Book: The Wilful Murder of Mr. Isaac Blight, Shipbreaker, on 23rd September 1805

http://www.britishtransporttreasures.com/product/rotherhithe-the-wilful-murder-of-mr-isaac-blight-shipbreaker-on-23rd-september-1805/

More from local historian Stuart Rankin who has made another Rotherhithe-themed book available for download on his website. It is great to see these difficult to acquire titles becoming so easy to access. 

Here is the description of the book from the above page:

Blight’s yard and house was situated adjacent to Dog and Duck stairs and acces on the land side was  restricted by the excavations for the entrance to what is now South Dock.  On a day when Mrs. Blight had gone to Margate, Patch was holding a conversation with his employer when he claimed an unknown man (presumed an angry creditor) put an arm holding a pistol round the door into the room and shot poor Blight in the abdomen. He would remain conscious but in agony for many hours before expiring. The shot roused the household and from that moment Patch was not alone for more than a few seconds until a surgeon Mr. (later Sir) Astley Cooper arrived from Guys Hospital. Also summoned were two Bow Street Runners.  The Runners were not police or detectives in the modern sense but thief catchers sent in pursuit of identified criminals, empowered to raise a “Hue and Cry” among ordinary citizens to join in the chase. In this case they were hampered by only having Patch’s description of one arm to go on, Mr. Blight recalling nothing and there being no weapon found at the scene. They entered into consultation with Mr. Cooper and… If you would like to know how the case was solved read the book!

The account of the trial is of particular interest in that the prosecution was led by Barrister William Garrow, whose early trials as a defence counsel featured in the recent BBC series “Garrow’s  Law.

By way of postscripts Astley Cooper, although he could do nothing to save him remained comforting the frightened Mr. Blight until the end mercifully came. The unfortunate Mrs. Blight remarried to a prosperous Deptford Coal Merchant named Long who unfortunately became mentally unstable and had to be committed. She retained the name Blight for business purposes.

This is a very rare little book full of Regency detail and atmosphere.

Update: Between Bridgers by Mary Wilson

Some blog readers will remember me asking for information about F. Mary Wilson's small book Between Bridgers, which has been out of print for a very long time and is almost impossible to locate by anyone wanting their own copy.  I am delighted to announce that Between Bridgers has now been made available on the British Transport Treasures website for download as a PDF e-book.  The site is run by Stuart Rankin, one of Rotherhithe's most prominent local historians, who has published numerous booklets about Rotherhithe, its docks and its ship building past.  There is a small fee of £1.05 for downloading the book, which helps to cover the hosting costs and day to day running of the website, and for each sale made 5p goes to the Help for Heroes charity.  It's a great opportunity if you would like to know more about the Downtown area of Rotherhithe in the 1960s, when the Surrey Commercial Docks were still open, and when life was unrecognizable to those of us who have come into the area since the closure of the docks.

For readers who didn't see my posts on the subject, Mary Wilson wrote a much-loved book about Rotherhithe called Between Bridgers, which focused in particular on the Downtown area and was illustrated throughout by Mary Want.  Mary Wilson was a resident of Rotherhithe's Downtown area, the Head Teacher of Redriff Primary School and had expert knowledge of the area.  More than that, she had a real feel for the place, its present and its past. The "bridgers" of the book's title are the swing and lift bridges that crossed a number of cuts (links between different docks) in the Surrey Commercial Docks.  Although the book is not exclusively about Downtown, it does take a distinctly Downtown-centric view of things, and that's really refreshing because most books about Rotherhithe focus on the area around St Mary's Church, which is nowadays referred to as Rotherhithe village.

For more books about Rotherhithe available from British Transport Treasures, see the side bar to the right.

Book: "On The River: Memories of a Working River"

Enormous thanks to Alfie Read for lending this book to me.  It was he who loaned me Between Bridgers, and has plenty of terrific stories of his own.  On The River was published in 1989, on the centenary of the Dockers' Tanner Strike of 1889.  It covers all of the docks and the main channel of the river.  Fascinatingly it began as a piece of Reminiscence Theatre that used the words of the contributors and the songs they remembered to assemble a touring show. 

It begins with  a short Preface by Pam Schweitzer, one of the book's editors, and an Introduction by Ron Todd, the then General Secreatary of the Transport and General Workers' Union.  These are followed by some reflection son the Dockers' tanner Strike by Jack Jones.  But this book is not about political, commercial or industrial history.  It is social history, because this is a book of stories by people who lived on the river, worked in the docks and lived the lives that the river provided for them.  There are a series of chapters, each divided into a whole series of short themes.

The chapters are:  A Child's Eye View of the River; A Sense of Community; Riverside Views; Up and Down the River; Hard Times on the River; Disasters on the River; Riverside Trades; Lightermen The Aristocracy of the River; Dockers and Stevedores; The Building of the Dock; Labour Organisation and Industrial Disputes.

There are some terrific photographs of the river and the docks throughout, but the stories are what makes this come to life.  I'll give just a couple of examples, local ones.

This was written by Bill Lindley in the chapter "A Child's Eye View of the River," under the theme "Swimmers and the River Police:"

I've swum across to Wapping from Rotherhithe when I was twelve. You'd do it with a couple of your mates for a dare.  We used to go from Platform Wharf.  You'd wait for high water.  Couldn't do it if it wasn't high water.  We used to have to do it when there was no what they call 'Four Beetles and a Log' around - that was the coppers.  They used to call them 'Four Beetles and a Log' because they used to be in these long black boats you know.  And you had to watch them because Wapping police station was over there.  They'd drag you out of the water and give you a walloping.

In the chapter "Disasters on the River," Flo Lindley wrote about The Blitz:

Three o'clock in the afternoon, Jerry lit up the place.  He set fire to Surrey Docks. Again at five o'clock.  And then he came back at seven.  Luckily one bridge remained open.  Otherwise we would have lost everybody there.  That night I had a carrier bag with a blanket and two children in my arms and my mother and father with me.  I was going to the pub, and the police said to me, 'Don't go.'  They turned me back and I said, 'Why?' And of course, being inquisitive I went, didn't I?  I went and had a look.  And he'd bombed it, the pub, and the church, and the shop.  The first daylight raid we had. 

In the chapter "Lightermen" Frances Amelia Edwards writes about an incident with a coal barge in the Surrey Docks in 1954:

My husband Harry was working on the coal barges.  What happened one day was that there were six coal barges they were working on.  They'd got five of these away, but they couldn't get the other one out as the tide was too high and they had to cut the rope because they couldn't get out to it.  They left it, and they went and had a drink and a rest, and when they came back, the whole barge had got fixed inn between the dock piers.  People came from all over the place to have a look at it.  They had to wait till high tide to release the barge again.  There was a court of enquiry and they nearly lost their jobs, but the company was very short-staffed so they kept them on.  that was in the Surrey Docks in 1954.

The amazing generosity of the people who contributed to this book has made it an absolute classic, if you are interested in local history as it was actually lived.  In case people reading this post are interested, those contributors who are listed as living in Rotherhithe and Surrey Docks are:  Harry Brown, Fed Coombs, Nell Coombs, Morry Foley, Bill Lindley, Flo Lindley, Jimmy Newcombe, Lil Newcombe, Bill Wardell but there are contributors from all over the area, including Deptford, Greenwich, Blackheath, Limehouse, the Isle of Docs, Charlton, Stepney, Woolwich, Canning Town, Silvertown, Poplar etc.

There's no table of contents or index, so it's a matter of enjoying it in the order in which it is delivered, rather than flipping to the pages that might interest you most.  That suits me just fine, as the stories are all so fascinating.  Although it's about the Port of London as a whole, there's enough about Rotherhithe to keep me going for a very long time, and my recent Downtown post is going to need a major update, as are several others!

It's a wonderful book, and I've just ordered a second-hand copy of it.  So sad when books like this go out of print but thank goodness for online sources of second-hand books.

On The River. Memories of a Working River.
Edited by Pam Schweitzer and Charles Wegner
An Age Exchange Publication
ISBN 0947860096

The Caird Library, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

Oh no!  A new vice!  The Caird Library in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich is seriously good.  I have my three year library card tucked away in my wallet and a really good feeling about yet another happy obsession.  The Caird Library is lovely.  You can either turn up with one form of identification and get a day pass or apply for a three-year reader card for which you need to pieces of i.d. (see the website for what you need to bring for each).  You can't take books away with you, but that's no hardship given the vast amounts of desk space and the lovely, light and modern atmosphere.  There is a late night opening on Thursdays, it is open on Saturdays (see opening times here), the staff are friendly and helpful and the books are numerous. 

Oh the books.  Oh the joy!  Where to start?  There are thousands of them, and they are all about ships, shipping, shipbuilders, voyages of discovery, navigation, maritime engineering, the Royal Navy, naval battles, the East India Company, privateers, luxury liners etc etc.  It's a cornucopia of maritime joy.  There are original hand-written tomes so old that they shed alarmingly as you turn the pages, and there are books so new that the pages have yet to be turned.  Glorious.  There are also shelves full of all the recent relevant magazines and periodicals.

There is also access to facilities that only institutions are able to access via a series of computers that are available to all members, whether day or long term.   JSTOR, for example, houses thousands of articles online, and the Caird Library have subscribed to the areas that are relevant to maritime investigations.  

My favourite piece of kit, because it is such a revelation, is the ship plan database.  In one corner there is a vast screen fixed to the wall and a touch-screen panel on the desk beneath - you can enter the name of a ship to find if there are any plans available, and when you see the plans they are extraordinary in their detail.  The ability to zoom in means that the spidery handwriting on so many of these plans can be deciphered and detailed parts of the plans can be examined very clearly.  A stunning facility.

There are some great online facilities too, which you can access from your home computer.  The Research Guides, for example, are incredibly useful.  You can also view the Caird's catalogue and reserve books using their Aeon system (registration and log-in required). 

As well as these more modern pieces of tech, there are photocopying facilities (for which you need to buy a card, with credit on it), which is an excellent facility to have.  If you want to photograph anything you need to sign a form that sets down terms and conditions for how you use whatever photographs you take.

The library is divided into two sections, with books in both - the group area, where you can talk and exchange notes, and the quiet area, where silent research is provided for.  Both are big areas and on the Friday afternoon that I was there with some of the contributors to the Surrey Docks Farm Heritage Project (five of us), virtually empty.

You can take in laptops and iPads, but bags and coats must be left in a locker (free of charge).  Pens are not permitted, but propelling pencils are.  If you forget your own pencil there are plenty available in pot at the desk, free of charge, with an industrial pencil sharpener.

If you are interested in going for the day, or joining for longer, It is worth working through the Caird Library pages on the Royal Museums Greenwich website and following the links to more information so that you know what's there and how to use it. 

If you are into ships, this is a marvelous resource, a candy shop of irresistible treats.  

Short book review: A.G. Linney's "Peepshow of the Port of London"

Peepshow of the Port of London
A.G. Linney
Sampson Low, Marston and Co. Ltd. 1929
244 pages

There are a dozen things that I ought to have been getting on with, but when A.G. Linney's book Peepshow of the Port of London turned up a few weeks ago, I just had to dive straight in.  I had been looking for this book for ages, because it is frequently quoted as a good source of information about the Thames in the 1920s, when Linney was investigating every nook and cranny along the river and writing about his experiences.  It proved to be elusive, but it eventually turned up on my Amazon wishlist.

Published in 1929, between the First and Second World Wars, Linney wrote Peepshow when London's docks were all still operational. Linney could see signs of decline at that time, and it clearly concerned him.  Through Linney's eyes, the Port of London as a shipping destination was a vivid, vibrant world of ships, their cargoes, Thames-side buildings and a wide spectrum of the people who worked at the docks and wharves.

Linney's writing is full of energy and enthusiasm.  He saw romance and drama in the docks and their activities, and this comes over unmistakably in the way he writes about the world he was exploring, even down to the poetry of their names:  "To my thinking it is in the names of the stairs and the causeways and the ferries and the draw docks that the romance of the waterside is most quickly to be discerned.  On maps and charts there are names that catch the eye and grip the imagination so that one feels a spurt of interest."

Unlike his later book Lure and Lore of London's Rivers, this is not a geographical tour from one end of the tidal Thames to another.  Nor has he taken a historical approach, although he does give some accounts of the past of some of the sites he describes.  Instead, Linney has picked topics that attracted him, and has woven a travelogue around them.  The result is an elaborate and engaging mosaic of narrative descriptions, supported by a lot of black and white photographs most of which are from the author's own collection.  It's more lyrical than empirical, but it reads so smoothly and shares a huge amount of knowledge with the reader.

Linney's interests are broad, so as well as some wonderful descriptions of how things looked, and some lovely descriptions of ships using the docks, he goes into the nuts and bolts of how things operated as well.  There are great descriptions, for example, of the cargoes handled at various docks and how these were processed and sold. His section on ivory at the London Docks is particularly fascinating.

At all times Linney's enthusiasm and imagination draw the reader in to his perception of the docks and warehouses as endlessly intriguing places where produce of the world, everything from spice and ivory to flour and wool converged.  This comes over most strongly in his three chapters on the London Docks:  "Sometimes I stand by the main entrance to the London Docks and watch a wool-laden lorry go out and seek to let my imagination follow its contents from source to finish.  I see the vast sheep-runs of New South Wales, Queensland, and South Australia, with their flocks numbered in millions;  I see the shearers at work in their sheds;  I see the wool wagons and the railway trucks making for tidewater; I see the big steamers headed for London River; I see the tug bringing up her train of lighters."   Elsewhere, some his descriptions are rather more prosaic and underwhelmed, most notably his description of the notoriously difficult launch of Brunel's Great Eastern, a ship that he describes as "this famous monstrosity."

There are also two chapters about Rotherhithe, because Linney was particularly attracted to the commercial shipping and dockland operations of the Surrey Commercial Docks.  They are Chapter XIV, The Fascination of Surrey Docks and Chapter XV, Round the Rim of Rotherhithe.   He was intrigued by the reputed insularity of the residents of the Downtown area of Rotherhithe who, "it is often said, have never ventured as far afield as the 'mainland' (Jamaica Road, Lower Road etc) and have passed all their lives by Surrey Docks.  To them the West End is actually as unknown as Timbuctoo."  Other areas covered in dedicated chapters are London Dock, Blackwall, the Isle of Dogs, Dagenham Reach and West India Dock.  Otherwise his chapters are more generic, with titles like Romance by the Riverside I and II, Over and Under the River, Side Streets and Hidden Rivers and The Wonder Warehouses of London, I, II and III.

This is a real mixture of history, field observation and anecdote.  Linney loved the Port of London, and this comes over clearly in his writing and his photographs.  If you are looking for an engaging and useful account of the Port of London in the 1920s, this book provides the perfect snapshot of the docks, wharves and river at that time. 

Stuart Rankin's "A Short History of the Surrey Commercial Docks" now available

It is great news that Stuart Rankin's excellent A Short History of the Surrey Commercial Docks is now available for download, free of charge, from the Docklands History Group archive page at:
http://www.docklandshistorygroup.org.uk/downloads/RankinSurreyDocks.pdf

If you are interested in the former Rotherhithe docks, this is the best book available.

Stuart Rankin's Rotherhithe Local History Papers to go online

Stuart Rankin's booklets
(image from mclarensbooks.com)

As anyone who follows the blog will know, I am a big fan of local historian Stuart Rankin who wrote a series of local history walks and, most importantly, a set of six booklets called the Rotherhithe Local History Papers.  His Local History Papers are about to be republished online by the Docklands History Group on their Archive page.  See details in the poster below.  The first of the booklets is not yet available, but I will post again when it is - which should be some time this month (September 2013).

This is really great news, an excellent opportunity to own your own copies of a research project that has been out of print for several years. With lots of images, including paintings, engravings, photographs and maps in black and white, each booklet in the series is written in a digestible and enjoyable style.  Stuart Rankin worked mainly from primary resources, consulting with other experts, making his work of particular interest and value for those interested in understanding the maritime, industrial and social past of Rotherhithe.

Short book review: Bermondsey and Rotherhithe Through Time

Bermondsey and Rotherhithe Through Time

By Debra Gosling (photographs by David Toogood)

Amberley Publishing 
2012, 96 pages.

I previously reviewed another book in this series, Geoff Lunn's Port of London Through Time.  That was a look at the Thames and its maritime traffic.  This looks at the inland areas of Bermondsey and Rotherhithe, juxtaposing images of the past and images of the present.  There is no map of the area that the book purports to cover, but flipping through the pages, its scope extends from London Bridge and Tower Bridge in the west and extends east to Rotherhithe. There is a good mix of municipal buildings, shops, churches and pubs, but comparatively few residential or industrial scenes.

The comparisons between past and present are shown almost exclusively in photographs, which means that the earliest images of each of these areas is usually only as old as the earliest photographs.  There are no paintings and very few engravings from further back in the past. Most of the "before" photographs date to the early 1900s, with some rather later, dating to the 40s and 50s.  The earlier photographs are mostly sepia or black and white, as you would expect, and the 2011 photographs are all in full colour.  In total, there are around 50 photographs over the 96 pages.

There is a one-page introduction, but unlike the Port of London book in the same series, this book is not divided into chapters, and the book has no obviously visible structure, jumping from area to area and back again.  There is no table of contents or an index and there is no map to show where these buildings are located. Given the absence of any way of navigating the book, the only way of searching for something specific is to start from the beginning and work your way through.

The format is very straight forward.  There are two images on each page, one from the past and one from 2011, with a paragraph of text to explain what is being shown. As you can see in the example below the emphasis is very much on the photographs and far less on the explanatory text.

Most of the "then and now" photos are directly comparable, with shots taken from similar angles showing buildings that remain and those that have been replaced.  As you would expect, many of the before and after photographs represent radical changes and it is fascinating, if sometimes rather demoralizing, to be presented with the change from one state to another. A good example of this is the case of the elegant St John's Church in Horsleydown, which was built in 1736 and destroyed during the war; its foundations were used to build the modern and profoundly ugly London City Mission.  In other cases, however (as in the the cover image above, of the Rotherhithe dock offices, and the Peele Almshouses on Lower Road) it is remarkable, and reassuring, to see how some buildings have been so very well preserved that their appearance has changed very little over the decades, at least on the outside.  In the case of the Brunel Engine House it is a relief to see how well the 1995 restoration resurrected it from its ruinous 1980s condition.  Sometimes all that is left of a building is what was rescued after a building was destroyed, as with the pair of salvaged caryatids that flanked the entrance to the destroyed Rotherhithe Town Hall, now standing alone, but cared for, in Southwark Park. 

Most of the photographs are of Bermondsey, which makes sense as it is by far the bigger of the two areas, and there are far fewer photographs of Rotherhithe. If you are interested in the old wharves and docks along the Thames waterfront in either area, there are virtually none of these (except for a past and a present photograph of Butlers Wharf).  And apart from a photo showing a group of deal porters standing on piles of wood, there are none of the old Surrey Commercial Docks in Rotherhithe, which seems like a major oversight given how much of the interior space of Rotherhithe peninsula the docks occupied, how much employment they provided and how much municipal and residential infrastructure they required.

Although this is primarily a book of buildings, there are some good photographs of people engaged in different activities in the past - Bermondsey Carnival in 1900 is particularly good, but the two women standing in the doorway of the Bermondsey Bookshop in 1921 and the workers on their way in to Lipton's factory in 1928 are also fascinating.  There are only one or two photographs that have captured old modes of transport, like a horse-drawn tram, but these are well worth looking out for.

In summary, there are some fascinating photographs comparing the past and present of both areas, which demonstrate both the survivors and the radical changes that have taken place in Bermondsey and Rotherhithe.  If you are interested in what the area looked like before the 1900s this is probably not the book for you, because this is all about photographic representations and has very few earlier illustrations.   Likewise, if you are interested in Rotherhithe you may feel short-changed, because the emphasis is focused on the much bigger area covered by Bermondsey. Similarly, if you were hoping for some photos of the Thames frontage or the vast network of docks you will certainly be disappointed.  But this is otherwise a valuable resource for anyone interested in the past of  the general area.  The old photographs are really engaging, most of the modern photographs taken by David Toogood in 2011 are suitably clear and the print is quality good. The 2011 photographs will probably provide a useful resource themselves in future decades.

If you live or work in Bermondsey in particular, or are looking for a present for someone who does, this provides a good view of how the Bermondsey area (and to a lesser extent the Rotherhithe area) has evolved during the 1900s.  It is stuffed full of good quality photographs and it has a lot of charm.

Short book review: Port of London Through Time by Geoff Lunn

Port of London Through Time
Geoff Lunn
Amberley Publishing 2011

There are a lot of books of this sort about London.  Their strength lies in the photographs, which juxtaposition past and present, with only enough text to explain what the reader is looking at on the page. All books of this genre are interesting, because photographs of past heritage never cease to be fascinating.  This one concerns itself exclusively with the maritime past of the Thames.

A thriving port for many centuries, by the 1930s it was the world's largest port, and was only undermined as a thriving destination for ships and cargo by the 1950s invention of the container, specialized container ships and roll-on-roll-off (ro-ro) technology.  This book covers the stretch of the Thames that formed the Port of London, from Gravesend to the Upper Pool, just the other side of Tower Bridge.   

Chapters are as follows:

Introduction
Chapter 1: Gravesend to Gallions

Chapter 2: Royal Docks to Rotherhithe

Chapter 3: Lower Pool to London Bridge

(There is no index)

Although the Port of London existed for many centuries, the comparisons between past and present are doing via photography, so apart from one c.1850 painting, the earliest "before" images are sepia photographs dating from the early 1900s but majority are from the 50s and 60s.  The "after" photographs are all modern, most taken by the author and his daughter.  The photograph on the front page gives a very good impression of what the rest of the book is like.  Photographs from the past are set against photos from the present, but are not always directly comparable (as in the sample page of South Dock, scanned from the book and shown on the left).

The value of this sort of book lies mainly in the quality of the original photographs, and although these are excellent, the majority of the old photos are of ships and few show the surrounding landscape or the old docks. The ship photographs are really lovely, but there are less informative than those of former wharves and docks.  These are certainly available because they appear in other books about docklands and local history, so it is surprising that so few were selected for this book.

Each chapter has a page of introductory text.  On the following pages, the text that accompanies the photographs consists of around a paragraph on each page. Although limited, it provides historical information about architectural features, advances in shipping technology and changes in river usage and river services.  There are a small number of maps dotted throughout the book, most of which show what the docks looked like in the past, which is useful now that so many of the Thames docks have been filled in and are no longer shown on modern maps.

For those interested specifically in Rotherhithe, there are very few photographs of the past docks or Thames frontages, and quite a few of the already familiar present. There is also a fundamental error on page 71, where a photograph that claims to be the entrance to the Surrey Commercial Docks is actually a photograph of Dundee Wharf and entrance inlet to the former Limekiln Dock on the north bank of the river.  One paragraph, over a photograph of Greenland Dock, says that "the locals have fun speeding across the dock waters" (with a picture of the watersports centre's speedboat, used mainly for monitoring sailing classes), which makes it sound as though we all have speedboats moored outside our houses, when in fact we would probably be arrested if we tried anything of the sort -  a shame though, I wouldn't mind giving it a whirl!  On the other hand, there are super photographs of ships that used to moor in Greenland Dock, including the Cunard's Ausonia and the Canadian Pacific Beaverfir. 

In conclusion, there are lovely photographs of ships but, for me at least, not sufficient photographs of the infrastructure that supported them.  Some readers, like me, would undoubtedly prefer fewer photographs of ships and more photographs of the old dockland landscape and Thames frontages, and one does wonder if there are more errors like the one on page 71. The narrative is generally good, but limited. 

There's no information provided about the author, apart from a passing comment that he wrote a column for the Port of London Authority's in-house magazine.

New book on Rotherhithe: Rotherhithe Photographs: 1971-1980 (Paperback)

Rotherhithe Photographs: 1971-1980 (Paperback)
By Geoff Howard
Vane Publishing
ISBN-10: 095613890X
ISBN-13: 978-0956138903

Available from Amazon.co.uk. I have it on order.

There's a review on the British Journal of Photography. Here's an extract (has one of the photos from the book):

Geoff Howard is an unassuming man, and he only mentions in passing that he once exhibited in the Whitechapel Gallery and published his work in Creative Review, and that his photograph of Martin Parr hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. But if his humble nature makes self-promotion tricky, it's also the secret to his fascinating fly-on-the-wall shots of 1970s Rotherhithe. 'I met Pam and Alan Field, a young brother and sister from Rotherhithe, at a party in north London when I was still attending college (at the London College of Printing),' he says.

'We got talking and they invited me down to their local in Rotherhithe. It was packed and there was a very aggressive atmosphere - when people finished their drinks they'd just drop their glasses on the floor, so by the end of the night you were ankle-deep in broken glass. But I got interested in it, so I started shooting pictures. It was very working class and I'm middle class but I can get on with most people and fit in. You just see how people live.'

His approach was anything but subtle though - using a Leica with a 25mm lens and a big flash, he'd simply walk up to groups and shoot them. But although he had some problems, he had less than you might expect. 'People were very amiable, and I don't think they really took me seriously,' he says. 'Plus I'd just take the shot and move on quickly. But I wanted to be aggressive and do that flash (of light) to capture what was going on. I was an available light photographer but the pubs were very dark so you couldn't shoot them like that - you'd need to really push the film and use a very slow shutter. I wanted to show it like it was, not just capture the atmosphere.'

Here's also what Southwark Weekender has to say (with another one of the photos from the book):

A photographer is searching for a woman he caught on camera nearly forty years ago.

The haunting shot is part of a series chronicling the lives of youngsters in 70s Rotherhithe and is now featured on the front cover of a book.

If the woman - walking down Rotherhithe Street on Christmas Day 1973 - can be found, the photographer will send her a free copy of the book.

Filled with evocative images of Southwark Park festival, old pubs and strip clubs, and now much-changed scenery, the shots cover life in the area from 1971 to 1980.

Geoff Howard, the photographer, told the 'News' that to begin with, his experience of south London was the Elephant and the London College of Printing, where he studied photography.

Geoff said: "In my final year I happened to meet a young couple, brother and sister, while at a party - they lived in Eugina Road with their divorced mother. We all became friends and I took to visiting frequently. As I always have done, I took photographs. The local pub, The Apples and Pears, had a very definite atmosphere, and these pictures were the start of me shooting more seriously.

"Documentary photographs acquire a different meaning with the passing of time. In some ways 1980 doesn't seem that long ago, but in other ways it seems a very long time ago - much has passed since then. The docklands redevelopment was certainly the end of the things I saw in Rotherhithe. I'm just glad I saw the things I did."

New Book: Great Houses, Moats and Mills on the South Bank of the Thames

An Amazon alert has just informed me that the following book is now available for pre-order. I thought it might be of interest to other residents of the area. The price being quoted by different suppliers varies substantially so I would recommend that you shop around if you decide to pre-order it. Amazon and Oxbow books are both offering it for pre-order

Great Houses, Moats and Mills on the South Bank of the Thames: Medieval and Tudor Southwark and Rotherhithe (MoLAS Monograph 47, Museum of London Archaeology Service 2008) (Hardcover)
by Simon Blatherwick (Author), R. Bluer (Author)

Product details:
* Hardcover: 240 pages
* Publisher: Museum of London Archaeology Service (10 Oct 2008)
* Language English
* ISBN-10: 1901992837
* ISBN-13: 978-1901992830


Product Description
Regeneration in the 1980s-90s on the south bank of the Thames resulted in archaeological and historical investigations at Platform Wharf, Rotherhithe, and next to London Bridge, in Southwark. The development of both sites from the 14th century is of major interest. The Rotherhithe property was acquired c 1349 by Edward III and the existing house rebuilt by him in 1353-61 with two courts, including a riverside range of apartments. Royal interest ceased after Edward's reign, and the house passed to Bermondsey Priory in 1399. The fragmentation of the site into smaller properties, including ones with industrial uses, is charted. The Southwark site contained three notable residences during the medieval period and tidal mills on the waterfront.The 14th-century moated house of the Dunley family and a pleasure-house built by Edward II, the Rosary, were both acquired by Sir John Fastolf for his own grand London residence in the 1440s. In the later 16th century there was massive immigration into this part of Southwark and by the mid 17th century the former moats and gardens were built over with small properties and alleys. The moat infills produced exceptionally rich assemblages of domestic artefacts and ceramics, the waterside location preserved a wide variety of plants, timber structures and woodworking evidence.