Open House, Sewol, Iran, Sabah, Sarawak & Orange Order: Saturday 16th September 2017 was another busy and varied day for me in London, beginning with two visits on Open House Day and continuing with four protests.
Open House – Banqueting House – Whitehall
Though I’d often walked past the Banqueting House in Whithall, usually on my way to protests at Downing Street or Parliament Square, I’d never before been inside the building. But when I came past on Open House Day there was only a short queue and entrance was free. I had time to spare as a protest I’d hoped to photograph had failed to materialise, so in I went.
Inigo Jones designed (or copied from Andrea Palladio) the Banqueting House for the Palace of Whitehall, built 1619-22, and it is the only remaining building from the palace. It was the first neo-Classical building in England.
I went to Peckham to see a few things in the Peckham Festival including the Open House showing of the Old Waiting Room at Peckham Rye station which was housing a photographic exhibition of old pictures of Peckham.
The building itself turned out to be more interesting than the exhibition which lacked any real examination of the more recent past of Peckham. But there were other things to see in Peckham, and a short walk around Rye Lane and the Bussey Building is always interesting.
Back in Central London, my first protest was in Trafalgar Square where a small group mainly of SOuth Koreans was continuing their series of monthly vigils in memory of he Sewol victims, mainly school children who obeyed the order to ‘Stay Put’ on the lower decks as the ship went down.
They continue to demand the Korean government conduct a thorough inquiry into the disaster, recover all missing victims, punish those responsible and enact special anti-disaster regulations.
Overthrow the Islamic Regime of Iran – Trafalgar Square
Also in Trafalgar Square the 8 March Women’s Organisation (Iran-Afghanistan) were protesting on the 29th anniversary of the massacre of political prisoners in Iraq following a fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini calling for the death of all Mojahedins and leftists as ‘fighters against God’ and ‘apostates from Islam.’
The fatwa led to over 30,000 political prisoners, mostly members of the main opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) being executed, largely hanged in groups of six and buried in mass graves.
The protesters call for the overthrow of the Islamic regime as necessary for the ‘litigation movement’ can achieve justice and build a society where such executions cannot occur and no one is suppressed, imprisoned or tortured for their ideas.
A short distance down the road at Downing St, Sabahans and Sarawkians were protesting on Malaysia Day, which they say is a ‘Black Day for Sabah and Sarawak’, calling for a restoration of human rights and the repeal of the Sedition Act and and freedom for Sarawak and Sabah.
Among them was Doris Jones, the leader of the Sabah Sarawak Keluar Malaysia secessionist movement in London.
When Malaysia was founded on 16th September 1963 the two independent countries in North Borneo joined with the Federation of Malaya and Singapore and were given promises, assurances and undertakings for their future in the federation. These included ’20 points’ of an Inter-Governmental Committee (IGC) Report, which the prrotesters say have been cast aside, and anyone raising them is being detained under a draconian Internal Security Act.
The annual Lord Carson Memorial Parade, one of several annual parades by lodges of the Orange Order came to the Cenotaph for wreaths to be laid. As well as various lodges dedicated to the Apprentice Boys of Derry there were others remembering the Ulster regiments that fought on the Somme. As well as members of lodges in the Home Counties and London, these parades also include some who come from Ulster and Scotland.
Lord Carson (1854-1935) was a leading judge and politician in the UK becoming Solicitor General and First Lord of the Admiralty. He had joined the Orange Order at the age of 19, and in 1911 became the leader of the Ulster Unionists, determined to fight against home rule for Ireland by “all means which may be found necessary“, becoming one of the founders of a unionist militia that became the Ulster Volunteer Force.
But in later years he warned Unionists not to alienate the Catholics in the north, something which parades such as this clearly do in some areas of Northern Ireland. In London they are much less controversial, although I have at times been threatened by those taking part for photographing them. But on this occasion I received just a few hard stares and even some faintly welcoming grins from some who recognised me.
I turned right at the end of Ridgway Road onto Loughborough Road and walked under the railway bridge to the junction with Coldharbour Lane, turning east and walking a few yards under another bridge to the station entrance. Outside the station which was then closed at the weekends were a young couple who saw my cameras and asked me what I was photographing. We had a short talk and then they asked me to take their picture.
The Flower Box, Coldharbour Lane, Loughborough Jct, Lambeth, 1989 89-5d-12
A few yards further on I was back to the small parade of shops in front of the alley leading to the Celestial Church of Christ where I had made some photographs a month earlier.
I don’t know how long The Flower Box had been closed, but clearly it was some time, although I could still read its faded signage, ‘FLOWERS FOR EVERY OCCASION’ and ‘SAY IT WITH FLOWERS’.
Perhaps surprisingly this building with the triple decoration at left is still standing at No 208, now a Chinese takeaway, with the demolished shop at right under the hoarding rebuilt and now serving Caribbean Cuisine.
My next picture came just a couple of yards away, when a young man riding a bike emerged from the alley. I could see him coming as the shop at left had been demolished. I was rather surprised that the two floors above, hidden by the hoarding were still standing as there didn’t appear to be very much holding them up.
I turned around and walked back westwards along Coldharbour Lane which bends southwards under more railway lines before almost immediately swinging west again, creating the narrow space for this building between viaduct and road. That end wall of the property is only six bricks wide – around 4ft 6inches, though the building widens out further away.
This block is still there, looking perhaps a little better than when I made this picture. The first floor window on the end wall has been bricked up. It appears to be leaning a little in my picture because I did not have the camera level.
Shakespeare Road runs south here and I walked a short distance down it to photograph Jubilee Terrace. The road was obviously named for William S, and as the plaque states, Jubilee Terrace was built in 1887, the year of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubillee, 50 years after her accession on 20 June 1837. It was the occasion for her to start making public appearances again after a long period of isolation following the death of her husband in 1861.
I think these were built as a terrace of houses in conjunction with the business premises to the north shown in the next picture. The houses at both ends and the central pair are three-storey while the others only have two.
Shakespeare Business Centre, Shakespeare Rd, Loughborough Jct, Lambeth, 1989 89-5e-62
At the north end of Jubilee Terrace and joined to it, this was built as commercial premises for Osborne and Young corn merchants, with an entrance for horse-drawn vehicles at its centre. Later it became known as Coldharbour Works.
You can read more about the history of the building on Brixton Buzz, including the rather surprising finding underneath that underneath the blank boards of the shopfronts at right were those you can now see on the building for bird seed specialists B.O.Y, Brinkler, Osborne & Young, including the original owners of the premises – B.O.Y were apparently in business here from around 1932 until they were taken over around 1974.
The southern end of Jubilee Terrace and in the yard of Coldharbour Works behind the shop of Anna French, Fabrics Lace Wallpapers in what I assume was one the store of the corn merchants. Anna French started a company in Scotland in 1976 to make her designs and is one of the best-known wallpaper and fabric designers. The company is now part of Thibaut, the oldest US company in wallpaper and fabrics.
Anna French moved to smaller premisess in Hinton Rd and the building is now Kings College Hospital Therapies Department
The Green Man, Coldharbour Lane, Loughborough Jct, Lambeth, 1989 89-5e-64
The Green Man on the corner of Coldharbour Lane and Hinton Road had been at the edge of one of the pictures I’d taken on an April walk, but here in a picture taken looking from the end of Belinda Rd it is in the centre of the picture and we can see its name and pub sign.
It closed in 2003, not because it was unprofitable, but because it was too popular with drug dealers and petty criminals and was asked to close. There had been a pub of that name on the site since before 1800, but this building dates from 1881. In 2016 the building, now a skills zone and careers advice centre, was given a Shimmer Wall Green Man artwork on the second floor above its entrance.
London Loop – Uxbridge to Moor Park: Monday May 29th 2006 was the Late May Bank Holiday for that year, the day which replaced the Whit Monday Bank holiday in 1968, though at first for a trial 5 year period, only becoming a final replacement in 1971. Unlike Whitsun it came in a regular place, saving us having to do esoteric calculations to find the date o0f Easter, and then add on 50 days for Pentecost. This year, 2023, the Late May Bank Holiday actually falls on Whit Monday, but that isn’t usual. Though some people still call it Whit when it isn’t.
We had decided to go on a walk on the bank holiday, and we had been following the various stages of the London Loop, a kind of walkers M25 around the outskirts of London. The section we had reached began at Uxbridge and ended at Moor Park.
Although the M25 has made journeys around London much easier for those in cars, there is no equivalent for public transport. I live only 8 miles as the crow flies from Uxbridge station it took us a train, two buses and well over an hour to get there.
From then on it was fairly plain sailing, or rather walking, though much of the first half of our route was on the towpath of the Grand Union Canal. We covered section 12 which ends in Harefield and section 13 which goes on to Moor Park. The two add up to around nine and a half miles, with another mile or to the station at each end. The two links give maps and details and also short notes on points of interest in the walks, so I don’t need to add to them.
We didn’t have these pdfs, but a copy of the book about the whole loop published five years earlier. Perhaps some things had changed but I think the directions given were at times in any case rather too vague to be useful. However the small reproductions of the OS Maps it contains soon let us work out the correct path. Nowadays of course you can get the maps and route guides on your phone, which can also tell you exactly where you are. Unless like me a few years ago when you get lost in a dense forest where there is no GPS (and no phone signal.)
On My London Diary right at the bottom of the May 2006 page there is a short text about the day which includes “most of it was pretty boring, far too much green. The book giving the route is pretty hopeless in places too, which is perhaps why there were parts of it that very few people seem to have found, with badly overgrown paths” and also points out that back in 2006, the London Loop was still “an almost unsigned footpath route“. I think the waymarks are now much improved.
The piece concludes with what should have been a link to the pictures simply reading “coming shortly” though there is a previously unlinked page with a set of them. The next page and the rest of the pictures are still missing. But probably I had decided the 25 that are there are enough to give a good impression for the walk.. I’ve uploaded just one extra to go with this post.
Saturday 16th January 2016 was a busy day for me, ending rather unusually with taking some photographs at a party which I also put on-line.
St Pancras Die-In for Calais refugees
Saturday 16th January 2016 was an International Day of Action in solidarity with refugees and there were protests in Calais and Dunkirk as well as in many cities. The protests were held at short notice against the clearing the Calais refugee ‘Jungle’ and urged the UK government to give refugees at Calais safe passage into the UK to claim asylum.
Many of those in the camps have family and friends in the UK, which has failed to take a fair share of the migrants. Protesters included people from the London2Calais convoy as well as a Christian contingent with some bible-based placards.
After a brief speech on the wide pavement in front of Kings Cross station the protesters walked to the main entrance of St Pancras International where a large group of police prevented them from entering and they held a short rally.
The protesters then marched off down to Euston Road accompanied by a large group of police. While some continued to march along Euston Road many caught the police unaware by rushing down the steps into the underground entrance and along past the ticket offices before being stopped by more police at the underground entrance to the long shopping mall in St Pancras Station.
They held a protest there with several speakers calling for refugees at Calais and Dunkirk, who include many unaccompanied minors and others with relatives living in the UK, to be allowed to enter the UK and make asylum claims. Actup London then staged a die-in with others sitting down to join them for around ten minutes, ending with a final speech.
Apparently a few protesters had managed to get in and protest with fake body bags at the Eurostar entrance. The protesters had been careful throughout to leave a path for people catching trains to enter the station, but some had been held up by police who mistook them for protesters.
I was late and missed the start of the march against the annual inhumane slaughter of dolphins and small whales at Taiji in Japan. They had met in Cavendish Square but were marching down Regent St when I caught up with them on their way to the Japanese Embassy.
Although there were several hundred taking part, the marchers kept to the pavement rather than take to the road, which seemed rather strange and perhaps reduces their impact, though it did mean that shoppers who often appear to be sleepwalking did have to move out of the way.
Dominic Dyer of the Born Free Foundation, Care for the Wild and CEO of The Badger Trust led the march down the street. As usual many of the marchers had made their own posters and placards and some carried dolphins. This year many of the placards called for a boycott of the Tokyo Olympics for the shame that this inhumane slaughter brings to Japan.
I walked with the marchers taking pictures as far as Oxford Circus, waiting until all of them had passed on their way down Piccadilly to the Japanese Embassy and then left.
Around the statue of Erost were a group of Vegans from ‘Awakening Compassion’, standing and holding posters with large photographs of animals we farm for food – chickens, cows, sheep, goats, pigs- with messages such as ‘I am an animal – Someone not something – I want to stay alive.
Although I’m opposed to the cruel treatment of animals, the animals in these pictures owe their existence to the farmers who over millennia have bred them and now raise them. If we gave up eating meat and dairy products our countryside would be a very different place. We should be eating less meat for various reasons, and I do often have meals without it and pay more for meat and eggs produced with less cruelty, but farm animals form a vital part of the ecosystem and I’d hate to lose them.
The message of the Syrians who had come to protest in Trafalgar Square was clear – Drop Food Not Bombs on Syria. Instead of spending billions on bombs and weapons they want the money to be spent on humanitarian aid for those under siege across Syria, including those in Madaya and the Yarmouk refugee camp.
Many wore or held the Free Syria flag with its green, black and white strips and three red stars, and various posters which made clear they condemnation of ISS, the Russian bombings and the Assad regime.
One poster read ‘Syrians started the Revolution – Assad started the war’ while others made clear what they were calling for; ‘Drop the Food, Not Bombs’ and ‘Medaya is Crying While the World is Denying’
International Times new ‘Issue Zero’ – Mayfair Rooms, Fleet St
Hot from the press – but long sold out
Notorious London underground paper International Times, first published in 1966 and closed down in 1973 (with several re-incarnations and a web site since 2009) started again for its 50th anniversary with a launch party for the 36 page ‘Issue Zero’.
Among those writing for the new issue were stalwarts from its early days, including Heathcote Williams, and the issue was edited by Heathcote Ruthven with subediting by Emily McCarthy, Heather Williams, David Graeber and Heathcote Williams, design by Darren Cullen and art by Nick Victor and Claire Palmer.
Six years ago on New Year’s Eve we walked with a couple of family members from Sudbury to Brentford. This year because of rail and health problems none of our family are staying with us and “South Western Railway services between 18 December and 8 January are subject to change and may not operate”, so if the weather is fine we will probably do a rather shorter walk from home.
The trip in 2016 to Sudbury Hill station was reasonably fast; a short train journey then a bus and a couple of short hops on the Piccadilly line got us there in a little under an hour and a half, and within a few minutes we were walking along suburban streets to Horsenden Wood, where we walked to the top of the hill.
Unfortunately it was a dull and damp day, and we could only see the extensive views this part of the walk would have given us had the air been clear dully through the murk, but the path up through the wood was enhanced by the slight mist. We walked down the hill to cross the Grand Union Canal.
Soon we reached the highpoint of the walk for some of us, the 1930s trading estate leading to the Art Deco Tesco on Western Avenue, designed by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners and built in 1933 for Hoover, along with the 1930s moderne canteen, now an Asian restaurant. We chose the Tesco both for a tiny bit of shopping and the toilets, then walked west to the footbridge to cross the busy road.
Almost immediately on the path the other side of Western Avenue we came to St Mary the Virgin Perivale, now used for concerts, with just an occasional service.
This Grade I listed redundant church dates in part from the 13th century and was the smallest church in Middlesex (outside London.) We explored its graveyard and sat down on a rather damp seat there to eat our sandwiches in what was either heavy drizzle or light rain.
The next section of the walk took us beside the River Brent, another of London’s minor rivers and like the rest of our walk going to Brentford, though we had to make some deviations to follow roads and footpaths. This was a relatively quiet and sometimes boring section of the walk, though its always good to walk beside the river, and there was a rather dumpy viaduct for a doomed railway, a council estate and a long foot path to a Cuckoo Lane where no cuckoos were to be heard except for our ludicrous imitations.
Things got more interesting again when we reached Hanworth Church, and early work of George Gilbert Scott who later called it ‘a mass of horrors’ and Brent Lodge Park, where I ignored the pleas of some of my cfo-walkers and led us firmly away from a tea-room – we were already and hour or so behind schedule if we were to finish the walk during daylight.
Brunel really knew how to build a viaduct, and here was the first major engineering work on the new Great Western Railway in 1836-7, with 8 semi-elliptical arches each of 70 ft span and rising 19 ft supported on hollow brick piers – the first time these were used in a railway viaduct. 886 ft long, the height to the parapet is 81 ft, and when built it was 30 ft wide to carry two broad gauge lines. Later it was widened to 55ft with a third pier added to each existing pair, and it could then take four standard gauge tracks, which were laid in 1892. We walked under this impressive structure beside the River Brent to the south side which is the earlier part and carries the arms of Lord Wharncliffe, chair of the committee that gave permission for the GWR.
We continued by the Brent to join the Grand Union Canal, another earlier great engineering acheivement along with the rest of the canal system, at the Hanwell flight of locks. Our route now ran along the towpath, so navigation was simple, all the way to the Great West Road.
There was still just enough light to take a few photographs, but my companions were flagging and our walk was getting slower and slower.
By the time we reached the road for the short walk to Brentford Station it was truly dark and they had slowed to a snails pace, and despite my urging them to catch the next train we arrived there to see it just departing, for once dead on time, though we were an hour and a minute later then planned. It had been a good walk but would have been better without the 29 minutes wait there for the next train.
You can see many more pictures from the walk on My London Diary at New Years Eve Walk.
I can no longer remember whether the short excursion to Greenland Dock from Rotherhithe came at the end of my previous walk or a few days later at the beginning of my walk on 28th October 1988, though of course it doesn’t really matter. The story of my previous walk began at Greenwich and Deptford Creek October 1988 and ended with Deptford to Rotherhithe October 1988.
I’m unsure now whether I took the fist few of these pictures at the end of my previous walk or at the start of my next one, but it hardly matters as they are in the same area and within a few days of each other.
This is one of the two bridges that linked the riverside areas of Rotherhithe and the Surrey Docks to the area around Lower Road and Surrey Quays station, then on the East London which ran between Shoreditch and alternately to New Cross or New Cross Gate, linking to the District line at Whitechapel. Both have been preserved, though not in working order and this one a short distance from it former site.
At the centre of the picture you can see the curved lower end of the bridge and below it the flat rail on which it rolled back to raise the bascule, with a heavy counterweight above so very little power was needed to raise the bridge.
Four people in kayaks link up and stop to talk to each other in Greenland Dock. I was standing at the end of Greenland Quay and looking towards the tower blocks of the Barkantine Estate on the Isle of Dogs across the Thames.
Southwark Park, Rotherhithe, Southwark, 1988 88-10j-62
My next picture was made in Southwark Park, which I think I walked through to Jamaica Road. I’m not absolutely sure what the building in the background was, and I think the area it was in has now been re-developed. Somewhere in the north-east corner of the park it was probably a part of the former St Olave’s Hospital which closed in 1984 and was demolished and replaced by Ann Moss Way in the 1990s.
I seem deliberately to have tried to make this picture mysterious, taking three near-identical frames, an unusual number for me at the time when film was relatively expensive.
Major Works, James Jackson and Co, Jamaica Rd, Bermondsey, Southwark, 1988 88-10j-51
This works was next to Major Road, though I’m not sure if it took its name from the road or gave its name to it. It was demolished to build Bermondsey Underground Station on the Jubilee Line Extension which opened at the start of 2000. According to the text on its frontage the company was ‘Established 1827’ and made ‘Flooring Adhesives, French Polishes, Wax Polishes, Varnishes, Seals, Staines – Etc.’
Relatively few streets in the area aspire to a No 90 and none that I can find that look anything like this now. This was a part of a terrace of 5 similar houses starting at a street corner, with two pairs of doors on the street and one around the corner as another frame (not digitised) shows. It appears to be later Victorian and I suspect has been demolished. The gate was perhaps a 1930s addition.
Lockwood Square was a 1960’s addition to the council’s Southwark Park Estate with flats around a central grass area. There had been a Lockwood Street here and it was probably badly damaged by wartime bombing. The buildings are bounded by Drummond Road, Clements Road and Southwark Park Road. Some of the ground floor is garages and there are a few shop units. To the north is a play area and Saint Crispin with Christ Church Bermondsey and the similar block of New Place Square.
Guantanamo, Firefighters, Advocacy, RMT & Lambeth Cuts. Wednesday 25th February 2015 was a busy day for protests in London, and I photographed five events.
Free Shaker Aamer at Parliament
The Free Shaker Aamer campaign protested for 4 hours at Parliament calling for the urgent release of London resident Shaker Aamer from Guantanamo, where he had been held for over 13 years and regularly tortured. Of course I didn’t stay with them that long – there aren’t really that many ways to photograph a fairly small group in orange jumpsuits – but it meant they were still there when I arrived over three hours after their protest began.
Usually their protests are at lunchtime, but because they had stayed longer I was able to photograph their weekly protest at around 3.30pm on my way to an event outside Downing St. They continued these protests while parliament was sitting until Shaker was released towards the end of 2015.
Striking Firefighters block traffic
Firefighters came out of their rally in Central Hall and blocked the road in front of Parliament. I don’t think the police tried to move their fellow public servants, who had a large black balloon with the message ‘FBU – WE RESCUE PEOPLE, NOT BANKS! STOP THE CUTS’ as well as several banners.
After around ten minutes they marched down to Downing St, blocking much of Whitehall. In front of the gates to Downing St there was a very noisy protest, and police did come and talk with In front of the gates to Downing St there was a very noisy protest, and police did come and talk with FBU leader Matt Wrack and promised to try to get someone to come out and talk with them.
They were still waiting when I left – and I think they would still be waiting now before anyone representing our Tory government came.
Welfare Advocacy not a Crime
A short walk away in Caxton Street people were protesting outside the Dept of Work & Pensions in a nationwide day of action over the arrest of welfare rights activist Tony Cox.
Although by law welfare claimants are allowed to have an adviser present with them at job centre interviews, when a claimant arrived together with Cox his interview was cancelled. And later that day police arrived at Cox’s home, arresting him and charging him with threatening behaviour.
When his case came to court in October the prosecution had to drop the main charges. A month after the first hearing Cox was found guilty of refusing to supply person details to the police and fined £200 and admonished on the charge of hindering the officers.
RMT protest Underground Job Cuts
Despite earlier promises, Transport for London were planning to go ahead with a 50% cut in station staffing, closing ticket offices such as the well-used one at the busy Edgware Road station on the Bakerloo Line.
Things threatened to get nasty with some angry exchanges when police tried to move RMT members handing out leaflets to the public, but the RMT members insisted on their right to do so on the pavement outside the station entrance.
Lambeth against £90m cuts
Another tube journey changing at Oxford Circus from the Bakerloo to the Victoria Line took me south of the river to Brixton where a short distance from the station a lively rally was taking place on the street corner outside Lambeth Town Hall.
Around a hundred trade unionists, pensioners, library and other council staff, social housing tenants and other residents were there to tell councillors arriving for a council meeting to reject library closures and other £90 millon cuts.
It was now around 6pm, and in late February the sun sets around 5.30, so it was getting rather dark. Although I had both flash and LED lighting, neither is much use for lighting larger groups of people, and even on the corner of two major roads the streetlighting a few yards back was pretty poor. Thankfully digital cameras are considerably better than film under such conditions and I was able to get good results at ISO 3200.
Although my main project on Hull had really been completed with a show in the Ferens Art Gallery in 1983 I continued to make at least annual visits to the city, staying with my family at the home of my in-laws in north Hull just off Chants and Bricknell Ave.
While there I would go out for long walks around the city, often with my two sons and occasionally with other family members or on my own, but always with a camera (or two.) Mostly, as in June 1988, I was re-visiting areas already familiar to me but sometimes finding new things to photograph.
Our visit in 1988 was a short one, I think for the wedding of a god-daughter, and most or all of these pictures were taken on a long walk which began with a bus journey to the city centre and the Old Town and then went north along the streets close to the River Hull to Sculcoates, before returning, possibly on another day or by bus, to the city centre and Paragon Station.
Both my sons, then aged 7 and 9 were with me on the walk, and appear in photographs that I took, but only one is I think present in the pictures on line, hiding at the side of a bridge. I seldom photographed people on my walks at the time, prefering to concentrate on the buildings and cityscape, but there is one rare example in these pictures of a man leaning on a fence on the pavement in Carr Lane. Almost certainly he had watched me taking photographs and had asked me to take his picture.
I think I have managed to put the pictures more or less in the order in which they were taken, so those familiar with Hull can follow my wlak, although they will find some buildings have since been demolished.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
Continuing with pictures from my walk along the Greenwich Meridian in Greater London in 1984-6.
Stratford Bus Station – Peter Marshall, 1995
My walks took me as close to the line of the Meridian I had pencilled on my 1983 1:25000 OS map as possible, though that line may not have been quite exact. I think it goes through the area at the extreme left of the picture above, here just a few yards east of the roadway. My series of walks kept as close as possible to the pencil line, but it often runs through private property, buildings, across rivers etc and many detours, some quite lengthy were required.
Barge carries contaminated earth from Poplar gasworks site, Peter Marshall, 2011
One of those fairly lengthy detours was north from Poplar, where the line ran through the gas works site and across Bow Creek. It wasn’t until 2011 that I was able to go onto the former gas works site, having been engaged to photograph the use of a barge to carry away the heavily contaminated soil from the site. The line crosses the river here, going through the left end of the large shed close to the opposite bank, near to Cody Dock. This is also part of a private business estate, though you can now walk along the roadways in it. There are several such areas I have been able to photograph in later years, but I won’t add any other later pictures to these posts.
Stratford Station – Peter Marshall, 1995
The line continues through the east end of Stratford Station.
Thinking of the line of the Meridian, I had decided it was appropriate to use a panoramic format, and these pictures were all taken with a swing lens panoramic camera. I think at the time I owned two such cameras, an expensive Japanese model and a cheap Russian one. The Russian was a little more temperamental and it was sometimes difficult to wind on the film, but had a much better viewfinder and I think was probably used for most of these. Both give negatives which are roughly the width of medium format film – 55-58mm – but only 24mm high, the limit of 35mm film, giving a roughly 2.3:1 aspect ratio. There is no discernible difference in image quality.
Langthorne Rd, Leyton – Peter Marshall, 1995
Both used 35mm film and curve it in the horizontal plane around a little over a third of the outside of a circle, with the lens pivoting roughly 130 degrees around the centre of that circle during the exposure. This keeps the distance between the centre of the lens and film constant, avoiding the distortion produced by using flat film, where the edges of the film are further from the lens node. This gives a very noticeable distortion with ultra-wide lenses, limiting them to an angle of view (horizontal) of roughly 100 degrees.
St Patrick’s Cemetery, Leyton
Swing lens cameras are limited in angle of view only by the mechanical limitations and can generally cover 130-140 degrees. But the curvature of the film does produce its own unique view. Assuming you keep the camera upright, straight vertical lines remain straight as the film is not curved vertically, but non-vertical lines show curvature, increasingly so as you move away from the centre of the film. You can see this clearly in the shop window in Langthorne Rd.
I suppose for many people Marylebone is the name of a station (though some will connect it more with its cricket club.) The station was the last London terminus to be built, opened in 1899 and never completed, with only four platforms of eight ever built. It lost most of its express services in 1960 and was only saved from closure and demolition by a thriving commuter service from Aylesbury. I think the train here must be one of those used on that route. Marylebone provided one of the few successes of the privatisation of British Rail, generally a triumph of dogma over sense, with the setting up in 1996 of Chiltern Railways. Among other services they provide a pleasant route to stations to Birmingham with comfortable trains and some very cheap tickets, part of the old ‘Great Central’ Network which could probably have been revived much more sensibly and at far lower cost than the ridiculous HS2 project.
I had wrongly captioned this image earlier, thinking it showed the mouth of the Maida Hill tunnel, but although it was taken very close to there it is actually looking away from it, and the black hole at the end of the water is the bridge under Lisson Grove. The tunnel is hidden from my view here, some way down and a few yards to the right of where I was standing.
I went down the steps leading to the canal towpath and took a picture of a boat entering the tunnel. The previous image shows the top of the structure crossing the canal over the mouth of the tunnel which carries electrical cables from the nearby Grove Road power station in St. John’s Wood which closed in 1969 – with the site now housing two major National Grid sub-stations.
There is no towpath in the 249m long tunnel, which is only wide enough for a single narrow boat; boats have to wait at the entrance until the tunnel is clear.
Here you see the canal under the cable bridge.
And this is the long wall of the power station site in Lodge Road. Although it looks very forbidding I’m told it was – at least in the old days – a very pleasant place to work. Coal used to come to the power station from a siding off the lines into Marylebone Station, though possibly at some time it also came by canal.
The Volkswagen workshops were opposite, and a little further west on the south side of the canal were the works of the confusingly named Thames Bank Iron Company, Iron Founders and Heating Engineers who made radiators and other heating equipment, and, according to their lorry parked in front of the building next to some pipes, Drainage Systems.
The pictures show a rather different side of Marylebone – and indeed London – than we now normally think of. They are a stone’s throw from the leafy streets of St John’s Wood with its billionaire oligarchs and from Lords Cricket Ground. But until a few years before I made these pictures, London was very much a manufacturing city. Things had been changing for some years, but it was Thatcher that really put the boot in, moving the country away from manufacturing and into services. And this de-industrialisation was one of the themes behind my pictures of a post-industrial London.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
