Continuing the series of post about the black and white pictures I made in 1980, with the pictures and the comments I posted more recently daily on Facebook.
24m-16: street, warehouse,
http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/24m-16.htm
Shad Thames was in 1980 a truly remarkable street, a canyon between the riverside warehouses on the left of this view and their further premises linked by bridges across the street.
Work had just begun on some of the properties, but it took years to complete. The redevelopment has kept a little of the general character but seems to me to be an empty pastiche. My heart still sinks every time I go to the area.
Shad Thames, Bermondsey, Southwark. 1980
24m-21: street, warehouse,
http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/24m-21.htm
In this closer view you can see the girders supporting those bridges across Shad Thames, and also a number of pipes spanning the gap. Some of them may have been a part of the hydraulic power system which powered many of the cranes and hoists in the warehouses, avoiding the fire danger of other power sources. Fire was always a danger in warehouses, and one fire in 1931 when a seven storey warehouse full of rubber and tea was burning at Butler’s Wharf attracted great attention as ‘the Frozen Fire’. Around 70 fire engines and more than a thousand firefighters, along with two fire boats too several days to extinguish, with firemen working in snow and intense cold; large icicles formed on the buildings as the water ran down and it covered the roadway with sheets of ice.
You can see a remarkable story about it on the London Fire Brigade web site, complete with coverage from Movietone News.
24m-22: warehouse,
http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/24m-22.htm
Another picture from Shad Thames, looking up, just a few yards down the street from the previous picture. Sometimes described as a ‘canyon’ it was a dark and fairly narrow street between the riverside warehouses and their landward companions.
24m-25: warehouse,
http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/24m-25.htm
Another image from Shad Thames, with two of the linking bridges, pigeon and aeroplane.
Overhead walkways, Shad Thames, Bermondsey, Southwark. 1980
24m-33: warehouse,
A rather more minimal view looking vertically up from the middle of the street.
24m-34: street, warehouse,
http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/24m-33.htm
Wire and rubbish in a window.
24m-35: ship, deck, river, warehouse, flats
http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/24m-35.htm
This paddle steamer was moored here in front of Butlers Wharf for some years, and I think may be the Tattershall Castle, once a ferry from Hull to New Holland across the Humber and now, very much altered, a floating bar on the Victoria Embankment on the north bank of the Thames. Before becoming a bar and restuarant she served some time on the Thames as an art gallery.
I’d been across the Humber once or twice on one of its fellow paddle steamers, the Lincoln Castle, a more modern design which continued in service for 5 years after the Tattershall Castle was retired in 1973. Later I had tea in the Lincoln Castle when it was a restuarant on the beach beside the Humber Bridge, whose opening in 1981 brought the ferry service to an end. I can’t recall having seen the Tattershall Castle in service.
The third of the Humber paddle steamers, built by the same yard as the Tattershall Castle also in 1934 was the Wingfield Castle, and was saved from becoming a bar in Swansea by being found too wide to fit through the lock gates and is now an floating exhibit in ‘Hartlepool’s Maritime Experience’, close to where she was built.
24m-41: boat, dock, warehouse,
http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/24m-41.htm
Again these buildings were only listed in 1982. Originally built as a cornmill and warehouse in 1882, they were rebuilt after a fire in 1894. I was fortunate to photograph them before they were converted to residential use in 1981-3
The notice on the wall reads “Mooring Facilities at these premises can be used when convenient by those having business here but the Proprietors do not guaranteed their sufficiency and accept no responsibility for the consequences of any defect therein“.
The barge moored here seems to have been cut off at the right hand end, and is apparently sitting on the mud.
24m-43: boat, dock, warehouse, crane
http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/24m-43.htm
A view up St Saviour’s Dock before any conversion. There are four cranes on the wharf at left. There are still two cranes, but they look rather different, without the shelter for the workers, and the doors of the loading bays are replaced by balconies
Some of the buildings at right were later demolished and the frontages of most of the buildings altered in the conversion to residential use. The general impression however has been retained.
To be continued…
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