Monthly Archives: December 2024

London Films – Capturing 100 Years of Change

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This time last year, in that strange period, between Christmas and New Year, I wrote a post about London – Captured in Music Videos, as they are fascinating, not just for the excellent music, but to see London in the background, in these videos from the last few decades.

For this year, I thought I would have a post about London films. Not films where London appears in the background, but films which are dedicated to telling a story about a particular aspect of the city.

They are fascinating to watch, not just to see how the city has changed physically, and how life in the city has also changed, but also to make us think.

The people we see in these films working or living in London could probably not have foreseen the dramatic changes that would transform their city, and likewise our experience of the city today is just a snapshot, and in years to come many aspects of the city will be radically different, and it will be someone else’s city, who will probably look back at film of London in the 2020’s with a mix of nostalgia and amusement.

So for the long, dark evenings, here is London from the past 100 years.

If the WordPress YouTube Block works there should be several videos embedded in this post. I am not sure if they will show in the emailed version of this post. If not, go to the home page by clicking here to view the post.

The London Nobody Knows

The film “The London Nobody Knows” is a fascinating glimpse of London at a time of great change. By the release of the film at the end of 1968, there had already been considerable reconstruction after the bombing of the 1940s, and gleaming glass and steel office blocks were springing up across the city.

There were though still a considerable number of bomb sites and damaged buildings, and the London Docks were still busy, although there were signs of the changes that would effect trade on the river and the docks in the future.

The film was written by the writer Brian Comport and the artist and author Geoffrey Fletcher, and the film takes its name from the book the London Nobody Knows by Geoffrey Fletcher. His books mixed Fletcher’s drawings of buildings, street infrastructure, people etc. across the city with descriptive text.

The film uses the actor James Mason as a focal point for the film, as he visits and talks about the changing face of London, armed with his flat cap and umbrella:

The London Nobody Knows is perhaps the classic London film.

Capital County

Capital County is a 1951 London County Council film and starts with some history of the development of London, then going on to show the very extensive range of services for which the LCC were responsible, and how these services touched much of the life of all Londoners. The film demonstrates this through Albert Brown, a typical Londoner:

Capital County shows that it is not just physical change that has transformed London over the last 70 plus years, but also the way London is administered and governed.

Bermondsey Wall

Bermondsey Wall is a 1932 film which has some wonderful views of the working river and backstreets of Bermondsey, and focuses on the work of the Time and Talents Association, who by the time of the film were based in Dockhead House, Abbey Street. Time and Talents was started in 1887 to help young girls use their “Time and Talents” in the service of others, to provide education, practical skills and also provide hostels for girls’ accommodation. The organisation has evolved into a community organisation which is still running today across Rotherhithe and Bermondsey.

The Proud City – A Plan for London

The Proud City is a film produced for the Ministry of Information, to explain the 1943 County of London Plan. The film includes the main authors of the plan, JH Forshaw (Architect to the London County Council) and Sir Patrick Abercrombie (Professor of town planning, University of London), who explain why a plan is needed, the thinking behind the plan, how it will transform London, and the resulting benefits for all those who live and work in the city, along with some wonderful film of the city.

The plan was wide ranging, and covered almost every aspect of life in London, and the plan identified many of the issues with the haphazard way in which London had developed over the centuries, resulting in poor housing, housing and industry together existing in a mixed street plan, traffic congestion, the way the old village London had merged into a far larger and more complex greater London.

We can see today how some of the ideas from the plan have been implemented. The plan makes a comparison between the north and south banks of the river in central London, with well designed offices, government buildings and a fine Embankment with trees and gardens on the north, whilst on the south bank there was a confusion of warehouses, slums and derelict streets, which had been made worse since the Blitz. The plan identified the south bank of the river as an ideal opportunity to develop a new river frontage, worthy of London.

The intention with bombed, industrialised areas such as Stepney, was to transform them into new “social units” or neighbourhoods, each with a population of between 6,000 and 10,000, and having a school, local shopping centre, medical facilities and with housing provided by a mix of terrace housing, each with a garden, and blocks of flats built within landscaped grounds.

Industry and commerce would be moved to the boundaries of neighbourhoods, rather than being mixed in with housing, and main roads would also be at the edge to avoid through traffic.

An early example of the concept that today seems to have attracted the name of the 15 minute city.

The film has some wonderful quotes, for example the following from Patrick Abercrombie:

“There must be change, always change, as one season, or one generation, follows another”.

This quote sums up London’s history. A city that has always changed, adapted and evolved, but the problem with change is that it raises questions about what we keep and what we get rid of to continue that change.

You can see these issues play out every day, with a few current examples being the M&S building in Oxford Street, proposed redevelopment of Liverpool Street Station, the new buildings on the site of the London Weekend Television building on the Southbank, and the potential demolition of Bastion House on London Wall, along with the adjacent, old Museum of London site (both by the architects Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya, who also worked on the 1951 Festival of Britain and designed the magnificent Skylon).

The Port of London

A film by British Pathe and British Instructional Films Ltd and headlines as a Classroom film. The film shows the workings of the London Docks. It starts off slowly, whilst working through a map showing the location of all the docks from Tilbury to St. Katherine, and then shows the docks in operation:

British Instructional Films Ltd were primarily a documentary film maker, founded in 1919 by Harry Bruce Woolfe. The subject of these films ranged from the re-enactment of military engagements through to a long running Secrets of Nature series, which included painstaking studio and laboratory work, as well as filming out in the field.

A common thread running through the films produced by the company was patriotism and Empire.

The company suffered financially during the late 1920s and early 1930s and became part of the Pathe company, who continued to use the brand name of British Instructional Films for their educational films, as with the film Port of London.

The City of London – Reel 1

Part one of a film from 1951 showing the City of London in operation – the Stock Exchange, Baltic Exchange, Lloyds of London etc.

The City of London – Reel 2

The second part of the film, which focuses on the ceremonial and crafts aspects of the City of London.

Both films show a very different City of London to the City of today, including a City where men are in all of the roles of any consequence in the City:

Barbican, 1969: The development of the Barbican Estate following World War II

This is a wonderful film in “Technicolour” that covers not just the development of the Barbican Estate, but includes many other aspects of London. The views of the estate being built, alongside views of what was there before help illustrate what a transformational housing project the Barbican was for the City of London:

The film includes a brilliant few minutes of people looking round one of the show flats which have been furnished in a very modern, late 1960s style, with emphasis on the kitchens, bathrooms, and how the flats have been designed to maximise views through the windows, sunlight, sound proofing etc.

The Living City

The film The Living City was made in 1970 for the City of London Corporation. The film starts with views of the fires started by incendiary bombing on the night of the 29th December 1940, and then goes on to tell of the reconstruction of the City, the institutions and businesses that make the City the main centre for global trade, finance and insurance, and how the City is being rebuilt, including some film of the Pedways:

It is interesting to compare the City of London in 1970 with the City of today. The film talks about Cheapside being the main shopping street of the City and a “seething confluence of seven major thoroughfares” between the Bank junction and St. Paul’s. The film shows the amount of traffic along streets such as Cheapside and across the Bank junction, and this is one of the things about the City that I struggle with today.

Despite the air being much cleaner and healthier, the City just seems to have lost a sense of human activity, of being an exceptionally busy, exciting place, and across the whole film we can see the sheer diversity of activities that went on within the City of London.

There is film of the markets at Billingsgate, Spitalfields and Smithfield, and somewhat ironically given the City of London Corporation’s plan to close the Smithfield meat market, the film talks about the “City’s determination to keep the wholesale markets”.

There have though been some positive changes in the 74 years since the film, the fur market in Beaver House of the Hudson Bay Company no longer operates, and ivory is not stored and traded in the Port of London Authority warehouse in Cutler Street.

The danger with changes such as the closure of Smithfield is that the City of London gradually looses all the things that have made the City such an important place for many hundreds of years, and the square mile looses its identity and ends up much like many other places in central London where expensive apartments, hotels and places to attract visitors and tourists become the primary drivers of redevelopment.

The Changing Face of London

The Changing Face of London from 1960 is also about change, starting with scenes of demolition and the ruined buildings across the city, then focussing on redevelopment and potential plans for the city.

The models shown for large site redevelopment and also for individual buildings are fascinating, but thankfully some of these schemes did not get built.

If you have been on my Barbican walk, at 17 minutes and 19 seconds into the film, there is a view of the new section of London Wall that had been opened in the previous year (1959), and to the left you can see the church of St. Alphage, which was later demolished to just the medieval remains we can see next to London Wall today, and to the left there is Roman House, the white office block that was the first post war building constructed in the area, and about the only one of the buildings in the scene that remains to this day.

The Pedway: Elevating London

The Pedway was one of the ideas coming from wartime plans for post-war redevelopment of the City of London, where pedestrians would be separated from road traffic on raised pedestrian ways, and the redevelopment of London Wall resulted in one of the areas where Pedways were extensively used across a wide area.

The concept was not only to separate pedestrians from traffic, but also to provide on the Pedway, the shops, pubs, restaurants and other services that would have normally be found at street level.

This 2013 documentary tells the story of the Pedway, along with the associated redevelopment of much of the City of London:

The original Pedways have all but disappeared in the development of the last few decades, however elevated walkways are still the main method of walking through the Barbican estate, and there has been a reconstruction of a Pedway (but without shops, pubs etc.) in the area to the north of London Wall, around the remains of St. Alphage.

This Is London – 1981

This film is more a tourist overview of London, but is interesting as it shows the city at the start of the 1980s, when London was still a very low rise city.

At 55 seconds into the film, there is a wonderful bit of film of a hovercraft on the Thames and passing under Tower Bridge:

Bob Hoskins: London is being “Sterilised by greed” 

This is another absolute classic, with the actor Bob Hoskins showing Barry Norman around parts of the south London riverside from Coin Street on the Southbank down to Shad Thames, and whilst some of the developments he talks about did not get carried out, many did, and his core argument is the same today as it was in 1982:

The future’s up for grabs – GLC Docklands

Where the Bob Hoskins film talks about the derelict buildings along the river, and the preference of developers for offices over houses, the following film explores the impact on those who lived around the large expanses of old docks that were “up for grabs”.

There are lots of interviews with those who live in the area. Young people who complain about the lack of facilities and how far they have to travel for school, older people who talk about what the docks were like when working, talk about some of the new developments and the physical separation of council and private housing etc.

Many of these issues are still just as relevant, and the area around the Royal Docks shown in parts of the film are still being developed today, and from my walks around the area, there still seems to be very few facilities for those living in the new apartment blocks.

River Cruise Down The Thames

This is a GLC film, aimed mainly at visitors to the City, but the film also highlights the benefits that the GLC has brought to the city (the film ends with the slogan “keep GLC working for London” as the film was made when the Conservative government was arguing for the abolition of the GLC).

The film runs from Hampton Court, Twickenham and Kew, down to Greenwich and the recently completed Thames Barrier:

Film 87 – How Docklands became Vietnam

The closure of the London docks offered producers of film and TV programmes so many opportunities with large areas of derelict land and buildings available.

Much of Bob Hoskin’s film The Long Good Friday was filmed in and around docklands, and this extract from Film 87 shows how Beckton Gas Works were transformed into Vietnam for Stanley Kubrick’s film Full Metal Jacket:

It is worth watching just for Barry Norman’s description of yuppies at the beginning of the film.

The following links are to films held by the British Film Institute. Unfortunately, unlike YouTube, the BFI does not appear to have a player that can be embedded in a WordPress site, so the links take you to the BFI website.

Barbican Regained

The film covers the area that would become the Barbican, but also takes a look at the rest of the City:

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-barbican-regained-1963-online

Many of the views of the area that would become the Barbican are in colour, and in one section of the film, when the camera is panning across the Barbican, at 10 minutes 52 seconds, there is a view that is almost identical to that taken by my father around 16 years earlier. See the post on the Cripplegate Institute and Jewin Crescent, and photo at this link to compare, and the comparison shows how little had changed during the whole of the 1950s.

A Day in London

This film from 1920 starts from Victoria Station and then travels across London, visiting the main landmarks that a visitor to the city would have been expected to visit:

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-a-day-in-london-1920-online

The majority of the landmarks are much the same today as they were in 1920. What has changed are the people, cars and buses, and the fact that in 1920 Downing Street was just a normal London street that happened to have the official home of the Prime Minister. A reminder that one of the many factors to have changed London over recent years has been terrorism with Downing Street now looking like a fortified street, London’s bridges having barriers between road and footpaths etc.

Barbican Phoenix

Barbican Phoenix is yet another film on the redevelopment of the area around London Wall and the Barbican:

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-barbican-phoenix-1961-online

What interests me about these films is that they include scenes that are very similar to the photos taken by my father, and at 1 minutes, 36 seconds into Barbican Phoenix there is a view of the Red Cross Street fire station and church of St. Giles Cripplegate that are also featured in my father’s photo in the post at this link.

A small selection of films that show how London has changed over the past 100 years, and how London has continued to evolve to meet challenges and opportunities.

One of many themes from these films is the sheer diversity of activities there were in London, and my concern is that in many ways it is becoming a less diverse city, and risks ending up as a tourist attraction rather than a living and working city.

I think sometimes we focus too much on the physical aspects of the city, preservation of buildings etc. Whilst it is important that we preserve key buildings and significant architecture, that we build more homes etc. my personal view is that the far more important question is what do we want the city to become – probably a question that is impossible to answer.

alondoninheritance.com

A Christmas Book – London after Dark by Fabian of the Yard

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London after Dark by Fabian of the Yard is not really a Christmas book. I have added the Christmas reference to the title of this Christmas Day post for a special reason.

My father had a large collection of books about London, and reading many of these at a young age was probably one of the factors that helped grow my interest in the city.

On the inside page, he frequently wrote the date of purchase, where purchased, and if a present, who gave it to him (often written by the person who gave it). A bit of a tradition that I have carried on to this day, as surprisingly, I am often given London books as Christmas presents.

London after Dark was a present to him, confirmed by the note and date on the front page of Christmas 1954 – Christmas 70 years ago today.

Fabian of the Yard was ex-Detective Superintendent Robert Fabian, whose first book, simply titled “Fabian of the Yard” had been a best seller and was described in newspaper reviews as “the best detective autobiography ever written”. This is the cover of London after Dark:

The author biography on the inside cover reads: “Fabian began as an ordinary constable walking the regulation 2.5 m.p.h. on the beat, and worked his way up through all the grades of the C.I.D.

Few men understand the workings of the criminal better than Bob Fabian; from his earliest days as a probationer detective in Soho he made a point of frequenting the cafes and dives to which hardened old lags tend to return, and from them he learned a strange kind of loyalty which on more than one occasion helped to solve a difficult case.

But the Underworld also knew that when Fabian was roused it faced an enemy whose pursuit would be relentless and whose brain could outwit the most cunning.”

The caption to the following photo reads “I spend much of my time wandering round odd spots in London”:

London after Dark covers the period when Fabian was head of the Vice Squad, and in the book he gives “vivid descriptions of dope, prostitution, blackmail, low night-clubs and all that goes with the murky side of London after Dark“, and that “he eschews sensationalism and deals with them as human problems for which it seems we are all responsible” – I did say it is not really a Christmas book.

“Night closes over London, and under the light of a lamp, two people meet”:

A selection of chapter headings helps provide an idea of the contents:

  • London’s Night Clubs
  • Dope – A Traffic in Damnation
  • Sex and Crime in London
  • The Street Girls of Soho
  • The Master Minds of Crime
  • The Men of Violence
  • London’s Cocktail Girls
  • West End Hotel Undesirables
  • The Blitz Site Murder
  • The Constable Who Noticed Something
  • The Killer Left a Thread

“Drama or romance?”:

The book is a fascinating, very descriptive read of crime in London during Fabian’s police career, up to his retirement in 1949.

There is an interesting chapter on the role of the pub in London night life, and the pubs of Soho (or the “square mile of vice” as Fabian describes the area), were places where anything could happen.

To try and maintain order within the pubs of Soho, Fabian included a list of “thou-shall-nots” as a guide for the Soho publican:

  • Allow betting in the pub. This is very strictly enforced and a publican can very soon lose his licence if he allows any laxity in this rule.
  • Allow billiards on Sunday. The reason for this is not obvious as it cannot be more wicked to play the game on Sunday than any other day of the week. It is probably a survival of a strict Sabbatarian approach to the Lord’s Day, and, like so many similar rules and regulations, awaits the hand of the reformer.
  • Allow the pub to be used as a brothel. This is the most important rule as there was a time within living memory when certain pubs were used for immoral purposes, and quite unfit places to take one’s female relations or friends.
  • Serve liquor to policemen while on duty. Hard luck on a thirsty policeman, maybe, but a very wise precaution.
  • Allow drunkenness, violent, quarrelsome or riotous conduct to take place on his premises. I am not going to pretend that there is no drunkenness in pubs today – there is – but compared with my young days, it is no longer a serious social problem. I well remember the average Saturday night on the beat when the paths were strewn with drunks of both sexes. Fights were a regular feature, and it was quite common to see two women surrounded by a crowd tearing at each other’s hair and screaming. Not a pretty sight, I can assure you.
  • Harbour thieves or reputed thieves, policemen on duty or prostitutes. A pub is a natural meeting-place, and a publican has to be especially careful to ensure that his premises are not used for criminal purposes or soliciting by males or females.

“Outside a London pub, ‘hot dogs’ find ready customers”:

“For those who prefer a restaurant, Soho provides for every taste”:

The book is very much of it’s time. The language used to describe sections of the community in Soho is not what we would use today, and the attitude to what were crimes at the time (such as homosexuality) is appalling.

The book describes a Soho (with some diversions to other parts of London as well as some serious crimes across the country) that was over 75 years ago and for the most part is unrecognisable today.

I am not in favour of cancelling books and authors from when attitudes were so very different. They are important in understanding how attitudes have evolved, how London was at various points in history, and how attitudes, places and communities continually change.

Too often we look back on a sanitised view of the past – a golden era when compared to the present time, and an understanding that the past was just a flawed as today is important.

Someone looking back on London in 75 years time will probably be just as critical.

“For some, life begins after dark”:

“A friendly chart with Roy Birchenough at his club”:

Roy Birchenough, on the left in the above photo, seems to have come to the notice of the police on a number of occasions. The following news’s report from the Sunday Express on the 31st of July, 1932 is a typical example:

“VORTEX STRUCK OFF. CLUB STARTED BY TRAGIC VISCOUNTESS. The Vortex Club, Denman Street, Piccadilly, which was started by Eleanor Viscountess Torrington a fortnight before she was found dead from gas poisoning last December, was struck off the register by Mr. Mead at Marlborough Street yesterday.

The new proprietor, Harry Shine was fined £130, and the secretary, Roy Birchenough was fined £120 for selling drinks without a licence during prohibited hours and on credit.

These disreputable clubs necessitate constables having to visit them and drink which is undesirable but necessary, declared Mr. Mead.”

The fine detailed above did not change Roy Birchenough’s approach to keeping a club, as he was fined a number of times during the 1930s, and in 1939, he received a “sentence of one month’s imprisonment was passed at Bow Street on Roy Birchenough, of Norfolk Place, London, W., for selling liquor at Chumleigh’s bottle party, Regent Street, London. He was fined £60 for keeping the premises for public dancing without a licence.”

“Piccadilly Circus, where the pulsing heat of London is most truly felt”:

The big problem for the Vice Squad in Soho in the 1930s and 1940s was drugs, and London’s black market drugs included heroin, cocaine, morphine, pethidine, with the main problem drugs being opium and marijuana, and during a five year period, prosecutions for marijuana increased by 2,100 per cent.

Charing Cross Road was a particular problem area, and it was where “young gangsters use it to get courage. Girls are betrayed by it. It is the easiest, newest weapon of the West End ponce”.

Fabian describes a raid at the Paramount Dance Hall in Tottenham Court Road, where eight men were arrested – one so drug crazed that he attacked the police.

The Paramount Dance Hall and the Club Eleven were both closed by the police. Another closure was the A to Z Dance Club in Gerard Street after a raid by twenty five police officers.

“The lights of Leicester Square act as a magnate to Londoners and visitors from overseas”;

A read of “London after Dark” by “Fabian of the Yard” provides a whole new perspective for when you walk the streets of Soho. A very different place today, but a place that is in danger of changing from the area described in the book to a very sanitised, corporate space that removes almost everything that has made Soho such a unique area of London.

And with that, can I wish you a very happy Christmas, however (or not) you are celebrating, and if you get any books as presents this Christmas, write the date inside, along with who gave it to you (or better still get the giver to write) – a simple message to the future.

alondoninheritance.com

York Buildings Stairs and the Watergate

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The following photo is from the 1890s book, “The Queen’s London”, and shows the Water Gate between Buckingham Street and the Embankment Gardens:

The caption underneath the photo reads: “In a corner of the public gardens on the Victoria Embankment, at the foot of Buckingham Street, is the ancient Water Gate to York House, a mansion begun by Inigo Jones for the first Duke of Buckingham. It is a beautiful monument of the famous architect’s skill, and can challenge comparison with similar work by any of the Italian masters. The old Water Gate is the earliest ornamental archway in London. It is interesting, moreover, as showing the former level of the Thames. This part of town was a very different place once, when the nobles fancied it for their mansions, or even prior to the making of the Embankment, when it was regularly lapped by the tide.”

The above description, written around 130 years ago applies equally today, and the Water Gate has been a regular feature in books that covered the key features of the city at the time of publication, and the Water Gate made another appearance in the 1920s volumes of “Wonderful London”:

Apart from the architecture, the really fascinating thing about the Water Gate is that it shows how much of the Thames was taken up by the construction of the Embankment, and with a walk up Buckingham Street, it demonstrates the topography of the area, and how we can still see the relatively steep descent from the Strand down to the foreshore of the river.

Rocque’s 1746 map shows the Water Gate and surrounding streets as they were in the middle of the 18th century. They are shown in the following extract, in the middle of the map, where the Water Gate is part of York Buildings Stairs:

The map shows that the Water Gate faced directly onto the Thames foreshore, and whilst the Water Gate was an unusual feature for Thames Stairs, York Buildings Stairs were just another of the Thames Stairs that lined the river, and looking along the river in 1746, we can see other stairs. Salisbury Stairs, Ivy Bridge, Black Lyon Stairs and Hungerford Stairs, all lost with the construction of the Embankment.

The Embankment was built between the mid 1860s and the early 1870s (there are various dates either side of these dates, dependent on exactly what start and completion meant), and around 15 years before the start of construction, John Wykeham Archer created the following water colour of the Water Gate:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

The Thames was much wider before the construction of the Embankment, and the foreshore would have been a much shallower slope down to the centre of the river.

The above image shows grass growing across part of the foreshore, and a sunken boat to the right.

The sunken boat must have been just one of thousands of old wooden boats that were abandoned on the river and gradually decayed, sank, and became part of the river’s story. This has been happening from at least the Roman period, and on the southern side of the river, a Roman boat was discovered when excavating the ground ready for the build of County Hall.

I wrote about the County Hall Roman boat in this post, and it again illustrates how much wider the river once was, on both northern and southern sides of the Thames.

Also in the above image, there is a brick wall along the back of the Water Gate. Whilst this may have been to keep back very high tides on the river, its primary purpose seems to have been to create a terrace along the side of the river, as the street was called Terrace Walk.

In the 1746 map, the stairs are called York Buildings Stairs, and this name tells of the building that the Water Gate was once part of, and that once occupied the streets behind the Water Gate in the 1746 map.

The building was York House, shown in the following print, with the Water Gate shown with steps down to the river:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

The building that would eventually become known as York House was built around 1237 for the Bishops of Norwich, and was then known as Norwich Place. This was the time when Bishops from around the country had a London town house as a London base, to be near the Royal Court, in which to entertain etc. (for another example, see my post on Winchester Palace).

The Bishops of Norwich maintained ownership of the house until Henry VIII gave the house to the Duke of Suffolk in 1536, granting the Bishop a smaller house in Cannon Row, Westminster.

Mary I then took the house and gave it to the Arch Bishop of York, and this is when the house took the name of York House. From then on, the house went through a series of owners who seem to have gained or lost possession of the house at the whim of Royal favour.

The Water Gate dates from George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham’s ownership of the house, when he carried out extensive repairs and had the Water Gate built in around 1626.

The caption to the photo from the Queen’s London at the top of the post, attributes the repairs and the Water Gate to Inigo Jones, however there is doubt about this and the Historic England listing for the Water Gate (Grade I) states that it was “executed by Nicholas Stone but the design also attributed to Sir Balthazar Gerbier”, and that the alterations to York House carried out at the same time were also by Gerbier, rather than Jones.

The Water Gate and stairs down to the river would have provided a private landing place, enabling the occupants of York House to take a boat along the river, or to return home, without having to use the streets, or a public landing place. The Water Gate would also have stood out along the north bank of the river, and would have been a statement, and an impressive place for visitors to arrive.

York House was demolished in the 1670s, with only the Water Gate surviving. The land behind was developed by Nicholas Barbon into the network of streets we see today.

George Villiers, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham imposed a rather unusual condition on the redevelopment, in that the streets that were to be built spelled out his full title, so if we go back to Rocque’s 1746 map, we can see his full title, including the “of” with Of Alley. I have numbered the street in the order in which they appear in his full title:

Only part of the Duke’s title remains today. Duke Street is now John Adam Street, George Street is now York Buildings, and part of Of Alley has been lost under the development of the land between John Adam Street and the Strand with only half remaining now as York Place. All as shown in the following map (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

The Water Gate today:

The Water Gate lost its connection with the River Thames with the construction of the Embankment between the mid 1860s and the early 1870s. This created the roadway, the Victoria Embankment, walkway along the river, with large retaining walls along the river.

Between the Victoria Embankment and the Water Gate are Embankment Gardens, and part of the gardens and Victoria Embankment are built over what is now the Circle and District Line, along with the sewage system designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, which was much needed to avoid sewage being discharged directly into the Thames.

The Water Gate is now a considerable distance from the river, and if the distance measure feature on Google maps is accurate, the Water Gate is now 129 metres from the river – a distance which shows the considerable size of the construction work that formed the gardens and Victoria Embankment.

After the construction of the Victoria Embankment, and the gardens, there was concern about the future of the Water Gate, which by the end of the 1870s was in a very poor state, and in urgent need of restoration.

There were also proposals that the Water Gate should also be moved to sit on the new Embankment wall, facing onto the river. Whilst this would have continued the gate’s original purpose, it would have been completely out of context, and there was no need for such a water gate onto the river as using a waterman to row you along the river was by the late 19th century a redundant mode of travel.

Building News of November 1879 covered the issues with, and proposals for the Water Gate:

“The Metropolitan Board of Works have at last turned their attention to the deplorable condition of York Stairs, or Buckingham Gate, as it is sometimes called, now half buried in the newly made slopes of the Embankment-gardens.

Designed to face with its best aspect the fashionable highway of the day – the river, the building became almost forgotten when that time passed away, until the Embankment again brought the public to its proper front. It is undoubtably a relic worth preserving on account of its artistic merits, independent of the historic interest attached to it.

We wait with interest to learn of the Metropolitan Board of Works with regard to its ‘restoration’. It is hoped that better judgement will be exercised by that practical body than has been in some similar instances.

There can be little question that to allow it to retain its original site must be the best plan. Under some circumstances it might be desirable that such a structure should follow the retreated river margin; but the lines of the modern Embankment, however beautiful in themselves, would be utterly discordant with the old-style water gate. And again, the river is no longer the highway from which the majority of people view our public buildings.

We are glad to see that something is to be done. As we pointed out in a former number, it is quite time the neglected ornament was reinstated to a position of the dignity it deserves.”

One of the proposals for the water gate, to reunite it with the river whilst maintain it in its original position, was to run a pipe from the river, under the Embankment, over the rail tracks of the new cut and cover railway, and to a large pond around the water gate.

This would bring river water to fill the pond, and the construction of the sewer under the new Embankment was expected to ensure that the river water would now be clean. This proposal did not get carried out.

Rather the water gate was restored, and the surroundings of the water gate landscaped, to bring it to a similar state that we see today. The work was carried out by the London County Council (who took over the responsibilities of the Metropolitan Board of Works), and completed in the early 1890s.

A look behind the water gate, and we can start to see the difference in land levels, with steps up to the southern end of Buckingham Street:

In the above photo the railings and steps are all Grade II listed, and are described as “Mid C.18. Cast iron and Portland stone”.

What was Terrace Walk in 1746 is now Watergate Walk, here looking to the west, and steps up to Villiers Street:

And to the east towards York Buildings:

The rear of the Water Gate:

The rear of the Water Gate in 1862, as painted by John Wykeham Archer in 1862, just before the construction of the Victoria Embankment and gardens:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Buckingham Street is one of those London streets where the majority of the buildings that line the street have listed status.

In the photo below, the end of terrace building is a 1679-80 town house, built as part of Barbon’s development of the area. It was somewhat rebuilt later in the 17th, and again in the 18th centuries:

A plaque on the building states that Samuel Pepys lived in a house on the site, which must have been the original Barbon development:

Next to the houses in the photo above, is the house shown in the photo below, Grade I listed, with the listing dating it as “c.1676-77 with early C.19 and later alterations”, and as being again part of Barbon’s development of the land formerly occupied by York House:

This house also has a plaque claiming Samuel Pepys as a resident, and it appears he lived in the house between 1679 and 1688, when he stayed with William Hewer and that the house was partly in use as the Admiralty Office:

Looking up the full length of Buckingham Street, we can see the way the land gradually rises in height, up to the rear of the building at the very far end, which has a frontage onto the Strand:

One of the very few buildings on Buckingham Street which is not listed, is this building on the south east corner of the street:

The building that was originally on the site was once the home of William Smith – the father of English Geology:

The rear of the water gate from the southern end of Buckingham Street, which again shows the height difference between the street and the gate:

Another house from Barbon’s development of the area. Grade II* listed as a terraced town house, and dating from between 1675 and 1676:

As we approach the northern end of Buckingham Street, where John Adam Street crosses, we can better see the height difference with the rear of the building at the far end, which has a frontage on the Strand. Steps run up from John Adam Street, and the remaining section of the now renamed Of Alley is at the top of the stairs:

One of the interesting aspects of walking the streets between the Strand and the Embankment is the wide variety of architectural styles we can find. The result of the redevelopment of small plots of land over the centuries.

On the corner of Buckingham Street and John Adams Street is the following Grade II listed corner house and office, built around 1860 by R. P. Pullan:

Walking back to the Embankment Gardens, and this is the view towards the west. The Water Gate can be seen lurking low down on the right:

The above view shows just how much the area in front of the Water Gate has changed.

For roughly the first 240 years of the water gate’s existence, it was looking out directly onto the River Thames, and was used as a placed where people could catch a boat to travel across or along the river.

For the last 155 years, the Water Gate has lost contact with the river, now 129 metres to the south, and it looks out across a very different view.

The York Buildings Stairs / Water Gate are also another example of how we have significantly reduced the width of the River Thames over the centuries, and how the river now runs in a channel, rather than a river with a gradually descending and wider foreshore.

For more on this area, you may also be interested in my post on the Embankment Gardens Art Exhibition and the Adelphi.

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The Eagle’s Nest and Monmouth

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Long term readers will be aware, that as well as taking photos of London, my father also took photos around the country in the late 1940s / early 1950s during National Service and then cycling with friends and staying in Youth Hostels.

For this week’s post I am visiting two of these locations, the wonderfully named Eagle’s Nest followed by the town of Monmouth.

I have been saving this post until the gloomy days of December, as we approach the shortest day of sunlight of the year, as a reminder of the weather and long days of summer.

The Eagle’s Nest

The following is the first of my father’s photos taken from the Eagle’s Nest, a view point looking over the lower Wye Valley with the River Wye in the foreground and the River Severn in the background:

I visited the Eagle’s Nest a few months ago, on a warm September day, and the following photo is looking at the same view as my father’s photo, 76 years later:

The location of the Eagle’s Nest is in south east Wales, very close to the border with England, so close that the border runs along the middle of the River Wye, so in the above photo, the fields in the centre left are in England, the wooded banks on the right are in Wales.

In the following map I have marked the location of the Eagle’s Nest with a red circle, and ringed the town of Monmouth, which I will come to later in the post, with the dark blue circle:

The River Severn is the large body of water from bottom centre up to top right. The Eagle’s Next overlooks the River Wye, which can just be seen in the above map, threading up from where it meets the Severn, just past Chepstow in the south of the map.

The following extract shows the Eagle’s Nest circled, with the loop of the River Wye:

The Eagle’s Nest is reached by one of two paths through the surrounding woodland. One is a steep ascent via 365 steps, the other is a more gentle route, and together they form a loop via a car park next to the road at the bottom of the wooded sides to the river.

The path up through the woods:

Which is well signposted:

The view is the result of the River Wye cutting through limestone over very many thousands of years, leaving limestone cliffs on either side with the river in a valley or gouge.

The Eagle’s Nest is the name given to the viewpoint which was built in 1828 as part of the walks around the Duke of Beaufort’s nearby Piercefield estate. The name is appropriate as it is easy to imagine eagles nesting in the limestone cliffs and flying out over the Wye, hunting for food. 

It was built on the Monmouthshire bank of the Wye, and at a height of 771 feet, it offers a wonderful view of the bend in the river, to the south and east, and across to the River Severn.

The Eagle’s Nest viewing point, built on the side of the cliff, with railings and a run of seats, as shown in the following photo:

The way a tree at the end of the row of seats has weaved its way around the wall gives some indication of the age of the view point:

This is the second of the two photos taken by my father in 1948, and is looking slightly to the left / east of the first photo, and shows the flat area of land circled by the River Wye. In the background is the River Severn, and to the upper left, the limestone cliffs of the gouge created by the river, can be seen:

The same view in 2024:

In the upper left of the above photo, the limestone cliffs that form the sides to the route of the River Wye can be seen. The following photo shows a closer view of these cliffs:

There seem to be a number of theories as to how the gouge through which the River Wye flows, was formed, but their common factor is the Wye gradually eroding through upper layers (possibily sedimentary layers that covered the area), then down through the limestone below.

It could also have been due to erosion by glacial melt water flowing along the route of the future River Wye.

Whatever the exact geological process that formed the area, it has left behind a very impressive landscape.

The River Severn flows in the background of the 1948 and 2024 photos, and there are a couple of key features today, which were not there in 1948.

At that time, a ferry provided a crossing of the River Severn, however with post-war rising traffic volumes, a ferry would not last for long as a feasible option.

The need for a bridge was being argued from the 1920s, and finally was justified and funded, with construction started in 1961, with the second Bridge opening in 1963.

From the Eagle’s Nest, we can see the original Severn Bridge in the distance:

The Severn Bridge was a considerable success, and traffic using the bridge increased rapidly in the decades after opening, so much so, that it was expected that the bridge would be running at full capacity by the mid 1990s.

The answer was a second bridge, and in 1992 construction started, with the bridge opening in 1996, and named the Prince of Wales Bridge with the Prince also performing the opening ceremony.

The Prince of Wales Bridge can be seen in the following photo:

Both bridges were originally toll bridges, however at the end of 2018, tolls for both bridges were removed, and they are now free to cross.

The Eagle’s Nest has been a viewing point for almost 200 years, and changes to the route of the Wye will take centuries as the river naturally changes over time.

I assume that the land in the middle as the river curves around the inside of the cliffs, is mainly soil / mud and possibly sediment deposited over the centuries as the river occasionally floods.

There is one feature in my father;s photos that I assumed would not have survived in the following 76 years. The following photo is an extract from the photo at the top of the post, and shows a small area of land that has fallen into, or been eroded by the river:

The feature is still there, in what appears to be exactly the same shape:

The level of the mud in 2024 seems higher than in 1948, so perhaps mud is gradually being deposited in the breach, and over the following decades it will disappear and the original line of the river bank restored.

The view from the Eagle’s Nest is stunning, even more so after a walk up through the woods where there is no indication of the view, until you get to a few stairs down through the trees to the viewing platform – it is well worth a visit.

After an uninterrupted 20 minutes looking over the River Wye, we then left for the next destination of:

Monmouth

Monmouth is a wonderful Welsh town, just a couple of miles inside the border and surrounded by a stunning landscape.

The book “Where Wye and Severn Flow” by W.J. Smart (1949) provides the following description of the town and the surrounding countryside:

“It is literally true that five minutes walk from the centre of this ancient town of Monmouth and you are in the corn fields. The same number of minutes will take you over the Wye Bridge to the foot of the Kymin – a wooded hill which rises to seven hundred feet above sea level – or over the Trothy Bridge where you may begin the thousand-feet ascent up the winding road to the Trellech Plateau. If you are here in the springtime, you will find the winding, woodland paths on the Buckholt, fifteen minutes walk from the town, lined with bluebells and foxgloves; in the summertime, you will find boating on the river from Wye Bridge to Symonds Yat; in the autumn you will see the hills on every side aflame with colour.

Monmouth is thus at the bottom of a basin with highlands rising all around it. It is surrounded by three rivers – the Wye, the Trothy and the Monnow. Its natural scenery is unspoilt and probably unchanged since the days when Caractacus repulsed the Romans on the Little Doward, or when William Fitz Osbern, the chief military advisor to William the Conqueror, stablished Monmouth Castle to keep back the Welsh.”

The walks may be slightly longer these days to get to the surrounding countryside as there has been some development since the above was written, however the description of Monmouth at the bottom of a basin, the three rivers and the surrounding countryside is still just as valid.

The major change is probably the dual carriageway of the A40 which today runs between the town and the River Wye.

My father was cycling through Monmouth in the year before the book with the above description was published, and he took a couple of photos of one of the unique structures in Monmouth, the medieval bridge and gate tower at the entrance to the town over the River Monnow:

The following photo if from a slightly different angle, and through the main arch of the gate tower we can see Monnow Street – the main street through the town:

The same view in 2024 – seventy six years later:

In 1948, the bridge was the main route to the south and west of Monmouth, so as shown in my father’s photos, the route through the bridge was open, and there was a sign on the right indicating a 9ft 6 inches headroom, the height at the top of the straight side walls, below the arch at the top of the route through the gate.

A new bridge opened in 2004, a short distance to the east, and from then onwards, the Monnow Bridge has been closed closed to traffic.

The bridge and gate tower are Grade I listed. The bridge is believed to have been built in 1272, to replace a wooden bridge from the 1170s.

The bridge and gate house are not exactly as they were first built. The gate tower was modified in both the 18th and 19th centuries, starting in 1705 when it was converted to a two storey home, with included the removal of a battlemented parapet.

Monmouth did originally have stone defensive walls surrounding the town. The gatehouse was not part of this walls, but provided a stand alone structure to defend against anyone trying to cross the bridge into the town, and also as a toll house, generating revenue from those crossing the River Monnow to the town.

The width of the bridge was originally limited to just the road surface that we see today, but was widened in the early 19th century, to the width we see today. The passageway on the north side of the bridge was cut through the gate tower in 1819, with the southern passageway added in 1845.

The following print shows the road and bridge before these changes, with the central arch being the only access through the gate tower:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

The gate tower has been used for a range of purposes over the centuries, a gaol, toll house, guard room and for a short time as a residence.

The gate tower was often used for defensive purposes as Monmouth occupies a key geographical location, on the Welsh / English borders, as well as at crossing points over the Rivers Wye and Monnow.

The town saw frequent skirmishes during the various campaigns between the Barons and King Edward II in the 14th century. The town changed hands a couple of times during the English Civil War, and the last time that the gate tower was occupied by troops ready for the defence of Monmouth was during the Chartist risings in 1839.

Side view of the bridge and gate tower with the River Monnow flowing underneath:

A blue plaque for the Monnow Bridge which confirms that it is the only surviving medieval bridge and gate tower in Britain:

Monnow Bridge was the only means of access from the roads to the south of Monmouth, into the town, and from the bridge Monnow Street, which is effectively the high street, leads up through the town:

Looking at the map of listed buildings on the Cadw website shows that the majority of the buildings along Monnow Street are listed.

In the above photo, the Robin Hood Inn is on the corner, and is Grade II* listed. It is believed to be 16th century is origin, with the main internal features being 17th century.

The upstairs rooms of the building were used as a meeting place for Catholics before the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829 removed the majority of the restrictions on the Roman Catholic faith.

The building in the photo below is the distinctive Cornwall House, one of the few buildings in Monnow Street that is set back from the street. The house is a 1752 rebuild of a 17th century house on the site, which had earlier been an inn:

Monmouth is the type of town where shops such as White Stuff and Café Nero occupy Grade II listed, 18th century buildings. The plaque on the upper floor at the centre of the building has the initials THE and the date of 1724:

The Shire Hall:

Monmouth was the county town for Monmouthshire until boundary and county changes in 1974. The Shire Hall was important in Monmouth’s role as a county town, with the County Court occupying the building from 1821.

The original Shire Hall was built in 1724, but has been much remodelled to accommodate the various functions which have occupied the building.

On the front of the Shire Hall is a statue of Henry V, who was born in Monmouth, according to the statue in 1387, however a different date in 1386 is frequently given for the date of his birth in Monmouth Castle. The statue is part of the overall Grade I listing of the Shire Hall and was added in 1792, being the work of Charles Peart:

Directly in front of the Shire Hall is a Grade II* listed statue of Charles Rolls (part founder of Rolls-Royce) who, although born in London, had strong connections to Monmouth, as he was the son of Lord Llangattock of “The Hendre”, a large Victorian county house close to Monmouth.

The statue was unveiled in 1911 following Rolls death in a flying accident at Bournemouth in 1910. The statue has Rolls looking at a model of the bi-plane he was flying at the time of his death:

Henry V was born in Monmouth Castle, however today there is not that much left of the structure. The following photo is looking at what remains of the Great Tower of the castle:

On the approach to the castle is the Grade I listed Great Castle House:

The original house, dating from 1673 is at the centre. The side wings were added in 1863.

The house was built by the Duke of Beaufort , and has been used as a residence by the Beaufort’s, an Assize Court prior to the construction of the Shire Hall, and as a girls school.

In 1852 Great Castle House became the headquarters of the Monmouthshire Militia, and has continued in having a military role as the building is now home to the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers, and their Regimental Museum occupies the block to the left, which is why there is an assembly of military equipment in front of the building, with the cannon seen to the right being captured at Sevastopol in 1855.

At the top of Monnow Street, Church Street runs off to the side. A narrow pedestrian, shop lined street, which leads as the name suggests, to the church. Every single building in the street is listed:

Not what you would perhaps expect to see in such a street, but along the street we find the Savoy Theatre, described in the Grade II* listing as a “rare and little altered example of a small cinema (600 seats) from the inter-War period in Wales, and as part of the continuous run of historic buildings in Church Street”. The cinema occupies a 19th century rebuild of a house dating from around 1700:

A final look down along Monnow Street, with the wooded hills in the distance, across the bridge and the River Monnow:

The viewing point at the Eagle’s Nest and the town of Monmouth are both wonderful places to explore, and both look glorious on a summer’s day, the type of day which seems a long way off whilst I am writing this post during days of cold, grey December weather.

You may also be interested in the following posts covering the area around the Wye Valley and Chepstow:

Chepstow And The River Wye

Tintern Abbey – Summer 1947 and 2019

National Service, Chepstow, 1947

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Thomas Linacre, Faraday, Gregory de Rokesley, Thanet House and John Wesley

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After a long series of posts exploring the Royal Docks and the area around north Woolwich, I am now back in the City of London, continuing my series of posts on the plaques that can be found across the city streets, and some of the history that they tell, starting with:

Thomas Linacre – Physician

The plaque for Thomas Linacre is in Knightrider Street, a section of which runs along the back of the Faraday Building in Queen Victoria Street. It is a strange street, as although there are no barriers, and it appears to be an ordinary public street, it is a private road, and there are orange signs on the walls at the entries to the street that advise it is a private road, and that unauthorised parking will be clamped.

I assume it is a private road due to the Faraday Building, and that there were once Post Office buildings on both sides of the street.

In the following photo, the Faraday Building is on the left, and you can see the plaque just by the start of the ramp up to one of the entrances to the building:

The plaque tells that the Physician, Thomas Linacre lived in a house of the site:

The years on the plaque cover the period from his birth until his death rather than the time he lived at the house on this site. I cannot find any firm reference to when he did live in Knightrider Street, and it is one of the interesting things about plaques in general. The plaque does not tell us how important the site was to Linacre. A short visit or a long life in Knightrider Street.

Linacre is believed to have been born in Canterbury in 1460 (as usual, there is a very small amount of doubt due to the distance of time, and the availability of written records from the time), but he did go to Christchurch, Canterbury, and followed this with university at Oxford, where in 1484 he was elected a fellow of All Souls’ college.

He travelled widely in Italy, Rome, Florence and Padua, where he obtained his Doctor of Medicine, which was confirmed when he returned to England, where he continued his stay in Oxford.

In 1501 he was appointed to the office of preceptor and physician to Prince Arthur, the eldest son of King Henry VII, and the next in line to the throne.

In 1501, at the age of 15, Prince Arthur married Catherine of Aragon, and soon after their marriage, the couple moved to Ludlow Castle. Not long after their arrival they both became ill with the “sweating sickness”. Catherine recovered, but Arthur died on the 2nd of April, 1502.

Henry VII’s second son, also a Henry, would then become next in line for the throne, and he would marry his elder brother’s widow. In 1509, Arthur’s younger brother would become Henry VIII – how history would have change if a 15 year old boy had not become ill and died.

How much responsibility Thomas Linacre had for the health of Prince Arthur is not clear, however his death does not seem to have done any damage to Linacre’s career, although after the death, Linacre does seem to have devoted his time to study and furthering his skills within his profession as a physician – perhaps he was keeping a low profile.

As well as medicine, Linacre also started on a course of study in theology, and was ordained as a priest, collecting a number of parishes across the country, far too widely distributed that he was able to serve as a local priest, and this was probably either for an income, or for a pension as he often resigned from the parish a short time after taking on the role.

In the early 16th century, the role of a physician and the practice of medicine was incredibly basic by today’s standards. During his time in Italy, Linacre had seen a more structed environment for the distribution of knowledge, and this led him to the founding of the Royal College of Physicians of London.

He had received royal approval for the new college through the granting of letters patent, however there was no money associated with royal support, and the costs of the college had to be covered by Linacre, and other associated with the college.

One way in which Linacre supported the new college was through the use of his home in Knightrider Street, where meetings of the college were held. Linacre gave his home to the college before his death, and the house was used as the meeting place for the Royal College of Surgeons all the way to 1860, when the site was taken over to become Her Majesty’s Court of Probate.

Again, it is strange what is not mentioned on these plaques, and for Thomas Linacre, there is no mention of his role in the founding of the Royal College of Physicians, or that the College held meetings at the house on the site for many years.

Thomas Linacre died in 1524, and was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Thomas Linacre “from a very curious old drawing”:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Her Majesty’s Court of Probate was a short term replacement for Thomas Linacre’s old house, and the meeting place of the Royal College of Physicians, as this area was soon to be taken over by the new London Telephone Service, then the Post Office and now British Telecom.

Knightrider Street is an interesting street that has changed over the centuries. Taking over other streets, lengthening, then being chopped and shortened. I wrote a post a few years ago which included some of the history of Knightrider Street, which can be found here.

At the western end of Knightrider Street, Addle Hill runs north, and along this we find:

Faraday Building North – The home of multiple London telephone exchanges

The building on the right of the above photo is relatively new, however look along the ground floor of the building, and half way along, there is a strange architectural addition, the surround to an entrance to an earlier building on the site:

The VR in the rectangular panel above the entrance shows that this is a survivor from the reign of Queen Victoria, and the plaque to the left explains the origins of the feature:

That this was the former site of the north block of Faraday Building.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the rapid expansion of telephone services across London. These started out as a local service, then expanded national, and finally during the 20th century, international services.

Telephone services became an essential business tool for the financial, insurance and trading businesses that occupied the City.

Early technology for telephone services, which continued through most of the 20th century, required lots of space. All the cables that ran across the City to individual telephones needed to be terminated, the equipment that connected telephone to telephone needed space, which grew rapidly with the introduction of mechanical automated telephone switching equipment. Space was needed for the teams of operators who manually connected calls.

We can follow the expansion of the site through a couple of OS maps, and in the first from the 1890s, I have marked the buildings that at the time were labelled as the Controller’s Offices for London Telephone Services of the General Post Office. The site surrounded by the red lines is that of the building in Addle Street. In yellow is the building that was in the site of the current Faraday Building (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

By the 1950s, the current Faraday Building along Victoria Street had been built, and the building on Addle Street had extended east, occupying the site of all the small buildings to the right of the red lined building in the above map, and had now become Faraday Building North, and confirmed by the blue plaque. and as shown in the following map:

As indicated by the plaque, the building was home to multiple different exchange systems supporting local traffic all the way to international traffic, as the Faraday Buildings were the hub of international cables, and the operator services that went with them.

Key telephone circuits were also routed via Faraday, including the hotline between Washington and Moscow. Space requirements continued to increase and more modern buildings were required to house new technology and during the early 1980s, Baynard House was built to the south of Queen Victoria Street.

As the technology serving telephone services continued to evolve, automated switching become standard, removing the need for space for operators. Electromechanical switching was replaced by computer controlled switching, again removing the need for large amounts of space.

These changes meant that space requirements for telephone services reduced considerably, and telephone services consolidated to the main Faraday Building and Baynard House on Queen Victoria Street, and in 1982, the old building on Addle Hill was vacated, however the surrounds to the entrance to the building were retained, and now add some interest to the building on the site today, that, along with the plaque, inform that this area was once a central hub of telephone services that connected the City of London to the country, and the rest of the world.

A few years ago, I wrote a post on the Faraday Building in Queen Victoria Street, and the comments to the post are brilliant, as there are many from those who worked across the Faraday Building complex. The post can be found here.

Gregory de Rokesley – Eight Times Mayor of London

The next plaque can be found in Lombard Street, towards the junction with King William Street. In the following photo, there are three people to the right of the grey van. look between the front two, and a blue plaque can just be seen:

The plaque informs that Gregory de Rokesley, who was eight times Mayor of London lived in a house on the site:

Gregory de Rokesley, or Gregory of Ruxley, took his name from Ruxley in north Kent; to the south east, and now almost a suburb of Sidcup.

As with so many others who were part of the governance of the City of London, Rokesley was a highly successful merchant, trading in a wide variety of goods, including wine, corn and wool. He also supplied the Royal Court with goods, and to indicate the wealth that he had accumulated, in 1290 he lent the King a sum of £1,000. A huge sum in the 13th century.

His first steps into the management of the City were as a sheriff between 1263 and 1264. This was followed by becoming an Alderman of Dowgate ward, and then between 1274 and 1281, he held the position of Mayor of London.

During his first period as Mayor, he did undertake actions to improve the governance of the city, improve the hygiene of the city by employing what were described as a corps of scavengers to remove waste from the city streets, however his efforts in maintaining law and order in the city were not that effective, with rising crime rates, and he consequently lost the position of Mayor in 1281.

His successor, Henry le Waleys, proved equally unpopular, and in 1284 Rokesley was again elected as Mayor, although this time he only last until the following year.

His downfall again was law and order, and in 1285, King Edward I set up a commission to examine lawlessness across the city.

Edward I also allowed the Canons of St. Paul’s Cathedral to enclose the site of the old folkmoot, just to the north east of the cathedral due to the trouble caused by those who used the site (the Folkmoot was one of the Anglo Saxon methods of governance and was a meeting place of the free population of London in order to make decisions on important issues of the time. It was held three times a year at Midsummer, Michaelmas and Christmas.

By the end of the 13th century, the Folkmoot as a method of governance was becoming redundant, and the space appears to have been used by those described as “evil-doers”, hence the justification for the closure, however enclosure of the space, as well as setting up a commission to look at lawlessness in the city was seen by the inhabitants as an attack on the city’s special liberties, and Rokesley was blamed for not defending these liberties from the King’s attentions, so, for the second and final time, he lost the position of Mayor.

Rokesley was a bit of a contradiction, because as well as being a successful City trader, having many roles in the governance of the City, including Mayor, he was also a Royalist and was given many important roles by the King, which also probably contributed to his wealth.

He died in 1291, and his will included a considerable amount of property scattered across and around London, as well as his large mansion house in Lombard Street – the site referred to by the plaque.

Thanet House – Aldersgate Street

Close to where Aldersgate Street meets the roundabout circling the old Museum of London site, there is a bus stop, with a plaque on the adjacent wall which tells anyone waiting for a bus that here was the site of Thanet House:

Which could have been found here between 1644 and 1882:

Hard to believe if you walk along Aldersgate Street today, that in the book Londinopolis (1657), the author James Howell describes Aldersgate Street as having “spacious and uniform buildings which made Aldersgate Street resemble a street in an Italian town”.

One of those buildings was Thanet House, built by Inigo Jones in 1644, which is shown in the following print, published around 40 years after the house was completed:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Thanet House was the building’s original name, and it would later be called Shaftesbury House. Old and New London has the following to say about the building:

“Shaftesbury or Thanet House, one of Inigo Jones fine old mansions, formerly the London residence of the Tuftons, Earls of Thanet. From them it passed into the family of the clever and dangerous political intriguer, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury”.

Thanet House is shown in William Morgan’s 1682 map of London (the centre of the following extract), where the house also has gardens stretching back towards the location of the wall around London:

Thanet House, or Shaftesbury House came back into the ownership of the Thanet family in the early 18th century, however rather than being a London residence for the family, it was used as an Inn, a Lying-in-Hospital, shops, and, as the following 1851 print shows by the sign above the central door, there was also warehouse space to rent:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

By the middle of the 19th century, Aldersgate Street was a busy commercial street, with the Post Office buildings at the southern end of the street adding to the importance of the area.

The end of Thanet House came in 1882 when it was demolished, and by the 1890s editions of the Ordinance Survey map, the site was being shown as having been subdivided into a number of smaller buildings facing onto Aldersgate Street.

A photograph of the building in 1879, a couple of years before demolition, can be found on the Royal Academy of Arts website, at this link.

A short distance along from the plaque to Thanet House, there is another plaque to be found:

John Wesley – The Probable Site

Which can be seen on the wall to the left:

The plaque on the wall:

John Wesley was the key founder of the religious movement known as Methodism.

He was born in 1703 into a religious family, and religious learning was a key part of his early education, which continued at Charterhouse School in London, and then at Christ Church, Oxford.

The event in Wesley’s life that happened at Aldersgate Street was after his return from a couple of years in Savannah, Georgia, in the US, where he had been invited to act as the local minister attending to both the spiritual needs of the colonists as well as trying to convert the indigenous American population.

He was largely unsuccessful with attempts at conversion, and sailed back to England both disillusioned and depressed by his experience, and doubting his inner spiritual strength.

On the 24th of May, 1738 Wesley attended a Moravian meeting in Aldersgate Street (the Moravians were one of the oldest Protestant streams of Christianity, dating back to the 15th century), and it was at this meeting that, as described on the plaque, he “Felt his heart strangely warmed”, as he described in his diary entry for the day:

“In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s ‘Preface to the Epistle to the Romans’.  About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

His later diary entries do though throw some doubt on how influential the meeting in Aldersgate Street was to his restoration of faith and spiritual strength, however he started to preach widely across the country, and his lasting legacy was to be the Methodist Church after his death in 1791.

“The Beauties of Methodism. Selected from the works of the Reverend John Wesley”:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

There is though some doubt as to exactly where in Aldersgate Street the Moravian meeting that Wesley attended was being held. The plaque does state that it is at the “Probable Site”.

The plaque is also now part of the history of the area, as it was placed on an earlier building in Aldersgate Street in August 1926:

So the plaque itself has survived the destruction of much of the area during the last war, and the demolition of buildings across the area ready for the build of the Barbican estate, and is therefore one of the very few survivors from before the last 70 years of Aldersgate Street reconstruction.

Five more of the plaques that tell the long and diverse history of the City of London.

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Crossing the Thames at Woolwich

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Woolwich has the distinction of having two unique ways of the crossing the River Thames. There is one of two, dedicated foot tunnels under the river (the other is at Greenwich), and it is the only place on the river where there is a combined vehicle and foot passenger ferry across the river, which has the added bonus of being free.

I have not used either of these crossings for around 20 years, so when I was walking around the Royal Docks for my previous posts, it seemed the idea opportunity to use the tunnel and ferry again, and I could also use London’s latest bit of transport infrastructure, the Elizabeth Line which runs to Woolwich, to get there.

The river is a short walk from the Elizabeth Line station, and a short distance away, there is a sign offering the two choices to cross the river:

The location of the entrance to the foot tunnel is not immediately clear. There is a small street (Glass Yard) heading off Woolwich High Street, where the above sign is located, you need to walk to the end of this street, turn right, and the tunnel entrance is hidden behind the Waterfront Leisure Centre:

The entrance on the north bank of the river is far more obvious as it stands alone, as can be seen in the following photo from across the river:

Although the entrance to the foot tunnel is hidden behind the leisure centre, it is the crossing point of a number of walking and cycling routes as illustrated by the rather comprehensive sign outside the entrance:

The Thames Path – where to the east it is 8.75 miles to Crayford Ness. The Capital Ring, where it is 35 miles to Richmond Bridge, The Thames Cycle Path with Greenwich to the west (6 miles) and Erith to the east (6.5 miles),

The bottom left sign informs that North Woolwich Station is a quarter of a mile away via the foot tunnel, which is rather out of date as North Woolwich Station closed in 2006.

The brick entrances to the Woolwich foot tunnel are Grade 2 listed, and the Historic England listing describes these structures in a far better way than I can:

“II Rotunda. 1910-12, by Sir Maurice Fitzmaurice. Red brick with blue brick plinth; roof mostly of lead. One storey. Canopied entrance with decorative bargeboards and foliate capitals to cast-iron columns. Segmental arches over paired fifteen-pane sash windows with wrought-iron grilles set in square recessed panels; stone cornice beneath panelled stone-coped parapet. Conical roof with circular lantern.”

Despite the fact of the Grade II listing, the unique status as being one of only two foot tunnels under the Thames in London, and that the tunnel is still in use, the Leisure Centre has been built up against the structure, as closely as it possibly could be, as illustrated by the following photo:

The Woolwich Foot Tunnel opened in 1912, when Woolwich already had a free ferry across the river, so you may well ask, if there was a ferry, why go to all the expense of building a tunnel under the river?

The local newspapers covered the opening of the tunnel, and the first paragraph in their accounts provides the justification for the tunnel:

“In spite of the County Council’s efforts to provide a frequent and regular service between North and South Woolwich, two causes have mitigated against the continuous working of the ferry – fog, and, in exceptionally severe winters, ice. The stoppages, especially those from fog, usually occurred during the early morning when workpeople had to cross the river to their labours, and serious hardship was thus inflicted on a large number of people. With these facts before it, the County Council recognised that the service would have to be supplemented, and in November 1908, they submitted to Parliament a scheme for the construction of a tunnel for foot passengers between the north and south districts.

It was pointed out that if such a tunnel were constructed it would no longer be necessary to provide a continuous service of ferry boats. The necessary sanction having been obtained tenders were invited and that of Messrs. Walter Scott and Middleton Ltd., amounting to £78,860 was accepted.”

My last few posts on the Royal Docks has hopefully highlighted the size of these docks, and therefore the amount of people needed to work across them. Add to that, the industry that occupied the land between the docks and the river, all contributed to a significant demand for workers, many of whom would have lived on the south of the river in Woolwich, and for whom, the ferry would have been essential to their employment on the north of the river.

The following postcard was issued to mark the opening of the tunnel on the 26th of October, 1912 by Lord Cheylesmore, who was Chairman of the London County Council:

The photo for postcard was by a Woolwich photographer, although I cannot be sure whether the photo is off the Woolwich or the North Woolwich tunnel entrance. The opening ceremony was held at the southern entrance, however I cannot place the features seen around the entrance in maps of the area around the time of the tunnel opening.

When the tunnel was opened, the entrance was in Nile Street, a short, wide street that led to the South Pontoon, from where the Woolwich Ferry could also be taken, so unlike today, the foot tunnel entrance was collocated with the ferry approach, so if the ferry was not running, the passengers could simply divert down the tunnel.

Today, the tunnel entrance is separate to the tunnel approach.

Early photos and postcards often had crowds looking at the photographer, possibly the novelty of seeing a photographer. In the above photo there is a baby or young child in white, in the centre of the crowd. It would be fascinating to know the stories of these young Woolwich residents:

Walking into the entrance to the tunnel, and there is a large No Cycling sign above a spiral stairway that leads down to the tunnel:

The view along the tunnel from the base of the southern entrance:

Lift at the base of the southern entrance:

The newspaper article covering the opening of the tunnel provides some background to its design and construction:

“The new tunnel, which was begun in May, 1910, was designed by, and carried out under the supervision of the Chief Engineer of the London County Council, Sir Maurice Fitzmaurice. It closely resembles the Greenwich Tunnel, which was opened in 1902. It consists of a cast iron tube, of 12ft. 6in. outside diameter, connecting two vertical shafts of 25ft. inside diameter, and about 60 ft. deep.

The length between the shafts is 1,635 ft., or nearly one third of a mile. The thickness of the river bed between the top of the tunnel and the river is about 10 ft. at the deepest place. Electric lifts have been provided to accommodate forty passengers each. A fair day’s progress in tunnelling was 8ft. 6in. The ground passed through was almost entirely chalk, with numerous fissures, which were in free communication with the river. The cost has been about £85,000.”

The Greenwich foot tunnel referred to above was opened in 1902, and both tunnels used a very similar construction technique. I wrote a detailed post about the construction of the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, here.

Sir Maurice Fitzmaurice, who designed and supervised the construction of the Woolwich foot tunnel was also responsible for the Rotherhithe tunnel, where construction started in 1904 and the tunnel opened in 1908.

As you walk through the tunnel, it is good to know that there is 10 feet between the top of the tunnel and the bed of the River Thames:

There are plenty of very obvious signs that state there is to be no cycling through the tunnel. During my walk through there were two cyclists. One was wearing a high-vis jacket, obviously going either to or from work, and was cycling very slowly – which was fine given how empty the tunnel was of walkers (only me and one other), however half way along I heard a whooshing sound behind me, and one cyclist, on a racing bike, wearing a helmet, sped past, looking like he was doing a time trial through the tunnel. In the time between passing me, and me lifting my camera, he was the distance from me as shown in the following photo:

The problem of cycling through the tunnel has been around since the tunnel opened. In June 1913 the Woolwich Gazette and Plumstead News reported the following:

“FOOT TUNNEL CYCLING – Hebert F. Clarke of 1. Chertsey Road, Leytonstone was summoned for riding a bicycle through Woolwich Foot Tunnel. George Hunter of 28 The Parade, Grove Green Road, Leytonstone, was also summoned. Each fined 2s.”

It is remarkable how many tunnels under the Thames opened in a very short period of time, and much was made of the cost of the Woolwich tunnel compared with the others:

  • 1897 – The Blackwall Tunnel. Cost £1,300,000
  • 1902 – Greenwich Foot Tunnel. Cost £180,000
  • 1908 – The Rotherhithe Tunnel. Cost £1,000,000
  • 1912 – The Woolwich Foot Tunnel. Cost £87,000

Infrastructure getting cheaper is something we can only dream of today.

Approaching the southern end of the tunnel:

The decision to build a foot tunnel at Woolwich, highlights the challenges of planning for the future.

At the opening ceremony, it was stated that the need for a subway had been emphaised by recent fogs, which had interfered with the working of the ferry.

Lord Cheylesmore stated during his speech at the opening ceremony that (referencing the decision to open the ferry. twenty-one years earlier) “If future requirements had then been realised it was possible that a vehicular tunnel would have been constructed in the first place.”

It is always a problem when constructing any large transport / infrastructure project, to know whether an alternative design would better serve future requirements. The problem is that waiting for those future requirements to become clear, results in nothing being built. Building now risks it being outdated in the future.

The opening ceremony was held in Nile Street, the access road to the ferry, with the tunnel entrance alongside. Nile Street is now under the Waterfront Leisure Centre, and the ferry pier has moved slightly to the west.

At the southern end of the tunnel, the lift was not working, so it was up the stairs for the 60 ft. of the access shaft:

Back up to the surface on the north of the river, and here the access building is identical to that on the south of the river, although here it is in open space, with no surrounding buildings:

Outside there are direction signs for the Capital Ring and on a separate post, direction signs for local buses and a DLR station. Fortunately no sign for North Woolwich Station on this side of the river:

One of the new Superloop branded buses stops outside the tunnel entrance:

New building close to the entrance to the tunnel which is alongside the approach road to the Woolwich Ferry:

The new tunnel had an impact on one of the oldest professions on the river. In the year after the tunnel was opened, the London County Council paid out £15 to each of the sixteen remaining Woolwich ferrymen, who once rowed people across the river.

One of the ferrymen was a 60 years old who had been on the river “since he was six weeks old”, and knew “every mudbank and creek from Kingston to Dover and Yarmouth”, and as well as a ferryman had worked on lighters, as well as being a sailor.

He complained that “I’ve worked hard and straight, I’ve helped the police and I’ve helped my passengers. I have saved lives and property. I have been proud to be a freeman of the river, and now, when I am old, they go and dig a hole below it and rob me of my trade. It isn’t fair.”

Following the opening of the tunnel, there were ongoing challenges with the costs of running and maintaining both the ferry and the tunnel, with some attempts to reduce the hours that the lifts down to the tunnel operated (which were soon restored), and the number of ferry crossings, which were reduced slightly, however the ever increasing volumes of motor traffic meant that any reduction in ferry crossings was short lived.

The northern tunnel entrance:

From close to the tunnel entrance, we can see the current terminal of the Woolwich Free Ferry:

The northern tunnel access which is in a very different environment from the hidden and enclosed location of the southern. Hopefully with all the new building planned for this part of North Woolwich, it will stay in the open:

The opening ceremony for the tunnel was held in Woolwich on the southern side of the river. After the speeches and formal parts of the ceremony, Lord Cheylesmore along with the other dignitaries who had attended the ceremony descended down to the tunnel and walked to North Woolwich.

After emerging from the tunnel entrance shown in the above photo, they took the Woolwich Free Ferry back to Woolwich, and that it what I will now do.

Walking to the pier that leads to the ferry – the access road bends to the left at the end of the end of the orange cones:

As you walk onto the road leading up to where the ferry boards, we can see the old walkway that was to the immediate west of the approach to the ferry. In the following photo, there is a large anchor in the gap between the bushes:

Looking along the approach to where the ferry boards:

As you walk up to the ferry, there are some brilliant views along the river. In the following photo, the Thames Barrier stretches across the river, and on the right is where the ships carrying sugar cane dock for unloading into the Tate & Lyle factory:

Where vehicles and foot passengers board the ferry:

The Woolwich Ferry is currently a two ferry service, with a departure every 15 minutes from five in the morning until nine in the evening. Whilst waiting for the ferry to arrive, you can watch the two ferries perform their synchronised crossing of the Thames:

Facilities are basic, but then with a 15 minute service there is no need for anything more sophisticated. The footpath on the western side of the approach road takes you up to the boarding point, where a bus shelter provides some limited protection from the elements:

The earliest references to a ferry at Woolwich date back to 1308, when it was included in the sale of a house by a waterman named William de Wicton.

The ferry in the 14th century, and the following centuries would have been similar to services provided by watermen along the length of the Thames, where for a fee they would row you across the river.

These services were generally provided from a defined point, usually a set of Thames Stairs or a named place where a street reached the river. This was the case for the ferry at Woolwich, where it ran from Warren Lane at Woolwich (circled red in following 1746 map extract):

To and from the end of the lane in the following map. This point was covered by two separate pages in my copy of Rocque’s map so I have had to show two different map extracts. Where the tip of the red arrow is located was where the lane met the Thames:

The ferry service run by a waterman must have been a very ad-hoc serviuce and he probably spent more of his time rowing people up and down the river. During the 18th century there was very little where North Woolwich is now located. It was all fields, marsh and streams as the above extract demonstrates.

The early years of the 19th century saw the start of more formal ferry services, with the military setting up a ferry for their own use, from Woolwich Arsenal in 1810, and in 1811 a ferry was established by an Act of Parliament, and was run by a company that was called “The Woolwich Ferry Company”, however this service only lasted until 1844.

The demand for a regular, high volume service would come with the development of the area to the north of the river with the Royal Docks and associated industry in the 19th century.

On the 16th of October, 1880, the Kentish Independent reported that “A meeting is advertised for Monday next at the Town Hall to consider the proposed establishment of better communications between South and North Woolwich, embraced in the scheme of the Thames Screw Ferry Company. From the company’s prospectus we learn that they contemplate building two large twin screw boats, with turn-tables on deck and other conveniences for transporting horses and vehicles, together with a saloon for passengers, and that they propose to have landing stages at various positions below London Bridge. As we are chiefly interested in the Woolwich section of the river, where facilities of communication are perhaps more needed than anywhere else, we hope that the promoters will give us their earliest attention. At a moderate calculation it is computed that some 200 carriages will cross the river daily, and with a charge of 6d to 2s according to the number of horses, it is estimated that the speculation will be a profitable one.”

On the same page as the above report, there was a fascinating article on the impact of the electric lights at the Royal Albert Dock, which had only just opened, and was the first London dock to be lit by electric lighting.

Consider that the following was written when London must have been very dark at night, very limited electric lighting, some gas lighting, and not much else after dark:

“THE ALBERT DOCKS – The appearance of the electric lights at the new docks, seen from any eminence where a full view of the whole sweep can be obtained, is on a clear night very striking and beautiful, especially if a position is chosen from which any of the brilliant sparks are seen reflected in the river. In another sense beyond pleasure to the eye, they are beacons of satisfaction to the people of Woolwich, for they typify better days in store, increase in trade, and reduction of local burdens.”

It must have been quite something to stand in Woolwich and look across the river to see the light from the new electric lights along the new dock, and the article also highlights the positive impact that the docks were hoped to have on Woolwich – and for which a ferry was really important, so the residents of Woolwich could benefit from the opportunities opening up on the north of the river.

One of the two Woolwich ferries arriving at the northern pier:

The two new ferries entered service in early 2019, after being delivered from where they were built in Poland.

The ferry in the above photo is named the Ben Wollacott, after the 19 year old deck hand who died in the river in 2011, after being pulled from the ferry while mooring ropes were being untied.

Serco, the company then in charge, was found guilty of failing to ensure the health and safety of its crew, and fined, with costs, a sum of £220,000.

The second of the two new ferries was named the Dame Vera Lynn.

The above photo shows a packed ferry, with a mix of lorries, vans and cars making the free crossing across the river.

And whilst I was waiting for the ferry to arrive, there was a queue of vehicles building to cross from north to south:

There is no ceremony for foot passengers boarding the ferry, the barrier across the walkway lifts and you walk onboard, whilst vehicles are still leaving the ferry:

Which provides a perfect opportunity to see the deck of the ferry before any vehicles have boarded:

The ferries before the current pair had a passenger area below the vehicle deck. With the two new ferries, there is a passenger area at deck level, on one side of the ship, where a corridor is lined with blue plastic seating:

The meeting in Woolwich Town Hall in October 1880 was strongly in support of a new ferry, with the “rapid growth of townships on the north of the river” being a key driver of the need for Woolwich residents to be able to cross the river via regular and reliable services.

In the October 1880 meeting, we also see the demands that the ferry should be free. Many of the bridges over the Thames in west London had recently had the fee dropped for a crossing, so west London bridges were now free to cross, and the Woolwich argument was that the three million people east of London Bridge were paying their rates, which went towards the Metropolitan Board of Works ability to drop the charges for west London bridges, east Londoners should have the same facilities.

Plans then moved quickly, and in 1884, the Metropolitan Board of Works agreed to deliver a free ferry across the river, and in 1887, the construction company Mowlem (who were also responsible for much construction work across the whole of the London docks right up to their closure), was awarded a contract to build the approach to the ferry, pontoons and boarding infrastructure.

The Woolwich Free Ferry opened on the 23rd of March, 1889, and such was the importance of the event that reports of the opening also mentioned that it was made “the occasion of a public holiday in the neighbourhood of Woolwich”.

The service was opened by Lord Rosebery, the chairman of the London County Council, who had just taken over the responsibilities of the Metropolitan Board of Works (and after whom Rosebery Avenue was named).

Two steam ferries had been built for the opening of the service, the Gordon and the Duncan, and they were reported as being “capable of carrying a thousand people and at least a dozen vehicles upon the upper deck”.

The ability to take a thousand people and only twelve vehicles highlights the original need for the ferries, being able to transport large numbers of residents from Woolwich and surrounding areas, to the new employment opportunities that were opening up across the Royal Docks, and the industry along the river.

Local business soon took advantage of the new free ferry in their advertising, with, for example T. Gordon, a maker of hand-sewn boots in 9 Hare Street, Woolwich, heading his adverts with the opening of the Woolwich Free Ferry, and that residents of South and North Woolwich, Silvertown, Canning Town, Plumstead, Charlton and the Surrounding Vicinity could all now “Come and judge for yourselves”, the quality of his boots.

The new service was not without its problems. The ferries were built of pitch-pine “a wood chosen for its self preservative qualities, but unfortunately very inflammable”, and there were occasional fires on the ferry as a result.

There was also a case where the steering on a ferry jammed mid river, with the Captain stopping power so it would not ram the jetty, however the ferry then started drifting in a busy river. On checking the steering gear it was found that a bolt had dropped and jammed the gear, and on removal, the ability to steer was restored.

The bolt was found to be unlike any used in the ferry, so it was assumed to be sabotage.

The ferry crossing in the 1970s:

The following photo shows two of the three ferries built in 1963, and which were replaced by the ferries that we see on the river today. The photo dates from the 1980s, as behind the ferry, on the left edge of the photo, some of the dishes of the BT Docklands Satellite Ground Station, can be seen:

I took the following photo on a Sunday in 2015, I know it was a Sunday as two of the three ferries are moored in the river just to the right of the pier on the left, where there is a single ferry docks:

The following photo shows the Duncan – one of the first boats built for the opening of the ferry service:

The deck is crowded with passengers with what appears to be a mix, including children along with men in military uniforms. The upper deck is crowded with vehicles.

The following photo shows the Gordon, the second of the three ships built for the opening of the ferry. It was named after General Gordon of Khartoum:

Although it does not look that much different from the above ferry, the photo below is of the Will Crooks, built in 1930 as one of the replacements for the original fleet of ferries:

The following photo from the 1920s books “Wonderful London” shows the ferry crossing the river, with a man at one of the Thames stairs in the foreground. There is a rowing boat tied up, so perhaps he is one of the old waterman still hopeful of some business:

The text with the above photo claims that the ferry “conveys about half a million vehicles a year free of charge”, and that the cost to run the ferry was about £25,000 a year.

My view from the ferry of the landing place on the north of the river, from where the ferry had just departed. The round brick building of the tunnel entrance can be seen to the right:

The Tate & Lyle factory:

As I arrive at the southern pier, the Dame Vera Lynn is arriving at the north:

The crossing between Woolwich and north Woolwich is brief, however it does provide the opportunity for some wonderful views across the river. Another view of the Thames Barrier, with the towers of the Isle of Dogs in the background:

Arriving at Woolwich:

The ramp descending:

As with boarding the ferry, when leaving, the barrier lifts and you walk off. A quick look back at the ferry:

The Woolwich ferry approach road:

As I was leaving, a queue was building up ready for the following ferry, and at Woolwich, there is a separate queuing area where vehicles queue before be let on to the approach to the ferry.

The route from south to north seemed much busier than that from north to south. That may just be a time of day thing. I tried to find any detailed statistics of ferry usage on the Greater London Authority and the Transport for London websites, but after a quick search, nothing seemed to be available.

The headline statistics seems to be that the Woolwich ferry carries around two million passengers a year. The vast majority of these will be the occupants of vehicles rather than foot passengers.

The following photo shows the entrance to the ferry at Woolwich:

I did not notice one on the north of the river, but at Woolwich on the south, the ferry has a “River” TfL roundel:

The combination of the two methods of crossing the river at Woolwich are unique. Whilst there is another foot tunnel at Greenwich, there is no other large passenger / vehicle ferry.

The fact that the Woolwich ferry continues to be free is remarkable in today’s financial environment, where so much starts to be attracting a price.

When the new Silvertown tunnel opens, there will be a fee for using the tunnel, and to stop people continuing to use the currently free Blackwall tunnel, a new fee will be introduced for using this old tunnel, the first time in 130 years.

It will be interesting to see if the Silvertown tunnel has an impact on traffic levels on the Woolwich ferry. Theoretically not, as the Silvertown Tunnel follows a similar route to that of the Blackwall tunnel. It could be that traffic on the Woolwich ferry increases to avoid the fees at the Blackwall and Silvertown tunnels, such are the unintended consequences of change.

To introduce a fee for the Woolwich ferry would require an Act of Parliament to amend the act originally brought forward by the Metropolitan Board of Works to introduce the ferry, which specified that the ferry should be free to use.

Today, foot passengers wanting to travel between the north and south sides of the river at Woolwich also have the choice of the DLR which runs from Woolwich Arsenal to the north, as well as the Elizabeth Line which runs from Abbey Wood, to Woolwich, before heading north of the river.

The loss of the docks in the 1980s significantly reduced the number of jobs for residents of the south to commute to on the north. The DLR and Elizabeth Lines have added alternative options, however for a quick, free crossing of the river, the Woolwich Ferry is a wonderful way of seeing the river and getting between north and south Woolwich, and the foot tunnel provides an historic alternative using one of only two surviving foot tunnels under the Thames.

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