Coronavirus musings!!! I have decided to document some of the goings on in this mad world...

Coconut Flour, Digestives and Nettles

We went to Morrison’s for milk, eggs and vegetables – we came out with coconut flour, gluten-free digestive biscuits and tinned salmon.  We also got a cauliflower that had been sitting lonely on an empty shelf, and a packet of rice, also the last on the shelf.  Later on as I nibbled the gluten-free digestives (that just weren’t the same) I tried to concoct a recipe that would include coconut flour, some olives we found, half an onion, some cream cheese that still looked ok, the cauliflower and maybe the tinned salmon as well.  Luckily Google has a plethora of recipes involving just about every ingredient combination possible.  Pearl barley and rhubarb salad anyone?  Scallops with apple and bacon?  Sea urchin tacos?  My boyfriend has taken to foraging on our daily walks, gathering nettles, hawthorn leaves and dock leaves, and nibbling them as we walk along.  He also gathers goosegrass which apparently can be made into an edible but somewhat stringy pie.  We may be relying on these things in the next few weeks and months.  Nettle pie with coconut flour and tinned salmon anyone?  Or a cauliflower served with a sprinkling of hawthorn and dock leaves?  But from a more serious point of view, foraging might be an alternative way to get some freely available and nutritious foodstuffs.  Just make sure you know what you are picking.  Nobody wants a deadly nightshade salad.  Now what to do with those olives?

The Market has a variety of different buildings in different materials which are very interesting for the artist to paint.  The railway line makes an appearance, as it does in most images of the market, making it feel at time quite enclosed.

Borough Market is such a cacophony of sights, sounds, smells, colours, tastes...  I explore some of its history in my book that I am creating about Southwark and Bermondsey.

1952 map of London's riverside - Southwark and Bermondsey

Looking on an old 1952 map of Southwark and Bermondsey, the intimate nature of the streets next to the river is very apparent.  If we think of streets running parallel to the river Thames with walkways overhead we think maybe of Shad Thames, which still retains some of its original character.  It is easy to forget that most of the streets by the river were once like this.  There are overhead walkways in Clink Street, even around the corner from Southwark Cathedral at New Hibernia Wharf.  Bankside is the same, as is Bermondsey Wall.  It is also interesting to note the amount of 'ruins' - evidently bomb sites.  This part of London was heavily bombed because of all its important industries and factories.

Southwark and Bermondsey

Here are some recent paintings of Southwark and Bermondsey - I am hoping to compile a book about the city south of the river, running roughly from Waterloo to Rotherhithe.

Views around London Bridge are cut up and segmented by the railway and the roads that run beneath it:

Borough Market:

 

 

A small road of Borough High Street - if you want an impression of some old Burbage plots then take a stroll down Borough, looking at all the little lanes and courtyards that used to lead to coaching inns:

 

 

A quick pen and ink drawing I did of Shad Thames:

 





City of London - paintings

I am creating a book about the history of the City of London - focussing on unusual and hidden aspects of the Square Mile.  I am particularly interested in the labyrinth of old courts and alleyways to be found in some areas of the city and the beautiful old buildings that survive relatively unchanged.

Below: Looking into Ball Court.

 

Railway line going into Fenchurch Street Station over Crutched Friars:

 

Bengal Court: Some beautiful old buildings and original windows:

A Flight Across the River

We took a cable-car from North Greenwich across to Silvertown a few months ago.  The views were amazing and we could use our Oyster card which was handy.  There are wonderful views from the London Eye of the centre of the city, but there is something about an aerial view of this developing part of London that is even more interesting - there are lots of old warehouses (such as Millennium Mills), and lots of building sites.  The area is being regenerated and constantly changed, and there is still evidence of industry along the river.  The view isn't neat and contained; it is messy and fragmented, and much more interesting for the artist!

The Millennium Dome (above).

Silvertown Way runs to the right of this industrial area.  This is a really interesting part of the working Thames.  We headed for Orchard Place (in the distance to the right).

Above - The Tidal Basin Tavern - bombed in WWII but didn't survive beyond 1990 due to structural problems - so it's obviously been sitting here on this roundabout for a long time.  I wonder what they will replace it with?

Old warehouses on Orchard Place with the Dome beyond.

Secrets of the Square Mile

The Secret City

I am planning to write a book about the secret alleyways, lanes, paths and courtyards of the City of London - it will consist of paintings and sketches of points of interest, concentrating on unusual and quirky facts.  The book will be split into different wards and will cover areas of interest in each ward.  There are so many fascinating snippets about the city to include - it will be hard to decide what to put in!  I don't think it will be designed as a walk, but there could be the option to include walks in the back of the book.

I first came to St Bartholomew the Great when there had just been a wedding and the porch was decorated with beautiful lilies and white roses.  The building above is the gatehouse to St Bartholomew the Great.  It had a Geogian facade until 1916 when the original 16th century frontage was revealed in a zeppelin raid.  This timber-framed frontage was restored after WWI.  These details came from Images of Lost London by Philip Davies - which is a stunning book about the history of the capital.

Alleyways

There are a collection of amazing alleyways between Gracechurch Street and Lombard Street which probably haven't changed for a long time.  My grandfather used to work in the city after the war and would go through these alleyways every lunchtime to get to the pub.  They are probably some of the most intact and unspoilt alleyways and courts in the city: Castle Court, Bengal Court, Ball Court, St Michael's Alley, St Peter's Alley and George Yard.  Modernity is encroaching on the city from all sides, but passing into Ball Court (below) is like stepping back into another age - Dickensian lighting and lamps, shady figures(!) and old barrels - very atmospheric.

There is a part of old Limehouse that still exists along the river - originally called Limekiln Dock.  To the left lies Wapping and Narrow Street behind Dunbar Wharf - to the right is the Isle of Dogs.  The Barley Mow Brewery lay along Ropemakers Fields to the north.  Just west along the river is Limehouse Basin (below):

Limehouse Cut runs north east from the basin up to an old towerblock which I think is being redeveloped.  Below, we look towards the Thames and on our right is Dunbar Wharf.  There was a Brewery Wharf next to this spot, presumably linked to the Barley Mow Brewery.

 

 

These wharfs have been very tastefully restored, and are an echo of those at St Saviour's Dock and Shad Thames.  In fact, once they were widespread along much of the Thames and walkways such as those we see at Shad Thames were very common (for example at Lambeth and Wapping).  Barrels could be rolled from wharf to warehouse without the need for crossing the busy road!  I believe that the large door spaces on these warehouses are called loopholes.  There were originally a lot more walkways at Shad Thames than there are now - my father took a picture of the street in the 1970s and there are far more bridges then than there are today - made from a variety of materials - not just the trendy metal ones we see now!

 

 

The view above is a mystery to me - it might be along Regent's Canal looking towards Limehouse Basin?  Below is a picture of Wesley reading an interpretation board!

North Greenwich Tate & Lyle

The structure above has been demolished recently - it had been one of the last industrial parts of the river left.  Owned by Syral, part of the French Tereos company - it processed wheat flour into starch - which gave an interesting smell to the area.  You could actually go under the silos - below:

We named the shore next to the silos 'Shoe Beach' because of the amount of shoes we found there - no clay pipes though sadly.

Millennium Mills

Millennium Mills is another old factory/warehouse/wharf site that is going to be redeveloped.  Though as of yet nothing has happened to it.  It isn't quite as atmospheric as the Chambers Wharf cold stores, as you could walk right up to them.  You can't get too close to the site unless you are feeling very intrepid.  Here is a view (sbove) from the bridge across the Albert and Victoria Docks.

Millennium Mills (dating from the 1930s like Chambers Wharf) was a flour mill.  You can still see some of the equipment through the open side of the building.  The Royal Docks (which includes the Victoria and Albert docks) closed in the early1980s.  One gets the feeling that this Art Deco building ought to be listed (as is the nearby D Silo) as it is one of the only old factories in this area.  It bears the name Spillers (remember them of Bermondsey and dog biscuits?) who built the current building.  An earlier factory on the site was built by Vernon & Sons.

You can see D Silo to the right of this picture.

St Saviour's Dock and environs

St Saviour's Dock in Bermondsey - looking towards Dockhead and Jamaica Road.  To the right is Shad Thames - to the left Jacob's Island (a notorious slum until recent times).

 

Looking back towards the Thames.  St Saviour basically means 'Jesus' and the dock is actually the mouth of the Neckinger River.  It was first used as a dock by the monks of Bermondsey Abbey.  'Neckinger' is an interesting name, derived from a gibbet hung at the mouth of the river - this was known as the 'Devil's Neckerchief'.  There used to be a pretend gibbet outside the Clink Prison Museum but this has been taken down now (presumably too mouldy).

 

 

Warehouses in Mill Street, Jacob's Island, ironically not a Victorian slum any more - now very expensive! 

 

 

 

Neckinger Mills, Bevington and Sons.  A leather factory up until the 1980s.  Bermondsey was the centre of the leather trade - messy trades such as leather tanning were kept at arms length from the rest of London.  If you look on old maps of this area, you can see the small square and rectangular tanning vats that surround the tanneries.  Just to give you an idea - here are some vats that I saw in Marrakech (below)!

 



Chambers Wharf redeveloped

Some old pictures of Chambers Wharf (possibly from 2006-7):

The image above is taken from the stub of Llewellyn Street looking towards Cloyne Row (today Chambers Street).  The little building on the right may have been part of a terrace the rest of which was demolished.  Llewellyn Street was reasonably big and had trees planted down it - originally called Llewellyn Grove.

It is interesting that the streets in this part of Bermondsey are all long and parallel to one another.  A series of parallel roads stretch from Jamaica Road to Bermondsey Wall.  On a map of 1795 these were recorded as: Nutkine Corner, Salisbury Lane and East Lane, and to the right were some 'rope walks'.  These perhaps hold the clue as to the orientation of the later roads on top of them.  Rope walks are lanes or paths where material was stretched out prior to being twisted into rope.  To the west of the rope walks was Jacob's Island - this is covered in a separate blog such is its extensive history!

Chambers Wharf itself was a series of cold stores that stretched between Cloyne Row and Llewellyn Street to the south, Loftie Street to the east, Bermondsey Wall and the Thames to the north and Channel Row and East Lane to the west.  When I first walked around this area I was interested in creating location drawings - sadly I didn't do any of Chambers Wharf before it was demolished, but I took lots of photos instead.  I was fascinated by the atmosphere that these huge buildings gave this riverside area - something that will never be seen again in this area.  I realised that these were some of the last industrial buildings here.  The buildings above are the cold stores, and the wharf itself was between the river and Bermondsey Wall.  A bit of the wharf may be pictured below - I couldn't quite work out which bit it was from the map, which shows a series of buildings!

The recently demolished cold stores were built in the 1930s, and this is obvious from their appearance which has an Art-Deco feel to it.  The facade almost reminds me of a cinema or bingo hall albeit more industrial looking!  Before the cold stores, in the late 19th century this area had lots of huge granaries, which seem to be roughly the same alignment and shape as the cold stores on the maps.

For many years Bermondsey and much of the Thames riverfront in this area was characterised by tall factories, wharfs, warehouses and cold stores like these.  Bermondsey had so many factories it was known as 'London's Larder' and elderly residents from the area remember the rich smells that infused the air here - particularly biscuits!  (Peek Freans, Jacobs and Spillers (dogs' biscuits) were all here.)  Vinegar, jam and custard were also made in the area, and added to this was the aroma of the important tanning industries of the area (less of a good smell!)  Old maps of the area show lots of rope walks and tanning yards to confirm this.  Below is Loftie Street and a warehouse that backs onto it - on the wall you can see the remains of another warehouse with arched windows that was attached to this (?)

Deptford Dockyards: Biscuits, Brewing and Baccy

The first dockyard at Deptford was the King's Yard established in 1513 by Henry VIII. It wasn't until 1869 that it closed. It later became the Foreign Cattle Market and then Convoy's Wharf where huge ships unloaded paper until 2000 - my boyfriend Wesley remembers seeing them in the early 1990s. Today it is abandoned (above).

The above photo shows the entrance to the victualing yard at Deptford, renamed the Royal Victoria Victualing Yard in 1858. It finally closed in 1961 and today its ornate gates are hidden amongst the towerblocks of the Pepys Estate. It is hard to imagine how iconic they originally were for the thousands of men who walked through them every morning. Tobacco, rum, chocolate and ships' biscuits were just some of the many items stored at the victualing yard. Ships' biscuits were really rather nasty, being made from just flour and water (and perhaps the odd maggot).

Watergate Street

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.

A Deptford Walk

I am in the process of creating some books about London - possibly taking the form of walks though the city - at the moment they are just a jumble of pages.

Areas looked at include:

Southwark

Lambeth

Greenwich

Shoreditch

Bermondsey

City of London

Borough

My most recent one is possibly going to focus on Deptford going up towards the old Surrey Docks - looking at the following things: St Nicholas Church and skulls, site of Payne's wharf - only the old river facade left, Watergate Street down to the river (complete with resident saxophonist), cobbled Borthwick Street (once Butcher's Row), Convoy's Wharf, tree from John Evelyn's Sayes Court, the Princess of Wales pub 1883, the old Storehouses from the King's Royal Dockyard, the steps where Sir Francis Drake was knighted, old cannons along the Thames front, entrance to the Royal Victoria Victualling Yard complete with more scary skulls, old boundary stone, gauge house, hydraulic lock Greenland Lock, lock keeper's office, hydraulic capstans, old crane, gasometer... ETC.

Old corner building - Oldfield Grove

There is an old building on Oldfield Grove (above) that interestingly marks the line of an old street, Cornbury Road, which once led off Oldfield Grove (then Oldfield Road). I believe it used to be the pub that is shown on a map from 1916 on the corner of Cornbury Road and Oldfield Road, which was called the Baron's Arms. I can't find any more information about it though!

Corbett's Lane, Bermondsey

I am particularly interested in the origin of older roads and streets in London, many of which are recorded today as lanes. Corbett's Lane near Southwark Park is an interesting example.

The map to above is perhaps the earliest image (1795) from www.mapco.net I could find of the lane and its strange dogleg bend - why is it this shape? What boundary does it follow? This road (formerly spelled Cobbetts Lane) from pre-industrial Britain is still a pleasant country byway free from later railway lines and terraces and is reasonably important as a small thoroughfare. It winds its way through fields and meadows on the south side of the Thames - St Helena's Tavern and Tea Gardens are on its southern side along with the interestingly named Lemon Valley. It is interesting that Lemon Valley is a well known location on the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic ocean. Is there some travelling connection with this? Or does this name hold some other significance?

In 1882 the lane is still free from urban sprawl and is still an important(ish) road, but in 1895 up springs WestLake Road to the North, Silwood Street to the right and Eugenia Road to the south - as the image below shows (from www.old-maps.co.uk). The surrounding terraced roads seem to follow the shape of Corbett's Lane closely, but the Lane itself remains untouched and it becomes little more than a narrow path. It is interesting that this redundant part of the lane has shrunken but not completely disappeared. But it is still a shadow of its former self and is much smaller than the western part of the lane that became Rotherhithe New Road. Many lanes in London take this form - small parts of them retain their original name and other sections become main roads that are numbered or include 'New' in the title.

Modern roads are all about saving time and money, and the older Corbett's Lane fails to provide a straight and efficient route from Southwark Park Road to Rotherhithe New Road and thus has been bypassed. The map below is from 1920-22 (www.old-maps.co.uk).

So what remnants of Corbett's Lane can still be found today, if any? The dogleg part of the lane can still be found at the northern edge of the Silwood estate which is undergoing a process of regeneration - it retains its old name which is unusual. It is a cul de sac but in theory it still runs parallel to Silwood Street and then twists up between Westlake Road and Eugenia Road, past St Katherine's church and Rope Walk (which once provided rope for nearby docks), where it is a small path. A small straight road parallel to the railway arches and lined with small businesses has also been named Corbett's Lane (originally Corbett's Passage) - it does not follow the ancient route but links up with where the dogleg bend used to be. It is nice that the old name has stuck to the area and thus gives an air of continuity to the estate even if many of the streets have since changed. Below is a modern map from www.google.maps.co.uk with the original plan from the 1851 map overlaid onto it - this might not be accurate, so it may be that the eastern side of the lane matches better with the modern road than it appears to. The green part of the road is Manor Road and Rotherhithe New Road. The red part of the lane is Corbett's Lane. To the left of Corbett's Lane, Debnams Road was originally called Prospect Place, which gave it a somewhat prosperous sounding air. Derelict old tower-block Gillam House, between Silwood Street and the railway line has just been demolished.

Who is the Cobbett of this particular road (as it was originally spelled)? William Cobbett (1763-1835) was a radical politician and one of the foremost political journalists of his age. The St Helena tavern and tea gardens that were to the south of the lane were open from c.1770 and must have provided a welcome relief from the squalor of the city. This was a neighbourhood known to be frequented by footpads or highwaymen, especially around Trundley's Lane. - hopefully not still the case!

Lambeth High Street

I was walking in Lambeth High Street the other day and it occurred to me that this road isn’t really like an ordinary high street with the usual small shops and pubs spread along it. Originally in Lambeth there were two streets that ran parallel to the river and were dissected horizontally by Lambeth Butts: Fore Street, and Back Street (the northern section was called Back Lane) as you can see in the photo to the right from www.mapco.net (Lambeth, 1753)

The modern Lambeth High Street follows Back Lane which has a characteristic twist west at its north end towards the river at Horse Ferry (where the Garden Museum is today). Today it is like any small back road in the city, but for the old pub halfway down, the Windmill - one of many small buildings now vanished - it has been rebuilt since the old 19th c. photo below to the right from www.partleton.co.uk. It is in fact the only older building in the street apart from the ornate one on the corner that I think used to house the Royal Doulton pottery. It has some beautiful tiles on the facade. Potteries were once common in Lambeth (as was Delftware).

Lambeth High Street was originally narrower than today. Nearby Lambeth Walk was then named Three Coneys Way after a local pub (coneys are rabbits if you were wondering!). This in turn ran into the wonderfully named Melancholy Walk which is today Boundary Row and Surrey Row (I think?). I wonder who gave it this name and for what reason?

What fascinates me most about London is its rich patina of history and how it makes itself known to us on the surface. Little clues as to the antiquity of roads and streets hint at how old some parts of the city are. Sometimes telltale signs might be in buildings of some considerable age but might also be as simple as the name of the road, its shape, length or location in relation to other streets. At the moment I am especially interested in roads of some antiquity - many of which are known as lanes and have all sorts of interesting bends and turns in them, often split up and dissected by large modern roads.