have won awards for their handling of this ‘brownfield’ site. The house and the various follies were listed buildings and have been retained (fortunately for the developers, neither the paper mill nor the training college gained listing.)

Although the architecture of the new housing is perhaps pedestrian (although not suburban), the abbey and its surroundings immediate have been restored (although most of brown’s parkland is now under housing.) The development is high density, but there are quality touches in the street furniture. The spacious lawn in front of the house (offices for a high-tech company) has its impressive steps, but the housing is terraced town houses with balconies rather than gardens.

*About all that remains of the cement works at Swanscombe*

From here I cycled on to the open emptiness of Swanscombe marsh. In the distance were the heaps of spoil from the Channel Tunnel Rail Link which burrows under the Thames here. The piers for the former cement works are now derelict and closed off, used only by a few fishermen. The Pilgrims Road no longer leads up to the village, cut off by the work on the link.

Past the giant pylons carrying the grid across the Thames, I came to the saltings on Broadness Marshes and was rather surprised to see these still in use as moorings. The tide was high as I walked down beside them, and a boat made its way out. Another was being worked on near the landward end, but otherwise the place seemed deserted.

More pictures on My London Diary beginning here.

Save Swanscombe Peninsula SSSI

Recently the Broadness Cruising Club in the saltings have discovered that the owners of the Swanscombe Peninsula have “registered the land our boats are moored on and our jetties and boat sheds are built on as their own” and are trying to get rid of them from the site, restricting their access. The club has been there for over 50 years and is now fighting for the right to stay with a fundraiser for legal costs.

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Battersea Riverside 2012

Battersea Riverside. The short walk from Battersea Bridge to Wandsworth is one I’ve done quite a few times over the years. For most of the walk you can now keep to the riverside, with views across the Thames, though a few short detours are needed. It’s on of my favourite walks in London and only a couple of miles, though if you want a longer walk it is now part of the Thames Path so you can continue for many miles either upstream or down.

When I first made this walk in the 1970s the riverside was lined with industry and I could only access the river at a few locations. By 2012 the industry had almost all gone and there were blocks of private flats along most of this length. But ‘planning gain’ meant a riverside path even if it was lined behind by planning loss.

People have to live somewhere and London needed extra housing, though almost all of these new developments were the wrong kind of housing and not the social housing desperately needed by Londoners. Back in the early post-war years we saw social housing being built to provide mixed communities and promote social cohesion, but Thatcher changed all that, and social housing became something only for the poor and that stigmatised residents as failures.

*Overground train on its way to Clapham Junction*

The loss of industry also meant the loss of jobs in the area, and took place at a time of increasing gentrification in Battersea, with people moving in who worked in wealthier parts of the city.

*Looking upstream from Wandsworth Bridge*

As I wrote in 2012, “Every time I walk it a little more has gone with a new block of flats or hotel or other luxury development. But a few things remain.”

You can see the panoramic images larger by right clicking on them and choosing Open Image in New Tab’ More pictures on My London Diary at Battersea Riverside.

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Carnaval, Right To Protest & Tobin – 2005

Carnaval, Right To Protest & Tobin: On Sunday 7th August 2005 I began by photographing London’s Latin Americans getting ready for the Carnaval Del Pueblo procession, then went to Parliament Square for an illegal protest against the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 which had come into force on August 1st and among other things restricted the right to demonstrate within a large area around parliament without prior written notice to the police. Finally another illegal protest on Westminster Bridge expressed support for the Tobin Tax, a low rate of tax on currency conversions with the aim of discouraging short-term currency speculation and so stabilising currency markets. Here is what I wrote about the day in 2005 with some pictures and links to more on My London Diary

Carnaval del Pueblo – Southwark

Carnaval, Right To Protest & Tobin - 2005

Sunday I started off photographing London’s Latin American communities getting ready for the start of their annual Carnaval Del Pueblo procession. This year it was starting from Potters Fields near the GLA headquarters, on an empty site awaiting development, rather than from a street, and this made photography a little more difficult.

It was good to see so many groups taking part, although I found it very difficult to sort out the different nations, and found myself unable to recognise most of their national flags.

This procession, making it’s way to Burgess Park where there is a Latin-American Festival, is one of London’s most colourful events, with some costumes to rival those seen at the much larger annual Notting Hill event at the end of the month.

I was sorry not to be anle to go on to the festival, especially since there was to be a short period of silence to mark the tragic shooting by police of the innocent Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, on a tube train at Stockwell Station the day following the second round of bombings in London.

I followed the procession up to London Bridge Station where I needed to get on a train to get to Westminster.

More pictures

The Right to Protest – Parliament Square

*Police arrest a demonstrator in Parliament Square, London. The crime? Holding a protest banner. Welcome to Britain, the police state (not that I think the police particularly welcome it.).*

Britain once had a deserved reputation as a haven for free speech and the rights of the citizen. A number of acts by our New Labour government have seriously curtailed these freedoms – including introducing a number of measures that they had opposed before they came to power.

Some of these measures have just been a part of the general trend to central control begun under Thatcher, but others have been brought on by the threat of terrorism and even more by the growth of opposition to government policies, and in particular to the war on Iran.

Formerly a life-long supporter of the party it saddens me, and angers me. One of the signs that Brian Haw holds in a picture is a quotation from a speech by Condoleeza Rice in January 2005, when she said “if a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society. We cannot rest until every person living in a ”fear society” has finally won their freedom.”

New restrictions have been brought in that move Britain into that realm of a “fear society”.

This afternoon I saw five people arrested for simply peacefully holding banners supporting the right to protest. It happened on the square opposite our Houses of Parliament, and it made me feel ashamed to be British.

Although the law was passed largely to get rid of Brian Haw, it turns out not to alter his right to be there, as his protest started before the act became law and is thus not covered by it. Rather a lot of egg on government faces there.

[The High Court decision that agreed Haw was not covered by the Act was overturned by the Court of Appeal in an alarming decision in May 2006.]

More pictures

The Westminster Tea Party – Time for Tobin Tax

*Holding up tea bags on Westminster Bridge*

In 1978, Nobel Prize-winning economist James Tobin proposed a uniform world-wide tax at a very low level – perhaps only 0.2% – on all foreign currency exchange transactions. The aim was to deter speculation on currency movements, thus giving the elected governments greater control over their fiscal and monetary policies, and reducing the power of unelected speculators (who include some of the larger multinational companies) to affect the markets.

Exporters, importers and long-term investors would all benefit from less volatile exchange rates, and the revenue raised by the tax could make a significant contribution both to the revenue of national economies and also for international development projects.

As a small gesture of support for the Tobin Tax, another illegal demonstration took place in Westminster this afternoon, unnoticed by police. A small group of demonstrators, again following an example from Boston – although this time from 1773 – chose tea as a way to symbolise their protest. Each threw a teabag, produced by one of the giant corporations, from the middle of Westminster Bridge into the River Thames below.

A couple more pictures at the bottom of this page on My London Diary.

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Swan Upping on the Thames – 2006

Swan Upping on the Thames: On Monday July 17 2006 I again photographed the annual Swan Upping which takes place on the River Thames over five days, in the third week of July starting on Monday at Sunbury Dock and ending on the Friday of that week at Abingdon Bridge. Like many who live close to the river – a five minute walk for me – I’d heard about this for many years but is was only in 2001 that I first saw and photographed the event – before then I had always been teaching during that week.

It is a ceremony that began in the twelfth century where a part of their huge grab of the country the Norman invaders claimed ownership of mute swans on open water as well as all the land. Later they granted some rights over the swans to others including London Livery Companies the Worshipful Company of Vintners and the Worshipful Company of Dyers, who now share the rights to swans on the Thames equally with King Charles III.

You can find pictures and text from a number of years on My London Diary, up to 2013, when I had photographed it ten times and I then decided I was simply repeating myself. I might go again, perhaps just to watch the spectacle but not to try and cover it in any depth.

Some years I wrote at some length about the history and what actually takes place, but here I’ll post my first post about the event in 2001 and the post I made in 2006, the year in which all pictures here were taken.

2001

Swan upping is an annual event, counting swans along the Thames from Sunbury to Abingdon takes a week. The Crown decided it was a good thing to claim the swans around the 12th century, so they could gorge themselves on them at banquets, [later] they let some of their rich mates in the city have a share, but protected them from the people by severe penalties.

Swans are seldom eaten now, but upping continues to divide the Thames birds between the Crown, the Dyers and the Vintners.

2006

I’ve said rather a lot about swan upping in some previous years. It’s a fascinating and colourful event, which keeps a record of swans on the River Thames, as well as giving them a useful health check. The swans are handled very carefully and care is taken to avoid undue distress (though some of the press present this year could have been rather more careful.)

Swans are no longer normally eaten, but are admired for their decorative effect and looked after. Although anglers are now rather more responsible than in the past, the birds examined still often have signs of damage from discarded hooks and line. Many cygnets die in the first few months before the uppers come around, either from predators or other hazards.

I still feel an excitement watching the skill of the uppers as they surround a family of swans, gradually closing in on them, avoiding gaps and then grabbing them out of the water.

Great care is also taken when releasing the family back into the river, and usually only a few seconds later they are swimming serenely as ever.

*Eric who cycled along the towpath to try to lure the swans into suitable places for upping using crushed digestive biscuits*

One of the smaller mysteries to me is how there are so many swans on the river, but so few mating pairs – and many of these with very small broods. Of course there are many other lakes and rivers around, and swans can and do move around, although many of the adults in these pictures were ringed as cygnets in more or less the same locations.

*The swans get recorded – here the leg ring is being checked while the Swan Master looks at the bird’s beak.*

In 2006 I left the uppers at Runnemede, but in some years I went with them to Windsor where they stand to drink a Royal Toast in Romney Lock and then, on the way to the Eton Boathouses at Windsor, the Dyers and Vintners salute the Royal Uppers by standing in their boats with oars upraised.

More pictures from 2006 on My London Diary.

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Rainham, Purfleet, Thurrock & Ponders End – 1993

Rainham, Purfleet, Thurrock & Ponders End: On Saturday 11th December 1993 I took a train from Fenchurch Street to Rainham and then walked along by the river to Coldharbour Point. There the path stopped and I returned to Rainham and took the train to Purfleet where I could pick up the riverside path again and walk on to Grays. Probably I walked about 9 miles in all and by the time I finished it I think the light would have been fading, with sunset at around 4pm.

Tilda Rice, Purfleet, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-64 — *Tilda Rice, Rainham, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-64*

On this walk I made a little over 200 black and white images, a selection of which you can find on Flickr in my 1993 London album beginning here.

*Waste Paper, Purfleet, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-51*

There are more colour images from this walk, including a number of panoramas, mixed with pictures from other occasions starting here on the final two pages of my Flickr album of colour pictures from 1993.

*Notices on Fence, Purfleet, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-53*

But today I found some more pictures from that walk at the start of my album 1994 London Colour and I’ll share these in this post. They will have come from a cassette of film which I took in 1993 but only developed a month or so later in 1994.

*Waste Paper, Purfleet, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-56*

Works, Purfleet, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-46

*QEII Bridge, Dartford Bridge, Pipeline, River Thames, West Thurrock, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-11*

The final image in today’s post is something completely different on the same film, a shop window in Ponders End which I found it strangely weird. As it is on the same film as the others I think it was probably also taken in December 1993 although my caption stated 1994.

*Shop Window, Ponders End, Enfield, 1994, 94-01-1-14*

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Darent Valley Path & Thames – 2015

Darent Valley Path & Thames: The route we took on Saturday 4th July 2015 was new to my wife and son, but one I’d taken quite a few times before, both on foot and on my Brompton, but this time I left the bike behind and walked with them.

Or rather more or less with them, as I often stopped or walked a few yards to one side or other to take pictures, and then had to scurry after them to catch up. Walking with a camera is very different from walking. My son does have a camera (one of the Fuji fixed lens X100 series) but takes far fewer pictures than me – and did much less running about.) But his captions are often rather more droll than mine, and seldom constrained by the 5W’s – Who What Where When Why.

It was a bad day for this walk, hot and sunny with virtually no shelter between Dartford and Greenhithe along the banks of the Darent and Thames. But I’d heard that there would be a boat sailing up Dartford Creek, a rare occasion at the time and decided it would be good to photograph it.

This route is now one end of the Darent Valley Path, a 19 mile path which ends at Sevenoaks, most of which I’ve walked or cycled on other occasions, and the part beside the Thames is on the England Coast Path.

The Darent used to be navigable at least up as far as Dartford, where barges brought in and took out cargoes. Close to Dartford is a half-lock which holds back water above it when the tide goes out, long out of use but now slowly being restored to bring the waterway back into regular use.

*A fixed low bridge impedes navigation. This bypass was built as University Way, but the University never came so they renamed it Bob Dunn Way*

There used to be a lock which craft could go through when then the tide was high enough downstream, but that was replaced by a fixed barrier. Boats can still go through in either direction close to high tide when their is enough water for them to clear the sill.

*The yacht arrived later than expected and I had to run back to photograph*

*it coming under the flood barrier. It was too late to get under the bridge on the same tide.*

As well as the Darent, barges also went up the River Cray which joins the Darent downstream from the half-lock. This too is being brought back into leisure use.

By the river in the centre of Dartford was the industrial estate dominated by the pharmaceutical manufacturing plant of Burroughs Wellcome who took over a former paper works here in 1889. In 1995 this became Glaxo Wellcome, the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. The works was wound down from 2008 by the then owners GlaxoSmithKline with manufacturing ending in 2013. Much of the site was empty by 2015 and now has large blocks of flats.

On the west side of Dartford Creek had been paper mills, but the last of these, owned by Wiggins Teape closed in 2009 and there was by 2015 housing on the site.

*QEII bridge and Littlebrook Power station, River Thames, Dartford*

When the third Dartford Bypass was built around 1988 barges were no longer bringing esparto grass and other raw materials for the paper works up the river and no thought was given to navigation. Boats that can lower masts or without them can creep under the road for a short time on a rising or falling tide when there is enough water to allow them to float but not high enough for the bridge to block their transit.

Much of the land to the east of the creek was marshes, which made it a suitable location for the Wells fireworks factory, long closed. But I think it or an adjoining site was now in use for clay-pigeon shooting, and for much of this section of the walk we sounded under gunfire.

There had once been a pub, Longreach Terrace, and a ferry to Purfleet on the Thames close to the the mouth of Dartford creek, but both were long gone. It was here too that smallpox victims were brough ashore to the islolation wards of Orchard Hospital, demolished around 1975, part of the Joyce Green Hospital which was demolished around 2000.

*The Purfleet to Zeebruge ferry goes under the QEII bridge*

Further downstream on the banks of the Thames we passed Littlebrook power station – the final plant there, Littlebrook D, had ceased operation only four months earlier – before going under the Dartford QEII bridge and past Crossways Business Park. I had meant to climb up the hill to Stone Church, but missed the footpath and ended our walk in Greenhithe. But I was too tired anyway – and had stopped taking pictures on this last part of our walk.

More at Darent Valley Path & Thames.

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Rainham and Hornchurch – 2006

Rainham and Hornchurch: On Thursday 11th May 2006 I put my Brompton folding bike on the train for the journey across London to Rainham Station. The journey, around 31 miles in a straight line, though rather longer on the ground, took me almost two hours on three trains, one Underground. As usual I took a book to read and relaxed on the journey.

Rainham is in Havering, part of Greater London and is the last station out to the east on the C2C rail service where the Travelcard I used covered. I did several rides and walks from here into Essex over the years, but I on this one stayed inside Greater London.

The first part of this bike ride followed the route of the London Loop path around the outskirts of London, which at that date came to a dead and desolate end at Coldharbour Point. The path now continues to end in Purfleet, and if you have the stamina you can continue walking on a riverside path which ends at Tilbury Docks before having to retrace your steps to Grays.

I didn’t write much about the ride back in 2006, and I didn’t ride very far. After returning from the end of the path I had a short ride west along the A13, which I don’t recommended as it is certainly not cycle friendly with much fast-moving traffic. The Mardyke Estate, where I went after that is now called ‘Orchard Village’ which at least avoids confusion with the Mardyke, a small river a few miles to the east. I continued roughly north through South Hornchurch, finally ending my ride at the District Line station of Elm Park.

The sculpture in the river facing the barges and the Tilda Rice plant is Diver: Regeneration by local sculptor John Kaufman, who died in 2002, not long after it was placed here in the mud in 2000. Some of the funding for it came from the landfill company which carried waste here to raise parts of the marshes above sea level.

*Waste Transfer Jetty – Landfill is raising much of the below sea-level marshes*

My pictures don’t reflect the nature of the area which has large areas of open with marshes and country parks and two rivers flowing through it, the Beam River and the Ingrebourne which flows into the Thames at Rainham Creek. I think it is also an area which has seen considerable regeneration since 2006 in the London Riverside area of Thames Gateway redevelopment.

*Coldharbour Point and the barbed wire where the London Loop then ended*

Here’s my account with the usual minor corrections from 2006:

Rainham is at the eastern edge of London, an area of marsh, industry, warehouses, container stacks, dereliction and landfill on the Essex (north) bank of the Thames, cut across by the elevated A13 trunk road which sweeps across the creek and on over the marshes to Purfleet, alongside the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

One day the Thames Path will continue past Coldharbour Point, but for the moment it’s a dead end. I eat my sandwiches and then turn back, making my way up onto the elevated roadway, but the views are disappointing.

At the next roundabout west I take a look around, leave the main road and then head north, past disused areas of the Ford Dagenham site and up through the Mardyke Estate and South Hornchurch.

At Elm Park the heat of our first hot day if the year – 25 Celsius in the shade, but I’ve been constantly in sun – gets to me and I give up and take the Underground towards home.

*One of many houses decorated for the Cup Final. Unfortunately West Ham lost to Liverpool*

The heat has buckled some of the rails and the District Line train has to crawl along, more or less at my cycling speed, but at least I can just sit and rest.

There are more pictures from the ride here.

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