Magical Mystery Tour in Rotherhithe

http://thescribblaire.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/magical-mystery-tour/

A nice account by blogger "the Scribblaire" of a walking tour of Rotherhithe, with photographs.

It was a beautiful Autumn day in London yesterday, with watery sunshine and a slight chill in the air.  A perfect day for walking.  The Scribblaire’s other half had arranged for a trip to somewhere in London that we had never visited.   I had thought that it might be to a church in The City that he had discovered recently, but I was wrong.

We boarded the train to Waterloo station and, on arrival, headed for the eastbound Jubilee line.  Once above ground at Canada Water I was shown a sign pointing to the Brunel Museum and told that this was our destination. 

RM22/78 Rotherhithe (map) Bomb Damage

A fascinating map of the Surrey Commercial Docks on Yersinia's Flickr site, which was picked up by Google Alerts. Click to see the bigger image.  The link no longer works, sadly, but the map is still interesting.

Key (provided by Yersinia):
Black - Total destruction
Purple - Damage beyond repair
Dark Red - Seriously damaged, doubtful if repairable
Light Red - Seriously damaged, repairable at cost
Orange - General blast damage, minor in nature
Yellow - Blast damage, minor in nature
Green - Clearance areas
Small circle - V2 Bomb
Large circle - V1 bomb

Squat Property - Rotherhithe 1983

The Times Live, za (Ben Trovato)

A fascinating if somewhat bleak and disturbing look into another way of life in Rotherhithe 20 years ago. Unfortunately the link is now dead, and I've been unable to find a copy anywhere else.  So this is a snapshot of an article that appeared on The Times Live, ZA.  It was an interesting enough snapshot of Rotherhithe before the LDDC redevelopment of the area to be worth publishing here, even as a fragment.

The author, Ben Trovato, used to live in a squat in Rotherhithe and paints a portrait of what the area was like back then. He then went on to make some interesting observations on what he found in Rotherhithe today.

We’ve already picked out a ground-floor flat. Sticking to the shadows, we reach the door and go to work on the lock. It takes three minutes for the hacksaw blade to snap. The crowbar is no help. Nor are the screwdrivers. This leaves the sledge hammer. I pick it up with both hands and am about to deliver a death blow when a police siren cuts through the fog. We grab the tools and make it to the stairwell just as a sleek, white Rover veers into the estate. Cops pile out of it and begin searching an area 50m from us. They leave. We exhale. Ten minutes later, the lock shatters and the artist uses his Doc Marten boot to open the door. We replace the lock and become the legal occupants. Vote Labour.

It seems too good to be true. A clean three-bedroom flat with a view of the Thames for which no rent will ever be paid or demanded. Sure, there is no electricity, gas or hot water, but we can’t exactly complain to the council. After weeks of living by candlelight, which doubles as our central heating, we meet a gentleman who shows us how to bypass the meter for the price of a bottle of rum.

Rotherhithe is a rough area, no doubt about it. There are half a dozen heroin dealers living within a five minute walk of one another. Some squatters have their cars set alight at night. Punks, skinheads and anarchists share an uneasy existence alongside angry, rent-paying Cockneys. These legitimate tenants hate us for living in flats identical to theirs, but for free. I come home one night to find “Squatters Will Die” spray- painted across the door.

The Rotherhithe of Geoff Howard

http://thelondoncolumn.com/2012/09/03/rotherhithe-photo-text-geoff-howard-15-2/

From the forward to Rotherhithe Photographs, 1971-80 by Geoff Howard:

Ship and Whale, Rotherhithe.
© Geoff Howard 1975

Rotherhithe was a riverside village to the east of London in medieval times, but the real development of the area started with the major dock building in the first half of the 19th century; these docks were amalgamated into the Surrey Commercial Docks in 1864. Surrey Docks are only a part of Rotherhithe, but people tended to use the two names almost interchangeably. Surrey Docks underground station is at the south end of the docks; Rotherhithe Street itself follows the bend of the river Thames around the north side of the docks. Rotherhithe Street – the longest street on London – or was it in England – bordered by high walls hiding the docks, with just occasional gaps at a gate or bridge, with glimpses of water or warehouses, and like all the surrounding streets mostly deserted, a ghostly, uninhabited feeling, broken by small estates of council flats, a few pubs, some newsagents or little corner shops. The river on the other side of the road, often just a few steps down to the water.

While these photographs date from 1971 to 1980, the majority were taken between 1973 and 1975. It was the time after the closure of the docks in 1969 but before the complete redevelopment of the whole London docklands area, north and south of the river Thames, during the 1980s.

Great London history blog: HistoryLondon

http://historylondon.wordpress.com/

A blog by Julian Woodford ("Transmitting gobbets of London's past for the edification of the world," whose book The Boss of Bethnal Green: Joseph Merceron, Godfather of Regency London will be published soon. I've been following it on Twitter: @HistoryLondon.

London Blitz, day 1, September 7th 1940

The Guardian

From The Guardian website, above:

Using Google Fusion tables, we've produced this map of the first day's bombing. Click on a red dot to get details -once it's loaded

The Great British Story - A history of Greenland Dock

BBC News

Brilliant short video about the history of Greenland Dock

The Great British Story looks at how London's Docklands have been transformed over several centuries of history.

Presenter Peter Snow talks to historian Fiona Rule about how Greenland Dock on the east side of the Rotherhithe peninsula was transformed in the late 17th Century.

The dock was a monumental achievement for its time and developed as a centre for the whaling trade.

It became an early template for London's super-sized docklands that spread across east London in the 19th Century.

The Great British Story - London's Docklands is broadcast on Tuesday, 12 June on BBC One London at 22:35 GMT and nationwide on the iPlayer thereafter.

The whole episode (dealing with all of London's Docklands) can be seen on BBC iPlayer (and is well worth watching if you have iPlayer, which you can load free of charge):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01jxrhv/The_Great_British_Story_Regional_Histories_Londons_Docklands/

Aquatic Sports Gala Day in 1925, Surrey Docks

Thanks to the Transportine blog for a post with some photographs of Surrey Docks in 1925, plus a video, all of the Port of London Authority Aquatic Sports Gala Day in 1925 (see it on the above link).  All black and white and really fascinating.  I particularly liked the diving footage.  It drew a big crowd!  I also very much like the tall ships masts in the background, and the sheds at the sides of the dock.  The diving boards are mounted on scaffold.  No modern glamour here, but people are evidently having a great time.

Red RF Route 202 in 1929

http://www.red-rf.com/rf-350

Introduced as the 202 by independent companies G.H. Allitt & Sons Ltd and Robert Hawkins & Co Ltd ('Nil Desperandum') on 23 Jul 29 (initially only from New Cross to Rotherhithe Red Lion, but extended at the end of the year), the two operators were joined in 1931 by Renown Traction Co.Ltd (for 4 months, until their only bus caught fire) and E Puttergill ('Golden Arrow'). Between November 1933 and June 1934, the three remaining companies were acquired by the LPTB, operation from Old Kent Road garage (P) starting in January 1934.

In 1935, the Rotherhithe New Road terminus became known as 'Canal Bridge', whilst Clifton Rise was still known locally as Clifton Hill. In May 1936, the small ex-independent one-man buses were replaced by nine crew-operated side-engined 5Q5s, running every 5 minutes. The route was always single-deck operated because of low bridges in Trundleys Road, including one carrying the Bricklayers Arms goods yard line which descended at a shallow gradient for the very heavy goods trains.

See the above page for more and click on the image to see the detail on the destination sign at the front of the bus.

Local history books by Stuart Rankin at the Canada Water library

Putting my overall dissatisfaction with the library as a functional beast on one side, I thought it might be worth bringing attention to a series of books about Rotherhithe, if anyone is interested in the local history of the area.

Although I have a really good collection of local history books and papers, my approach to finding out about the area has been somewhat random, and I have to thank whoever selected the local history books in the library for including a series of which I was unaware.

The series are all referred to as Rotherhithe Local History Papers. All appear to have been written or put together by the excellent Stuart Rankin (who is my absolute local history hero, but sadly lives overseas) and appear to have been published locally in the late 90s and the year 2000.

The titles that I took out of the library are:

By Stuart Rankin:

• A Short History of the Surrey Commercial Docks
• Shipbuilding in Rotherhithe - Greenland Dock and Barnard's Wharf
• Shipbuilding in Rotherhithe - The Nelson Dockyard
• Shipbuilding in Rotherhithe - Bull Head Dock to the Pageants - Part I
• Shipbuilding in Rotherhithe - Bull Head Dock to the Pageants - Part II

Edited by Stuart Rankin

• Historical Notice of the commercial Docks in the Parish of Rotherhithe, County of Surrey By Nathaniel Gould (a reprint from 1844 with additional illustrations and an introduction)

Boys lying on the quayside, Rotherhithe c.1914

Portcities

Description: Young boys lying on the quayside and peering over into the river at one of the Rotherhithe wharves. Waldo McGillycuddy Eagar took many photographs of the Thames and the people who lived, worked and played along its shores. His work forms a remarkable document of a maritime community that no longer exists.

Creator: Waldo McGillycuddy Eagar CBE

Date: c. 1914

Wasting Space - the new Canada Water Library

I went down to join the new Canada Water library today. I was pleased that it was opening because I wanted somewhere to go and sit and work in peace and quiet. The Lib Dem newsletter 'Focus' was shoved through my letter box yesterday, confirming that the library is now open (which I suppose means that they were responsible for it), so I decided to go and look it over.

Three quarters of its exterior is still immersed in building works but the front door was easy to find and opened into a large space with a security guard sitting on a pedestal, a bit like a Wimbledon referee, a small reception desk, some computer consoles and, at the opposite end, a cafe. Some shelves appeared to be offering the latest best sellers. It seemed like a big space, poorly used.

Joining required a piece of identification which had an address (I used my driving license), and took only two minutes. The result was a credit-card sized plastic card with a membership number clearly marked.

I asked the receptionist, a nice lady, for a map, and although she had no idea whether there was one she found one in a brochure holder for me. It showed that there were two library floors. At the elevetor there was a sign showing which subjects were on each floor. History, the topic where I thought I would start, was on the top (second) floor.

I made my way to the stairs. The stairs confirmed my first impression of poorly used space, an unalterable part of the design, a mistake that cannot be corrected. It is true that the stairs are aesthetically very pleasing - a vast open wooden spiral leading from the ground floor to the first floor, using up an enormous amount of floor space on the first floor. A complete and utter waste of valuable space.

The second floor is not, in fact, an entire floor but a mezzanine or gallery - a narrow corridor that follows the perimeter of the library, and looks out over the first floor. Why? Why not put in an entire floor? My bewilderment increased when I climbed the steps to reach that level. The wall was lined with shelves carrying books, language tapes and the like. On the edge looking over the void was either empty wall or banks of desks and chairs with wall sockets for laptops. The few desks that were provided were full with people plugged in with their laptops - some with books, but most apparently surfing the web on the free wi-fi.

The history section, when I found it, was quite small. Looking specifically for local history I found that I have a much, much bigger collection of Rotherhithe and Thames books and information than the library has, which is a bit sad.

Back on the first floor, with a couple of local history books in my hands (you can take out up to 15) I had a wander round to see what the seating was like down there. It was almost non-existant. A small row of swivel chairs with views over Canada Water were fully occupied, and the few desks were taken. A numebr of desks with computers on them were free, but when I tried to log on using my full membership number (observing the rule that it was case sensitive) my number was rejected.

I continued my wander around the first floor and found myself at a childrens book section which, sadly, had a children's play area attached. There were only two children there but they were already disturbing the peace. Why? Why not put the kids books and the kids themselves down with the cafe in the under-utilized ground floor space and free more area upstairs for the much-needed work stations?

The books at the Canada Water library must represent a tiny fraction of the numbers that used to be held in the Albion Street library before it closed (now, apparently, about to be developed as yet more high rise housing). Overall, between the two libarary floors, I would be fascinated to see how the numbers between the new library and the old one compare, and how the content type breaks down, and how topics were chosen.

Back on the ground floor, still clutching my books, I asked the receptionist how to sign out my loans. He was very helpful and explained that it was self-service and showed me how to use the machine, which was straight forward (if a bit reluctant to accept some of my books). At the same time I asked him why my log-in had failed on the PC that I had tried and he gave me the essential piece of information missing from the log-in screen - you only enter the numbers, not the letters. It would have been SO useful if, instead of telling me that my membership code was case-sensitive, the log-in screen had told me to elminate the letters from in front of the number. And how can a number be case sensitive anyway? Silliness.

I cannot understand how someone granted it planning permission given that it simply doesn't make any sensible use of the internal space. The second floor is no bigger than a corridor, the first floor has two huge holes eaten out of it by the massive central stairwall and the children's play area, and the ground floor is simply underutilized. The lack of desk space would be laughable if it wasn't so damned infuriating.

Why the Council should feel the need to provide free wi-fi to anyone who happens to live in the area I cannot imagine - it is obvious that it will become a free Internet Cafe for people checking up on their Twitter and Facebook accounts rather than a resource for researchers and studying students.

What a complete waste of space, quite literally. Why the Council should have allocated planning permission to something that is more space than actual content I really cannot understand.

Someone told me today that we, the taxpayers, payed £14 million for that farce.

So I am now the happy owner of a membership card for a facility that cannot provide me desk space. Thanks, Southwark Council!

Stripped down as you've never seen her: Pictures of Tower Bridge

A friend sent me this link to the Daily Mail, which has some marvellous photos of Tower Bridge under construction, which were found in a skip!

Stripped down as you've never seen her: Pictures of Tower Bridge during construction found dumped in a skip
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2067581/Stripped-youve-seen-Pictures-Tower-Bridge-construction-dumped-skip.html

Do have a look - they are fascinating and beautiful. There are eight in total, including the one above.

Still here

Although I finished my one-year project to document the Russia Dock Woodland and Stave Hill Ecological Park I am still very much around and am completing my history of Rotherhithe offline.

If you want to email me with any queries or comments I would be very pleased to hear from you (my email address is in the header of the blog).

The "care" of one of the last 2 remaining composite clippers

This is off-topic. It is, however, a rather chilling account of how a mixture of complacency and neglect, followed by belated and somewhat undirected good intentions conspired to let down an almost unique piece of maritime history. It seems remarkable that the various UK authorities who should have taken responsibility for one of the world's only two surviving composite clippers could have allowed matters to reach such a desperate point. Click the photos below to see them at full size on the Wikipedia and Clipper Ship 'City of Adelaide' Limited websites.

The City of Adelaide is the oldest surviving clipper ship in the world, and one of only two composite ships surviving (three, if you count the beached metal frame of Ambassador lying wrecked off the coast of Chile). The story of the ship, built in Sunderland in 1864, reveals a busy and fascinating career in service between the UK and Australia before being sold into sundry other roles. The sepia photo below shows her in 1884. She finished the first part of her active career in 1894 as an isolation hospital ship, masts removed, moored off Southampton. Many ships which served this function were then broken up.

Thanks to the interest of one individual she survived, remarkably, to become a training ship for the UK Royal Navy from 1923 (and was renamed HMS Carrick) until a decision was made to break her up after the war. Again, she was rescued from that fate. One might have thought that these rescues were a positive sign for her future and that as time went on and she became a floating monument to maritime heritage, her future might actually be secure. The subsequent decline of this important representative of history, however, makes tragic reading on this thoroughly researched and fully referenced Wikipedia page about the ship, last updated in February 2011.

The ship's fortunes began to slide when The City of Adelaide was presented by the Admiralty to the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (Scotland) Club where it served as the club's headquarters from 1948, following a refit. From then until 1980 she was in use by the club but apparently allowed to decline because the club realized , belatedly, that they could no longer maintain her and looked for funding and a new owner for her. Nothing appears to have happened until 1989 when "the ship was flooded when the deck edge was trapped beneath the wharf on a very low tide". The mind boggles, particularly if you know anything about mooring boats of all sizes on tidal waters. There's a ghastly photo on the Wikipedia page of the ship below water, only the very top of the superstructure remaining visible. In a unique move the ship was given Listed Building status by a Scottish quango and was purchased for the token sum of £1.00 (UKP) in 1990. It was put under the charge of the Scottish Martime Museum. A reprieve? Apparently not, because in the year 2000 the trustees of the Scottish Maritime Museum applied for permission to demolish the newly designated Category A Listed Building. The application was refused.

From this point forward the story becomes really quite farcical, with a conference on the subject concluding that funds should be raised to save her (but no real indication as to where these funds were to be found) and the decision to give the ship its original name back, becoming once again The City of Adelaide. The Scottish Maritime Museum applied once more in 2009 for permission to demolish the ship "at an estimated cost of £650,000". In January 2010, the Australian Adelaide Preservation Trust made a proposal to take the ship off the UK's hands. To cut a long story short, the UK has proved unable to preserve this remarkable and once beautiful ship. It has fallen to the Australian organization to rescue her. Here's the concluding paragraph from the Wiki page:

Scottish Minister for Culture and External Affairs, Fiona Hyslop announced on 28 August 2010 that the City of Adelaide would not be deconstructed, and that Adelaide has been identified as the preferred bidder. Extensive work will be undertaken to allow the ship to be moved and displayed in Adelaide during 2011, the 175th anniversary of the settlement of South Australia, the first stage of which was completed in December 2010. The group based at Sunderland congratulated the Australian group but stated that their campaign to keep the ship in the United Kingdom would continue.

Based on the UK's previous handling of the ship, I sincerely hope that the Sunderland group fail.

Ships of this era are so rare. When wooden ships started to supplemented with iron frames and then replaced entirely with iron and steel there was a lot of money to be made from the breaking of wooden ships. This means that even when ships survived the dangers of their maritime careeers, their chances of remaining in one piece were very low. The City of Adelaide and the Cutty Sark were two remarkable survivors of this process of industrial change and systematic recycling - and it is nothing short of a tragedy that one of those two ships was allowed to sit and decay.

I have a serious affinity with ships and the UK's ship building heritage, probably partly because most of the men in my father's family were merchant sailors, my grandfather a rigger. I also live in the middle of a former wooden ship-building centre on the Thames, and it whilst hunting for information about the locally built Lothair that I stumbled across the above page about The Adelaide. I was seriously upset when the Cutty Sark burned down, but that at least seems to have been a freak (if irresponsible) accident. The City of Adelaide, by contrast, was allowed to decay over a period of decades. It really breaks my heart to see how The City of Adelaide was so tragically neglected by the UK, when she should have been preserved and honoured as a vital remnant of a rich ship building and sailing past. I hope that the Australians do a rather better job of caring for her. Surely they couldn't do much worse.

Sorry about this - I just had to get it off my chest.

See the Wikipedia and City of Adelaide websites for more information.


UPDATE 16th October 2013:
Thanks very much to Rob of the Thames Pics website for the news that Adelaide is now on her way to Australia. Here's what Rob said about her arrival at Chatham in September:  "Before leaving these shores, she has come down from Irvine to first be fumigated at Chatham docks and to then say an emotional goodbye at an event in Greenwich by the Cutty Sark with the Duke of Edinburgh in attendance."  Do have a look at the Thames Pics page dedicated to the ship's arrival for some really terrific photographs - Adelaide on the back of a transport ship is amazingly impressive.   There are videos of her too, also by Rob on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QppN8FZID5I

Birds, bees and a rather trendy caterpillar

I went to meet Steve Cornish to talk about the reed warblers currently nesting in Downtown Pond, and to look at some of the recent work being carried out at the Russia Dock Woodland. The RDW is looking good, with water flowing well, lots of Yellow Flag irises in full flower, hundreds of damsel flies, and lots of pale pink dog roses scattered around. After we had failed to see the warbler (but saw a spotted woodpecker) we walked to the Stave Hill Ecological Park compound.

The Stave Hill compound is looking excellent with a vast and elegant wooden insect city sitting on a base of pebbles, water and apline flowers. But although these were great features the star attraction turned out to be some bee hives that I didn't know existed, complete with their handler Craig. The hives, which Craig makes himself, were quite unlike any hives that I have seen before, and I had thought were compost bins. Likewise Craig, in a business suit and bare-headed, did not fit my preconception of a beekeeper (which involved strange hats and a lot of netting). We went over to him as he opened up the hives to look for the Queen, pulling out frames covered in bees to locate her. The bees carried on working regardless, apparently unconcerned about their world being rearranged. I asked a lot of probably very silly questions and received some fascinating answers. Queen bees (we saw one) can live as long as eight years, whereas worker bees during the busy summer months may literally work themselves to death in only six weeks. The Queen that we were looking for wasn't laying eggs properly. If a Queen ceases to lay eggs then the hive will die out in a matter of around two months. Craig had a replacement for her to ensure the survival of the entire hive. If the Queen isn't replaced then not only does the population of the hive eventually die out, but the worker bees cease to work at full capacity. As well as collecting pollen and working in the hive, the workers are responsible for keeping the hive clean inside and out. They can also attract missing bees by generating the scent of the hive, which they do as a group with a fanning motion. The male bees from the hive have no stings, and I stood with one on the palm of my hand, a truly beautiful little thing. Craig says that many people confuse honey bees for wasps, which surprised me.

My thanks to Craig for the highlight of my week.










A presumably suicidal caterpillar, black and bright green, was trying to make its way into one of the hives, and that too ended up on my hand. I didn't photograph it but I looked it up when I arrived home and it was a Zygaena filipendulae moth (Six-Spot Burnet - you can find a photograph here if you want to see what it looked like).

Surrey Docks Farm & Greenland Dock on the 16th March

After leaving Stave Hill Ecological Park I walked through the RDW and headed past the Downtown site and over the bridge to the Thames Path.

The Downtown site is an absolute disgrace. The strategy of leaving an area to decay so that people will support development is truly dishonourable. Fortunately local kids don't seem to have adopted it as a private hideaway (which is what we would have done when I was a kid, it has to be confessed).

I cut through the Surrey Docks Farm to follow the Thames Path and was lucky enough to see piglets! Quite gorgeous. As usual the farm looked great and the cafe, re-opened a few weeks ago, was absolutely heaving!

I walked back to my house along Greenland Dock where the coots and grebes were already attacking each other. A pair of grebes were laying claim to the pontoon under the Norway Cut swing bridge - last year they shared it with a pair of coots. We'll see who wins this year!

Stave Hill Ecological Park

The SHEP is also looking extremely well organized. Spring is usually a period when the new growth climbs through the old, but at Stave Hill the old growth has been firmly removed and the new growth will have a free range. I walked past a man hoeing at the grass area below the windmill. It looked like hard work but everything was very tidy and clean.

The main highlights of the walk through the ecological park were the violets, a single lovely daffodil and two frogs mating in the tiny pond at the end of the butterfly sanctuary. The reed bed opposite Stave Hill pond, and the fabulous coloured bark of the surrounding shrubs, are as lovely as usual. The colours never cease to amaze at any season. The butterfly sanctuary has been crew-cut again, but will doubtless recover eventually. The bee-attracting budleias are all growing new leaves. The new moat at the end of the butterfly sanctuary still looks very harsh and new but it will hopefully mellow during the summer.

More from yesterday at the Russia Dock Woodland

Spring is arriving

Today was the perfect spring day. I arrived at about 12.30 and I was wandering around in a t-shirt. I had the emergency back-up of a jumper around my neck and a jacket arranged over my shoulder bag, but it was so warm that I didn't actually need either. I haven't felt so warm outdoors all year.

The park was very quiet. There was the usual assortment of women with pushchairs, men with small dogs and the odd jogger, but there weren't many other people around.

I haven't been in the parks for ages and it was great to go and stretch my legs and see what had changed. As everything was under snow the last time I was there quite a lot had changed!

Both the Russia Dock Woodland and Stave Hill Ecological Park looked very manicured.

I'll write about the Ecological Park in the next couple of days. In the Russia Dock Woodland there were patches of crocus and snowdrop. They were lovely. Daffodils still haven't come into flower but they should do in the next couple of weeks. The cherry laurel is in bud, and in the areas where it was seriously cut back it is making a radical come-back and the Red Nettle is widespread. The Yellow Flag, as usual at this time of year, is reviving and the bulrushes are fluffy, dispersing their seeds. Everything else has new buds and tiny green leaves. There is pussy willow and there are catkins.

There were several squirrels out and about.

There was a lot of bird song from the trees but the only ones I came face to face with were blackbirds, starlings, a magpie, lots of pigeons and two sparrows.

On the ponds there were mallards, moorhens, coots and, on Globe Pond, two Canada Geese.

On the insect front there was one gigantic and very cheesed off bumble bee, a ladybird on a dead oak leaf and a very surpising bright yellow brimstone butterly (which was just too far away to photograph).

Spring has certainly arrived, and not a moment too soon!