St Peter's church | >Re-PHOTO

St Peter’s to the Thames

St Peter’s to the Thames: The fifth post on my walk which began at Kew Bridge Station on 10th of December 1989. The previous post was Chiswick Waste, Stamford Brook, British Grove & St Peter’s Square.

St Peter's Church, Black Lion Lane, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1989, 89-12c-35 — *St Peter’s Church, Black Lion Lane, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1989, 89-12c-35*

St Peter’s Church is at the south-east corner of St Peter’s Square on Black Lion Lane and is now uncomfortably close to the Great West Road, this section built well over a hundred years later in the late 1950s. In 1829 the church would have been surrounded by trees, meadows and market gardens with a pleasant walk to the nearby Thames. Now you need to seach for the subway to get across one of the busiest roads out of London.

The architect was locally born Edward Lapidge, whose father was an assistant to Capability Brown as a landscape gardener at Hampton Court. As well as a wider practice he also built other local churches at Hampton Wick and Putney. The Classical church building is Grade II* listed and William Morris who lived nearby had a hand in redecorating its interior in 1887.

*Leaning Woman, Karel Vogel, North Verbena Gardens, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1989, 89-12c-36*

This 1959 concrete sculpture by Karel Vogel, (1897-1961) a Jewish Czech-born artist who fled here from the Nazis in 1938, was Grade II listed in 2016. It was commissioned by the London County Council’s Patronage of the Arts scheme when the Great West Road was being built through St Peter’s churchyard in 1959 “provide visual amenity in compensation for” this major road scheme. The sculpture, cast concrete over a metal framework, took Vogel over a year to complete and was extremely controversial in the local area.

By 2016 the sculpture had seriously deteriorated and Radio Prague reported in 2023 on its planned renovation at a cost of over £50,000. The restored statue now looking in grand shape was unveiled in July 2024.

*Metropolitan Water Board, Hammersmith old pumping station, Great West Rd, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1989, 89-12c-21*

This 1909 building (described by some estate agents as Victorian) has now been converted into ‘exclusive’ flats.

*Upper Mall, The Dove, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1989, 89-12c-11*

You can see the sign for The Dove pub which has its entrance on the footpath here at 19 Upper Mall. This Grade II listed public house is well worth a visit. It has probably been serving beer since the 1730s and was bought by Chiswick Brewery in 1796. Although a charming enough place its listing probably more reflects its stories and associations rather than any particular architectural merit. Of course as the very detailed The Dove, Hammersmith – a tiny mystery on Zythophile states its popularity has resulted in “most of the “facts” printed about it being demonstrably wrong.”

Also worth a visit is the William Morris Society Museum, just behind me as I made this picture in the lower floor of the house he lived in for the last 18 years of his life, renaming it as Kelmscott House. Doubtless he enjoyed the facilities of The Dove (then called The Doves, apparently by an error of the sign-maker) including the marbles game of bumblepuppy.

*Hammersmith Pier, River Thames, Furnivall Gardens, Lower Mall, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1989, 89-12d-61*

This pier is on the corner of Furnivall Gardens. Previously this had been mouth of Hammersmith Creek which ran north as far as King Street. The fishermen here were replaced by noxious industries in the nineteenth century, with brewery malthouses to its west and a lead mill on the east. The creek was filled in by Hammersmith council in 1936 and they built a new town hall across it which opened in 1939 – still there facing the Great West Road.

Wartime bombing removed the Phoenix Lead Mills and the Friends Meeting House with its burial ground and the area was opened as a public park, Furnivall Gardens, named for Frederick James Furnivall, one of the founders of the Oxford English Dictionary as well as Working Men’s College and the Hammersmith Rowing Club (now renamed after him) as well as the probable inspiration for ‘Ratty’ in the Wind in the Willows.

The pier here was opened at the same time as Furnival Gardens in 1951 for the Festival of Britain to enable people from the area to board steamers to take them to the Festival. After the end of the Festival there was little use for it. Eventually the PLA sold it to the owner of the Dove pub, and it was extended to provide more moorings.

*River Thames, Furnivall Gardens, Lower Mall, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1989, 89-12d-62*

Beyond the moorings at Hammersmith Pier – Dove Pier you can see the southern end of Hammersmith Bridge and mansion blocks along Castelnau Road.

Great Union St, Hedon Rd & Popple Street

Great Union St, Hedon Rd & Popple Street: The River Hull divides the city in two, and although there are around a dozen bridges linking the two sides, they remain very separate. Perhaps the most obvious aspect of this are the two league sides, Hull FC and Hull KR, facing each other in bitter rivalry from West and East. The river may not quite be an iron curtain but at least when I first went to Hull it was a very tangible divide.

I stayed in North Hull, on the west side of the river, and was surprised to find my wife who had grown up there was almost completely ignorant of anything on the other side. Of course some people worked on the other side of the river, and back in the sixties and seventies were often delayed on on their way to work or coming home as the bridges opened for river traffic. Now those openings are infrequent as few vessels make passages upriver.

Mo's Cafe, Great Union St,, Hull, 1989 89-8n-15 — *Mo’s Cafe, Great Union St, Hull, 1989 89-8n-15*

I photographed Mo’s Cafe on two different days in August 1989 and the notice in this picture tells me it had recently closed and “MOVED TO DRYPOOL GARGE 18 HEDON RD 2 MIN’S AWAY”. My second picture a day or two later is from across the road and shows some of the surrounding buildings which were still there on Great Union Street until 2015, but are now demolished.

On the north corner of St Peter Street, those buildings were part of the Rank Hovis Clarence Mill site, and Mo’s Cafe was at the rear of the Waterloo Tavern on Great Union Street at its junction with Clarence Street. The pub closed around 2010 and is now an an antiques salvage yard.

*As You Like It, Hedon Rd, Hull, 1989 89-8n-16*

This doorway presents a mystery I have been unable to solve in its plate fixed on the wall. At the top is a helmet of sorts, perhaps a link to diving though it could be just heraldic fantasy. Below is a shield with its three crowns, the emblem of the City of Kingston upon Hull since the 1400’s and the text ‘AS YOU LIKE IT’, presumably a trademark as underneath in smaller letters it states ‘REGISTERED’.

Finally at the bottom is one of those lettermarks of combined letters, always unreadable unless you know what they are. I can see a ‘J’, ‘F’ and ‘R’ with an ‘L’ that is possibly for Limited as there is a small ‘D’ to the right. Perhaps some local historian will know more and comment.

*Gravestone, Great Union St, Hull, 1989 89-8o-62*

I think the small graveyard area is part of the churchyard of the former St. Peter’s Church, which was destroyed in a wartime bombing raid in 1941. Since the Covid lockdown this area has been cleaned up by a group of local residents and is now a small park now known as ‘Thinkers Corner’ after a sculpture by Kevin Storch was placed in it on the 59th anniversary of the start of the Second World War in 1989.

Unfortunately I could not read the inscription on the stone but I thought he had probably been the captain of the vessel shown.

*Herald, Storage tanks, Hedon Rd, Hull, 1989 89-8o-63*

I don’t know what was in these tanks if anything, but the 1928 OS Map shows some molasses tanks in this area to the south of Hedon Road. The large building with HERALD on it has its frontage on Popple Street, just off Hedon Road, and the name N R Burnett Ltd large on the other side. The company is still listed as a timber merchant in Hull, now in West Carr Lane. HERALD seems to have been painted over their name at a later date. It was also on the side of the building followed by a second line already illegible, but could have read TIMBER [HULL] LTD.

This area is immediately to the north of Hull’s timber dock, Victoria Dock, which opened in 1850 and closed to shipping in 1970 and has been redeveloped for residential use. Hull remains the UK’s leading importer of softwood mainly from Russia and the Baltic states.

*C M Railton & Son, Popple St, Hull, 1989 89-8o-66*

C M Railton & Son were as their sign states Joinery Manufacturers and the property in the centre of the picture is still on Popple Street, backing on to Hedon Road next to Robbies pub (aka Victoria Hotel/Monkey House.) The site is currently a medical supplies company.

C M Railton moved out and are now registered in Beverley as a non-trading company, due to be struck of the register and deemed to be bona vacantia – without owner.

Behind at right is a sawmill, one of a number on the Hedon Road. You can read an extensive article by Paul Gibson, The timber industry in Hull, on his Hull and Eat Yorkshire History site.

*National Dock Labour Board, Popple St, Hull, 1989 89-8o-51*

The National Dock Labour Board was set up by the Labour government following the 1945 Dock Strike in 1947 to adminster the Dock Workers’ (Regulation of Employment) Scheme. It combined the trade unions and employers and controlled wages, hiring of labour and discipline of workers and was financed by a levy on employers.

It gave dock workers security, guaranteeing them with work on the docks, finding employment for them if they were laid off by an employer – or if no work was available a £25,000 payoff. The scheme was abolished by Thatcher in 1989 as being an anachronism that prevented the industry exploiting its workers. Dockers went out on strike in July 1989 but most voted to go back to work in August.

This building remains on Popple Street though rather difficult to recognise except by the distinctive brickwork. It was used for some time by St John Ambulance but is now a charity providing activities and education for vulnerable adults.

More from East Hull in later posts. As always you can click on the pictures to see a larger version on Flickr.

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

In Honour of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

In Honour of Our Lady of Mount Carmel The annual procession from St Peter’s Italian Church in Clerkenwell first took place by special permission of Queen Victoria in 1883 and continues annually. On the third Sunday in July, this years was last Sunday, but in both 2019 and 2013 it was on Sunday 21st July. For this post I’ll use photographs from these two years though I’ve been on quite a few other occasions.

I can’t remember when I first got to know about the procession, one of London’s oldest and most colourful religious festivals, but I think it will have been in the early 1990s when I belonged to a group called London Documentary Photographers, organised by the senior curator of photography at the Museum of London, Mike Seaborne, and became friends with another photographer, Paul Baldesare, who as his name suggests, is of Italian extraction, his father coming to the country before Paul was born.

Since then its been a fairly regular entry in my diary, though I’ve been away from London some years, or had other pressing business. More recently it’s been more of a social occaision, where I’ve met Paul and other photographer friends with perhaps more interest in the Sagra in the street below the church, where Italian food and wine are sold, with wine often being brought in specially from small Italian family winemakers, mostly good and mainly cheap.

I didn’t go last Sunday, mainly because of the amber heat warning. There is little shade and taking pictures means much standing in direct sunlight, something dangerous for any length of time, particularly someone of my age and infirmities. Instead I stayed inside, drinking plenty of water and keeping as cool as possible.

It’s a great event, with lots of people, colourful statues being carried around the streets and a succession of floats and walking groups in costumes largely reflecting biblical scenes of the life of Jesus. There are I think two Jesus’s in the line-up, one with a communion cup leading the first communicants and another carrying a heavy wooden cross.

Photographically for me the climax comes with the release of a white dove or doves, though both the number of doves and how they are set free has differed over they years. But most years recently I think there have been three who have been held in the hands of clergy and supposedly released together. Except the clergy are not always well-synchronised and the doves too have minds of their own. Its hard to get a picture capturing all of them in a single shot.

Sometimes the doves shoot up almost vertically while at other times they speed past the cameras just over our heads. And although we think of white doves as being photogenic, at some points in their flight they look decidedly ugly and even maimed.

Back in the times of film when the cameras I used just took a single picture when you pressed the shutter release you seldom had more than one chance to capture them. Nowadays digital cameras all have modes to take multiple frames and this cuts much of the danger of missing the birds completely. It’s probably the only time in the year I have any use for the 8 frames a second my camera has on offer, though the first time I tried this the camera went into sulk mode and refused to take even a single shot and I had to grab my second camera.

But its also something I’ve now done many times and find it hard to approach in a new and fresh way. Some events evolve enough to make event fatigue not a problem but those that stay more or less the same can’t arouse the same level of interest. Perhaps I might have taken a break this year even if the weather had been less of a problem.

More pictures and details on My London Diary from 2013 and 2019 with a separate group of pictures from the 2019 Sagra.