Category Archives: The Thames

The 120th Anniversary of Vauxhall Bridge

Two places have just become available on my walk on Saturday the 13th of June – Wapping – A Seething Mass of Misery. Click here for details.

Last Tuesday, the 26th of May, was the 120th anniversary of the opening of Vauxhall Bridge. If you had attended the official ceremony in 1906, you may have received a copy of the London County Council booklet recording the event:

Inside was an overview of the Order of Proceedings, which included members of the London County Council travelling in carriages from County Hall to the new bridge:

Along with a Programme of Music, which the Battersea Borough Prize Band played from an enclosure on the eastern side of the Westminster end of the bridge:

The bridge that was being opened in 1906 was not the first Vauxhall Bridge, the original had opened in 1816 as part of an explosion of bridge building, starting with Putney Bridge in 1729 through to Tower Bridge in 1894, a period when 21 bridges were built or rebuilt to support the equally explosive increase in population, homes and industry on both sides of the river, and to provide an easy method of crossing the Thames.

On March the 6th, 1806, a petition was presented to Parliament by the parishes on the Surrey and Middlesex sides of the river, in favour of a bridge over the Thames, at or near the Vauxhall turnpike, along with the construction of new connecting roads.

The petition stated that the need for a bridge was because of the “great increase in buildings, population and commerce in the said districts, and their lack of communication with the western parts of the Metropolis, other than by the circuitous route over Westminster or Battersea Bridges; and the advantages anticipated are a great accommodation to the persons residing in the neighbourhood of the places above mentioned, likewise an additional convenience to the commercial part of the community by opening a more extensive connection with the counties of Middlesex and Surrey”.

The 1806 petition did not make any progress. A second petition was made in 1807, and on the 13th of March 1807, the House of Commons gave permission for a Bill to be brought before Parliament, however petitions against a new bridge at Vauxhall were raised by the proprietors of Battersea Bridge and the inhabitants and landed proprietors of Chelsea and Battersea.

This was in the days when many bridges were privately owned and charged a toll, which is why the owners of Battersea Bridge were objecting as another bridge could have resulted in a reduction in their income.

In 1808, the Bill for a bridge at Vauxhall passed its Second Reading, but was not returned by the House of Lords.

Finally in 1809, an Act was passed allowing for building “a bridge across the Thames from the bank or shore thereof at or near a certain place on the south side of the said river called Cumberland Gardens, neare Vauxhall Turnpike, to the opposite shore called Millbank”.

John Rennie was appointed as the engineer to the bridge, and the first stone was laid on the 9th of May 1811. The stone laying ceremony included the deposit with the foundation stone of different British coins of the year and a silver plate. Apparently these were recovered when the first bridge was demolished in 1899 and were stored with the London County Council’s records. I have had a brief search but cannot find out what happened to these objects.

After construction began, the original Rennie design was found to be too expensive to complete. He offered a second, cheaper design, but this was also viewed as too expensive, so a deign from Samuel Bentham was commissioned. On review, Bentham’s solution was considered to have design issues, so the engineer James Walker was asked to complete a fourth design, which was the design used for the first Vauxhall bridge.

The land surrounding the first Vauxhall Bridge was very different to when the second bridge was completed.

The following map from the LCC booklet shows the stretch of river and surrounding land of Vauxhall and Millbank:

On the Lambeth side of the bridge, the approach was marked by Marble Hall, the smallest of the three pleasure gardens in the immediate vicinity of the Vauxhall Turnpike (red arrow). Cumberland Gardens (green arrow) occupied a site a little to the south of the bridge, while the largest and most celebrated of the three pleasure gardens was Vauxhall Gardsens, originally called Spring Gardens (blue arrow).

The Westminster side of the river was described as “quite open and as rural as could be found anywhere”.

By the time the second bridge opened in 1906, the area was very different (the large, empty space with the word Westminster was the site of the Millbank Penitentiary):

(‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“)

The intention was to name the bridge Regent’s Bridge, in honour Prince Regent, who had shown a considerable interest in the bridge, however by the time the bridge was completed, it had taken on the name Vauxhall Bridge.

The original Vauxhall Bridge was the first iron bridge to be built over the Thames. It was 809 feet long and 36 feet wide, and was formed of nine arches, each with a span of 78 feet and 6 inches. The total cost, including construction of the approach roads, compensation to land owners etc, was £296,998.

The first Vauxhall Bridge was completed at private expense for private profit, so a toll was charged for use of the bridge.

In the first full year of operation, the bridge generated £4,977 in tolls, and despite later reduction of tolls and the construction of additional bridges, by 1877, tolls generated by Vauxhall Bridge amounted to £62,392.

Tolls were a common means to finance bridge construction and maintenance, and during the time of the first Vauxhall Bridge, the only bridge above Blackfriars Bridge in what was the County of London (prior to the 1960s expansion) that did not collect tolls was Westminster Bridge.

It was the 1877 Metropolis Toll Bridges Act that provided for the Metropolitan Board of Works to purchase the interests of the private companies, and of H.M. Office of Works in the following bridges: Waterloo, Lambeth, Vauxhall, Chelsea, Albert, Battersea, Wandsworth, Putney, Hammersmith and the bridge over Deptford Creek.

After the purchase of the bridges by the Metropolitan Board of Works, the tolls were removed and the bridges were free to use.

The LCC booklet includes a list of the bridges over the Thames up to 1906, including the date of opening, rebuilds, and the engineer responsible:

Image from the LCC booklet showing the Thames below Vauxhall Bridge around 1820, with the new bridge in the background:

And a print from a very rural Millbank in 1829, showing Vauxhall Bridge:

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

A photo from the LCC booklet showing the original Vauxhall Bridge:

Changes along the river, and the design and construction of the bridge, along with increases in traffic during the 19th century, all combined to justify the build of a new bridge.

The LCC booklet explains:

“The scour of the river due to the high velocity of the current had, however, tended to expose the foundations of the bridge, and this had been met by depositing material from time to time around the foundations. The velocity of the current had probably been increased by the removal of old London Bridge in 1831, and of old Westminster bridge about thirty years later, but it was in the first place due to the obstruction caused by the numerous and thick piers of the bridge.

Besides having a dangerous effect on the safety of the bridge, the strength of the tide was a considerable impediment to traffic, which was also hindered by the narrowness of the arches. Powers were obtained to remove two of the central piers, thus converting three arches into one. The estimated cost of this was £40,9099. These powers were allowed to lapse.

In the meantime the effects caused by the scour of the river continued, and in November 1887, it was thought advisable to have the foundations of three of the central piers examined by a diver. The result of the examination showed that the bottoms of the timber cradles upon which the piers were founded were in several places 4 or 5 inches above the level of the clay bed of the river adjoining them, and in the case of the third pier from the Middlesex side of the bridge the clay was found to have been scoured away from beneath the cradle 5 or 6 inches inwards from its outer edge. This was arrested by laying bags filled with cement along the outer edges of the cradle, and by depositing 6500 tons of slag around the piers.

In 1887 it was found that these protective measures were in turn washed away.

Moreover, the small width of the bridge and the heavy gradients of its approaches combined to render the structure inadequate to cope with the growing demands of road traffic. This traffic had recently much increased, being assisted by the enlargement and alterations at Vauxhall Station, and the weak condition of Lambeth bridge. During the week ended 11th July 1891, 34,915 vehicles had crossed the bridge, as compared with 22,232 vehicles in the week ended 12th June, 1879.”

The Bridges Committee of the LCC decided that there was a strong case for a new bridge. At the same time, there was an issue with Lambeth Bridge, but the committee decided that Vauxhall should be the first bridge to be rebuilt.

The cost was estimated at £484,000, and Parliament authorised the London County Council (Vauxhall Bridge) Act of 1895.

Before demolition of the existing bridge, a temporary wooden bridge was built between the western end of the Albert Embankment and Millbank.

The first phase of work consisted of demolition of the old bridge followed by construction of the new piers. This work was completed in November 1903.

Whilst the first phase was underway, plans for the superstructure were prepared, and the work on this phase of the bridge commenced on the 1st of January 1904.

The new bridge was designed and construction supervised by Maurice Fitzmaurice, the London County Council’s chief engineer, assisted by the council’s architect, W.E. Riley.

The following photo from the booklet shows the new Vauxhall Bridge. Comparing with the above photo of the first bridge shows much larger piers and wider arches:

The reduction in the number of piers and increased distance between the piers was key for traffic on the river.

With the original bridge, the narrowness of the arches, and the eight piers reduced the space for the river to flow under the bridge and resulted in the tide running up to a velocity of 7 miles an hour, which caused problems with the handling of vessels as they passed under the bridge.

There had also been a considerable increase in the number of vessels passing under the bridge due to the increase in the number of riverside factories and workshops along the upper reaches of the river, and in 1894, an average of 391 vessels were passing under the bridge every twenty four hours.

The roadway over the new bridge was also wider, and the approach to the bridge had a smoother gradient, making it easier for traffic and pedestrians to cross the bridge.

The key features of the new Vauxhall Bridge were;

Total length across the river between abutments is 759 feet 4 inches
Total waterway of 699 feet 4 inches
The central span is 149 feet 7 inches wide, with a head of 20 feet above high water
The width of the bridge between parapets is 80 feet, divided into a carriageway 50 feet wide and two footways of 15 feet in width each
The abutments are formed of concrete faced with granite
The upper portion of the masonry is treated differently on the two abutments, the Westminster one having, above the roadway level, two massive blocks of granite masonry on either side, destined probably to server as the bases of lofty piers or groups of statuary. These measure 20 feet in length by 10 feet 8 inches in width
The Lambeth abutment has similar piers, but behind the downstream one is an open balustrade and a flight of steps giving access to the foreshore.
The upstream side is a plain granite parapet wall, which is continued for some distance along the approach to the bridge. Construction of this abutment involved division of the two large storm relief sewers known as the Clapham and Effra sewers

As mentioned in the above list, the original intention for the large blocks of granite masonry on the abutments of the bridge was for either some pylons of statues. The following newspaper report explains why the pylons were not part of the finished bridge:

“An attempt has been made to introduce a Parisian feature in the ‘pylons’ which have never formed a part of a London bridge. These oblong pylons are carried high above the stone balustrades at the entrance of the bridge, and they are introduced not only to give dignity to the appearance, but also to lend additional strength to the structure. The design resembles in many ways the Alexander III Bridge across the Seine, where, however, the pylons are treated more ornamentally. But the bridges committee while accepting the design and being favourably impressed by the pylons have decided not to adopt them as they would entail the additional cost of £10,000, thus the design will go to the L.C.C. this week shorn of the pylons.”

So the approach to the bridge was built without any pylons or statues, and the large granite blocks on which these would have been placed can be seen to left and right of the following photo of the roadway of the new bridge when completed. They are still there today, and still without any decoration or structure on top:

This is the Alexander III Bridge across the Seine referred to in the above description. It had been built a couple of years before the new Vauxhall Bridge, so if the money had been available, Vauxhall Bridge could have had similar impressive structures towering on the abutments, above either side of the approach to the bridge:

Image source and attribution: Jebulon, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

So whilst the roadway over the bridge was devoid of any decoration, there is decoration along the outer sides of the bridge.

The London County Council’s architect, Mr. W.E. Riley advised on the decoratuion of each support by placing steel panels over the masonry, and the application of bronze figures of heroic size on both elevations.

These figures were then created by Mr. A. Drury and Mr. F.W. Pomeroy.

This is a view of the side of Vauxhall Bridge from a few years ago. Statues can be seen above each of the piers:

On the western, upstream side of the bridge are Pomeroy’s statues representing Agriculture, Architecture, Engineering and Pottery:

And on the eastern, downstream side of the bridge are Drury’s statues representing Science, Fine Arts, Local Government and Education:

As well as the statues along the side of the bridge, there was another unique feature to the new Vauxhall Bridge, as explained in the LCC booklet:

“In consequence of the narrowness of the old bridge, no line of tramway had been constructed over it, and thus a gap had been left between the lines running from Victoria down the Vauxhall Bridge Road and the tramway at Vauxhall Cross.

In view of the importance of such a line, it was decided to apply to Parliament for authority to construct it. In 1896 the London County Council (Vauxhall Bridge Tramways) Act was passed, and steps were taken to carry out the work concurrently with the formation of the carriageway of the bridge.

Vauxhall Bridge is thus the first bridge over the Thames in London to accommodate a tramway. It will be seen, on looking at the map, that with the completion of the tramway over Vauxhall Bridge, there is a tramway in a straight line from Victoria Station to Camberwell-green. The latter point is a centre where a number of tramways meet on the south side of the Thames. The new line will therefore be of great importance in connecting large areas of South London with the stations of the London and Brighton, South Eastern, and Metropolitan District Railways at Victoria and with the large omnibus traffic starting from that point.”

The last paragraphs highlights how building one bit of infrastructure can have a much wider benefit, and although the original tram network has disappeared from London’s streets, the interconnectivity of different transport methods, whether train, underground or bus, has long been key to London’s success as a city.

The story of the two Vauxhall bridges also shows that bridges, as with any infrastructure needs maintenance and eventual replacement.

To highlight the benefits of the new bridge, and how London is subject to continual change, I will end the post with the following from the Westminster Mail on the 12th of May, 1906:

“VAUXHALL BRIDGE ROAD TRAMS – Considerable interest was evinced on Wednesday evening in the experimental trips of an electric tram car over the recently completed Vauxhall Bridge-road track. The sight of a tram-car on the bridge was a decided novelty, and attracted crowds of spectators. A car usually running on the Waterloo and Clapham route was requisitioned for the purpose, and it is understood that everything worked smoothly and satisfactorily.

Residents and those having business in the neighbourhood are agreed as to the rapidity with which the work of the electrification of the track was carried out. And but for the fact that the large sewer at the junction of the road in Tachbrook-street required extensive alterations, the task would have been accomplished even more speedily.

The past 15 years have witnessed remarkable alterations in Vauxhall-bridge road. In the early nineties the tinkling bells of the old one-horse cars were a dreadful nuisance, not in the least mitigated by the fact that there were no conductors. When the LCC acquired the system they substituted the more up to date pair-horse cars, and, better still, abolished those tinkling bells.

Now we are on the eve of having electric cars, a still greater improvement. In other directions too, the thoroughfare has been improved, and several blocks of handsome flats have taken the place of small house property. Of good width, and well paved with wood, Vauxhall Bridge-road should speedily become a much more important locality than has been the case hitherto.”

From Putney to Hammersmith – Slipways, Craven Cottage and Industry

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Walks

My Wapping walk has now sold out. There are spaces left on:

Limehouse – A Sink of Iniquity and Degradation on Saturday the 6th of June. – 2 Tickets Available

I have also added a new date for my Bankside walk, which is the first time in two years:

~~Bankside to Pickle Herring Street – History between the Bridges on Saturday the 20th of June~~ – Sold Out

Last Sunday’s Post on A. Tattam

There were a number of comments to last Sunday’s post on A. Tattam who ran a shoe repair business in Hackney. These comments provided much more information about Albert.

Unfortunately, I created the post so it was ready for Sunday, and then initiated the transfer of the site to the new hosting provider. This took a while to complete, test and fix a number of minor problems, and I switched the Internet address over to the new site last Tuesday, which meant all the comments were on the old copy of the site with my previous hosting provider.

I do have copies of all these, but cannot add as comments, so will add within the post, as they really added some fascinating detail to his life.

The move means that I am happy to report that A London Inheritance is now hosted with SiteGround.

Now to today’s post:

A few week’s ago, my post was about Putney and Fulham – Bridges, Church and Thames Stairs, and was the first part of a walk from Putney Bridge to Hammersmith Bridge, not just because it is an interesting walk, but also to find the Thames stairs and landing places listed in the Port of London Authority’s directory for this stretch of the river.

My last post finished at Bishops Park Upper Stairs, and this post continues onward, all the way to Hammersmith Bridge.

Exploring this area shows just how rapid London was expanding to the west in the beginning of the 20th century, and that there was still a considerable amount of industry this far to the west along the river.

The following Ordnance Survey map dates from the end of the 19th / early 20th century. I have marked Putney and Hammersmith Bridges, and also put a circle around Craven Cottage, the home of Fulham football club, which I will come to later in the post.

I will be walking along the right hand side of the river as it is orientated in the following map, and around 120 years ago, the land along the river and a distance in land was still open space, although to the right, dense streets of housing can be seen approaching (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Around 45 years later, a range of different industries were lining the river, Craven Cottage had stands, and housing had reached up to the river (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

As well as the two sets of stairs by Bishops Park, the Port of London Authority listing has another access point to the river close to Hammersmith Bridge. That is three places to access the river along this side of the river between Putney and Hammersmith Bridges. The listing does not include any stairs or slipways on the other side of the river, although some do exist, such as the stairs shown in the following photo:

I wonder if this is because the stairs on the eastern side of the river were up against industrial developments and businesses that used the river, and were therefore classified as working stairs, whilst the opposite side of the river had no similar development, and whilst there may have been stairs providing access to the river, these were not classed as working stairs.

The western side of the river is home to a couple of rowing centres, such as the Barn Elms Boathouse:

A short distance along from Bishops Park is the home of Fulham football club – Craven Cottage:

And walking along the river, the most obvious part of Fulham’s ground is the new Riverside Stand, which extends out and over the new walkway along the river:

Inside the ground floor of the new stand are a range of food and rink outlets, with seating alongside the river walkway. These are open during the day, not just on match days, when it is ticketed only, so if you are walking the river between Putney and Hammersmith, this is a good place to stop for a drink.

Inside, there are views through to the ground:

Fulham claim that Craven Cottage is the oldest football ground in London. They played their first match at Craven Cottage on the 10th of October 1896.

The club was formed in 1879, and before the move to their current site, had played at a number of locations around Fulham and Barn Elms. The club had purchased the land in 1894, and it had taken two years for the land to be cleared, a derelict house removed and the ground prepared.

This first, simple ground, was the one shown in the first map in the post. There were banks surrounding the pitch made from earth excavated during the construction of Shepherd’s Bush underground station.

A wooden stand was constructed but this only lasted a few years before being replaced by a new steel stand in 1905, and at the same time, the earth banks were terraced.

It is this configuration of Craven Cottage which can be seen in the following 1928 photo from Britain from Above:

In the above photo, the earthen bank along the river, to the left has now been replaced by the Riverside Stand, the northern edge of which can be seen in the following photo, where the stand and seating can be seen in the gap, and the photo shows just how close the stand is to the river on the immediate right:

Next to the stadium, alongside the river walkway is a statue of George Cohen MBE, a player who spent his entire professional life at Fulham, as well as playing for England, including the World Cup in 1966, where he played in the final against Germany.

The statue was unveiled in 2016 to mark the 50th anniversary of England winning the 1966 competition:

Leaving Craven Cottage, and the view along the walkway towards Hammersmith:

There is plenty of rowing along the river:

Not sure what these strange features are along the wall of the walkway:

It is hard to image that this entire walkway from Craven Cottage up to Hammersmith Bridge was once lined by industry, but a look at the second of the OS maps at the top of the post shows just how much there was.

A surprisingly high number of oil storage and distribution depots along with an oil refinery, a coal depot, a plaster manufacturer, sugar refinery, preserved food factory, joinery works, a distillery, wharves and warehouses.

Their proximity to the river allowing raw materials to be delivered, and finished products transported.

Nearly all evidence of these industrial sites has gone, replaced mainly by housing, but some traces can still be found.

Along the walkway, there is a small, green open space called Rowberry Mead. This was originally Roseberry Meade, where in 1638 there was a house with a cherry orchard which was recorded as being the finest in England. In 1661, a lease granted by the Bishop of London estimated the size of Rowberry Meade as being six acres.

In the late 19th century, it was a place where osiers (a type of willow tree), and reeds were grown for the basket making industry:

However by the 1940s, the cherry orchards, osiers and reeds had all gone, and the site was an oil distribution depot, with five circular oil storage tanks lining the river.

Whilst the tanks have disappeared, the outline of a couple of the tanks have been preserved in the layout of the park:

In the above photo, the curved fencing and concrete wall below is the riverside edge of the tank arrowed in the following map:

And the outline of the tank above the one with the red arrow is also part reserved, and this includes a mechanism which is placed in the centre of where the tank was located:

From a curve in the walkway, we can look across at the building which is still signed as Palace Wharf, which in the second OS map was the northern edge of the building complex that formed the Rathbone Works, where fibrous plaster and joinery was manufactured.

Also, in the following photo, it is interesting that whilst today there are no osiers / willows at Rowberry Mead, willows can still be seen growing on the river foreshore:

All the industry along the river required infrastructure to support the boats that brought goods to and from the storage depots and factories, most of this infrastructure has gone, but there still the remains of some wooden piers along the river:

In the following photo, the large brick building is the Crabtree pub:

There has been a pub on the site since at least the 1830s, with the large building we see today being a reconstruction of the pub in 1898 by Sich’s Lamb brewery of Chiswick.

The name of the pub, the Crabtree comes from the Crab Tree, or wild apple tree, of which there were once many in this part of Fulham.

In the following extract from the late 19th century OS map, the red arrow points to the first Crabtree pub, the green arrow points to Crabtree Lane, and the blue arrow points to Crabtree House. There are tree symbols covering many of the fields, presumably these were the crab trees which gave their name to the house, lane and pub:

Continuing along the walkway which heads under part of the original Palace Wharf buildings:

To show how industries changed along the river, in the late 19th century OS map, the area occupied by Palace Wharf was a malthouse, around 45 years later the site was manufacturing fibrous plaster.

Another reminder of just how connected with the river this stretch of the shore once was, along the walk there are features such as in the following photo, where mooring lines would be tied from the boats transporting goods to and from the industrial premises:

On the opposite bank of the river is the Harrods Furniture Depository:

The Harrods Furniture Depository was built between 1894 and 1913, having been designed by the architect W.G. Hunt.

As the name suggests, it was built to store furniture over and above what could be on display at the Knightsbridge store, and was also used to distribute furniture ordered by customers. The river was a key means of transport, and there was a pier on the river where boats could moor to deliver or take on furniture. Furniture was also repaired and restored in the building.

Harrods made use of the site in other ways to serve their customers, as the following from The Lady on the 30th of March 1895 shows:

“Many of our readers, and especially many ladies, will be glad to learn that there is a possibility this year of viewing the Boat Race from particularly comfortable quarters without the crushing inconvenience usually inseparable from such occasions. The directors of Harrods Stores have decided to fit up their wharf in front of the old Soap Works (now Harrods Furniture Depository), for the accommodation of a limited number of sightseers, and the race may be seen for at least a mile from this point for the very moderate charge of 2s 6d, light refreshments included.”

The Depository became redundant in the 1980s as delivery models moved from the retailers storing large volumes of goods, to a more just in time approach to minimise the need for costly stock holding and storage facilities.

The site was then converted into residential, with the large and impressive façade facing the river, being retained.

Getting closer to Hammersmith Bridge:

There has been a considerable amount of residential development along the land facing the river as we get towards Hammersmith Bridge.

These apartment buildings all follow the standard style of such developments of recent years, and they have the obligatory balcony:

The London Housing Design Guide published by the Mayor of London in 2010 defined in Section 4.10 Private Open Space that dwellings should have adequate private open space, in the form of either a garden, terrace, or balcony, and that 5 square metres should be provided for a two person dwelling.

This has probably led to a building design that in future decades will probably be recognised as an early to mid 21st century apartment design, much as today we recognise a Georgian or Victorian terrace.

Figurehead by the artist Rick Kirby between the riverside walkway and the new residential development:

The final approach to Hammersmith Bridge:

And as I approached Hammersmith Bridge, I found the last of the three places listed in the Port of London Authority’s guide to access points on this stretch of the river.

This access point goes by the simple name of “Hammersmith Landing”, and is a simple concrete slipway into the river surrounded by concrete walls:

The slipway was marked on the 1893 to 1896 revision of the Ordnance Survey map, where is was located directly at the end of Queen Street (now Queen Caroline Street). Rocque’s map of 1746 shows an unnamed street following the alignment of Queen Street and running through agricultural fields, with a number of buildings along the road, The street ran directly into the river, so as a point of access to the river, the site is probably at least 300 years old:

The building in the following photo is the Riverside Studios:

The Riverside Studios are another example of the transformation from industrial. The site was originally the 19th century and early 20th century Hammersmith Iron Works.

In 1933 the iron works was converted into a film studios with two sound stages, and films made here included “The Seventh Veil” with James Mason from 1945, and in 1950 “The Happiest Days of Your Life” with Margaret Rutherford.

In 1954 the studios were taken over by the BBC, who purchased the studios from the Alliance Film Company. BBC productions including Doctor Who and Quatermass and the Pit were then made here, along with Hancock’s Half Hour and Blue Peter, which are recorded on a plaque on the building:

And in June 1956, the American Singer and Actress, Eartha Kitt appeared in a BBC production at the studios, an event which is also recorded by a plaque on the building:

The BBC moved out of the Riverside Studios in 1975 as additional studios had been added to Television Centre in White City, and the Hammersmith buildings were then taken over by a charitable trust formed by Hammersmith and Fulham Council.

The current building dates from a major redevlopment of the site between 2014 and 2019.

Not long after the new site opened, the studios went into administration, and in 2025 were brought out of administration and brought under the control of a new charitable trust, the Anil Agarwal Riverside Studios Trust.

It was then up to the approach to Hammersmith Bridge, which continues to be closed to any form of traffic apart from pedestrians and cyclists.

Not only has Hammersmith Bridge been closed for some years, but Albert Bridge also recently closed, again apart from pedestrians and cyclists, as a crack in a cast iron component had been discovered in the north eastern abutment.

Work is now underway to restore Hammersmith Bridge, but this will probably take a number of years, and a 12 month plan is underway to repair Albert Bridge.

Two examples of the problems that can happen due to the age of much of London’s infrastructure:

If you are looking for a really interesting walk along the Thames, then the path between Putney and Hammersmith is well worth an exploration, and from Hammersmith there is an equally interesting walk to continue all the way to Chiswick, a route that has the added benefit of a number of good pubs. I wrote about the Chiswick to Hammersmith section in this post.

Putney and Fulham – Bridges, Church and Thames Stairs

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Walks

I currently have the following walks now available (click on each one for details):

Exploring the Lost Streets of the Barbican on Saturday 16th of May.

In the Steps of a Woolwich Docker – From the Woolwich Ferry to the Royals on Saturday 23rd of May.

The Lost Landscape and Transformation of Puddle Dock and Thames Street on Sunday 31st of May.

I hope to set up additional dates during the coming months, and for early notification of their availability, follow me on my main Eventbrite page, here.

Now to head to Putney and Fulham:

A couple of week’s ago, I wrote a post about the Putney Debates at St. Mary’s Church in Putney. Whilst there, I also wanted to find the location of some Thames stairs, as part of my long running attempt to visit the site of all the river stairs on the tidal Thames.

It was also an opportunity to have a walk around the area, and after arriving at Parsons Green station on the District Line, I headed south as I wanted to cross the river by a route I had not taken before, the walkway along the side of Fulham Railway Bridge:

The walkway is along the eastern side of the bridge, and brings back memories of the walkway that once ran along the side of Hungerford railway bridge, however this walkway looks to be better maintained.

From the walkway there is a good view of the river to the east. The large building on the left is one of the large blocks of flats which seem to be a feature of this part of the north bank of the river around Fulham, and the trees on the left are part of the grounds of the Hurlingham Club:

The bridge was built to allow the extension of the District Railway, and the following report from the St. James Budget on the 19th of January 1889 provides a wonderful description of how places like Putney were being transformed, and it starts with a reference to the Civil War debates:

“THE NEW WIMBLEDON AND FULHAM RAILWAY – Saturday, September 18th, 1647 – ‘After a sermon in Putney Church, the great General Cromwell, many great officers, field officers, inferior officers, and adjutators met in the church; debated the proposals of the army towards a settlement of this bleeding nation; altered some things in them; and were very full of sermon which had been preached by Mr. Peters’. So it is recorded in authentic history.

Ten years ago it was not difficult to imagine Putney as the headquarters of Cromwell. Ten years ago the District Railway had not been extended to Fulham and quant old relics of the past had not been pulled down. Ten years ago Fairfax House, in which Queen Elizabeth used to lodge, was still standing, and the straggling old high street, with its curious cottages, had not disappeared. Ten years ago the ‘early clerk’ was a rara avis in Putney, and ‘villadom’ had not become aggressive. But the opening of Putney Bridge Station inaugurated a new style of things, and the old Putney was well nigh improved off the face of the earth.

Since that a further extension of the railway has been in progress, and the early part of this year will see Wimbledon in direct communication with the aristocratic west and with all parts of the District and Metropolitan system. The present terminus to the District Railway in the south is at Putney Bridge, on the Fulham side of the Thames; but the opening of the new branch will carry the rails across the Thames to Putney proper, where a station is being established to serve the purpose of both the District and South-Western systems. Thence the line will pass through West Hill and Southfields in the Wandsworth District, and, skirting Wimbledon Park with its expansive lake, will for the present come to a stop at Wimbledon Junction.”

This article is interesting for several reasons. I really like the historical links, it demonstrates how what had been villages around London were being rapidly transformed in the later part of the 19th century, and it highlights the part played by the rapidly expanding rail network.

I also like the term “villadom” which probably describes the suburban houses that were rapidly taking over what had been the fields surrounding Putney and Fulham.

There is a plaque on the bridge alongside the walkway that records the construction and later refurbishment of the bridge:

The bridge was designed by William Jacomb, who had been an assistant to Brunel, and Jacomb created a rather graceful structure across the river, however the large concrete cutwaters around the central columns, which were added later to protect the bridge against any accidental collisions, slightly detract from the architect’s original intentions:

Just to the west of the railway bridge is Putney road bridge:

As with so much of the river, there was a reasonable amount of industry along the banks, and on the north, Fulham bank of the river, there was Swan Wharf and Draw Dock, which was used by the local corporation as a place where barges could be loaded with rubbish and transported down river to landfill sites around Rainham. The Draw Dock is highlighted by the red arrow in the following map, with Swan Wharf to the left (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

To the right of the Draw Dock was the granite, marble & mosaic works of Fenning & Co.

Whilst the corporation yard and granite works have been replaced by residential, the entrance from the river to the Draw Dock remains, although it extends no further back than the cut in the embankment seen in the centre of the following photo:

From the location of the above photo, I walked up to the church featured in the previous post on the Putney Debates. Directly opposite the church, on the approach road to the bridge, is a rather magnificent late 19th century pub:

This is the Grade II listed White Lion Hotel and Public House, which dates from 1887.

The date of construction is within the same couple of years as that of the railway bridge and the extension of the District railway to Putney, and is another example of how Putney was being transformed.

An 1888 advert for the White Lion provides an overview of the business when it opened:

“THE NEW WHITE LION HOTEL, PUTNEY – The above Newly Built Hotel when completed will afford unusual accommodation for Boating Parties, Families and Commercial Gentlemen. It contains Sixteen Spacious Bedrooms, Three Bathrooms, and Sitting Rooms, Magnificent Billiard Room with Two of Messrs. Cox and Yeoman’s Tables, fitted with the latest improvements, Bowling Saloons, Spacious Dining and Grill Room and also a Large Room for Banquets and Public Dinners.”

There are not that many pubs where you can see two large Caryatids supporting the upper floors:

The White Lion was built on the site of a previous pub with the same name, as being at the southern end of the bridge, and opposite the church, was a good location.

There are plenty of references to the pub going back to the early years of the 18th century, and it would be interesting to know if it was here when Cromwell was in the church opposite.

As is still the case, it is generally only bad news that makes the media, and the following example of a tragic accident in the White Lion in January 1750 again highlights the almost casual nature of death across London in previous centuries:

“On Tuesday last a melancholy accident happened at the White Lion at Putney, where some Officers being quartered, a Pair of Pistols belonging to one of them lay on the table where two Sons and a Daughter of Mr. Barnsley were playing; one of the Boys, about six years old (who was the eldest) taking up a Pistol, clapped it to his sister’s forehead, saying ‘I’ll shoot you’, and so indeed he did.”

I have left out the rest of the description of the accident as 18th century newspapers did not leave out any graphic details. There was no report of any action against the Officer who had left a loaded pistol out in a public space and it was just regarded as a tragic accident.

At the top of the building there is a large White Lion, and the date of construction:

I cannot find when the White Lion closed. It has been through the chain pub branding of Slug and Lettuce and Litten Tree. It has been an Australian themed bar and a sports bar, but the building seems to have been empty since 2012 / 2013.

The Historic England assessment record states that it is in poor condition, of medium vulnerability, there is slow decline and no solution for the building is agreed, so not a very promising future.

It is the type of pub that Wetherspoons would typically take over and restore, however there is already a Wetherspoons, the Rocket, in a brand new building just to the east of the church.

Hopefully there will be a future use for this wonderful building.

One of my aims was to visit two Thames stairs listed in the Port of London Authority records of access points to the river. I have highlighted them in the following map. The red arrow is pointing to Bishops Park Lower Stairs and the green arrow to Bishops Park Upper Stairs (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Seen from Putney, Bishops Park Lower Stairs are on the left of the following photo. The church on the right is All Saints, Fulham:

A close up of Bishops Park Lower Stairs:

As I mentioned in my last past on the Putney Debates, churches are often seen adjacent to important crossings or boundaries, and at either end of Putney Bridge, there is All Saints Fulham and St. Mary’s Putney, as shown in the following photo:

The first bridge across the river was opened in 1729, but there had been a ferry crossing here for many previous centuries, so whilst today the churches are at either end of the bridge, they would previously have been at opposite ends of the ferry crossing, when perhaps it would have been important for a quick prayer before braving a crossing by water.

The first bridge was of wooden construction. There was much opposition from the watermen operating the ferry, as the bridge would have destroyed their business. Compensation and pensions were needed to address the waterman’s complaints.

The churchyard of St. Mary’s was originally much larger than we see today. When the wooden bridge was built, the road curved around the larger churchyard to access the bridge, as can be seen in the following print, which was published in 1783 and titled “Putney Church from the White Lion”, again confirming the existence of the pub long before the 1897 building we see today:

(© 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 Port of London listing does not include any access points along the Putney side of the river, which is strange as there are a number of slipways, although some are quite recent such as the slipway in the following photo. Where the slipway reaches the higher point, which then extends into the river, was one of the construction sites for the Thames Tideway Tunnel:

The point in the river opposite the Tideway Tunnel site is where the University Boat Race starts.

Looking towards Putney on a busy Putney Bridge:

The view in the opposite direction towards Fulham:

In the early 18th century, there were no bridges between London Bridge and Kingston, so if you needed to cross the river, you would have needed a Waterman.

In 1726, the organisation to construct the bridge was put in place, as reported in the Flying Post on the 19th of May, 1726: “London, May 19. Above 180 Persons of the Nobility, Gentry &c. are particularly named to be Commissioners, or a Body corporate, for building a Bridge cross the Thames, from Fulham in Middlesex to Putney in Surrey.”

The references to Middlesex and Surrey recall the original counties that much of modern day Greater London were once part of.

Construction began in March 1729 as reported: “The building of the new Bridge over the River Thames from Fulham to Putney was begun yesterday in Presence of the Commissioners appointed for that work, and the Scaffolding in Fulham side was great part finished, as was that on the Side of Putney this day; and the first pile is to be drove tomorrow; several hundred men are employed in the great undertaking.”

The bridge was in use by the end of the year, and on the 11th October, the Kentish Mercury was reporting that: “The New Bridge over the River Thames from Fulham to Putney is so near finished that the wood work almost joins the brick and stone-work at each end; and the top being for the most part covered, several persons passed over yesterday; and ’tis reckoned that before Christmas, coaches and carriages may pass. ‘Tis no small surprise to see so great a Work complete in so short a time.”

The Putney end of the bridge:

(© 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 wooden construction of the bridge:

(© 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 bridge was a toll bridge. The following print shows the toll gate at the Fulham end of the bridge. There also appears to have been a toll gate at the Putney end:

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

I cannot find a list of the tolls, but did find the following report on the lengths that the staff of the toll gate would go to, in order to bring those who tried to avoid the toll to justice. On the 3rd of June, 1754:

“Yesterday morning, about Four o’clock, two Gentlemen in a Coach attempted to go through the Toll-Gate at Fulham Bridge, without paying the Toll, but were prevented by the Toll-Man, upon which one of the Gentlemen jumped out of the coach, ran up to the man, and with great Imprecations swore he would shoot him, at which time he snaped a Pistol against the Man’s Breast, and afterwards beat him over the Head with the But-End of it in a barbarous Manner. Mr. William Low, master of the Gate, seeing his Servant so cruelly used, pursued the Gentlemen to London, where he had one of them apprehended, and being carried before Henry Fielding, Esq. he was by him committed to New Prison.”

View of the Fulham end of the bridge, with the toll gate looking a bit smaller than in the previous print. It is easy to work out which end of the bridge is shown, as the church at the Fulham end had a small turret protruding above the tower:

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

It is interesting to see in these prints how the river had a natural foreshore leading up to the land, long before we built large embankments to hold back to river.

In the above print there are a couple of horses drinking in the river. Just above and to the right of the horses is what I thought may have been a gallows, but looking closely at the print there is a sign hanging from the wooden structure, so this may have been the sign of a pub alongside the Fulham end of the bridge.

The first wooden bridge survived for a remarkably long time, and was not replaced by the current stone bridge until 1886, when the Sir Joseph Bazalgette designed bridge of Cornish granite opened.

At the centre of the bridge:

Where a plaque shows the 1886 date of the bridge and the boundaries of the two parishes of Putney and Fulham:

Close to the northern end of the bridge is All Saints, Fulham:

One of the comments to my post on the Putney Debates mentioned All Saints, and that it was a location from the film the Omen, for the scene where the vicar is spiked by the lightning conductor.

On the bright spring day of my visit, the church did not have any of the sinister atmosphere of the Omen.

The church tower still retains the small turret seen in many of the prints of the bridge:

The church tower is the oldest part of the church. The first mention of the church dates from the 13th century, and the dedication to All Saints appears in the mid 15th century when the tower was being built.

In the 1880, the same decade as the railway was extended across the river, that the White Lion Hotel was being built, and the author of the earlier newspaper article complained about the aggressive “villadom“, the church was considered too small for the growing population, and was also subject to flooding from the Thames, so the original church was demolished (except for the tower), and a new, much larger church built to a design by the architect Sir Arthur Blomfield.

The interior of the 1880 church:

There is a mix of memorials in the church, including ones from the current version of the church, such as the tablet erected for Alfred Bassano, who must have had a fascinating life in military service:

Along with memorials which must have come from the original church, including that of Sir Thomas Kinsey, who was an Alderman of the City of London and who died on the 3rd of January 1696 at the age of 60. He must have grown up during an interesting time in London, with the Civil War and the restoration of Charles II when Thomas Kinsey was aged 24:

To prevent flooding, the new church was built three feet higher than the original church, so I wonder whether the floor level of the interior of the church is the same or also raised by three feet.

These memorials in the floor pre-date the current church, so either the interior floor level is the same, or these have also been raised by three feet:

Back outside and this is Bishops Park Lower Stairs:

I can find very little about these stairs, both Bishops Park Upper and Lower Stairs.

The name Bishops Park refers to the park around Fulham Place, the home until 1973 of the Bishops of London.

In the following extract from Rocque’s map of 1746, the original Putney Bridge (labelled as Fulham Bridge), can be seen to lower right. Fulham Palace is the area with the enclosure to the upper left of the bridge:

The names of both Fulham Bridge and Putney Bridge were both used to name the bridge, with Putney winning out in later years.

There are no obvious stairs shown in the map along the whole of the river.

I would have assumed that the Bishops of London would have made considerable use of the river as a means of travelling to and from Westminster and the City of London.

In the following extract from the same map, there are two breaks in the enclosure around the palace facing on to the river, but there is no indication that there were any stairs facing these openings.

There had been an embankment along the river to prevent flooding, and the large river wall that we see today, and along which there is a walkway that follows the river, was built by Joseph Mears between 1889 and 1893, so perhaps the stairs date from this period.

The lack of any obvious early stairs may have been because the previous embankment provided a more accessible way of reaching the river rather than a large, stone river wall, so the two stairs were added to provide access. I just have no proof, one way or the other.

The Port of London Authority listing provides no information as to their age.

Looking back to Putney Bridge:

Continuing further along the walkway, and I reach Bishops Park Upper Stairs:

These are of the same design as the Bishops Park Lower Stairs, and again must have been part of the original construction of the river wall.

Both sets of stairs are surrounded by railings, and have a locked gate to the stairs facing the park:

Both are substantial, wide sets of stairs, and are in good condition:

Frustrating that I could not find any detail as to the age or use of the stairs, but it is good to see that these large flights of stairs down to the river are there, and in good condition.

From here, I continued my walk to Hammersmith Bridge, as there was one more set of Thames stairs to find, and there is much to discover along this part of the Thames. The subject of a future post.

A Microscopic Examination of the Water Supplied to the Inhabitants of London

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The level of pollution in the River Thames has long been a problem, even in 2026, decades of under investment in sewage treatment has resulted in effluent being dumped in the river. Hopefully something the Tideway Tunnel will help resolve.

The state of the river in the 19th century was far worse than it is today. The rapid rise of London’s population and industry resulted in large quantities of effluent being dumped, untreated in the river.

Similar to the Tideway Tunnel, Joseph Bazalgette’s sewer system and pumping works of the 1860s and 1870s acted as an interceptor, catching sewage before it was dumped in the river, and routing it to new treatment works.

Before construction of this new system, the condition of the river was an open sewer, and what was worse, the river was used as a source of water by the water companies that supplied the city. Even the companies that relied on other sources were frequently drawing on heavily polluted water.

In April 1850, Arthur Hill Hassall published “A Microscopic Examination of the Water Supplied to the Inhabitants of London and the Suburban Districts”, where he reported on an investigation into the sources of water used by the London water companies, and examined the condition of their water supplies using a microscope to see what material the water contained.

Arthur Hill Hassell was the son of a Doctor and was born in Teddington in 1817. He was a student in Dublin and apprenticed to his uncle, Sir James Murray, a Dublin physician, and whilst in Dublin he published his first work “A Catalogue of Irish Zoophytes”, where he used a microscope to examine microscopic organisms, which at the time were believed to be somewhere between plants and animals.

After graduating, he returned to London and setup in general practice in Notting Hill, but he continued to be fascinated in what could be revealed by the microscope, and his next publications were “A History of British Freshwater Algae” (1845), and “The Microscopic Anatomy of the Human Body” (1849).

His 1850 publication would reveal the horrendous state of the water supplied to the residents of London.

In his description of the method used, he states that he collected a wine bottle full of water from the output of the different water companies, the river, and the sewer system, and examined samples of this water under a microscope.

Arthur Hill Hassall:

Licence: Public Domain Mark, Credit: Arthur Hill Hassall. Photograph. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.

In 1850, there were a number of privately owned water companies that supplied different areas of London. These were, along with the main source of their water as listed in Hassall’s book:

New River Company (source – springs around Ware in Hertfordshire and the River Lea)
East London Company (source – the River Lea near Old Ford, Stratford, below Lea Bridge)
Hampstead Company (source – several large ponds near to Hampstead Heath)
Kent Company (source – the River Ravensbourne)
Lambeth Company (source – the River Thames at Lambeth)
Vauxhall Company (source – the River Thames at Vauxhall)
Southwark Company (source – the River Thames, also at Vauxhall)
Chelsea Company (source – the River Thames, near Battersea)
West Middlesex Company (source – the River Thames at Barnes)
Grand Junction Company (source – the River Thames at Brentford)

In his examination of the water under the microscope, he was looking for organic and inorganic matter, including specific organic material that he described as “complex in organisation, endowed with life, and in many cases possessed of active powers of locomotion”.

Using the scientific understanding and terminology of the time, he described this type of organic material as:

Infusoria – animal productions, and include a great variety of singularly organized atoms, most of which are invisible to the common eye
Entomostraca – constitute a well defined division of Crustacea, or the Crab tribe and are remarkable for having their bodies enclosed in shell-like cases
Conferveae – vegetable productions of very simple organisation, consisting of cells or utricles, placed end to end and joined together, forming, by their union, threads often of extreme fineness
Desmideae – also vegetable productions, exhibiting however, some affinities to animals, so that, for a long time, it was a matter of doubt and dispute to which of the kings of the organic world they really belonged.
Diatomaceae – unite in their organization the characters of both plants and animals, insomuch that it is still uncertain which they really are. They are readily distinguished from all other organisms by their colour, which is brown, and by the fact that they are furnished with skeletons of Silex, or flint; it is this which renders them so durable – indeed, almost indestructible.

These are rather dry descriptions of what could be found in samples of water, so in a perfect example of a picture is worth a thousand words, Hassall included colour illustrations of what he saw whilst looking through the microscope at the samples of water collected in a wine bottle from across London.

Firstly, the Thames at Brentford and at Hungerford (near where the railway bridge is located today between the South Bank and Charing Cross):

Comparing these two illustrations shows that whilst the Thames at Brentford was bad enough, in central London there was a dense collection of both organic and inorganic matter.

Hassell adds little notes to show how he collected the water, and for Hungerford he added that the water was collected “two hours after the steam-boats ceased to ply”. Presumably, then as now, powered boats on the river churn up the sediment and prevent it from settling, and Hassall wanted to collect his samples in as near a natural state as possible.

As well as the view through the microscope, he added that the water from Hungerford presented a dirty and opaque appearance, and also contained dead organic matter, very considerable, both animal and vegetable, ochreous substance; down of wheat.

Hassall was surprised by the amount of living matter that he found in the water at Brentford, and he conducted further tests along the river, and came to the conclusion that “these have brought to light the singular and important fact, that Thames water, from Brentford in one direction, to Woolwich in the opposite, warms with living productions”, and that they are met with the greatest abundance near to central London and in the neighbourhood of the bridges.

He also added the following description of what a walker alongside the Thames in the mid 19th century would see:

“In one spot he will notice the carcases of dead animals, rotting, festering, swarming with flies and maggots, and from which a pestilential odour proceeds, contaminating the air around; in another he will see a variety of refuse borne along by the lazy current of the stream – decaying vegetables, the leaves and stalks of cabbages, grass from a recently mown lawn, excrement; in another he will remark on the commotion of the water, occasioned by the bubbling up of some noxious gas; and still further on, he will perceive some sewer; discharging its corrupt and filthy contents into the bed of the river, and causing the water around to assume an inky blackness.

Should the tide be out, the observer should now abandon the towing path, take a boat, and row to some of the shallower parts of the stream, If here he plunges his hand into the water, he will bring up a dirty and slimy mass. Entire acres (I might say without exaggeration) of a substance similar to the above may frequently noticed on the recession of the tide.”

To show what was being put into the Thames, he included a picture and description of sewer water, which contained large amounts of both organic and inorganic matter, much dead and decomposing matter, a black carbonaceous matter on which the inky colour of many sewer waters depend, and large quantities of sulphated hydrogen.

All this was being pumped into the river, frequently not that far from where a water company was drawing water to supply the residents and industries of the city.

Drawings of the view through the microscope of sewer water, and the first of the water companies examined- the Grand Junction Company:

The Grand Junction Company took their water from the Thames at Brentford, at a place which Hassall described as being “within reach of the sewage of that large and dirty town”.

Next came the West Middlesex Company, which took water from the Thames at Barnes, along with a sample of Cistern water:

The lower image shows Cistern Water, and the text explains that this was water from a cistern supplied by the Hampstead Water Company.

Cisterns were tanks where water was temporarily stored as part of the overall distribution system, between the source / reservoir, and the end user.

Hassall found numerous problems with the quality of the water in cisterns across London, and he had the follow general comment about cistern water “It may be observed, in general. that these waters contain the same forms of organic life as those encountered in the waters of several companies, with this important difference, however, that their numbers, for equal quantities of fluid, are usually much greater in the former than in the later”.

He goes on to explain that the samples he took from cisterns contained much greater quantities of living organisms, than the source water, for example:

The Chelsea Company is remarkable for its bunches of Ova cases
That of the Lambeth Company for its immense numbers of Bursaria and Paramecia
That of the Vauxhall Company for its hirsute worms or Annelida

Hassall makes the observation that the amount of life found in cisterns was dependent on the time of year (more growth when the weather was mild or warm) and also on whether the cisterns were frequently cleaned.

The Chelsea Company, who took their water from the Thames, near Battersea, and the Southwark Company, who took their water from the Thames near Vauxhall:

The water of the Southwark Company was described as being in the “worst condition in which it is conceivable any water to be, as regards its animalcular contents, in a worse state even than Thames water itself, as taken from the bed of the river”. Quite some achievement for the Southwark company to have their water described as being worse than the river water.

In the mid 19th century, the Southwark and Vauxhall Water Companies had combined. Most of the water companies had moved their supply sources to beyond the expanding city of London, looking for sources which did not have the same level of contamination as the Thames, along with methods of purification such as increased use of, and more complex design, of filtration beds, however the Southwark and Vauxhall Company still had their works in Battersea, as shown in the following map from 1894 (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

The site of the Southwark & Vauxhall Water Works would later become the site of Battersea Power Station, and if you walk through the power station building today, you are walking over the space once occupied by the central reservoir.

The Lambeth and New River Company’s water:

The Lambeth Company’s water “is procured from the river at Lambeth, and not far from a large sewer”.

In looking at the samples of water Hassall concluded that “the water of the Companies on the Surrey side of London, viz. the Southwark, Vauxhall, and Lambeth, is by far the worst of all those who take their supply from the Thames. They are demonstrably contaminated with more or less of the organic and decomposing matters, animal and vegetable, derived from sewer-water”.

In the above drawings, the lower is from the New River Company, who took water from the springs around the Hertfordshire town of Ware, along with the River Lea in Hertfordshire. This water was transported along a man-made river to the reservoir of the New River Company in northern Clerkenwell, from where it was distributed to consumers across the city.

See this post on New River Head and London’s Water Industry.

Hassall described that in the New River Company’s water, “living animalcules were not very numerous, but that it contained great numbers of Diatomaceous”, and that it also held abundant filaments of Fungi, dead organic matter, and much earthy matter, so even using a source well away from the polluted city did not mean that you had a clean supply to distribute to your consumers.

The water of the Hampstead Water Company was described as being generally bright and clear, but did contain numbers of Entomostraca and Infusoria.

The East London Company took their water supplies from the River Lea, and it was described as being similar to the water of the New River Company.

The Kent Company took their water from the Ravensbourne, and this water contained numerous species of the organic life that Hassall listed, along with much dead organic matter, and for good measure, quantities of grit.

Arthur Hassall was rather innovative in his thinking about sources of pollution in the Thames. He did not just look at the sources within central London, but considered the Thames as an overall system, comprising the core river, along with all the tributaries and the towns along the river and tributaries, as the inhabitants of all these towns were also putting all their rubbish, industrial waste and sewage indirectly into the Thames, and all this would eventually find its way to where the central London water companies were extracting their water.

Hassall used the 1841 census to illustrate the problem, and in the following table, he had added up the population of the towns along the Thames and tributaries above the town of Henley (Hassall used the name Isis for the river for its length from source to where it joins the River Thame by the village of Dorchester in Oxfordshire):

The following table shows the population along the Thames from Henley to London, as well as the towns along the tributaries that join along this section of the Thames:

This gave a total population of 2,316,273 living within the system of the Thames and its tributaries up to and including the city of London, according to the 1841 census (although it was higher than this as Hassall admits that there were some small towns where he had not been able to find the population).

It was not just the population along the river, but also the rapid growth of industry in London, and major towns in the river and tributary area, also produced polluted water as an industrial by-product, and frequently dumped this into the river system.

The state of the river was such that there were many cartoons emphasising the appalling state of the river, and the impact that it had on the health of the city’s residents, such as the following from Punch magazine in 1858:

Source and attribution: Punch Magazine, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In the book, Hassall included a section on Remedial Considerations, where he offered suggestions for improving the quality of water supplied to Londoners.

In doing so, he does not consider cleaning up the river, rather by seeking cleaner supplies of source water. His reasons for assuming the state of the river will not change are:

“It has been shown, and the fact is established by incontrovertible evidence, that all those companies who take their water from the Thames draw it from a polluted source, and, as long as this river is employed as the outlet of all the sewage of so vast a city as London, so long must its water used by so many of the metropolitan companies be bad at its sources, it can scarcely be otherwise than impure when delivered to the public.”

The challenge was in finding new, clean sources of water. Hassall looked at the River Wandle, which had a source in springs near Croydon, along with a large pond, however he finds that the refuse of a gas-works, a tan yard. a slaughter house and the sewage of the town is poured into the pond, and hence the Wandle.

Similar issues are found with all the small rivers around the wider area, people, industry, and even cross contamination between streams and canals.

In the mid-19th century, it seems almost every possible source of water in the counties around London was polluted to a greater or lesser degree.

Artesian Wells were a possibility, as these draw water from deep below ground, however Hassall considers the “operation of boring deep into the bowels of the earth” as expensive, uncertain and unnecessary, and that we should really be using the abundant supplies of water that nature provides on the surface of the earth.

Hassall recommended that open reservoirs be covered up, that cisterns should be cleaned regularly, and that water in cisterns should be refreshed, being stored in a cistern for no longer than 24 hours. At the time, many of these cisterns were made of lead, which was not recognised as a problem in the mid 19th century.

Filtration was identified as a major way of cleaning water between source and distribution, and Hassall conducted a series of experiments to determine the best method of filtration, using different types of charcoal, patent filters, loam, mild and strong clays, to see which individual or combination of materials would provide the cleanest water, and he identified a combination of charcoal, and clay mixed with sand as the best approach, and that three consecutive filtering operations should be carried out.

His summary recommendations are that a proper water supply to a populous city such as London, requires:

An unpolluted source
An unlimited supply
Perpetual renewal
Filtration
The abolition or modification of reservoirs and cisterns
Moderate cost

It would take many decades for the changes to be implemented that were needed to provide London with a clean supply of water. Investment, engineering, technical improvements, new sources, storage methods, distribution networks etc. were all needed, and today, on the whole, we have a very clean supply of water.

The Thames is today, cleaner than it was in the mid 19th century, but there is no way that I would want to drink water straight from the river, and I find it worrying when I see children playing on the foreshore, who, being children, will put their fingers in their mouth.

The Tideway Tunnel will prevent many of the overflows into the river from the wider London area, however as Hassall described back in 1850, it is the whole catchment area of the river and tributaries that need to be clean, as these contribute to the waters that flow through central London.

Perhaps we need another Arthur Hassall to graphically describe the contents of the water that flows through the city.

He seems to have been widely respected for his knowledge of water contamination. In July 1850, the same year as the publication of his book on the water companies of London, he was speaking at the Botanical Society of London “On the colouration of the water of the Serpentine”, where he described the cause of the vivid green colouration of the Serpentine that had taken place that year.

In the same year he also published a report on the “Adulteration of Coffee”, which apparently was a problem at the time, as he reported that roasted wheat, beans and potatoes had all been used.

As well as the pictures shown earlier in the post, Arthur Hassall’s writing was always very descriptive, and I will leave you with this graphic sentence from his summary, back in 1850:

“It is thus beyond dispute that, according to the present system of London water supply, a portion of the inhabitants of the metropolis are made to consume, in some form or other, a portion of their own excrement, and, moreover, to pay for the privilege.”

Watermen’s Rates, The Shock of America and a 19th Century Street View

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Three different subjects in this week’s post, but they all have a common theme of time – change over time, how centuries old data can be interpreted in modern ways, and how the future always develops in a way we can never foresee, starting with:

The 1803 Table of Watermen’s Rates

In last week post on Pageant’s Stairs, one of the references I included to the stairs, was the Watermen’s rates for taking you from London Bridge to the stairs in 1803, according to the “Correct Table of the Fares of Watermen, which has recently been made out by the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen”, as published in the Evening Mail on Monday the 16th of May, 1803..

The table included the rates for a long length of the Thames, from Windsor to Gravesend, and in my nerdy way of looking at stuff like this, I thought it would be interesting to interpret this data in a way we are familer with now, if we travel on London’s underground and rail network, where basic charging is by zone.

So taking the starting point of London Bridge, in the City of London, I mapped the rates in 1803 on to a map of the Thames, with each zone defining a specific Watermen’s price to row you from London Bridge.

If you walked down to the river in 1803 to take a Watermen’s boat to your destination, then, as with an Underground station today, we can imagine the following maps pinned to the wall of the alley leading down to the stairs, the first map starting with the zones from London Bridge out to Blackwall (the actual zone pricing is after the maps). All base maps are © OpenStreetMap contributors:

London Bridge is the bridge on the left edge of Zone 1, and this is the starting point for a journey east along the river, and as with Transport for London’s (TfL), charging today, the price increases as the length of journey increases.

There are some strange charges, for example the whole of the Isle of Dogs appears to be in a higher priced zone (6), whilst Deptford has it’s own little zone (5), which is a lower price to the Isle of Dogs.

Displaying data in this way does make some huge assumptions. For example, with the Isle of Dogs, the 1803 table does not specify where on the Isle of Dogs the priced journey would end, so as stated in the table it looks to cover a large distance of river, from Limehouse round to Blackwall.

In the next map, we continue along the river to Gravesend, which, as Zone 13 is the final easterly zone, and priced destination in the 1803 table:

There seems to be no standard length of journey, so as can be seen in the above map, the length along the river of zone 9 is much more than zones 11 or 12.

The pricing and sample locations within each zone is shown in the following table:

The best description of the difference between Oars and Sculler that I can find, is that with Oars, a rower is holding a single Oar in two hands, whilst with a Sculler, a rower is holding a pair of Oars in both hands.

I assume this explains the difference in pricing and why the price for a Sculler ends at the Isle of Dogs / Greenwich, as a boat could be rowed by a single person, using two oars, where with Oars, at least two people would be needed, each holding one oar on either side of the boat.

If this is wrong, comments are always appreciated.

The price for a Sculler ending at the Isle of Dogs / Greenwich is probably due to this being the physical limit that a single person could row along the river.

Regarding my earlier comment about the difference in length of the zones, the pricing table helps to explain this, with the jump in rates roughly rises in line with the distance travelled.

The above maps and table cover the east of the river. If you wanted to travel west, then there is a similar zone map hanging on the wall at London Bridge.

This is the first seven zones, from London Bridge up to Wandsworth:

Zone 6 covers the rate to Chelsea, and the following print from 1799 shows a party being rowed along Chelsea Reach. The boat is being rowed by Oars, as there are six rowers and three oars either side, so each rower is holding a single oar with both hands:

(© 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 above print shows several people being rowed by a team of six, and an obvious question is whether the rates apply to any number of passengers and number of rowers, and the answer is that there is an additional charge.

The 1803 Table of Watermen’s rates states that for the journey from London Bridge to Chelsea, for every additional passenger, there is an additional charge of 4d on top of the base rate, so in the above print there are ten passengers, plus two playing instruments who I assume also incur a charge as they are not Watermen.

The man at the back is wearing a Watermen’s badge on his arm, so presumably comes with the boat, so if the above boat had been rowed from London Bridge to Chelsea, the charge (see table after the next two maps) would have been 2s 6d base rate plus 12 times 4d (passengers plus musicians), so a total charge of 5 shillings and 10 pence.

Continuing along to Zone 18, Shepperton, Chertsey and Weybridge:

The final two zones, 19 and 20 run all the way to Windsor:

The table of rates travelling west from London Bridge:

The final five zones from Hampton Court / Town up to Datchet and Windsor:

The journey out to Windsor is considerable, and is way beyond the area of Port of London Authority’s responsibility, which ends at Teddington, the last westerly point on the tidal Thames.

Including Windsor in the Waterman’s rates must have meant there was demand for travel this far west, and is probably due to the times when the Monarch was based at Windsor Castle, so there would have been a need for travel from central London out to Windsor.

The price is also considerable for 1803 at 21 shillings, and on top of this there was a 3 shilling charge for additional passengers. Assuming the traveller from London to Windsor required a return trip, then the price would have been double, so not a journey that the average Londoner would have taken. Only one for the rich, and those on state business.

As well as listing charges for additional passengers, there were a number of other additional charges:

If the journey is not a direct journey between places on the river, for example, if the journey is taking or collecting passengers from a ship, which may include waiting at the ship whilst passengers and luggage transfer, then the Waterman has the option of charging either the standard distance rate, or a time rate of 6d for every half hour for oars, and 3d for scullers.
If the Waterman is detained at a stop by the passenger, for example having to wait at the destination stop whilst the passengers wait to disembark, wait to be met etc. then the Waterman can charge an additional 6d per half hour of waiting for oars and 3d for scullers.
A journey directly across the river is charged at the standard rate of 2d, or if more than one person, 1d per person
There were also standard rates between different stairs or landing places on the river, these were roughly the difference between the zones in which the different places were located. As an example, Wapping (Zone 3) to Greenwich (Zone 7), was 1 shilling 6 pence. The difference of the London Bridge standard rates of 2s 6d (to Greenwich) minus 1s (to Wapping, Zone 3).
No more than six persons are to be carried in a wherry (the standard Watermen’s boat), and up to Windsor and Greenwich, up to eight in a passage boat (which I believe is a larger boat than the basic wherry).

One surprising omission is any reference to the state of the tide, as for a rowed or sculled boat, it would have been considerably harder rowing against the tide than rowing with the ride. It may be that this is expected to average out over a series of journeys with half being against the tide and half with the tide.

It would also be interesting to add a time column to the listing of rates, as the journey to the furthest reaches to the east and the west must have been considerable. This was reflected in the rates for the watermen, however it must have taken many hours to reach the furthest places in the table, and time of the journey would have been variable, depending on tide, weather, other river traffic etc.

Despite what seems to be well regulated pricing, there were challenges for the passenger who used the river to travel through London.

The following print dated 1816 from the Miseries of London series shows a woman walking down the steps at Wapping Old Stairs, presumably wanting a boat to travel to her destination, and being “assailed by a group of watermen, holding out their hands and calling Oars, Sculls, Sculls, Oars, Oars”:

(© 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 Watermen are wearing their badge on their arms to signify that they are a Waterman, and the following is an example of such a badge:

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

Not adhering to the rates would often result in being brought to court, for example in 1847, waterman John Thomas Jones was in court on a charge of overcharging a passenger 12s 6d for a fare that should have been 4s 3d. The Waterman was fined 20s.

Watermen also were at a number of risks, as well as the daily danger of rowing along a congested river, they were also valued for their skills, and were prized as recruits for the Navy.

A report in the London Magazine in 1738 on the need to crew several new naval ships, states that a “press” took place on the river, with 2,370 men taken and enrolled in the Navy, the majority of them being Watermen.

The 19th century saw a gradual decline in the need for a Watermen to row passengers along the river.

The growth of steam ships on the river, the growth of the railways, underground, improved roads, bridges etc. all made it easier to travel without the need to be rowed.

Steam powered boats started ferrying passengers along the river, although initially this method of transport was not always safe and reliable. The following print from 1817 titled “Travelling by Steam” shows two Watermen watching a steam packet boat exploding and throwing the boat’s passengers across the river:

(© 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 newspapers listing of the Watermen’s Rates were always dense columns of text, and showing these visually on a map, in a similar way in which TfL display underground and rail fares helps with understanding part of the rich life of London’s river.

One big difference between 1803 Watermen charges and today’s TfL charging is that in 1803 there was no capping of the daily charge, so in 1803, you would have been charged for each journey you would have taken on the river.

The Sunbeam Weekly and the Pilgrim’s Pocket – Shock and Outrage at the Evolution of the United States of America

There is a wonderful statue at Cumberland Wharf in Rotherhithe, which is today a small area of open space alongside the river at the place indicated by the arrow in the following map:

Once a wharf between Rotherhithe Street and the Thames, servicing a large granary across the street via conveyors which ran across the street in the photo below, and which shows the area occupied by Cumberland Wharf:

If you look to the left of the space, there is a walkway with a statue at the end, which is alongside the river:

The statue consists of a taller figure – William Bradford, who was Governor of the New Plymouth colony in the United States for a number of periods between the years 1621 and 1657. The boy is in 1930s clothes, and represents a local boy reading a comic of the time:

The work by Peter McLean dates from 1991 and is titled “Sunshine Weekly and the Pilgrims Pocket”:

William Bradford was one the Pilgrims who left Rotherhithe on the Mayflower in 1620. The ship sailed from Rotherhithe from the area around Cumberland Wharf, although not their last port of call in England, as they stopped off at Plymouth before crossing the Atlantic on a two month journey.

Bradford is looking over the boy’s shoulder at his comic with, as described in the adjacent information board, “a look of shock and outrage” as he turns the pages of the comic:

The Sunbeam Weekly was a comic from the 1930s:

Why was the Pilgrim William Bradford, who had a long career as the Governor of the Plymouth Colony at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, looking at a 1930s comic with a look of shock and outrage?

The reason is that the pages of the comic are showing how the United States of America has evolved since the Pilgrims landed in 1620.

(Sorry, the photo is slightly out of focus. It was grey, overcast, raining, breezy and cold).

The pages of the comic show the Statue of Liberty, an aeroplane, cars, a train, skyscrapers, the Space Shuttle and King Kong:

William Bradford was a Puritan, the strand of English Protestantism that believed that the Reformation had not gone far enough in ridding the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices. Puritans, and the clash between reformers. separatists and the established church would play a major part in the English Civil War and the Protectorate which would take place during the 1640s and 1650s.

I am sure Bradford would be absolutely shocked how the United States has developed in the 400 years since he was part of Plymouth Colony. I am not sure about the outrage, as Puritans were against Roman Catholicism rather than what can loosely be described as technical progress, however they were strict religious adherents (which is where stories about Christmas festivities being banned during the Protectorate, although in reality the vast majority of the population continued to celebrate).

The pocket of William Bradford includes some key symbols.

A 1620 A to Z of the New World, a lobster claw and fish to show the seafood that was key to the Pilgrims survival in the early years of the colony, and a cross which is symbolic of the religion that the Pilgrims carried to the new colony. There is a small US badge at the base of the cross:

The artist’s tools are shown at the feet of the statue:

And along the edge of the base is the sculptors name and year the work was created:

I think this is a wonderful work of art.

I often wonder when looking at old photos, what the people in the photo would think about how the future has developed, as it is always in a different way to that expected at the time.

My father mainly photographed scenes rather than focusing on people, however whilst it is a gap of only 73 years, compared with the almost 400 years in the Rotherhithe statue, it would be interesting to see how those waiting for the 1953 Coronation procession in one of his photos, would look at the London of today:

If you walk the Thames path in Rotherhithe, or along Rotherhithe Street, stop at Cumberland Wharf to take a look at “Sunshine Weekly and the Pilgrims Pocket” and also consider that whatever we expect the future to be – it will almost certainly be very different.

And for the final look at a different aspect of time hopping, another of my first post of the month looks at the resources available if you are interested in discovering more about the history of London:

Resources – Tallis’s London Street Views

Today, if you want to look at a street and see the buildings and businesses along the street you can use Google Street View.

Imagine if it was possible to do this for the years long before photography and Google made this possible, well for the years between the late 1830s and early 1840s there is a Street View available, which whilst being drawn, and not as comprehensive as Google still provides the opportunity to take a virtual walk along a London street.

This is Tallis’s London Street Views.

(Before going further, the version of Tallis’s Street Views available on line is the 2002 reprint of a London Topographical Society (LTS) print of the street views. The copy was held by the University of Michigan and digitised by Google, and is made available online by the HathiTrust, a US organisation who describe themselves as:

“HathiTrust was founded in 2008 as a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries now preserving 19+ million digitized items in the HathiTrust Digital Library. We offer reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. and international copyright law, text and data mining tools for the entire corpus, and other emerging services based on the combined collection.”

The HathiTrust have made the work available under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives.

It is difficult to know the true copyright status of documents such as this, when you have very large organisations such as Google digitising vast amounts of works and many, often US based organisations making these fully available online, a situation which I expect is going to get more problematic in years to come).

John Tallis was the publisher of the Street Views. He was based at 15 St. John’s Lane, near St. John’s Gate.

Tallis was a prolific publisher of prints covering people (real and fictional), actors, landscape scenes, buildings, places etc. As well as multiple prints of London, he published images of other places, for example the following print of Margate Pier and Harbour:

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

Initially, Street Views was published in parts before being published as a complete set.

The following, from the Gloucester Journal on the 21st of July 1838 is typical of advertising for the Street Views:

“TALLIS’S LONDON STREET VIEWS. For the sum of Three-half-pence, you can purchase a correct View, beautifully engraved on steel, and drawn by an artist of great talent, of upwards of One Hundred Houses, with a Street Directory, or a Key to the Name and Trade of every occupier to which is added a Map of the District, and an Historical account of such Streets, Courts, or public Buildings worth recording.”

The Street Views obviously does not cover all the streets of London, but does provide comprehensive coverage of the major thoroughfares of central London, along with many of the smaller streets, particularly in the City.

An example of the way that streets are illustrated is the following view of part of Hatton Garden:

As well as an illustration of the building, where a business occupies a building, the name and trade is also provided, so at number 109 Hatton Garden there is a Pianoforte Maker and Music Publisher who presumably goes by the name of Hart.

Next door at 108 there is Schonberg, Engraver and Printer, along with a Taylor and Draper in the same building, and at 106 there is Battistessa & Co, Looking Glass and Artificial Flower Maker.

What is fascinating is being able to find more about these business, and in the British Museum collection is a trade card for the above mentioned L. Schonberg of 108 Hatton Garden:

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

Tallis’s London Street View is a fascinating way of walking the streets of London in the late 1830s and early 1840s, and a reminder that John Tallis came up with this format of recording a city long before Google Street View.

The Tallis’s Street View can be found at the HathiTrust, by clicking here, where you can scroll through the pages or download a copy.

Google Street View is a brilliant equivalent resource of today. Imagine being interested in London’s history in a couple of centuries time, and being able to walk through a photographic view of the City’s streets, however continuing the theme of the future is always very different to that we expect, and that services such as Street View are digital, will they survive that length of time given the magnitude of change that can occur over such a period of time.

Pageant Stairs, Pageant’s Wharf, a Fire Station, Obelisk, and Bus Stop, Rotherhithe

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I am in Rotherhithe this week, to visit another of the Thames Stairs that have lined the river for centuries, and to explore the history of the stair’s surroundings. This is Pageant or Pageant’s Stairs, back in January 2024, when the concrete floor at the top of the stairs, as well as the stairs leading down to the foreshore, were all covered in a layer of ice:

I have marked the location of the stairs with a red arrow in the following map, on the southern side of the river, opposite Limehouse (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

Pageant Stairs are shown in the 1914 revision of the Ordnance Survey map, at the end of an alley that leads between a fire station (yellow oval), and a public house (red arrow) from Rotherhithe Street (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

I was pleased to find there was a public house at the entry to the alley, as this confirms my theory that almost every Thame’s stairs, east of the City, had an associated pub, most alongside the stairs, others directly opposite or adjacent. I will come onto the pub and the fire station later in the post.

Pageant Stairs are listed in the Port of London Authority list of Steps, Stairs and Landing Places on the Tidal Thames, where they are described as “Concrete steps then wood steps, concrete apron”, and the listing states that they were in use as a landing place in 1708 (although the list does not identify the source of the 1708 reference, which is a standard date throughout the list for all stairs).

The earliest written reference I can find to the stairs is from the Oracle and Daily Advertiser on the 23rd of September, 1802, where business premises at or adjacent to the stairs are for sale and listed in the following advert:

“EXTENSIVE PREMISES, NEARLY OPPOSITE THE WEST-INDIA DOCKS, ROTHERHITHE, By Mr. SMITH.

At Garraway’s, tomorrow at twelve o-clock, in one Lot. THE CAPITAL and DESIRABLE LEASEHOLD PREMISES, conveniently situate for stores, in front of the Thames, at Pageant’s Stairs, Rotherhithe, late in the occupation of Messrs. Giorgi and Co. Chemists and Refiners; comprising a substantial dwelling house, garden, and small paddock, wharf and extensive warehouses for trade and merchandise; coach-house and stabling for three horses, well planned laboratory, drug, camphor and saltpetre-room; also a large warehouse, adjoining, in front of the Thames.”

So at the very start of the 19th century, the area around Pageant’s Stairs was already industrialised, with one of the many companies working in the chemicals industry that occupied the banks of the river, east of the City.

The 1802 advert mentions that the extensive premises included a substantial dwelling house, garden and small paddock. This is indicative of the semi-rural and small scale nature of the businesses along this stretch of the river as they developed during the late 18th century. Throughout the 19th century, the scale of industrial development would increase considerably.

A year later, Pageant’s Stairs are mentioned in the Evening Mail on the 18th of May, 1803 where the stairs are included in a listing of “Table of the New Rates of the Fares of Watermen”, with a rate “from Iron Gate to Duke-Shore stairs or Pageants, Oars 1s, Sculler 6d”.

Iron Gate Stairs were where Tower Bridge is today, and the stairs were rebuilt under the bridge (see this post). Duke Shore Stairs were on the northern side of the river, almost directly opposite Pageant Stairs.

Pageant’s Stairs were also frequently mentioned when recording events on the river, such as an 1870 report on the discovery of a body in the river by four young men who were rowing a boat. The location was given as being near Pagent’s Stairs, Rotherhithe.

In this article, the name was spelt Pagent, rather than Pageant, and this different spelling also seems to have been in use, but not as much as the far more frequent Pageant, sometimes with an ‘s.

The current build of the stairs, is, I assume, from the late 1980s / early 1990s redevelopment of the area when the residential buildings that now line this stretch of the river were built.

The approach to Pageant Stairs is up a series of steps, which form part of the river wall, and give an indication of the potential for high tides along this stretch of the river:

Alongside the stairs, we can see how they have been built within a walled surround, a way of continuing the river wall around the stairs:

It is not clear where the name Pageant originates. There was a wharf to the side of the stairs called Pageant’s Wharf, so the name may have come from the wharf, or the wharf took the name of the stairs.

The earliest written references I can find to the wharf date to around the same few years as the first written references to the stairs. This first reference to the wharf comes from the Morning Chronicle on the 17th of December 1804, and includes a possible alternative name of George’s Wharf:

“Twenty New Gun Carriages and Beds, nearly completed, to carry 18-pounders, Stock of Wrought Iron, Oak ad Elm Timber, Fire Wood, &c. Pageant’s Wharf, Rotherhithe. By Mr. Hindle, on the premises known by Pagent’s or George’s Wharf near the Board of Ordnance, Rotherhithe, tomorrow at 11.”

The stairs, wharf and name are almost certainly older than the above newspaper references, and it is probable that there was a wharf here in the late 1600s.

Rocque’s map from 1746 shows some short lines indicating stairs, leading down onto the foreshore, along with the name, The Pageants (in the centre of the following extract):

It is interesting that in the above map, to the east of the Pageants, we can see a plot of land almost as described in the 1802 advert, where there are buildings and open space that almost exactly correspond to the description as “comprising a substantial dwelling house, garden, and small paddock, wharf and extensive warehouses for trade and merchandise; coach-house and stabling for three horses, well planned laboratory, drug, camphor and saltpetre-room; also a large warehouse, adjoining, in front of the Thames“.

The plural – the Pageants – in Rocque’s map is the same form as used in the 1803 table of Watermen’s rates so it is probable that this was the version of the name used during the 18th and into the early 19th century.

Whether the name refers to a person, perhaps the owner of the wharf or land at some point, it is impossible to say, but it must have been in use for at least 300 years.

I also found one reference where the name used was Little Pageant’s Wharf.

The main industry along this stretch of the river was ship building, and a wider view of the Rocque map shows that in 1746, the area between what is now Rotherhithe Street (then Lavender Street) was full of shipwrights and timber yards, whilst inland of Rotherhithe / Lavender Street, it was all agricultural. It was proximity to the river which drove the early development of Rotherhithe:

There is a brilliant little booklet by Stuart Rankin published in 1996 as the Rotherhithe Local History Paper No. 1 which has a single comment about the Pageants, that they were at one time occupied by the business of Punnett & Sindrey, who were ship breakers.

In the early 20th century, the site was occupied by a firm of timber merchants, however the site would soon been transformed, as detailed in the following extract from the Southwark and Bermondsey Recorder on the 2nd of April 1926:

“BERMONDSEY BOROUGH COUNCIL – NEW DUST DESTRUCTOR TO BE PROVIDED IN BERMONDSEY AT A COST OF £19,327.

In the connection with the decision of the Bermondsey Borough Council to purchase Pageant’s Wharf, Rotherhithe Street, for the purpose of erecting a dust destructor, a specially convened meeting of the Council was held at the Town Hall on Monday evening.

The meeting was called as a matter of urgency in order to expedite the work, and it was decided that, subject to the submission of the necessary estimate by the Finance Committee, the tender of Meldrum’s Ltd of Timperley, near Manchester, should be accepted for the construction of the top-feed destructor, furnaces, boilers etc. in accordance with their specification, as modified by the amended drawings as approved by the Borough Surveyor, at a sum of £11,241, and that the tender of the Building Works Manager be accepted for the erection at Pageants Wharf of a steel framed, brick filled building and a brick chimney shaft, 120 feet high, at a sum of £8,086.”

The dust destructor, or incinerator, was needed as a result of the significant growth in Bermondsey’s population, and the waste they created.

It was opened in January 1927, and was capable of handling 100 tons of household waste a day.

Waste was collected from vehicles at the entrance and carried by an overhead railway, to where the waste was dropped into steel-lined hoppers, it was then delivered to three top-feed furnaces. Steam was generated in boilers from the heat generated by burning the waste, and the steam was used to generate a “steam blast”, which created a draught through the furnaces to get the fire to the high temperatures need to burn the waste.

The dust destructor was a major construction, and included concrete piles, 28feet in length, driven down into the hard ballast below the river bed. Fascinating to think that these piles are probably still there, beneath the river bed.

In the following 1939 image from the Britain from Above archive, I have marked the location of the chimney of the dust destructor. The image also shows how the agricultural land in Rocque’s map had been transformed into a large dock complex:

The dust destructor was to the east of Pageant Stairs , and occupied the space in the following 2024 photo:

In the above photo, there is a stone obelisk, and as far as I can tell, it serves absolutely no purpose, apart from decorative.

I have read stories about an alignment with Canary Wharf, and that the obelisk is on an alignment through the centre of the original development and the One Canada Square office tower.

I tried this on a map, and the obelisk is indeed on a perfect alignment (obelisk at the left hand end of the blue line, which then passes through the centre of Westferry Circus, then between North and South Colonnade, and passing through the centre of One Canada Square, which I have circled in blue) (© OpenStreetMap contributors:

This is almost getting into Ley Lines, or something from the excellent Rivers of London series of books, but I extended the line to the west, and it passes very close to the Bank Junction, and touches the northern edge of St. Paul’s Cathedral – two historic parts of the City of London.

No idea why the colonnade was built on an alignment with Canary Wharf, or whether it was intentional. Both developments were under the overall control of the London Docklands Development Corporation, so perhaps it was their idea to add some integration between the north and south of the river.

The view during my recent January 2026 visit, to take a look at Horn Stairs which are a short distance away:

The walkway in the above photo runs between Pageant Stairs and Horn Stairs. This was the view looking back from close to Horn Stairs. Note the name of the walk on the right given as Pageant Crescent (a bit hard to see in the gloom of a January day). Good that the name of the stairs and the wharf is still recorded here (although there is no name at the actual stairs):

During my visit in January 2024, the sky was clear, bright sunshine and very cold, with ice on the steps of Pageant Stairs. In January 2026, it was very wet, but above freezing, although a strong breeze along the river made it feel cold.

The weather has always had an impact on life on the Thames. We are familiar with the stories of ice fairs on the Thames in central London, but the river also froze, with ice and snow accumulating along many parts of the river.

In searching for stories about Pageant Stairs, I found a reference in the Morning Herald on the 20th of January 1838, which reported that “The state of the river is getting worse, and yesterday there was a continued freezing of the waters, in fact the accumulation of ice on the banks and in the stream itself, might be seen to hourly increase”.

The report went on to talk about the problems a ship’s captain had reaching his boat from Globe Stairs in Rotherhithe, due to the amount of snow and “enormous icebergs” on the river. He had to be rescued by a Thames police waterman, who cleared the snow overlaying the ice on the river and laid planks, so the captain could reach his ship.

Pageant Stairs was mentioned in the article as being the only place on the river, from Pageant’s Stairs, Rotherhithe, to Limehouse Hole on the opposite shore, which was pretty clear.

Looking down the stairs in January 2026, with only a small part of the foreshore visible:

The newspaper report about ice and snow on the river mentioned Limehouse Hole, and Pageant’s Stairs are directly opposite Limehouse, with the following photo looking across the houses in the far bank which face onto Narrow Street in Limehouse. Limehouse Hole is continuing round to the right:

The view was far better during my 2024 visit (the Grapes pub is roughly in the centre):

The following photo is of the view looking from Pageant Stairs down to Rotherhithe Street. The Public House marked by the PH in the Ordinance Survey map shown earlier in the post was at the end of the walkway, on the left and facing onto the walkway and Rotherhithe Street:

The pub was the Queen’s Head, one of two pubs with the same name in Rotherhithe, the other being in Paradise Street.

The Queen’s Head closed in 1928, shortly after the dust destructor, or incinerator was completed. This dirty, noisy industrial plant would have been to the rear and side of the pub, which was left in a small south-west corner of the plot of land with the rest being occupied by the dust destructor.

Not the best place to run a business such as a pub, although the river stairs were still in use.

Finding the Queen’s Head continues to confirm my theory that to the east of London, whether north or south of the river, there seems to have been a pub next to almost all the Thames stairs.

The Queen’s Head seems to have been a typical London pub, with all the appearances in local newspapers that you would expect, for example, from the Southwark and Bermondsey Recorder on the 22nd of October 1926: “DRINKS DURING PROOHIBITED HOURS. At Tower Bridge Court, before Mr. Pope, Alexander Glencross, licensee of the Queen’s Head, 243 Rotherhithe Street, was summoned for selling by his agent, Emily Newman, intoxicating liquors during prohibited hours to Jas. Quillan and Abraham Hill”.

Inquests were held in the pub, which also provide a view of the dangers of being on the river, and the complacent way in which deaths on the river seem to have been treated,. On the 18th of July 1835 “An inquest was held on Monday night at the Queen’s Head, Rotherhithe, on the body of Edward Evan Jones, aged 27, who was drowned on Friday evening by the boat which he was in being run down by a steamer. Mr. Cumberland, warehouseman of Cheapside, who was in the boat with the deceased and three others stated that as they were coming up the river they saw the Red Rover steamer about 60 yards behind them; the people on board called to them to get out of the way; they endeavoured to do so, but the off-set of the tide forced them into the middle of the stream. The Red Rover continued her course, and her bow struck the boat nearly midship, and sunk her. Witness was thrown out of the boat, and seeing the paddle-wheel coming against him, he dived under it and escaped injury. He believed that the collision might have been avoided had not the steamer been going so fast, although the off-set of the tide appeared to be the cause of the accident. The Jury returned a verdict of Accidental Death.”

On the 23rd of July 1898, William Cummings of Francis Street, Canning Town and Hugh Lane of Alphic Street Canning Tower were in court charged with stealing from the Queen’s Head a bottle of gin, a bottle of brandy, a box of cigars, quantity of cigarettes, gold brooch, silver scarfpin. money and other articles to the value of £3.

All normal for a pub by a set of Thames Stairs.

Pageant Stairs are unusual in that there is a bus stop with almost their correct name.

On Rotherhithe Street, just opposite the walkway up to the stairs is a bus stop that goes by the name of Pageant Steps:

Although in reality, I suspect the bus stop is named after the stone steps that are part of the early 1990s residential development around Pageant Stairs and Wharf. These new stone steps lead up from Rotherhithe Street between the flats, up to the obelisk.

A real shame, as whilst Pageant is in use to name this part of the walkway along the river, the stairs from street to walkway, and the obelisk seems to be called Pageant’s Obelisk, there is no plaque at the stairs naming them. Changing the Steps to Stairs for the bus stop name would also be a fitting reminder of a place where people once took a boat to travel, and now take a bus (although the use of either Steps and Stairs seems to have been relatively common) .

Whilst the majority of buildings and landscape around Pageant’s Stairs are the result of late 1980s / early 1990s development, there is a significant building that remains from the time before the dust destructor, and is there because of Rotherhithe’s industrial past.

This is the Pageant’s Wharf Fire Station, which can still be seen to the left of the walkway leading up to the stairs, still with the large distinctive doors leading to the space where fire appliances would be stored:

There is a plaque on the wall of the fire station, which for some reason is on the first floor, just visible in the above photo between the second and third windows on the right.

The height of the plaque and size of the lettering makes the plaque rather difficult to read, but a close up view shows that the building was restored by Barratt (the developers of the new residential buildings around Pageant’s Wharf), in memory of the crews who served at the fire station. The building, also now residential, was opened on the 25th of November, 1993:

The plaque refers to the station as “The Old Fire Station Rotherhithe”, which is a shame, as all the reports I have read about the station, from the time when it was in operation, call it either Pageant’s Wharf Fire Station, or the fire station at Pageant’s Wharf.

The foundation stone for the fire station was laid in March 1903, and news report stated that the new fire station was the result of the lack of fire stations in this part of Rotherhithe, and a recent large fire in the docks which expedited the funding and construction of the new station.

It opened in October 1903, and reports of the opening again mentioned the docks, “and the large numbers of wharves, where valuable property is frequently stored in large quantities and necessitating such protection”.

The fire station was equipped with a steam fire engine, owing to the fact that the water supply in the neighbourhood was poor. This was down to the area being mainly docks and industrial and “the amount of water required for domestic purposes is small, and consequently the pipe laid down Rotherhithe Street is of small diameter”.

The staff of the station consisted of an officer, six firemen and one coachman.

The coachman was part of the staff as fire appliances were still drawn by horses, and the fire station also had a two stall stable along with a fodder store. The first and second floors of the building consisted of living rooms for some of the staff (the earlier report when the foundation stone was laid also stated that the Coachman had married quarters at the fire station – presumably because the horses needed someone on site for their care at all times of the day).

An incident in the run up to the opening ceremony illustrates one of the problems of travelling in Rotherhithe.

Captain Hamilton, Chief of the Fire Brigade, with Mr Gamble, his second officer, along with a number of representatives and officials of the London County Council were travelling in carriages to the opening, but were delayed when they reached the Surrey Dock Bridge, as this had opened to allow a dredger to pass through.

This highlighted why a fire station was needed in the area around Pageant’s Wharf, as there were a number of lifting and swing bridges across Rotherhithe that could turn parts of the area into an island when they were lifted, thereby causing a delay to a fire engine trying to reach a fire.

I have marked the location of the lifting and swing bridges in the following map (in red) and the Pageant’s Wharf fire station (in black) in the following map (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“:

A report by Captain Hamilton, chief of the London Fire Brigade on fires in London during the year 1905, implies that the Pageant’s Wharf fire station was not that busy:

“The principal cause of fires where lives were lost was ‘children playing with fire’. Other causes are smouldering matches and other lights which are thrown down by people leaving buildings. Carelessly fitted electric circuits, temporary and inefficient fitting to gas cooking stoves and gas rings for heating glue etc. are grave sources of danger, as are also swinging gas brackets, particularly in warehouses and stables.

The busiest force station as regards calls in 1905 was the Euston Station, being turned out no fewer than 323 times. The smallest number of calls, viz. nine, was received at Sydenham, the same number being also received at Pageant’s Wharf, Rotherhithe.”

The report also stated that in 1905, across London, there had been 3,511 fires reported to the London fire brigade, and that 100 people had lost their lives in fires.

Despite the low number of calls, the station was doing important work, as in 1911 Pageant’s Wharf fire station won the Wells Cup, which was awarded to the London Fire Brigade Station which performs the “smartest job of the year”, won for the prompt way in which the station dealt with a fire which broke out in a big granary in their local district.

Another example of their work was in 1931 when firemen from the station rescued a thirteen year old boy who fell into the river and was at risk of being carried away by the tide. Firemen from Pageant’s Wharf got out on the river in a skiff and recovered the boy, who was taken to hospital.

The number of call outs at Pageant’s Wharf fire station seems to have continued to be relatively small compared to other stations across London, and there were occasional attempts to close the station, but these were successfully resisted.

The fire station was busy during the Second World War as the docks around Rotherhithe took heavy damage during bombing raids, but after the war there was a gradual reduction in call outs as both industry and the docks declined.

Closure of the Pageant’s Wharf fire station came at the end of the 1960s, although there were still attempts to keep the station open, with the swing bridges still given as a key justification, as in the following from the London Evening News on the 12th of September 1967:

“DOCKS BID TO SAVE FIRE STATION – Trade unionists in dockland are calling on the aid of their MP, Mr. Bob Melish, in a fight against a GLC plan to close a fire station in Rotherhithe. They are also writing to Home Secretary Mr. Roy Jenkins asking him to halt the closure when the council submits it for his approval. The GLC say the area can be adequately covered by existing stations and the one at Pageant’s Wharf is unnecessary.

The union men are worried that the area – a virtual island linked to the rest of Bermondsey by a swing bridge – could become cut off in an emergency. ‘If fire engines could not get to a blaze or flood quickly there could be serious damage or loss of life’, said a Bermondsey Trades Council spokesman. The unionists want the Home Secretary to order test runs of fire engines from neighbouring stations in peak traffic.”

No idea if the test runs were carried but, but Pageant’s Wharf fire station closed at the end of the 1960s, and the building is now residential, but thanks to the retention of the large doors on the ground floor clearly was once was a fire station.

It always amazes me how much there is to find in one small part of London, and the location of some Thames stairs always adds an additional layer of history.

The name Pageant remains in use, now covering the walkway along the river, the concrete steps from Rotherhithe Street to walkway as part of the recent redevelopment and a bus stop as well as the stairs, and the obelisk that has a strange alignment with Canary Wharf.

It is a quiet residential area, so different from the centuries of ship building, ship breaking, timber trading, an active fire station, and a place where the area’s household waste was incinerated.

New Smithfield and Billingsgate Markets, Horn Stairs and a Confusion of Greshams

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One of the challenges with the blog is that there are many updates I would like to add to previous posts. If I update the original post, then the update will be part of a post that could be from several years ago, so not very visible, therefore for this week’s post, I thought I would cover three very different updates to past posts.

The last two are based on feedback from readers, which is always greatly appreciated. The first is following a recent decision by the City of London Corporation, regarding:

The future of Smithfield and Billingsgate Markets

The City of London Corporation has been looking at relocating the Smithfield and Billingsgate markets for some years.

Smithfield Market is set to become a new cultural and commercial centre, with the new Museum of London already under construction in the old General and Poultry market buildings.

Billingsgate Market moved out of Billingsgate in 1982, when the fish and seafood market moved to a new location by the North Dock, between the northern edge of the Isle of Dogs, and the A1261 Aspen Way.

Originally, the City of London Corporation were planning to relocate both markets to Dagenham Dock, a location that was not popular with the market traders, and in November 2024, the City of London Corporation abandoned this move, and appeared to take an approach where traders would be helped to move to other locations, without having a single location available.

At the start of December 2025, the City of London Corporation announced a new policy, that the two markets would be consolidated and moved to a new location at Albert Island at the eastern end of the Royal Docks.

In the following map, the green arrow on the left shows the location of Smithfield market, the centre yellow arrow shows where Billingsgate Market is located today, and the red arrow on the right shows the future consolidated location of both markets, between the eastern end of the Royal Docks and the River Thames (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

In the following map, I have put a red line around Albert Island, the land which is planned to be used for the new markets (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

The land is currently derelict, with the majority of the buildings that once occupied the site having already been demolished.

At northern and southern ends, the land is bounded by two of the old locked entrances between the Royal Docks (a small part of which can be seen to the left), and the River Thames, on the right.

On the left centre of the map is the eastern end of the runway of London City Airport.

The following image is taken from the book that was issued to commemorate the opening of the King George V Dock in 1921. This new dock had not yet been officially opened by the King, so could only use his name once he had declared the dock open, which is why it is labelled as the New Dock in the image.

I have outlined in red the area of Albert Island as it was, following completion of the King George V Dock, the final dock of the three “Royals”:

As the plot of land is bounded on all sides by water, and the Royal Albert Dock is to the west, the plot of land goes by the name of Albert Island.

This location for the consolidated markets is a rather inspired choice.

It is a challenging location. Being at the end of the runway for London City Airport means that you could not build residential buildings. Even if these were built, they would have to be low rise, and would have the sound of planes either landing or taking off a short distance overhead.

The location is well connected from a transport perspective. In the above map, there is a road crossing towards the left of the plot. Follow this road north, and it connects to the A13, and south to the Woolwich Ferry, and further west to the new Silvertown tunnel.

The land has been derelict for some years, whilst the land around the rest of the Royal Docks has been gradually redeveloped.

Relocating the market here, will also bring a different activity to this part of east London, and will break up the rows of residential towers which have and continue to be built here, particularly along the land to the south, between the Royal Docks and the Thames.

I explored the area back in 2024 in a number of posts on the Royal Docks and surrounding areas. If you have been on my walk “In the Steps of a Woolwich Docker – From the Woolwich Ferry to the Royals”, you will also recognise Albert Island.

Firstly, this is why the site would not be suitable for residential. This photo was taken from the road that runs over Albert Island and shows that the land is at the eastern end of the London City Airport runway:

Starting from the north, this is a walk along the road over Albert Island showing how the area looks today. In the following photo, the end of residential development to the north can be seen, as well as the old locked entrances between the dock and the river. The start of Albert Island is the undeveloped land to the right of the residential:

The original eastern entrances between the Thames and the Royal Albert Dock:

Heading south and this is the central part of Albert Island. The majority of buildings associated with the docks were demolished some years ago, leaving the outline of walls, paths, streets and the concrete floors of long lost warehouses and industrial buildings:

There are still a few old streets that thread across the site, generally bounded by large growths of vegetation:

The main entrance from the road that crosses the site to Albert Island:

At the southern end of Albert Island is the locked entrance between the Thames and the King George V dock. This photo is looking at the northern side of the lock channel, which will become part of the new market site:

Also back in 2024, I had a walk around Albert Island. This is one of the old streets that thread the site, along with the one remaining warehouse building on the left:

Some of the few roads across the site were fenced off:

The only route across the island back in 2024 was a footpath that ran alongside the Thames, at the eastern edge of Albert Island. This is the footpath heading towards the Thames:

At the corner:

In the following photo, on the left is the Thames, on the right is Albert Island. It was a hot day when I went for this walk, and my main memory of this stretch is the hundreds of butterflies that were in the bushes on the right. As you walked along the footpath, they would rise out of the bushes, before settling back after I had passed – it was a rather magical place, also with the Thames on the left:

At the end of the footpath, steps up to a short path that went up to the locked entrance to the King George V dock:

Crossing the lock, and looking back towards the King George V dock. This channel marks the southern boundary of Albert Island, and the new market area which will be on the right:

The above photos were taken back in 2024, last year, 2025, I went on another walk through the area whilst I was planning my Woolwich to Royal Docks walk. I had intended to walk through Albert Island, however this proved impossible, as the crossing over the locked entrance between the Thames and King George V dock was then closed, and there was no clear route through.

I did try some options, but every route ended in fencing, or some other obstruction.

In the following photo, I had just walked along the footpath shown to the left of the photo, and optimistically found this sign for a footpath:

I followed this apparent footpath, and it ended in a waterlogged channel with no way through:

The relocation of the two markets is subject to the passing of a Parliamentary Bill to allow the old markets to be closed at their current sites, along with planning permission from Newham Borough Council for the Albert Island site, and I suspect neither of these will be a problem.

The 3rd of December press release stated that the markets “will continue at Smithfield and Billingsgate until at least 2028”, and I suspect that clearing the current site, any remedial work that needs to be done on what was an industrial location, followed by the new build, will take more than a couple of years, so the “at least 2028” suggests the possible timescale.

When the two markets have moved to Albert Island, they will be called “New Billingsgate and New Smithfield”, although for Billingsgate this is the second move after the original 1982 move from the original Billingsgate in the City.

Regarding the existing market locations, an updated press release on the 2nd of January 2026 states that “at Smithfield, the Grade II* listed buildings will become an exciting international cultural and commercial destination to complement the London Museum, which is moving next door”, and that “Plans for Billingsgate will deliver up to 4,000 much-needed homes in an inner-London Borough, alongside a new bridge across Aspen Way to help address the social, economic and environmental disparities between Poplar and Canary Wharf.”

It is a shame that Smithfield is moving from its City location as it was the last City market in its original location, and ends an activity that has taken place in the City for hundreds of years.

Having said that, the new location is good. It makes use of an otherwise difficult to use plot of land, it brings diversity of function and employment to the area around the Royal Docks, and in many ways it continues the tradition of the Royal Docks, as a place where products were stored, traded and moved on to their eventual location.

Albert Island has a website, which does not yet mention the move of the Smithfield and Billingsgate markets, and still covers the original proposals for a commercial shipyard, marina, university hub, and with easy public access to the Thames river path. Hopefully some of these will be part of the overall development. Bringing a shipyard back to the docks would be good, and access to the Thames river path would be essential. The Albert Island website can be found here.

The City of London Corporation announcement on the move of the markets to Albert Island is here.

If you would like more photos of the area, and the construction and opening of the King George V Dock, my post “King George V Dock – The Last of the Royals” covering this can be found here.

It will be an interesting development to follow.

Horn Stairs

Horn Stairs are one of my favourite Thames stairs, as they lead down to a lovely part of the Thames foreshore. At low tide, a wide expanse of gently slopping foreshore, with superb view across to Limehouse and the northern part of the Isle of Dogs.

My last visit to Horn Stairs was in mid January 2024, and almost two years later, I walked to the stairs again following an update on the state of the stairs sent in by a reader.

The reader commented that the stairs had been closed as they had lost a couple of their top steps, had come away from the wall, and moved back and forth significantly with the tide.

They were in a poor condition when I visited two years ago, with rotting wooden steps, and their fixing to the wall not looking very robust, so I am surprised they have lasted for almost another two years.

When I went in January 2024, it was a bright, sunny day. My return visit in January 2026 was wet, overcast and raining.

On arriving at Horn Stairs, there was a footpath closed sign, and temporary fencing at the top of the access steps, which looked like it had been moved, or blown aside:

Very temporary fencing off of the stairs:

I walked through a gap and looked at the stairs and the remains of the causeway leading across the foreshore:

It was clear to see that the top steps are missing, the top section of steps do not look in great condition, and the fixings at the side have come away:

This was the stairs back in 2024, looking very dodgy, but not fenced off and it was possible to walk down:

Horn Stairs, and the area of foreshore to which they lead, has a fascinating history, which I explored in the post “Horn Stairs, Cuckold’s Point and Horn Fair”.

Some photos from my previous visit, when the weather was much better than January 2026. Firstly looking along the causeway across the foreshore:

At the end of the causeway is a navigation marker, shown on the PLA chart for this section of the river, with a wonderful view across to the towers that occupy the Isle of Dogs:

Looking back along the causeway, showing that during a low tide, there is a large expanse of dry foreshore:

Wooden stairs do not last as long as concrete or stone stairs, and there are a number of examples along the river where wooden stairs have not been replaced after they gradually fell apart (see this post on King Henry’s Stairs for an example). I am also not sure why some are concrete / stone whilst other are of wood. Whether the frequency of use, their importance or location along the river deemed some to be of a more permanent structure, or whether it just came to costs at the time.

I have emailed both the Port of London Authority and Southwark Council to see if there is any information on who would be responsible, are there any plans to replace the stairs etc.

It would be a great shame if the stairs at Horn Stairs were not replaced.

Sir John or Sir Thomas Gresham – The Trouble with Identifications

A couple of week’s ago, I wrote a post about the Greshams of Norfolk and London.

The post told the story of Sir John Gresham, the founder of a school in the town of Holt in Norfolk, a member of the Mercer’s Company and a Lord Mayor of the City of London, along with his nephew Sir Thomas Gresham who was also a Mercer and through his Will, in 1597, Gresham College was established, to be run and administered by the City of London Corporation and the Mercer’s Company.

I included images of both Sir John and Sir Thomas Gresham in the post.

One reader commented “A very interesting post. The picture of ‘Sir John Gresham’ and the engraving of ‘Sir Thomas Gresham’ are identical: the engraving is laterally reversed because of the engraving technique, but otherwise the images are the same, even down to the number of done-up buttons and the hand holding the gloves. It’s the same man! Either the attribution of the painting is wrong or that of the engraving – probably the latter, I think.”

So I went back to the images and yes, they do look as if they are of the same person.

This is the image of Sir John Gresham:

I found the above image on Wikimedia, with the description “Portrait of Sir John Gresham (1495–1556)”.

As a general rule, I never take anything on Wikipedia / Wikimedia (or the Internet in general) as absolute fact, without finding supporting evidence, and in the search for evidence to support the Wikimedia description, I found the same image in the National Trust Collections website, where it is attributed as “Portrait of a Man, possibly Sir John Gresham the elder” I also found the same image at the Alamy website, (a stock image service company, where images are made available for a price, for use in other forms of media) where the image is described as “Sir John Gresham (1495 – 1556) English merchant, courtier and financier”.

So the image I found on Wikimedia was also described by the National Trust and Alamy as Sir John Gresham (in fairness to the National Trust they also included “possibly”), so I was happy to use the image from Wikimedia.

The following image of his nephew, Sir Thomas Gresham, is from the British Museum collection, and was an engraving by John Boydell of Cheapside, London and published on the 1st of May, 1779, and is described as being taken from “In the Common Parlour at Houghton”, which is presumably Houghton Hall in Norfolk, a county where the Gresham’s had property, hence the link with the town of Holt in my post:

To provide a good comparison between the two images, I converted the image of Sir John Gresham to black and white, and reversed the image (the reader commented that the image could have been originally reversed due to the engraving technique, therefore reversing again would get the image back to the original).

Now putting the two images side by side, we get the following (Thomas Gresham on the left and John Gresham on the right):

They look almost identical, down to the creases on the clothing, the number of buttons, the pose, the clothes, etc.

There are minor differences, however I suspect that these are down to the engraving (on the left) being made from the portrait (on the right).

I assume the process to create prints such as these, which were in wide circulation in London in the 18th century, was that an artist would visit Houghton Hall and make a copy of the original painting. As this was a copy, there would be minor differences to the original painting.

This copy was then used to create the engraving which John Boydell then published from his premises in Cheapside.

So is the image of Sir John or Sir Thomas Gresham?

I suspect it is of Sir Thomas Gresham, as the following image is from the National Portrait Gallery collection, and has the following reference: “Sir Thomas Gresham by Unknown Netherlandish artist
oil on panel, circa 1565″:

Attribution: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. Source National Portrait Gallery, London

Although the clothes are very different, the likeness, facial expression, the beard all look very similar to the painting and print.

This would mean that the National Trust is incorrect to state that their painting is Sir John Gresham, although again, they do state “possibly”.

To add a bit more confusion, in the print of Sir Thomas Gresham from the British Museum, the “size of the picture” is stated as 2ft, 1inch by 2ft 9 3/4 inches. whilst the National Trust give the dimensions of the painting of Sir John Gresham as 36 x 26 in, and that the painting is located at Dunham Massey in Cheshire.

So the painting is larger than that given in the print, and today is in a different location.

This confusion of Gresham’s shows just how hard it is to be certain of the facts when identifying anything painted, engraved or printed from some centuries ago. If I had the time, I would want to track down more original artwork of both the Greshams and see if this could come to a consensus of appearance of these two, whose contributions to the City of London can still be seen today.

I always try and make sure that the images used, and the detail in my posts is as accurate as possible. I use visits to the sites I am writing about, books and maps (of an age as close to the time I am writing about the better), newspapers from the period, and where I use the Internet, it is from reputable sources such as the British Museum Collection, and anything else is cross checked with other sources.

As the Gresham images show, it is hard enough to be sure of the facts of what we see, whether an image is of who we are told it is, but AI, which always seems to be in the news these days, is going to make this much, much worse.

I will never use any AI generated content in my posts, whether text or image, and to demonstrate why, I asked ChatGPT to generate an image of Sir Thomas Gresham, and this was the result (ChatGPT made the decision to produce a portrait “in velvet” for some reason):

The above image shows the dangers of where we are heading with AI image creation. Without any context, this could easily be taken as a painting of Sir Thomas Gresham. It took less than a minute to create, and is why we are moving into a dangerous period where we have no idea whether what we see or read is real or not.

And for all the comments that my posts receive, two of which were used for today’s post, thank you. I learn much, and they add considerably extra context and information to the post, which is what it should be, rather than machine generated content.

Nile Street Stairs, Woolwich

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One ticket has just become available for my walk “The South Bank – Marsh, Industry, Culture and the Festival of Britain” on the 8th of November. Click here for details and booking.

The Port of London Authority book “Access to the River Thames – Steps, Stairs and Landing Places on the Tidal Thames” lists 240 of these places between Teddington and Southend, and as you may have noticed from a number of blog posts, I am trying to visit all of them.

The 240 ranges from a causeway at Two Tree Island, near Southend, the last of the sites listed, via multiple sites as the Thames winds through London, out to Teddington, the end of the tidal river.

Back in May, I featured Bell Watergate Stairs in Woolwich, and today I am returning to visit another set of stairs in Woolwich – Nile Street Stairs.

This is the entry point to Nile Street Stairs from the embankment walkway:

The location of the stairs down to the foreshore has changed slightly, as concrete stairs now run parallel to the river wall, down to where the causeway that led from the original stairs can be seen to the right:

Looking to the right, we can see the full length of the causeway that ran from the stairs, with the access jetty to the Woolwich Free Ferry visible at top right:

Nile Street Stairs and Causeway, with the Woolwich Free Ferry:

The causeway runs for some length across the foreshore, and provided a reasonably dry, mud free route between the base of the stairs and your boat which would have been alongside the causeway.

It is in a remarkably good condition. I do not know when it was last repaired, but it is a remarkable survivor given that the original pier to the Woolwich Free Ferry was built immediately to the right of the causeway. The pier and docking point for the ferry we see today is a mid 20th century change from its first location.

As with many other Thames stairs, they have been very many events related directly to the stairs, and a strange headline concerning the stairs in the Kentish Independent on the 3rd of May 1957 read – “The Affair Of The Wet Footprints”, and the article goes on to state “After police boats had been alerted to scour the Thames near the Woolwich Free Ferry on Friday night to look for a youth who was reported to have fallen feet first into the water, P.C. Booth found wet footprints leading from the ferry stairs. He followed them as far as the Odeon cinema where they petered out.

The pier master told police that he had seen an 18 year old youth in Edwardian clothes stagger down the Nile Street stairs alongside the ferry. He then hit the rails, straightened up and slipped feet first into the river.

Later another youth said he had seen a man come up the stairs soaked to the skin.”

A rather mysterious story, with the wet footprints and the youth in Edwardian clothes in 1957.

What is remarkable about Nile Street Stairs and the causeway leading across the foreshore is their survival, as it was here where the original access to the Woolwich Free Ferry was built.

The following photo shows the entry to the foot tunnel to the left, and the pier providing access to the ferry straight ahead.

The stairs and causeway were immediately to the left of the ferry pier:

We can see how close they were in the following extract from the 1897 edition of the OS map, where I have arrowed the causeway (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland):

Which is much clearer in the following extract from the above map, where we can see Nile Street Stairs leading down, immediately to the left of the pier, and the causeway running out along the foreshore:

In the above map, the round entrance to the foot tunnel cannot be seen, as this had not yet been built. It was completed and opened in 1912, and in the following 1956 revision of the map, we can now see the round entry building to the foot tunnel, slightly inland from the pier and to the left of what was Nile Street, now named Ferry Approach, with the stairs and causeway still in place (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland):

The Woolwich foot tunnel had been built after the opening of the Free Ferry as an alternative method of crossing the river, when the ferry was not operational due to weather conditions such as fog and ice, maintenance problems etc.

Both OS maps only use the name “causeway”, rather than give the name Nile Street Stairs. It is named on earlier maps, one of which I will show later in the post. I suspect that the construction and use of the pier for the ferry diminished the importance and use of the stairs and causeway, which may have contributed to the failure to provide a name in these maps.

The above map also shows some brilliant street planning, as you have both the ferry and foot tunnel entrances side by side, so if you were in a hurry to get to your job at the Royal Docks across the river, and when you arrived, the ferry was not working, you could just detour to the tunnel entrance, and walk under the river rather than sail across.

You can also see in the middle of Ferry Approach, a space with the word “Lavs” – some public toilets, also possibly essential in what must have been a place with a very high footfall, as thousands of workers once used either the ferry or tunnel to get to their place of work, either at Woolwich Arsenal, the Royal Docks, or the very many industrial premises that lined the river on northern and southern sides.

In the following photo from the current top of the stairs, I am looking back along what was Nile Street. The round brick access building to the Woolwich foot tunnel is to the right, and the Woolwich Waterside Leisure Centre is the building to the rear of, and surrounding the foot tunnel entrance. The Leisure Centre was also built over Nile Street:

The following photo was taken from the edge of the leisure centre, as far back as I could get, to try and recreate the old photo earlier in the post. I should have been much further back, but the leisure centre now sits above Nile Street:

The area around Nile Street, the old ferry pier, and north towards Woolwich High Street has been considered as the original nucleus of the town of Woolwich, and many of the old street names recall rural surroundings. Streets in the area had names such as Hog Lane, Dog Yard, Hare Street and Cock Yard, and Hog Lane was the original name of Nile Street, as we can see from Rocque’s 1746 map of London, where I have underlined the name in red, as it was also used to name the stairs:

Rocque’s map shows the origins of Woolwich as a number of streets and buildings clustered along the river, with a total of five stairs providing access to the river. Hog Lane was both the name of the stairs and the street running back from the stairs, both of which would later change to Nile Street.

To the right of Hog Lane stairs in the above map is Bell Water Gate, which I wrote about in this post.

I cannot find out when the name changed, but I did wonder, given the ship building, naval and military aspect of Woolwich, with the Royal Arsenal (part seen to the right of the above map by the name of “The Warren”, whether the name changed in the late 18th / early 19th century following the 1798 Battle of the Nile where a fleet led by Nelson defeated a French fleet at Aboukir Bay, at the mouth of the River Nile where it flows into the Mediterranean.

This theory falls apart though as Hog Lane still appears in use for much of the 19th century, so in 1861 there is a newspaper report of a drunken man being robbed in Hog Lane, after he had gone to Hog Lane Stairs to wait for a boat, fell asleep, and on waking found that he had been robbed of his hat, handkerchief, boots and money.

Also in 1861 there was a report of a woman’s suicide at Hog Lane Stairs. She was wandering the foreshore and was asked by two boatmen whether she wanted a boat, but replied that a boat was coming for her. After going up the stairs, and returning sometime later, they found the same woman face down in the river.

The use of Hog Lane seems to die out after the 1860s, and in 1882 there is a report of the theft of timber from a wharf . It had been stolen from the pond adjacent to the owners wharf, and was re-landed at Nile Street Stairs, where the timber was sold for chopping into fire wood.

In 1915, Police Constable Taylor received the Royal Humane Society’s certificate for rescuing a boy from drowning at Nile Street Stairs.

The above news reports show why I find Thames stairs so fascinating. It is not just their physical nature, it is the very many stories of London life that can be pinpointed to their specific location. Looking over the river wall at the causeway and thinking about the thousands of Londoners who have used the steps and causeway, their stories, mostly just using the stairs to travel across or along the river, but also what drove some of them to suicide, crime, and the heroism of a rescue of a child from the dangerous waters of the Thames.

I have a theory that the majority of Thames stairs had a pub alongside. This seems true for nearly all stairs in Wapping, Shadwell, Limehouse, Rotherhithe etc. but also seems to be true for Woolwich.

There was a pub called the Nile Tavern adjacent to the stairs. In 1848 this pub was to be Let or Sold, and the following details were in the Morning Advertiser on the 15th of June 1848:

“Woolwich, Kent – Most excellent FREE WATER-SIDE PUBLIC HOUSE and TAVERN – to be LET or SOLD, with immediate possession, the Nile Tavern, Hog-Lane, Woolwich, situated adjoining the stairs next the Royal Dockyard, close to the Steam-boat Piers, and directly opposite the Eastern Counties Railway. The house is at present doing upwards of 20 puncheons of porter per month, with spirits , &c. in proportion, but which may be considerably increased.”

In other adverts for the pub it is described as “river facing”, so must have been at the river end of Hog Lane / Nile Street and facing onto the river.

I wonder if the pub was named after the Battle of the Nile, and the street changed name to reflect the name of the pub.

The Eastern Counties Railway refers to the railway and station that had just arrived in North Woolwich, and the steam boat piers refer to piers for boats travelling along the river, as well as the ferry set up by the Eastern Counties Railway to transfer rail passengers between their station of the north bank, and Woolwich on the southern bank of the river.

And if you fancy trying to order a “puncheon of porter” for Christmas from your local off licence, a puncheon is a third of a tun, which was a large barrel that held 252 gallons of wine.

In another advert, the Nile Tavern was described as “fronting the Thames and conveniently arranged for doing an extensive Public house and Tavern Trade, which its situation is always sure to command, being the nearest house to the shipping lying off the Royal Dockyard, and the place for embarkation for all persons connected therewith, and others employed on the river, the waterside premises” – a description which perfectly summarises why there was nearly always a pub next to a set of Thames Stairs, when the river was the working heart of the city.

In the following photo from the Woolwich ferry, part of the causeway is just visible emerging from the receding tide. The stairs are now on the left, but originally followed the causeway back and up to the land. The Nile Tavern must have been to left or right of the stairs, and Nile Street / Hog lane headed back to the left of the round foot tunnel entrance, under what is now a sports centre, and up to Woolwich High Street:

Woolwich is protected from the river by high concrete walls, as is the opposite shore along North Woolwich. The above photo provides a view of these defences.

They are needed as Woolwich is downstream of the Thames Barrier, and is therefore not protected by the barrier. When the barrier is closed, the height of the water is a remarkable spectacle.

Whilst the Thames has for centuries been the source of London’s economic growth, prosperity, work, trade and travel, it has also been a source of danger to the low laying land along the sides of the river.

Nile Street and the Nile Tavern were mentioned in reports of a major storm during the first week of January 1887 when the “weather had been rough and stormy during the greater part of the week. Heavy rain had fallen every day and the temperature has continued unseasonably high”.

In Woolwich, several houses in Nile Street were flooded, as was the cellar of the Nile Tavern, and along the length of the Thames there was flooding from the lower portions of Chiswick and Hammersmith, where barriers were erected. Parts of Kew and Richmond were flooded, and in central London, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, Lambeth, Blackfriars, Deptford and Rotherhithe were all reported as suffering from flooding.

In Shadwell there was an “inundation”, and the “sailors and waterside characters turned out en masse, and beguiled the small hours of the night with songs in praise of the ocean and the river. The poorer of the people who worked in the docks were great sufferers of the inundation, which at one time threatened to wash away their wretched houses.”

In a similar way to the storm and floods of 1953, the 1877 storm also caused flooding along parts of the east coast, and in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire.

Nile Street / Hog Lane Stairs – that is another of the 240 river access points on the tidal Thames.

Each has been a part of the development of their local area, both on the river and on land. For many thousands of people over the centuries, they were an important place for so many reasons.

We have lost that connection with the river, but it would be good if the name of these stairs was on display, along with a brief bit of their long story and how important they once were to the people of Woolwich.

Narrow Street – The Story of a Riverside Community

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Back in January I published the following photo, taken by my father in August 1948, which shows the rear of the buildings along Narrow Street in Limehouse. It was in a post about William Adams – The Adventures of a Limehouse Apprentice, and was used to illustrate how so much of Limehouse had a working relationship with the Thames, and I wrote that I would return to the photo to tell the story of some of the buildings.

The photo shows the rear of the buildings along Narrow Street. There are barges and lighters on the foreshore, and the majority of the buildings have structures on, or alongside the foreshore, showing that each building had some form of relationship with the river.

It is a place where for many of the occupants of the buildings, the river was either a place of work, or their onshore work was dependent on the river, the trade that the river brought to London and the wealth created by the river (although for the majority of the residents of Limehouse, very little of that wealth trickled down to them).

The same terrace of houses along Narrow Street today (my photo is looking straight at the terrace from the opposite embankment, where my father’s photo shows the terrace from an angle, and lower down as he was on a ship on the river):

The following extract from father’s photo shows the buildings to the left of the photo. I will be going into some detail as to the occupants of the buildings later in the post, but compare the following photo with the one above, as it shows the change that has happened across the Thames, from a working river, where many of the buildings along the river’s edge were involved in someway with the river, an industrial scene, barges and lighters on the foreshore, where the photo of the terrace today shows a clean foreshore, with the houses looking out on to a quiet river, mainly populated with Thames Clipper passenger boats, Ribs taking people on high speed trips along the river, containers of London’s rubbish being taken further down the Thames for incineration, and the occasional cruise ship heading for a berth along side HMS Belfast:

The following 19th century print shows the same terrace of houses. The tower of St. Anne’s Limehouse is in the background to the above print and the 1948 photo:

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.

Buildings have occupied the river’s edge in Limehouse for centuries, with Narrow Street providing a road alongside the inland façade of these buildings.

In the following extract from Rocque’s 1746 map, I have marked the terrace in my father’s photo with a yellow line. The red arrow is pointing to Duke Shore, which I will come back to later in the post:

The following extract is from “A New and Correct Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster”, published by Haines and Son in 1796, and again I have marked the terrace in the 1948 photo with a yellow line:

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.

This map shows the clustering of building in Limehouse in the 18th century, with much of the area to the north and east still rural, with fields and marsh. The feature marked as Lea River in the above map is the Limehouse Cut, that had recently been completed from the River Lea to the Thames, west of the Isle of Dogs, thereby allowing boats on the River Lea heading towards the City to take a short cut, rather than having to travel around the bulge of the Isle of Dogs.

The maps above show the area alongside Narrow Street has been occupied since the mid 18th century, however it has been occupied for very much longer as my post on William Adam’s demonstrated, when Adam’s became an apprentice to a boat builder in Limehouse in the 1570s.

The transformation of the area as we see it today, is therefore a very short period in Narrow Street’s long history as for centuries it was intimately connected with industry and trade on the river.

I can only illustrate a very small part of this long history in a single blog post, so I will start with a look at the terrace of buildings in the left side of the 1948 photo, explore who lived in the houses, the businesses that operated alongside the Thames, and compare with the area today, starting with the following then and now comparison, with the coloured arrows referencing the same places in both photos and also used as references in the rest of the post:

Working from left to right, the red arrow points to a gap, with a house on the site today. I will return to this location later in the post.

The yellow arrow points to the Grapes pub, a pub that claims to have stood on the site for nearly 500 years, and I have no reason to doubt that age, as what is now Narrow Street has been a street alongside the river for centuries, and whilst in land was still rural, light industries such as boat building occupied the river front.

There are many newspaper references to the pub, starting in the 1800s, when it was written about as “Mrs. Horsley’s Bunch of Grapes”. For example, in an 1805 advert Mrs. Horseley was advertising for staff for the pub, and in the same year, an auction in the pub of “free hold houses” in Limehouse was being advertised.

The 1911 census records that in the Grapes lived William George Higgins, aged 32 and listed as the Licensed Victualler. He lived in the pub with his wide Charlotte aged 35, and 7 children ranging in age from 5 months to 14.

Charlotte had been married before as one of the 7 children was listed as a stepson to William Higgins. He was also the oldest, at 14. Charlotte was recorded as “helping in the business”. She had had 8 children, one of which had died, with 7 surviving.

The members of the Higgins family had not moved far, as they were all listed as having been born in either Mile End, Stepney or Poplar.

The following photo shows the Grapes from Narrow Street, and it was typical of the times that such a narrow house would be home to a business as well as nine people – two adults and seven children:

Numbering of houses in Narrow Street seems to have stayed the same since the 1911 census, and the following extract from Open Street Map shows the stretch of buildings. The Grapes is shown towards the left, this is number 76. Not all the houses had a return in the 1911 census, but we can trace many of the occupants of the houses from the census (map © OpenStreetMap contributors):

At number 82 Narrow Street was William Ritchie aged 66 with his wife Mary 64. He was listed as a store keeper. They were recorded as having 7 children, all surviving but none living at home. Also living in the house was their nephew David aged 30 who was a general labourer.

At 84 Narrow Street was Charles Brammall, a 55 year old Lighterman who lived in the house with his wife Elizabeth aged 56, daughter Jessie aged 24 and son Sydney aged 14.

As an indication of the birth rate and the frequently high death rate for young children, Elizabeth had had a total of 9 children, 4 had died and 5 were still living. Jessie was recorded as “Help at Home”, whilst Sydney was still at school, although at 14 this would not be for much longer.

In my father’s 1948 photo, the rear of number 84 Narrow Street is the house in the following extract from the photo with the word “ETHEREDGE”. In 1948, the building was also occupied by Charles and Arthur Etheredge who were tug owners:

The Etheredge firm had operated from Narrow Street since the 1890s, so I suspect the residents in the 1911 census were either employees of the company, or were living in rented out upper floors.

Etheredge advertised their services as follows: “Vessels Towed to any part of the CHANNEL. Ships transported from Docks to Dry Docks”. As well as offices in the building at Narrow Street, they were also at the London Shipping Exchange, and if you wanted to send them a telegram to get a tug boat for your ship, they had the Telegram address of “TUGBOAT LONDON”.

At 86 Narrow Street was John Barnett aged 77, recorded as being a General Dealer with his 45 year old wife Caroline (quite an age gap) and 3 daughters aged 10, 8 and 6.

At 88 Narrow Street was George Costino aged 60, a Lighterman, and his 60 year old wife Clara. They were the only people in the house, and under children, it was recorded as “none”.

There is no number 90 in the census returns. This is probably down to it being part of the W.N. Sparks business. I will come to this business shortly, but for now, the following is a brief description of number 90 from 1955: “No. 90 is indisputably the oldest. I doubt it was once the home and workshop of an Elizabethan mast and spar maker, as local gossip claims, but one of the firm’s employees did in fact find a spade guinea and a doubloon there”.

Whilst the majority of Narrow Street residents seem to have been born in east London, some had moved to Limehouse, often from a considerable distance.

At number 92 was Robert Gilmore, age 26, who was listed as being single and having a job as a house painter. He was living in the house with Sydney Gilmore, his 2 year old son. Also in the house was Mary Stephenson, a 37 year old House Keeper.

Robert and Sydney had come from Scotland, with Sydney being born in Aberdeen. Robert was listed as being single rather than a widower, so it is interesting to speculate why he had moved from Aberdeen to Limehouse with his very young son.

The housekeeper Mary, had also moved some distance, coming from Cumberland.

Number 92 was also home to Caroline Thorn, 68 and a widow. She lived in the house with her son William, 31 and a General Labourer in the shipping trade, daughters Rosetta (25) a Dining Rooms Waitress and Amy (23) a Restaurant Cook.

All three children were single, and it is interesting when reading census date from over one hundred years ago, that many children were still single and listed as living at home, well into their late 20s and early 30s. Often this seems to be written about as a more recent trend, however it could have been something seen more in major industrial cities in the past.

Number 94 is the building highlighted by the orange arrow in the above then and now photo combination. The following is an enlargement from the original photo, and shows number 94. There are a large number of barges on the foreshore between the building and river, and we can see the name W.N. SPAR, with the rest of the name obscured by the mast and sale:

This was the barge building business of W.N. Sparks, and in 1911, the census records that the building was the home of Reuben James Sparks (30), a Barge Builder and Surveyor, his wife Georgina Sparks (35), daughter Ruby aged 6 and son William, who was 3 months old.

Reuben Sparks had taken over the business from his father, William Nathanial Sparks (hence W.N. Sparks on the building in 1948) who was born in 1848, and in the 1891 census, he was listed as being a Marine Surveyor and was also living at 94 Narrow Street, with his wife Sarah and their 8 children, ranging in age from Mary (19) recorded as being an Organist, down to Lily aged 3. Sarah’s sister Elizabeth was also recorded as living in number 94. She was aged 22 and a machinist, so there were 11 people living in the building, as well as the barge building business..

Reuben was their fifth child, but took over the business as he was the oldest son, the older three children were all daughters.

By the time of the 1911 census, William Nathaniel Sparks had moved from Limehouse to Ilford, where he was living at 38 Mansfield Road. The house is still there, and although now the exterior has been rendered and the house appears to be of multiple occupancy, it was a substantial brick house of the late 19th / early 20 century, so William’s barge building business in Limehouse had obviously been profitable.

In 1911, William was 64, but was still recorded as being a Marine Surveyor Barge Business, but I suspect by then he was mainly retired, leaving the barge business to his son Reuben.

William still had three of his children at home, who were all single. Grace (34), a professional vocalist, Edith (29), Ernest (27), a clerk, and Lily (24) also a professional vocalist.

In the house was also Ann, a servant and Elizabeth, a nurse, so one of the Sparks family probably needed extra medical care.

William and Reuben Sparks were just one in a line of barge building at the same site in Narrow Street.

The following print from 1876 shows the view along the same terrace of buildings as in my father’s photo, and on the right of the print is number 94, and rather than the name W.N. Sparks, the sign reads “Surridge and Hartnoll Barge Builders”:

The only reference I can find to Surridge and Hartnoll is their inclusion in a list or partnerships dissolved in May 1879, when they were listed as being barge builders, shipwrights, mast and sail makers. The record also detailed that as well as 94 Narrow Street, they also operated at Fisher’s Wharf in Millwall.

Number 94 had some history. In an article in the Sphere on the 23rd of April, 1955 about Limehouse, there is the following about the building: “Local gossip maintains that the bricked in ovens on the ground floor are relics of a sugar bakery which formerly occupied the premises. But there is circumstantial evidence that the famous blue and white Limehouse chinaware began to appear in the middle of the eighteenth century. Like the other premises of Messrs. Sparks, this house is full of noble old beams and is a maze of rooms, stairways and trapdoors. Contrasting with the now abandoned kiln where the timbers for wooden barges were once steamed into shape are modern welding plant and electric machinery.”

The front of number 94, facing onto Narrow Street. As with the majority of this terrace of buildings, number 94 is Grade II listed:

It seems a long way back in the post, but if you go to the then and now photo. the green arrow is pointing to an area of open space on the foreshore known as Duke Shore.

This was long an open space, and is shown in Rocque’s 1746 map as an open space as it still is today, although there are two modern, narrow houses that block off Duke Shore from Narrow Street, and the adjacent stairs between street and foreshore have also been blocked off.

Also returning to the 1948 photo, and to the left of the Grapes was an open space. Unlike Duke Shore, this was normally a built space, and in the following photo, the building in the centre with the bay upper floor is the building that stood in the space:

The Grapes can be seen just to the right with the brewery name Taylor Walker & Co on the sign at the top or th3 pub.

The building shown in the above photo was once the Harbour Masters office, but in the 1911 census, it was occupied by James Smith aged 59 who was listed as an Inspector. He lived here with his wife Annie Caroline aged 37, and 9 children including what must have been children from his first marriage as ages ranged from 0 to 24. The eldest two sons were a Mechanical Engineer and a Lighterman. Also living in the house was Katheryn Helvin aged 16 from Poplar and listed as a General Domestic Servant.

The following photo is the right side of the 1948 photo, and continues to show the industrial theme of the buildings along the foreshore, however what I want to focus on with this extract is the chimney and two large buildings in the background:

The building on the right should give a clue as to their function, as we can see the words Taylor Walker. This was the Barley Mow Brewery of Taylor, Walker & Co,

Brewing started on the site in 1730 with the firm of Hare & Salmon. Edward Taylor became one of the partners in the brewing company in 1796 and John Taylor joined in 1816, and the firm eventually became known as Taylor, Walker & Co.

The Barley Mow Brewery buildings that we can just see in my father’s 1948 photo were from the 1889 rebuild and expansion of the brewery.

Ind Coope purchased the brewery in 1959, and with the consolidation and closure of many London breweries, brewing ceased at the Barley Mow in 1960.

After demolition of the brewery, the Barley Mow housing estate was built on the site. A couple of the tower blocks of the housing estate can be seen in my comparison photo earlier in the post.

One of the tower blocks of the estate suffered a strange fate, as when the Limehouse Link Tunnel was built through the area, the tower nearest the construction site was demolished as there was concern that vibration from construction and ground movement would damage the tower.

The article I quoted earlier from the Sphere on the 23rd of April, 1955 was focused on the change then taking place in Limehouse with a focus on Narrow Street, what was being lost, and what may come. The last few paragraphs from the article are below, the text includes a phrase which I suspect, always has, and always will apply to London “the illusion of permanency“:

“Possibly the most disturbing feature of the post-war world is the speed of change. Traditional methods, standards, customs and scenes are swiftly dissolving; and notwithstanding the advantages of streamlined substitutes, those of us who have known the illusion of permanency cannot help feeling that our world has suddenly become unstable.

Nowhere is this feature of to-day more in evidence than along the commercial Thames-side, where long stretches of the tideway banks, in many cases unchanged for a century or more, have been almost completely transformed within the short space of the post-war period. And now the rambling Limehouse waterfront of Messrs. W.N. Sparks and Sons, barge builders and repairers, almost the last of the river scene as Dickens knew it, is for sale.

If you do not know the Limehouse riverside, you are to imagine a line of tall, venerable buildings of varying age, their lower walls washed twice daily by the tides. The centre piece is a dark and cavernous barge-repair loft, usually lit for passing watermen by a dramatic spray of blue welding sparks. The frontages abut on Narrow Street between the Bunch of Grapes and Duke Shore Wharf – a street famous in our island history, for it re-echoes the steps of Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, William Burrough, Phineas Pett, Duncan Dunbar, Captain Cook and Jerome K. Jerome.”

In 1955, there was still an expectation that the area around Limehouse, as well as much of the river all the way to the City, would continue to be a place of physical trade and industry in the coming decades. I doubt they could have imagined just how much of this would be lost over the coming 30 years. The articles final paragraph:

“It is too much to expect that this rambling old water-front will be left intact; the modern tideway cannot afford to permit the picturesque to stand in the way of progress. But whatever streamlined industry supplants the old barge establishment, whatever new trade it attracts to the Port of London, some of us think the Thames will be poorer.”

There is obviously much more to be written about Narrow Street (for example see this post about Daniel Farson, a one time resident of one of the houses in the Narrow Street terrace), however the constraints of a weekly post limit what can be explored.

Tower Hamlets council had a plan to demolish parts of the terrace in the early 1970s to replace with a green space along the river. Fortunately this did not take place. The Grapes pub was saved by new leaseholders which included Evgeny Lebedev, and Sir Ian McKellen. The terrace is listed, which should help preserve this historic and fascinating range of buildings, that for so long was part of the working river.

However, as the 1955 article stated, there is always the “illusion of permanency”.

alondoninheritance.com

Essex Street Water Gate and Stairs

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I have written about the area between the Strand and the Embankment in a number of previous posts. It is a fascinating place of alleys, steep streets to the river, and a place where we can still find features that are reminders of long lost landscapes.

One such feature can be found at the southern end of Essex Street, where the street appears to come to an end, with a large gap in the building at the end of the street framing the view towards the Embankment:

The archway through the building at the end of Essex Street leads to a set of stairs down to what would have been the level of the Thames. The archway in the 1920s from the book Wonderful London:

I love the details in these photos. There appears to be a child at lower left of the arch, who looks like they are holding a small dog or cat.

At first glance, the arch and surrounding building looks the same as the photo from 100 years ago, however looking closer and there are differences. The brickwork in the semi-circular area below the two round windows and above the entrance appears far more recessed in the 1920s than it does today, and along the wall between first and second floors there appears to be a white decorative band protruding from the brickwork which is not there today, so I suspect there has been some rebuilding / restoration of the building and arch.

A look at the London County Council Bomb Damage Map shows that there has indeed been some considerable post-war rebuilding, as the building surrounding the arch at the end of Essex Street is coloured deep purple, indicating serious damage.

A look through the arch in 2025:

The following photo from the the book “The Romance of London” by Alan Ivimy (1940), where the scene is described as “Water Gate, at Essex Street, Strand. This opening at the bottom of the street, which gives a view of green trees, is the old Water Gate, built into the surrounding houses, of Essex House, and the only survival of that great mansion”:

Essex House was one of the large houses that once lined the Strand, each with gardens leading down to the banks of the Thames. These houses would typically have their own access to the river as the river was frequently the fastest and safest method of travelling through London.

The caption in Alan Ivimey’s book is rather ambiguous as it states that the opening is the old water gate. It does not specifically state that the surrounding structure is the original water gate.

The houses lining the Strand often did have a feature where their private access to the river was located, as the view of these from the river would have acted as a location marker as well as a symbol of status, where a large, decorated structure acting as their gate to the river would have impressed visitors and those travelling along the Thames.

Another example is the Water Gate to York House, which was the subject of this post.

The arch was described as a Water Gate in the many illustrations of the feature that have appeared over the last couple of hundred years, including this print from 1848, where the Water Gate is described as the “stately portal with large columns to either side”:

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.

So is the arch a survivor from the time of Essex House? Any thoughts that this may be a historic survival are quickly dashed when looking through the Historic England listing.

The arch is Grade II listed, however the listing text states that it is a “Triumphal” gateway built in 1676 by Nicholas Barbon to terminate his Essex Street development, and to screen his development of a commercial wharf below. The listing also confirms that there was bomb damage, and the surrounding buildings date from 1953.

Looking through the arch, we can see the steps leading down to Milford Lane:

Through the arch and down the stairs, we can look back at the rear of the 1953 building, the stairs and the arch. The view shows how the height difference between the streets leading down from the Strand, and what was the foreshore of the Thames have been managed, where the ground floor from this angle is the basement from Essex Street:

Although the building was bombed in the 1940s, and rebuilt in the 1950s, this view still looked very similar to the 1920s:

So, although the arch has frequently been called the Essex Street, or Essex House Water Gate, it appears that the feature dates from Nicholas Barbon’s development of what had been the Essex House gardens, into Essex Street. It was bombed in the last war, restored and rebuilt, and the building surrounding the arch dates from the 1950s.

I mentioned at the start of the post how features such as the arch can act as reminders of a long lost landscape, and to see how this works, we need to follow a series of maps.

Starting with the area today, and I have marked the location of the arch / water gate with the red arrow in the map below (map © OpenStreetMap contributors):

In the above map, we can see Essex Street running slightly north west from the water gate (red arrow), up to the Strand. In the area between the arch / water gate, we can see part of the Victoria Embankment gardens to lower left, and on the right are Temple Gardens.

Going back to William Morgan’s 1682 map of London, and we can see the area soon after Nicholas Barbon’s development, with the red arrow marking the water gate:

There are 343 years between Morgan’s map, and the area today, and the street layout is almost identical, with Essex Street running to the north west, up to the Strand. The same two streets running east and west about two thirds up the street, and Milford Lane (blue arrow) running from the west to the south of the stairs in almost exactly the same alignment as today.

Morgan’s map shows a gap between the buildings at the end of Essex Street, where the arch is today. The map appears to show an open gap, with no arch, or floors above the arch. Whether this was an error in the map, whether the arch had not yet been built, or whether Barbon initially only put pillars on the building to the side of the gap as decoration, without an arch, would require much more research, but the key point is that the gap leading from Essex Street was there in 1682.

The 1682 map shows the stairs to the river, Essex Stairs (yellow arrow). These were not the stairs that lead down through the arch, but stairs at the end of what must have been a flat space between the water gate and the river, probably Barbon’s wharf development that the building and arch at the end of Essex Street was intended to screen.

To see how rapidly this area had changed, we can go back just five years from the above map, and the 1677 Ogilby and Morgan’s map of London.

In the extract below, we can see that Essex House, along with ornate gardens between the house and the Thames were still to be found. The red arrow marks the location of the water gate / arch we see today:

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.

Essex House can be seen close to the Strand, opposite the church of St. Clements.

Essex House was originally Exeter House as it was the London residence of the Bishop of Exeter who had been granted the site in the reign of Edward III.

The house and grounds were taken during the Reformation, after which it was purchased by Thomas Howard, the fourth Duke of Norfolk, who was arrested in the house and in 1572 he was beheaded for his part in the conspiracy of Mary Queen of Scots. The house was then owned by the Earl of Leicester, and became Leicester House. After his death, the property passed to his son-in-law, the Earl of Essex during the reign of Elizabeth I, and the house became Essex House.

Originally facing directly onto the Strand, by the time of the above map, we can see that houses and shops had been built between the house and the Strand, reflecting the slow decline in the importance of the large houses built along the Strand.

The house was pulled down around 1682, the same year as the map of William Morgan, however it is always difficult to be sure of exact publication dates, when the streets were surveyed for the map etc.

This may also answer why the gap of the water gate is shown without an arch as the William Morgan map may have used the plans for the area, rather than as finally built.

The 1677 map shows some interesting comparisons and features:

comparing the shoreline between the Thames and the land in the 1677 and 1682 maps, and after Bourbon’s development, an area of the foreshore appears to have been recovered – Barbon’s wharf development as mentioned in the Historic England listing
this would then put the current arch / water gate at the location of the original stairs at the end of the gardens, to the river
the slight north west angle of the gardens is roughly the same as the alignment of Essex Street today, so as we walk along Essex Street, we are walking along what must have been the central pathway through the gardens of Essex House
although not named in the map, Milford Lane is running to the east of Essex House, in the same alignment as the lane today (although in 1677 it did not have the bend round the base of the stairs. Milford Lane once formed the boundary between Essex House and Arundel House to the west

An extract from the 1677 map is shown below, covering the boundary with the Thames:

There are two boats moored at the end of the stairs down to the river at the end of the gardens of Essex House, where the water gate stairs are today.

There are two other sets of stairs shown on the map. On the left, there is a cluster of boats around Milford Stairs – named after the lane on the east of Essex House, and a lane we can still find today.

On the right there is a large cluster of boats around Temple Stairs.

Three stairs in a short distance shows just how many stairs there once were between the land and the river. Many still survive, but stairs such as Milford, Essex and Temple have disappeared beneath the land reclamation for the Embankment.

Temple Stairs appear to have been of a rather ornate stone design. The following print shows the Great Frost of the winter of 1683 / 4:

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.

Temple Stairs are on the left edge of the print, and they appear to be a stone, bridge like structure, probably over the most muddy part of the foreshore, with a set of steps then leading down to the river, where a passenger would take a boat to be rowed across or along the river.

The print has a pencil note “Taken from the Temple Stairs”, but other British Museum notes to the print state that the print is from near the Temple Stairs.

The following photo was taken from the southern end of Milford Lane, where it joins Temple Place:

The above photo is looking across what was Nicholas Barbon’s wharf development, which the houses at the end of Essex Street were meant to screen, and before Barbon’s work, this would have been the Thames foreshore, with the stairs leading down from the gardens of Essex House to the river, where the gap of the water gate can be seen.

In the following photo, the entrance to Milford Lane is on the right, behind the red phone box. The building on the left is Two Temple Place:

Two Temple Place gives the impression of being of some considerable age, however it is built on what was the Thames foreshore, and dates from the early 1890s, when William Waldorf Astor commissioned the gothic revivalist architect John Loughborough Pearson to create the building.

One of the stand out features is the gilded weather vane, made by J. Starkie Gardner, a representation of Christopher Columbus’ ship, the Santa Maria:

The water gate is today an interesting architectural feature at the end of Essex Street. Perhaps more importantly, it is reminder of a long lost landscape, which dates from Essex House and the gardens which led down to stairs to the Thames. After the demolition of Essex House, Essex Street was built on the same alignment as the gardens, and the stairs then led down to Barbon’s commercial wharf on what had been the Thames foreshore.

Today, the 19th century Embankment has further separated Essex Street and the stairs from the river, and Two Thames Place is a symbol of late 19th century building on the recently reclaimed land of the Embankment.

The stairs are also a reminder of a time when there were very many stairs along this part of the river, important places in the daily lives of many Londoners.

Very much, a lost landscape.

alondoninheritance.com

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