My boyfriend Wesley used to live on Watergate Street in Deptford. The image above is from www.olddeptfordhistory.com and shows the street some time in the early 20th century. It looks very different today! There certainly aren't any old weatherboarded buildings like the one on the left - once characteristic of areas such as Deptford and Rotherhithe.
At low tide it is possible to stand on the foreshore at the end of Watergate Street - at the moment you can only reach it by going along a narrow passageway beside the empty shell of Payne's Wharf. When we walked down here on Saturday, the brick walls echoed to a saxophonist playing by the water's edge.
Payne's wharf (below right) was built in 1860 and was a boiler workshop providing boilers for ships and vessels. Its arches perfectly frame Canary Wharf and its neighbours that have sprung up from the ruins of the city's docklands. It is a listed building today - well, more of a wall really. It is so important that structures such as these are retained in order to keep the character of waterside places in London before they disappear forever.
The image (below left) illustrates how much this end of Watergate Street has been raised from its original cobbled surface, presumably it is mostly building material from the Payne's Wharf site.
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