Tavy Bridge | >Re-PHOTO

Thamesmead & The Thames: More pictures from my October and November 1994 visits to Thamesmead.

*Tavy Bridge, Thamesmead, Bexley, 1994, 94-1003-61*

I hope the captions which I wrote at the time are accurate, but I found parts of Thamesmead rather confusing to walk around. There are both streets and raised walkways and various footpaths, and I don’t think the map was always too helpful.

*Tavy Bridge Centre, Thamesmead, Bexley, 1994, 94-1003-63*

However these shops were certainly at the Tavy Bridge Centre. Thamesmead is built on the flood plain and the whole area had been badly flooded before the new estate was developed. The planners decided to build with garages at street level and the living areas of the housing at first floor and above so as not to be vulnerable to floods.

*Tavy Bridge, Thamesmead, Bexley, 1994, 94-1003-52*

Some of the areas liable to flooding have since been rebuilt with housing at ground level. I assume that the river walls are now thought to be an adequate defence, but would not myself buy a house there.

*Footbridge, Yarnton Way, Thamesmead, Bexley, 1994, 94-116-41*

Sea levels are slowly rising as the earth gets hotter because of increasing levels of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels means that ice melts. The Thames Barrier still protects most of London, but will need to be replaced. Thamesmead is downstream of the barrier and so will need its own extra protection. At some point with high spring tides and an easterly gale this will be overtopped.

*River Thames, Beckton, Canary Wharf, Thamesmead, Bexley, Greenwich, 1994, 94-115-44*

I walked on to the riverside promenade, Thameside Walk. Looking towards the west both the remains of the Beckton gas works and Canary Wharf were visible though there was considerable haze due to air pollution in London.

*River Thames, Ford, Dagenham, Thamesmead, Bexley, Greenwich, 1994, 94-115-45*

Across the Thames and a little to the east was the vast Ford complex at Dagenham, its logo visible on the water tower at left.

*Promenade, River Thames, Thamesmead, Bexley, 1994, 94-115-35*

The river is stretches away east towards the estuary, turning around towards the south in the distance. At the left of the picture is the Essex bank. The river is a little over 2000 feet wide here.

The panoramic images here were taken on a Russian Horizon swing-lens camera, its 28mm lens giving a horizontal angle of view of around 127 degrees (often stated as 120.) The negatives, on standard 35mm film are 58x24mm, a similar width as a ‘6×6’ medium format camera though only 2/5 the height. It was possible to use the camera handheld, but for these pictures I used a sturdy Manfrotto tripod, usually working from a normal eye height of a little over 5 foot.

More to come from Thamesmead.

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Tavy Bridge, Thamesmead: In October and November 1994 I returned to Thamesmead, a New Town which I had first photographed nine years earlier and spent a few days wandering around the area, developed largely from the end of the 1960s by the GLC under architect Robert Rigg to house families from poor and overcrowded Victorian working-class terraces, particularly those in East London.

*Pyramid Club, Tavy Bridge, Thamesmead, 1994, 94-101-26*

The planners hoped to grow some of the community that had existed in those working class areas by giving the families of the initial residents priority for new housing, and had s strong belief that the water in lakes and canals as a calming influence of those who lived among them. Neither policies were as effective as had been hoped.

*Tavy Bridge Centre, Thamesmead, Bexley, 1994, 94-115-52*

Thamesmead is on low-lying land on the bank of the River Thames and had been flooded in 1953, so the living accommodation on much of the housing began at first floor level, with walkways there where people would meet and children play as they had done on the streets back in their old homes. The ground level was for cars, with roads and garages.

*Pyramid Club, Tavy Bridge, Thamesmead, Bexley, 1994, 94-115-53*

It didn’t work out too well in practice, partly because of a huge increase in car use, in part driven by the isolation of Thamesmead and poor public transport as well as increasing affluence. Shops, schools, pubs and more which might have been at the corner of the old streets were now much further away, and people increasingly got into cars, leaving the walkways deserted. And for those who did walk, there were almost always shorter routes at ground level across the streets and grassy areas than on the walkways.

*Pyramid Club, Tavy Bridge, Thamesmead, Bexley, 1994, 94-115-31*

As I think my pictures show, at least in part the result was an empty and rather alienating landscape, much used in films, notably Stanley Kubrick’s dystopian 1973 ‘A Clockwork Orange’, based on Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel. And in real life it seemed also to encourage high levels of drug-related crime and violence with often racist gangs.

*Pyramid Club, Tavy Bridge, Thamesmead, Bexley, 1994, 94-115-32*

Thamesmead lies across the boundary of two London boroughs, Greenwich and Bexley, and the abolition of the GLC in 1985-6 was also a disaster for the development of the town, with ownership first being transferred to a new body, Thamesmead Town Limited (TTL) and later in 2000 the housing to Gallions Housing Association with Tilfen Land taking over the undeveloped land.

*Tavy Bridge, Thamesmead, Bexley, 1994, 94-115-33*

The Tavy Bridge area where this first section of pictures was taken was redeveloped by Gallions together with Wates Group – and new homes were then built with living accommodation at ground level, so almost certain to flood.

*Limestone Social Club, T.C.A., Limestone Walk, Thamesmead, Bexley, 1994, 94-116-56*

Bus Stop, Tee Dee's, Hair & Beauty Salon, Thamesmead, Bexley, 1994, 94-116-55 — *Bus Stop, Tee Dee’s, Hair & Beauty Salon, Thamesmead, Bexley, 1994, 94-116-55*

Along with these photographs (and more in black and white on Flickr) I also made a number of panoramic images around Tavy Bridge which will feature in a later post.

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Thamesmead & The Thames – 1994