Thames Path | >Re-PHOTO

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is now filled with the shops and offices of 12 Smithfield Street, built in 2004 and now described on Buildington as “an outdated office block that has suffered from poor environmental performance, limited architectural merit, and inefficient servicing.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

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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Tamil Festival & Brentford Walk – 2010

Tamil Festival & Brentford Walk: On the morning of Sunday 8th August 2010 I photographed the annual Chariot Festival from the Tamil Hindu Temple in West Ealing and in the afternoon went for a walk in Brentford.

Tamil Chariot Festival in West Ealing

Tamil Festival & Brentford Walk - 2010 — *Men wait with coconuts outside the temple, ready to roll along the road*

The annual Chariot Festival from the Tamil Shri Kanagathurkkai Amman (Hindu) Temple at a former chapel in West Ealing comes close to the end of their Mahotsavam festival which lasts for around four weeks each year.

In it a represtentation of the Temple’s main goddess Amman (Tamil for Mother) and priests are dragged around the streets on a large chariot pulled by men and women on long ropes.

Behind them around 50 men naked from the waist up laid down on the street holding a coconut in front of them and rolled their bodies along the street for the half mile or so of the route. Men and women came and scattered Vibuthi (Holy Ash) on them. Following them were women who prostrated themselves to the ground every few steps.

From the Temple in Chapel Street the procession, led by a smaller chariot made its way along Uxbridge Road in the bus lane. People crowded around the chariot holding bowls of coconut and fruits (archanai thattu) as ritual offerings (puja) to be blessed by a temple priest.

To photograph the event I had – like those taking part – removed my shoes and my feet were soon soaked in coconut milk from the many cut open or smashed on the ground. Coconuts play an important role in many Hindu rituals and are a major product of the Tamil areas of India and Sri Lanka and many sacks of them were broken in the festival.

Further back in the procession were male dancers, some with elaborate tiered towers above their heads. Others had heavy wooden frames decorated with flowers and peacock feathers, representing the weight of the sins of the world that the gods have to carry; they had ropes attached to their backs by a handful of large hooks through their flesh. They turned and twisted violently as if to escape from the ropes, held by another man.

Women walked with flaming bowls of camphor which burns with a fairly cool flame and leaves no residue with others behind them carrying jugs on their heads.

The festival raises funds for various educational projects for children that the temple sponsors in northern Sri Lanka and other charitable projects in Sri Lanka devastated by the civil war and had sent more then £1.3 million in the previous ten years.

I left the festival, dried my feet as best I could, put on my socks and shoes and caught at bus to Brentford.

Many more pictures on My London Diary at Tamil Chariot Festival in Ealing.

Brentford

*Overflow from the canal takes the River Brent to the Thames*

When I was young and lived not far away Brentford was an important canal port, the junction of the Grand Union Canal (also here the River Brent) with the River Thames. The docks by the Thames were now a private housing estate and by 2010 almost all of the British Waterways sheds had gone, replaced by blocks of flats.

*Past the recent moorings were the last remaining loading sheds*

But the canal and the locks are still there, along with the small docks and some of the boat repair businesses. Little is visible from the High Street except where it goes over the canal, but despite extensive redevelopment in the 1990s – and more going on now – it remains an interesting area to walk around.

*From the footbridge over the Brentford gauging locks*

I’d photographed a little in the area back before much redevelopment took place, and more extensively in the 1990s. On line you can see some pictures from 2003 when some of the more recent development was starting. And I’ve returned a few times since this walk in 2010 and you can find more pictures if you search on My London Diary.

*Thames Lock, connecting the canal system to the River Thames*

As I noted in 2010, “Much of the walk that I took is now a part of the Thames Path, though it isn’t always well signposted, and some of the more interesting parts are a short detour away.”

More pictures from my short walk around Brentford on My London Diary.

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Chariot Festival, Plumstead & Woolwich – 2009

Chariot Festival, Plumstead & Woolwich: Sunday 28th June 2009 I photographed the Hare Krishna Chariot Festival from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square then travelled to Plumstead Common for short visit to the annual Mela there. But I didn’t find much to interest me and instead took a walk down to the Thames at Thamesmead West and then back alongside the river to Woolwich. On My London Diary I wrote at some length about the walk, which turned out to be surprisingly interesting and about how I thought the area could be improved.

Sri Jagannatha Rathayatra Festival – Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square

Chariot Festival, Plumstead & Woolwich - 2009 — *Musicians in the procession as it leaves Hyde Park*

I didn’t write much about the chariot festival on My London Diary in 2009 as I had written at some length about it the previous year – and I won’t say much here either as I posted about the 2012 Rathayatra festival a few days ago.

In 2009 I concentrated mainly on the people rather than the chariots.

More pictures at Sri Jagannatha Rathayatra.

Plumstead & Woolwich – Plumstead, Thamesmead West, River Thames

It was a long walk up the hill from Plumstead station to the common where the Mela is held and I arrived rather tired and was disappointed to find the the event seemed to be only just starting. But I’d stopped to take a few pictures on the way, and found several things of interest on the walk.

So after a short time at the Mela I decided it was too hot to wait around longer and to take a walk instead.

I walked down to Camelot Castle, home of self-proclaimed “celebrity gangster Dave Courtney“, who was made bankrupt in May 2009, owing £400,000 including an estimated £250,000 to HM Revenue & Customs.

Shouldn’t, I mused looking at the St Georges flags, patriots be pleased to pay taxes? I photographed the house and then onto the gates with a giant knuckleduster at their centre. Courtney also awarded himself a blue plaque with the text ‘Dave Courtney OBE lived here’ where the OBE stands for “One Big Ego”.

Soon after I came across Merlin Tyres. Is it coincidence that Merlin was one of the six main characters of Camelot?

The Plumstead Radical Club is a working mens club formed by local Liberals who later became members of the Labour party, but most working mens clubs lost any real political connection, though they still sell cheap beer to members. From Plumstead I walked into Thamesmead.

This part of Thamesmead West had failed to make good use of its location and what should have become a vibrant area at Broadwater was derelict and depressing.

But soon I reached the Thames path and photographed this woman cycling along it with the recent flats of North Woolwich around a third of a mile away on the opposite bank of the wide river.

And there are plenty of new riverside flats on the south bank too, with residents enjoying riverside views. These flats are perhaps less of an eyesore than some.

Woolwich Arsenal had three piers – this was the one in the middle, known as the Iron Pier, and you can see why from my picture. To the east was the Coal Pier, the lower parts of which still remain – built in 1917-20 it was used to bring in around 1500 tons of coal a week and is fenced off as a dangerous structure, The largest of the three piers, the T Pier has I think gone completely though there is now a Uber Boat pier.

In the Woolwich Arsenal site I came across a group of aliens, ‘Assembly’ by Peter Burke (b1944) placed here in 2004. I stopped to photograph them before heading to Woolwich Arsenal station for a train.

More on My London Diary at Plumstead & Woolwich.

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More Colour From New Charlton – 1995

More Colour From New Charlton: I think all of these pictures were taken in May 1995, the panoramic examples being made using a swing lens panoramic camera, probably the Horizon 202 from the Krasnogorsky Mechanicheskiy Zavod (KMZ) factory in Krasnogorsk near Moscow. This uses clockwork to rotate a 28mm f2.8 lens around a little over 120 degrees, keeping the lens to film distance constant by having the film in a curve around the axis of rotation. The camera made negatives 58mm long and 24mm tall on normal 35mm film, giving around 20 exposures from a normal ’36 exposure’ cassette.

*Willoughby Way, New Charlton, Greenwich, 1995, 95p5-671*

The film was exposed though a rotating slit behind the lens and different shutter speeds were obtained by altering the slit width. There were only two rotation speeds and for the faster speeds – 1/60 s, 1/125 s, and 1/250 s – the rotation took around a thirtieth of a second, enabling me to use the camera without a tripod.

*Thames Path, Lombard Wall, New Charlton, Greenwich, 1995, 95p5-662*

The lens focus was fixed and I think I usually worked at f8 which meant everything from a few metres away to infinity was sharp. The camera had a spirit level as by keeping the camera level vertical lines were rendered straight in the image. Horizontal lines away from the centre of the image become curved as you can see in some of these images, and care in composition was needed to stop these effects dominating the pictures.

*Mudlarks Way, New Charlton, Greenwich, 1995, 95p7-161*

The image quality was much the same as that from my several times more expensive Japanese Widelux f8 swing lens camera, but the Horizon had a useable viewfinder and was easier to use handheld. Though I think for most of my walks back in 1995 I was still carrying a rather large, heavy and solid Manfrotto tripod. I liked it because it could hold the camera absolutely steady at my eye level – and unless there was good reason not to do so I always preferred to view from that height.

*Andrews Sykes, New Charlton, Greenwich, 1995, 95c5-832*

But I was also photographing with more conventional cameras, and usually had two Olympus OM4 bodies, one with black and white and the other with colour negative film. Although I had a fairly full range of lenses, the great majority of the pictures were made using an Olympus 35mm shift lens.

Bugsby's Way, New Charlton, Greenwich, 1995, 95-5o-66, 1995, 95c5-825 — *Bugsby’s Way, New Charlton, Greenwich, 1995, 95-5o-66, 1995, 95c5-825*

In particular this allowed me to place the horizon in the images below or above the centre of the frame without tilting the camera which would have resulted in converging or diverging verticals. As well as shifting the optical elements up and down the lens mount allowed the lens to move to either side which also gave more control over framing.

*Works, Mudlarks Way, New Charlton, Greenwich, 1995, 95c5-823*

This area beside the Thames was then almost entirely industrial with aggregate wharves and some commercial premises. On other occasions I took more pictures along the riverside path which in the following year became a part of the Thames Path.

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Three Colt Street & Limekiln Dock – 1990

Three Colt Street & Limekiln Dock: My walk in Limehouse on Sunday 6th January 1990 continued. The previous post from this walk is More from Narrow Street – 1990.

*Limekiln Wharf, Development, Three Colt St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-34*

Limehouse gets its name from the making of quicklime here, an industry dating back here into antiquity getting its first written reference in 1335. The newly developed flats of Limekiln Wharf and Dundee Wharf on the south side of Limekiln Creek (or Limekiln Dock) are probably on the site of old lime kilns (lime oasts) where chalk (calcium carbonate) brought by boats from Swanscombe or Northfleet or other areas of North Kent was brought ashore in the Creek and roasted to give quicklime (calcium oxide) the vital ingredient for cement, mortar and concrete and with many other uses. When water is then added it forms slaked lime (calcium hydroxide.)

Along the street are the late-Victorian buildings of the Dundee, Perth, and London Shipping Co. which were used by the London Docklands Development Corporation which was responsible for the redevelopment of docklands, over-riding the normal functions of the local authorities and still have the LDDC logo as a weathercock, though this was not in place in 1990.

*Limekiln Dock, Three Colt St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-36*

The always interesting ‘A London Inheritance‘ has a fascinating and very detailed account of the area, based on considerable research, Limekiln Dock and the Black Ditch.

The Black Ditch has been much mythologised as one of ‘London’s Lost Rivers‘ and its lower parts were after the 1855 replaced by the Limekiln Dock Sewer. I imagine the Black Ditch and this were both subsumed into Bazalgette’s grand designs in the 1860s and now flow to Beckton.

The view here is looking out towards the River Thames. Since 1996 there has been a swing bridge taking the Thames Path across the mouth of the creek. It had to be built as a swing bridge because of the ancient rights of navigation into the dock, though I would be surprised to find that it has ever needed to be swung to allow this.

*Limekiln Dock, Three Colt St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-25*

There seemed to be quite a lot of rubbish in the dock in 1990, but in earlier years things were much worse. The post in ‘A London Inheritance’ quotes a court case from 1893 where it is described as “the common receptacle for the sewerage of part of Fore-street, and also being a harbour for a large portion of the animal refuse of the Thames.”

*J R Wilson, Ship Stores, Limekiln Dock, Three Colt St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-26*

J R Wilson, Ship Stores at Limehouse Wharf has a frontage on Narrow Street and its back faces Limekiln Dock. I think the area from which I took this and the other pictures is no longer open to the public, but gave access to the Thames Path before the footbridge across the dock was built. In the foreground is the white-painted flood wall which was built around the Thames in London in the 1970s. Together with the Thames Barrier this has protected London from the serious floods of earlier years, but with rising sea levels will soon become inadequate.

*110, Three Colt St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-11*

The late-Victorian buildings of the Dundee, Perth, and London Shipping Co were in 1990 in use by D D Repro Limited, ‘Plain Paper & Dyeline Specialists. Their board on the building depicts the rough outline of the Thames from Tower Bridge around the Isle of Dogs and on to Beckton.

*The Enterprise, pub, Milligan St, 145, Three Colt St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1b-12*

The sign on the pub shows a three-masted ship caught in ice. The ships on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 search for the North-West Passage were last seen by the whaler ‘Enterprise’, and I think this picture may be a depiction of one of his two ships, which were abandoned after being ice-bound for over a year. It was a story that very much caught the Victorian imagination.

The pub is said to have closed in 1963, but was open again in 1990, It closed in 2001, the pub became an Indian restaurant but is now an estate agents with another floor added in recent years.

Still more to come from my Limehouse walk in 1990.

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Deptford & Greenwich – 2005

Deptford & Greenwich: Some pictures from two bike rides in April 2005, the second cut rather short by a puncture, around one of my favourite areas of London, mainly along the southern bank of the River Thames. The area has changed fairly dramatically in recent years with new blocks of riverside flats replacing riverside industry, much of which had already ceased work by 2005. I first photographed here around 1980 and it still now makes an interesting walk (or ride) and I’ve done most or all of it a few times since 2005.

As usual I’ll post a slightly amended version of what I wrote at the time on My London Diary together with links to that site which has some more pictures. But I didn’t write anything about the actual pictures except the captions.

It was a fine sunny day on Thursday 21 April 2005 and I put my Brompton folding bike on the train to Waterloo, then cycled east from there to Deptford and Geenwich, taking another trip along one of my favourite riverside paths around the Greenwich Peninsula.

North Greenwich is still interesting, although the area by the Dome is now rather bleak. Time went surprisingly quickly, and I had only got just past the Dome when it was time to make my way back.

Just over a week later I tried to take up the ride from where I left off, but only made it as far as the footbridge over Deptford Creek, when I heard a loud bang as my rear tyre punctured. I should have stopped, mended the puncture and gone on, but I couldn’t face it.

I wheeled the bike to Greenwich station, got on the train and came home. One of my few gripes about the Brompton is that mending punctures is a bit of a pain; the small tyres are hard to take off and even harder to replace, and if you want to take the rear wheel off, it is a rather tricky business that I’ve yet to master. I have tyres with kevlar inserts that are supposed to be puncture-resistant, but they don’t seem very effective.

*Canary Wharf and River Thames from North Greenwich, London*

After I’d arrived home and had a cup of coffee, the puncture turned out to be a straightforward job.

*Ship breaker’s yard, North Greenwich, London, April 2005*

*St Pauls, Deptford, London built by Thomas Archer in 1713*

More pictures on My London Diary
From April 21st 2005
From April 29th 2005

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Thames Path – Cholsey to Shillingford – 2010

Thames Path – Cholsey to Shillingford: Pictures from a walk on Saturday 3rd April 2010 in South Oxfordshire from Cholsey station to a bus stop in Shillingford, mainly along part of the Thames Path, though with a few added detours, both voluntary and involuntary.

The Thames Path was officially opened in 1996, though I’d walked and cycled much of it in and around London many years earlier before and had made a very minor contribution to the consultation during its planning. I’d also photographed much further to the east along the Estuary on much of its English Coast Path extension from Woolwich to the Isle of Grain.

From the early 1990s together with my wife and one or both my sons we often made walks in the South-East, including along the River Lea, the Pilgrims Way, the Grand Union Canal, the London Loop as well as various unnamed routes largely along public footpaths throughout the year and in all kinds of weather.

In the early 2000s we decided we would try to walk the parts of the Thames Path to the west of London, where we had only walked a few short sections, bought a guide to the path and a series of OS maps. We were still walking in other areas as well and it was not until April 2013 that we finally covered the section of the walk to the source.

One of the reasons it took us so long was that we relied on public transport to get us to the river and back home at the end of each day’s walk. So the walk had to be divided up for us into short sections ending at a station or a bus stop and the further west we walked the scarcer these became. We managed to get a little west of Oxford a day at a time, but beyond Duxford (a short walk from Hinton Waldrist which had a bus service) there seemed to be nowhere we could sensibly reach or return to by public transport before or after a day’s walk.

In 2013 we did complete the walk, booking a couple of nights bed and breakfast on the way to the source to do so.

But back to April 2010. We travelled to Cholsey by train, changing at Reading, an easy and relatively short journey – less than an hour and a half. Cholsey isn’t on the Thames Path but it was only around a mile to walk to it, and then down to Moulsford Railway Bridge on the Thames itself.

*War Memorial in the town centre (another detour from the path)*

I’ll spare you the details of the walk though these are given at some length in the pictures and text on My London Diary – and of course in many text and online publications on the Thames Path.

Wallingford, the only major town on this section of the Path is well worth a visit – back in the day it had been “the most important town in Berkshire and had its own Royal Mint from the 10th to 13th centuries. Devastated by the Black Death, it became prosperous again in the 18th and 19th century with the river allowing it to trade with London and supporting thriving malting, brewing and ironfounding industries.”

But then came the railways and all Wallingford got was a short branch line, “now a preserved railway where I was dragged a rather tedious kilometre or so to see Ivor the Engine pulling out of the station on the edge of town.”

*At Benson we crossed the river by a footbridge over the weir*

We did also manage to miss the path in Wallingford, and make an interesting diversion before retracing our steps. We saw few other walkers, but in the Summer parts of the Thames Path get pretty crowded. But one advantage of following a national trail like this is that they are well waymarked and also never overgrown, though there are sometimes diversions.

[Near to home we have one of these diversions in Egham, where a small bridge has been officially blocked since early 2024 and is expected to remain closed until at least 2026. The damage looks relatively minor and many walkers have continued to use the bridge despite the barriers erected.]

Above Wallingford the Path crosses to the opposite band of the river and goes to Benson and on to Shillingford. Here we walked away from the river to a bus stop and stood waiting for the Express bus to Reading at that time a roughly hourly service – and took an hour to get to Reading Station. Or at least I stood waiting but Linda decided to go for a walk and I had to stand in the bus doorway and persuaded the driver to wait as I shouted at her to rush towards us.

Thames Path- Cholsey to Shillingford

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Lewisham Hospital, Greenwich Peninsula, Syria & Mali – 2013

Lewisham Hospital, Greenwich Peninsula, Syria & Mali: As often when I had a long break between two events I took the opportunity to take an extensive walk in one of my favourite areas of London and on Friday 15th February I went to the Thames Path at Greenwich after a lunchtime protest at Lewisham Hospital. Then I went to Whitehall for a small protest against Western military intervention in Mali and Syria and a possible attack on Iran.

Fight to Save Lewisham Hospital Continues

A lunchtime rally at the war memorial opposite the Hospital made clear that the fight by the entire local community to save services at their hospital was continuing.

As well as a legal challenge there were to be further mass demonstrations including a ‘Born in Lewisham Hospital’ protest the following month.

People in the area and all concerned with the future of the NHS were appalled by Jeremy Hunt’s decision to accept to the proposals for closure, which are medically unsound and would lead to more patients dying, but they would result in a huge waste of public funds.

The financial problem that led to the proposal was caused not by Lewisham but by a disastrous PFI (private finance initiative) agreement to build a hospital a few miles away.

As I wroteL “Lewisham is a successful and financially sound hospital which has received sensible public investment to provide up to date services, and the services that will be cut there will have to be set up again and provided elsewhere by other hospitals. Closing Lewisham will not only incur high costs, but will result in the waste of the previous investment in its facilities.”

*Louise Irvine, the Chair of Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign*

In making his decision Hunt deliberately set out to mislead the public by describing the replacement of A&E as only a small reduction in A&E services. The proposed urgent care centre could only deal with around 30% of the cases currently being covered. Similar the replacement of the current maternity service by a midwife only unit could only deal with around 10% of current births – and life-threatening transfers would be necessary if complications rose in these.

You can read a fuller account of the protest and more pictures at Fight to Save Lewisham Hospital Continues.

Thames Path – North Greenwich – Greenwich

I took a bus to North Greenwich and tried to walk along the Thames Path, parts of which had reopened after a long closure. It was a warm day for February and started off sunny, though later the weather changed giving some dramatic skies.

The path from Delta Wharf and north to Drawdock Road was still vlosed but beyond that in both directions the path was open. I’m not sure what all the work taking place was about, but in part it was to provide a new section of the path, and to put in new breakwaters. Some time later of course there will be new riverside flats here, but for the moment these were being built closer to Greenwich.

One fairly recent addition to the path was the Greenwich meridian marker at the bottom centre of this picture, the line going along in the gap between two metal beams and pointing north across the river.

And a little further to the east is the sculpture A Slice of Reality by Richard Wilson. In the following year this was to become part of London’s first public art walk, The Line. It is a 30ft slice of the former sand dredger Arco Trent – Google’s AI gets it badly wrong by describing it as “an eighth-scale replica“. As the name suggests it is a slice of the actual ship.

As I turned back and walked towards Greenwich there were some dramatic skies and lighting, but also some slightly boring road walking where the path was diverted away from the river.

Soon I was able to return to the riverside path and walk through the surreal landscape of an aggregate wharf.

The final section of the walk on my way into Greenwich had been targeted by guerilla knitters.

I was getting short of time, and could only stop to make one panorama although the weather was perfect for it.

This view shows the riverside path at left going south at the left and north at the right – a view of over 180 degrees. The shoreline here highly curved was in reality straight. I think the image digitally combines half a dozen overlapping frames.

By then I was having to hurry to catch the train back into central London – and the light was falling.

Many more pictures from this walk at Thames Path Greenwich Partly Open.

Stop Western Intervention in Syria & Mali – Downing St

This protest had been called by Stop the War on the 10th anniversary of the march by 2 million against the Iraq war in 2003, the largest protest march ever seen in the UK (and with many others around the world also marching.)

On this occasion they were calling for a stop to Western intervention in Mali and Syria and against the possible attack on Iran but the numbers taking part were very much smaller, with only around a hundred turning up.

Among them were supporters of Syria’s President Assad and Stop the War had lost a great deal of support by opposing the help being given to groups against his regime, with many on the left calling for an end to his regime.

Stop Western Intervention in Syria & Mali

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Thames Path Panoramas – Vauxhall to Wandsworth 2014

Thames Path Panoramas: Back in January 2013 I had photographed and taken part in a rather less bloody re-enactment of the Epiphany bloody armed insurrection by Thomas Venner and fellow Fifth Monarchists against the re-imposition of the monarchy in 1661 being performed by Class War for film director Suzy Gillett. I’d tried hard to avoid getting in the way of the camera but do appear for a few seconds as the insurrection made its way to seize St Paul’s Cathedral.

On Sunday 5th January, a year less a day later I and others involved were invited to a private afternoon screening of the film at the Cinema Museum close to the Elephant & Castle. As it was a fine day I went up some hours earlier to walk and photograph a little nearby section of the Thames Path.

I’d been making panoramic photographs since the 1980s, at first by cutting and mounting together a few prints from black and white images. Back in 1991 I’d bought my first panoramic camera, a Japanese Widelux F8 with a lens that swings around while making a picture on 35mm film, held in a curve so that the centre of the lens remains at a constant distance from the film. Later I bought several more similar but much cheaper cameras made in Russia and a Chinese beast taking 120 film.

These cameras all produced a very wide angle of view – around 120 or 130 degrees – but with a different perspective to “normal” cameras, with some characteristic curvature of objects. The normal rectilinear view stretches out objects at the edges of the frame and is only really usable up to around a 90 degree angle of view. Later I did work with a Hassleblad X-Pan camera and with a 30mm lens which gives a 94 degree horizontal view – around the maximum usable for a rectilinear view.

Digital methods changed the game. At first I used a film scanner and software that enabled me to merge several scanned images. Then things became even easier when I shifted to a digital camera. For projects such as ‘The Secret Gardens of St John’s Wood‘ I combined up to around 8 different 12.3Mp digital images form a Nikon D300 to make very large prints with wide angles of view.

But by 2014 I was working with a Nikon D800E and it had occurred to me that there was a simpler solution with its 36.3Mp images. I could use the 16mm Nikon fisheye which gives 180 degree diagonal coverage filling the frame and then convert these images digitally from their fisheye projection to the more friendly cylindrical projection of my panoramic cameras.

I could now make panoramas almost as easily as taking any other images, capturing moving as well as static scenes with ease. For most panoramic images it is important to have the camera level, and the D800E had nice clear indicators that could be displayed in the viewfinder to ensure this, and with an f2.8 lens tripods became a thing of the past.

For these images I used the incredibly flexible PTGui software, but later found the simpler Fish-Eye Hemi plugin for Lightroom more convenient, though PTGui allows some interesting options. Unfortunately this plugin is no longer available, though I hope it or a similar plugin will be made available again. Using it you transform the images without any loss of image at the centres of both horizontal and vertical sides so you can visualise what will be in your final image when looking at the viewfinder while taking images.

Many more pictures at Thames Path Panoramas.

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