A Rotherhithe Blog: December 2016

Monday, December 5, 2016

Stephen Humphrey has passed away

I was terribly sorry to hear about the death of Stephen Humphrey at the age of 64 on 1st December 2016. A Southwark historian who worked from primary sources, published a number of books and booklets on the subject, was president of the Rotherhithe & Bermondsey Local History Society and was still lecturing regularly about the history of Rotherhithe and Bermondsey, he was awarded with the Freedom of the Borough in 2012 and he will be very much missed.

Short obituaries have been published on the Southwark News, London News Online and London SE1 websites.

South Dock website

I have assembled all the posts about South Dock from this blog and posted them on a website of their own. South Dock is now London's largest marina but used to be a part of the Surrey Commercial Docks, which closed in 1970. It can be found at: https://southdockse16.wordpress.com

https://southdockse16.wordpress.com

British Transport Treasures

This blog is run with considerable assistance from excellent local history publications written by Stuart Rankin. His works are my starting point for all history posts. Stuart has set up a website, called British Transport Treasures, that specializes in out of print publications which can be downloaded as PDFs that can be saved and printed. Out of print publications are a nightmare for anyone attempting local history research unless they have access to a specialist library and archives. British Transport Treasures is expanding fast with an ever-growing catalogue of titles. Each of the publications is described with a magazine-style short review to explain the scope of the content, and provided with a preview of the cover and first page. There is a nominal cost for each, to cover the costs of hosting and running the site, and 5p per item sold is donated to Help For Heroes. I am a massive fan of the site and what it is attempting to do, and as it has a number of publications concerning Rotherhithe I have drawn attention to some of them here.

Between Bridgers – Rotherhithe Street and Downtown by F.Mary Wilson, privately published, n.d. but c.1964

Rotherhithe Then and Now History Walk by Stuart Rankin, Southwark Council 2005 [ebook]

Rotherhithe Tunnel Sketches 1829

Historical Notice… Commercial Docks… Rotherhithe by Nathaniel Gould, 1844 [ebook]

Shipbuilding on the Thames and Thames Built Ships [ebook] edited by Stuart Rankin

Other titles can be found by entering "Rotherhithe" into the British Transport Treasures search engine.