Category Archives: The Thames

Unilever House, De Keyser’s Royal Hotel and the Drinking Fountain Association

Many of my recent posts have covered sites in London where the view has completely changed, however there are still views in London that have seen very little change over the last 70 years. One such view is looking over the river to Unilever House.

In 1948 my father took the following photo from the southern end of Blackfriars Bridge:

I took the following photo 66 years later standing in exactly the same position:

Very little has changed. The curved building that sits at the north end of the bridge, Unilever House has some cosmetic changes during renovations but is basically the same. Construction of Unilever House was completed in 1933 and since then has been the London head office of Unilever PLC.

Unilever House was built on the site of the De Keyser’s Royal Hotel. This can be seen in the following early photograph that was taken from the opposite side of the bridge to my father’s photo and shows the hotel following the same curved façade to the road as the current building.

De Keyser’s Royal Hotel was opened on the 5th September 1874 by Sir Polydore de Keyser who came to London as a waiter from Belgium and eventually became Lord Mayor of London.

The hotel was very exclusive and initially every guest had to be introduced personally or by letter before they could secure accommodation.

The hotel had 400 rooms and was taken over by the RAF in 1916 and after the war was acquired by Lever Brothers as their London offices. Lever Brothers became Unilever in 1929 when they merged with the Dutch company Margarine Unie.

Also in the above photo, the building at the end of the bridge on the right is Bridge House, which is still standing, but not in use (more of this later).

The following photo shows the partly constructed Unilever House on the site of De Keyser’s Royal Hotel:

Note the adverts for Lifebuoy soap on the panels around the base of the construction site, one of Lever’s earliest products.

After taking the new photo to compare the view with my father’s I took a walk across the bridge to the north side. On the north-east side of the bridge, just before reaching the new Blackfriars Station is the now empty Bridge House and tucked in the curve of this building is an old drinking fountain erected by the Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain Association, which now stands rather forlorn in front of Bridge House which from its current state I suspect will soon be demolished, or hopefully renovated.

The Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain Association was formed in 1859. There is an excellent history of the Association on the site of the Drinking Fountains Association which is well worth reading not just for a history of the association but also for description of Victorian London that supported the formation of the Association.

To quote from the Association’s history:

The supply of drinking water generally available to the poorer classes in London was in those days lamentably deficient both in quantity and quality, coming as it did mainly from pumps and surface wells. A report made in 1866 showed how contaminated this water was, and not only was the impurity of the water held to be largely responsible for the outbreaks of cholera in 1848-49 and again in 1853-54 but the heavy consumption of beer and spirits was in great measure also attributed to this cause. It was therefore high time that something was done to provide a readily available supply of pure drinking water in the cause of temperance, as well as of hygiene and it was to meet this need that the Association came into being.

At the inauguration of the association on the 10th April 1859 the objects of the Association were stated in the resolution:

“That, where the erection of free drinking fountains, yielding pure cold water, would confer a boon on all classes, and especially the poor, an Association be formed for erecting and promoting the erection of such fountains in the Metropolis, to be styled “The Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain Association“, and that contributions be received for the purposes of the Association. That no fountain be erected or promoted by the Association which shall not be so constructed as to ensure by filters, or other suitable means, the perfect purity and coldness of the water; and that it is desirable the water-rates should be paid by local bodies, the Association only erecting or contributing to the erection, and maintaining the mechanical appliances, of the fountains.”

The plaque on the bottom of the Blackfriars drinking fountain states that it was erected by the Association in July 1861 by the Chairman Samuel Gurney MP.

Bridge House with the fountain is shown in the following photo. A telephone box and the fountain, both symbols of earlier ages (with phone boxes I suspect being largely made redundant by mobile phones).

There is much more to say about Blackfriars Bridge which for this post I have only used to cross from the south to the north banks of the Thames, however it has been a busy week so I will leave this for another post to do the bridge justice.

What I hope this post has highlighted is that in almost every corner and building across London there is a fascinating history to be discovered that provides a tangible link back to the lives of Londoners across the centuries.

The sources I used to research this post are:

The Face of London by Harold Clunn published 1932
London by George H. Cunningham published 1927
Old & New London by Edward Walford published 1878
The Drinking Fountain Association

alondoninheritance.com

Cannon Street Station and a Lost Roof of Iron and Steel

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Cannon Street Station is a strange station. If you walk down Cannon Street the station appears to be hiding, pretending to be an office block and blending in with the other recent glass and steel office blocks that now make up so much of the City.

To find any real evidence of Cannon Street Station you need to head to Southwark Bridge where across the Thames you can view the rail bridge heading across the river and entering the station where it is flanked by two brick towers providing passengers their first glimpse of the London Terminus of the original South Eastern Railway.

This was the photo my father took back in 1948 of the entrance to the station from Southwark Bridge:

In 2014 I took the following photo from the same spot on Southwark Bridge:

From this perspective the towers and the side walls remain, however the most significant change to Cannon Street Station is the roof. The original roof was glass on an iron frame that arched from side wall to side wall across the width of the platforms and ran the entire length of the station. The shape and length of the roof from the edge of the river to the station entrance made this a very significant landmark in the south of the City. The following photo is from a postcard showing the view across London looking west from the top of the Monument. The size of the roof of Cannon Street Station and how it dominated the area is clearly visible.

Cannon Street Station was built on the location of the Steel Yard. According to “Old and New London”, this was:

“the residence of the Hanse Town, German and Flemish merchants who obtained a settlement in London as early as 1250. Henry III, in 1259 at the request of his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, granted them very valuable privileges, renewed and confirmed by Edward I. The City also conceded them many privileges, on condition of their maintaining Bishopsgate in repair (they rebuilt it once), and sustaining a third of the charges in money and men to defend it when need was. In spite of English jealousy, the Steel Yard merchants flourished till the reign of Edward VI, when the Merchant Adventurers complained of them and they were held, like all other strangers to have forfeited their liberties. In vain Hamburg and Lubeck sent ambassadors to intercede for their countrymen. Their monopoly was gone, but the Steel Yard men still throve, and continued to export English cloth. Elizabeth, however, was rougher with them, and finally expelled them from the country in 1597-8.”

The Steel Yard derived its name not from the steel imported by the Hanse merchants, but from the King’s steel yard here erected to weigh the tonnage of all goods imported into London, the tonnage office being afterwards transferred to the City.

A view of the Steel Yard and neighbourhood in 1540 can be seen below:

Approval for the construction of the station was given through an Act of Parliament passed in 1861. Construction commenced in 1863 and the station was officially opened on the 1st September 1866. The station and bridge were designed by the Civil Engineers Sir John Hawkshaw and Sir John Wolfe Barry (who was also the engineer for the construction of Tower Bridge).

The station serves suburban South East London, Kent and East Sussex.

Due to pre-war neglect and damage during the war, the roof was demolished in 1958 and the hotel followed soon after in 1960. There followed a series of re-development projects across the station platforms and on the frontage to Cannon Street resulting in the station and offices we see today. Fortunately the towers facing the Thames are Grade II listed so at least what remains of the once magnificent building over and into the platform area is protected.

Much of the brick wall on either side of the station that reached up to the base of the roof is still in place and provides a sense of the scale of the original station. If you walk down to Upper Thames Street, then on the east side of the station, walk down Allhallows Lane along the side of the wall to the river, up a small set of steps and on the right is a plaque commemorating the German Hanseatic merchants who were based here in the Steel Yard for so many centuries.

Cannon Street, after which the station is named, was originally Candlewick Street, first mentioned in 1276 and ran from Watling Street to London Bridge and was widened and extended to St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1853-4.

The original station buildings facing the road were in true Victorian station style. Along with the functions needed to support the station, the building also included the Cannon Street Hotel. The following postcard shows the station and hotel building facing onto Cannon Street. The architectural style is very similar to that of Charing Cross Station. Note also the two towers that matched those facing the bridge across the river.

Looking at this postcard of Cannon Street it is hard to believe (or rather perhaps not given how much change there has been in the City) how the station frontage has changed. I took a walk down Cannon Street and took the following photo of the station as it now borders Cannon Street:

As I said at the start of this post, until you get really close and look at the ground floor entrance, would you really know that this is a station, or just another City office building?

Walk past the station and you will see an M&S Simply Food shop to the left of the entrance. Above this are two parish boundary markers for St Swithin London Stone (the church damaged by bombing during the war and demolished in 1962) and St Mary Bothaw (this church was on the site of Cannon Street Station, but was destroyed in the Great Fire of London and not one of those selected to be re-built).

Passengers arriving into Cannon Street Station would, if they could have looked directly into the station have seen the following view. Looking down into the station from this perspective gives an idea of the scale of the roof as it covered the length of the platforms from the edge of the Thames through to the station buildings on Cannon Street.

Today, by London station standards, Cannon Street Station is relatively quiet. In 2012/13 there were just over 20 Million entries / exits compared to 95 Million for Waterloo (the busiest) and 38 Million for Charing Cross and unlike other central London terminus stations, Cannon Street is closed on Sunday’s (although this will change in 2015).

A shame that this station hides itself in the street after which it is named, however at least the view from the Thames continues to provide a memory of this fantastic example of Victorian architecture and engineering.

The sources I used to research this post are:

Latest estimates of station usage reports and data – Office of Rail Regulation
London by George H. Cunningham published 1927
Old & New London by Edward Walford published 1878

alondoninheritance.com

Building the Foundations of the Royal Festival Hall

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I have a number of photos of the Southbank as it was just after the war and prior to any demolition for the Festival of Britain, along with a few photos of the building of the Royal Festival Hall and I thought I had found all my father’s photos of this area of London, however I was recently scanning some more negatives and found a set of photos taken in 1948 as the site was cleared and the foundations for the Royal Festival Hall were being started.

I find these fascinating on a number of levels. The methods of construction, the immediate surroundings and the views of London in the distance.

These photos were taken from the end of the footbridge that ran alongside Hungerford railway bridge.

This first photo is looking directly into what will be the Royal Festival Hall. The area has been cleared and the ground dug out ready for the foundations and building to commence.

The remains of the buildings on the edge of the site are running along the roadway that leads to Waterloo Bridge which is just to the left. St. Paul’s can be seen in the distance standing clear as the tallest building in London. The chimney is on the south side of the river, just further along the Southbank.

In the following photo the camera has moved slightly to the left and we can now see the Shot Tower that will remain for the Festival of Britain, and the start of Waterloo Bridge. After the Festival of Britain the Hayward Gallery and Purcell Room would be built in the space occupied by the Shot Tower and along the approach road to Waterloo Bridge, filling the gap between the approach road and the Royal Festival Hall. The Hayward Gallery and Purcell Room are true examples of Brutalist architecture with considerable exposed concrete, very different to the Royal Festival Hall.

And now further to the left again to see not just the construction site of the Royal Festival Hall but also the construction of the new embankment along the Thames.

It is surprising how that, apart from the different types of crane where most building sites now use Tower Cranes, the building site is very much as you find building sites today, however on enlarging the photos to look at the workmen, there is an almost complete absence of any of the protective clothing that would now be considered mandatory.

Trying to take a 2014 comparison photo is next to impossible. The following photo is taken from the end of the Hungerford Foot Bridge looking over towards Waterloo Bridge as close to the above photo as I could get, however the trees and building on the Southbank now completely obscure the view.

The following photo is looking down into the construction site. Note all the old multi-floor, empty window buildings along the approach road to Waterloo Bridge. These would soon be demolished ready for the Festival of Britain. What was the Shell Centre Downstream building (now converted into apartments) now stands on the site of these buildings and the area behind the Royal Festival Hall.

And turning to the right we can see on the right hand side the pathway along the side of Hungerford Bridge from Belvedere Road. The buildings in the distance still exist. The church is St. John’s, Waterloo, the building to the left of the church is now the James Clark Maxwell Building of King’s College London. The building to the left of this was the Royal Waterloo Hospital for Women and Children (which closed in 1976) and the building to the left of this is now also part of King’s College London.

I took the following photo from the end of the footbridge looking down to what was the ground level pathway between the Royal Festival Hall construction site and Hungerford Bridge. Still a very busy route from Waterloo Station to the foot bridge and across to the north bank of the Thames, but as with the rest of the site a complete change to how it was in 1948.

The original photos were taken from the same position with the same camera settings, so I was able to stitch my father’s original photos together into a panorama showing the whole of the Royal Festival Hall construction site from the edge of the River Thames to the edge of Hungerford Bridge to provide a complete view of the construction site and the horizon as it was in 1948.

The Royal Festival Hall is on a superb position on the south bank of the River Thames with sweeping views from Westminster across to the City. The building was the only permanent part of the Festival of Britain and one of the first major construction projects after the devastation caused by the bombing during the war.

Considering many of the other buildings that were constructed in the post war period, the design and architecture of the Royal Festival Hall works well within the location, is well proportioned and does not brutally dominate the area.

The following photo shows the view from the north bank of the Thames:

I did not really expect to ever take this view as I am a firm believer that London needs more trees and green spaces, however with the river frontage of the Royal Festival Hall the trees tend to obscure the building from the river and the north bank and do not open up a view of the building to the wide sweep of the river and the rest of London as I am sure the original architects intended.

It would perhaps be good to open up this area to provide an unobstructed view of the Royal Festival Hall from the north bank of the Thames and to open up the wide curve of the Thames from Westminster to City from the Royal Festival Hall, and give one of the few good examples of immediate post war reconstruction the visibility it deserves.

You may also be interested in my earlier posts of the Southbank site:

The South Bank – Before the Festival of Britain and the Royal Festival Hall

The Royal Festival Hall – Before, During and After Construction

alondoninheritance.com

Queen Victoria Street and Upper Thames Street – A Lost Road Junction

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Very much like last week’s post, this week’s was initially a bit of a puzzle and I could not locate where the following original photo had been taken.

There are no street names and no instantly recognisable buildings. I could not recall anywhere in central London with two streets joining, separated by a long length of steps. My only clue was the rather dark sign on the right hand side stating Southern Electric and Underground.

After checking the London stations of the Southern Railway I finally found where the photo was taken, but only because the buildings in the middle distance of the photo are still there, the rest of the scene is completely different.

The location is outside Blackfriars Station, looking east up Queen Victoria Street and my 2014 photo from the same position is shown below:

The foreground has completely changed, but what confirms the scene is the church tower (St Andrew by the Wardrobe) and the buildings around the church (the building behind the church is the British & Foreign Bible Society and the taller building behind that is the original Post Office Faraday building, opened on the 4th May 1933 and one of the main hubs for London telephone services).

John Stow in his 1603 Survey of London was rather dismissive of the church of St. Andrew, with the single sentence “then turning up towards the north, is the parish church of St. Andrew in the Wardrobe, a proper church, but few Monuments hath it”.

The “Wardrobe” reference in the church name is to the King’s Wardrobe that was moved out of the Tower of London in the reign of King Edward the Third. This was in a great house built by Sir John Beauchampe, Knight of the Garter, Warden of the Sinke Portes and Constable of Dover. He died in 1359 and his executors sold the house to King Edward the Third. Following this sale, the parson of St. Andrew’s complained to the King that “the said Beauchamp had pulled downe divers houses in their place to build the said house.”

As well as the buildings in the foreground, even the level of the streets has been changed with the level on the right being taken up to that of Queen Victoria Street thereby removing the steps at the road junction. It would be good to think that some part of those steps were left and are buried beneath the current street level adding to the layers of history buried beneath the City’s surface.

This small area is also a good example of how continuous development has reshaped London over the years, not just the buildings, but also the main thoroughfares through the City, and how the City has tried to manage the increasing volume of traffic passing within and through the City.

Queen Victoria Street is the main street on the left of both photos. In the long history of London, this, as the name implies, is a recent road.

It was fully opened to the public on Saturday 4th November 1871 and to quote from “The Face of London” by Harold P. Clunn:

“Queen Victoria Street was constructed by the late Metropolitan Board of Works as a continuation of the Victoria Embankment, with the object of providing London with a new main artery from the Mansion House to Charing Cross. It was the greatest improvement carried out in the City of London during the nineteenth century. Not only did it provide invaluable relief to the enormous traffic of Cheapside, but it completely altered the appearance of the City centre.”

The photos also demonstrate how the City has responded in recent decades when even Queen Victoria Street and the centre of the City were unable to manage the increasing volumes of traffic.

In the original photo there is a road that drops away to the right. This is the original route of Upper Thames Street which, with Lower Thames Street was the main through road running parallel to the River Thames and connected to all the short lanes and wharfs leading down to the river.

The following map is from Bartholomew’s Greater London Street Atlas of 1940, with the area of today’s post identified by the red oval.

The original photo was taken in front of Blackfriars Station looking up Queen Victoria Street and the road turning right below the steps can be clearly identified in the map as Upper Thames Street.

In recent decades the route of Upper Thames Street has been relocated to run far closer to the river, and rather than joining Queen Victoria Street, it nows runs underneath the river side of Blackfriars Station, underneath Blackfriars Bridge straight into the Embankment.

The following Google map shows the area as it is now with the re-routing of Upper Thames Street.

View Larger Map

Not clearly visible in the 2014 photo is the road, just past the bus stop, that leads down underneath the complex of buildings around Blackfriars Station to Upper Thames Street. This road is Puddle Dock, a reference to the original dock that was on this site.

Stow names this as Pudle Wharfe in 1603 and states almost against this wharf there is “one ancient building of stone and timber, builded by the Lords of Barkley and therefore called Barklies Inne. This house is now all ruine and letten out in severall tenements”

Puddle Dock was also probably the landing place for the first Baynard’s Castle which was built in this area by William the Conqueror. The role of Baynard’s Castle was to protect the western edge of the city as the Tower of London protected the east. The first Baynard’s Castle lasted from the 11th to the 14th century following which it was replaced by the second Baynard’s Castle further to the east.

Development of the Puddle Dock area started in 1952 when the Corporation of London offered the trustees of the Mermaid Theatre the lease of a bombed warehouse at Puddle Dock. The theatre opened in 1959 and is just under the building to the right on the road named Puddle Dock. The theatre has survived many attempts at closure and redevelopment and is now mainly a conference and events centre.

Returning to the original photo, I find it fascinating to look at the people in these photos. The following is an enlargement of the group of people in the centre.

The photo was taken on a weekend but note the very formal dress of the men. They have all probably just arrived on a train into Blackfriars and are heading off into the City. The man on the left appears to have a typical pushchair of the time. The adult and child on the right possibly heading down Upper Thames Street to visit the Tower of London?

The streets around them must have seemed permanent. I wonder what they would have thought of the same location today?

The sources I used to research this post are:

The Face of London by Harold P. Clunn published 1951
London by George H. Cunningham published 1927
Old & New London by Edward Walford published 1878
Bartholomew’s Reference Atlas of Greater London published 1940
Stow’s Survey of London by John Stow, 1603 (Oxford 1908 reprint)

alondoninheritance.com

The Royal Festival Hall – Before, During and After Construction

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A few weeks ago I published a post about the South Bank before the Festival Hall with some photos taken on the South Bank. This week I want to cover the same area, but this time showing the scene from the north bank of the Thames as this provides a very clear view of how a small area between Waterloo and Hungerford Bridges has changed.

The following photo was taken by my father from the north side of the Thames next to Hungerford Railway bridge in 1948:

Hungerford Railway Bridge is to the right and Waterloo Bridge is on the left hand side, both bridges framing the future site of the Royal Festival Hall. To the left of the photo is the Shot Tower and to the right is the Lion Brewery.

Until the 16th Century, this area was foreshore to the Thames, overgrown with rushes and willows and subject to flooding at high tides. The road behind the Royal Festival Hall, Belvedere Road was the Narrow Wall, a road built on the embankment to the Thames.

From Old and New London (Edward Walford (1878)): The spot between the Belvedere Road and the river between Waterloo and Westminster Bridges – till recently known as Pedlar’s Acre – was called in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Church Osiers from the large osier-bed which occupied the spot (an Osier is a type of Willow) This is a plot of land of some historical notoriety. It was originally a small strip of land one acre and nine poles in extent , situated alongside the Narrow Wall and has belonged to the parish of Lambeth from time immemorial. It is said to have been given by a grateful pedlar. (There is also a story that the pedlar’s dog discovered treasure there whilst scratching around in the ground). On Pedlar’s Acre at one time was a public house with the sign of the pedlar and his dog and on one of the windows in the tap-room the following lines were written:

“Happy the pedlar whose portrait we view,
Since his dog was so faithful and fortunate too;
He at once made him wealthy, and guarded his door,
Secured him from robbers, relieved him when poor.
Then drink to his memory, and wish fate may send,
Such a dog to protect you, enrich and befriend”

What ever the truth of this story, it is still fun whilst walking round the Royal Festival Hall to imagine the Pedlar and his dog digging in the willow beds and finding treasure.

Continuing from Old and New London:

Not far from the southern end of Waterloo Bridge on the site now occupied by the timber-wharfs of Belvedere Road and close by the Lion Brewery, which abuts upon the river stood formerly a noted place of public resort known as Cuper’s Gardens. As far back as the eighteenth century if not earlier it was famous for its displays of fireworks.

The Shot Tower was built in 1826 as part of the lead works on the site for the production of lead shot. The tower is built of brick, with a diameter at the base of 30 feet. The tower tapers slightly so at the top gallery the diameter is 20 feet. The gallery is 163 feet from ground level.

From the gallery, molten lead was dropped to form large shot, half way down the tower was a floor where molten lead could be dropped to make smaller shot.

The Lion Brewery is on the site of a former Water Works where water was taken from the river for distribution to the local area. Pumping water from the river was replaced by a supply from reservoirs on Brixton Hill and the works were removed in 1853. The site then became a brewery which became the Lion Brewery Company Limited in 1866. The building was damaged by fire in 1931, it was then used for a short time for storage and then remained derelict until demolition in 1949 to make way for the construction of the Royal Festival Hall.

The following photo was taken from the same position a few years later during the construction of the Royal Festival Hall in 1950 (judging from the position of the shadow on the river this was taken at the same time as the 1948 photo, some careful planning to get the comparison right). Construction was fast, from the foundation stone being laid by Clement Atlee in 1949 to the hall being opened on the 3rd May 1951

The Shot Tower remains (apart from the gallery at the top) and would remain for the duration of the Festival of Britain. The core of the Royal Festival Hall is under construction, covered in scaffolding and cranes. The new river frontage is also under construction.

The Royal Festival Hall was constructed by the London County Council and was planned as the one permanent building to remain from the overall Festival of Britain site that occupied the South Bank.

The following is my 2014 photo of the same area. I could not get into exactly the same position as my father when he took the original photos as the new foot bridge extends further into the river from the railway bridge.

The following Festival of Britain postcard shows a model of the site with the Royal Festival Hall on the left of Hungerford Railway Bridge. Difficult to see from this model, but Belvedere Road runs behind the Royal Festival Hall, under the railway bridge and behind the Dome of Discovery on the right. It is incredible how this small area changed in a few years either side of 1950.

On the north bank of the Thames opposite the Royal Festival Hall is Shell Mex House. The following is a painting of the view from Shell Mex House included in the programme for the Festival of Britain. The Shot Tower and Lion Brewery with Waterloo Station in the background.

The text below the picture is typical of the mood surrounding the Festival of Britain, the prospect of a bright future following the long years of war. The Royal Festival Hall is the only remaining building from the Festival of Britain as the rest was quickly removed after the closure of the festival.

Photo focussing on the area around the Shot Tower:

And again showing the Shot Tower and river:

You may also like to read my earlier post covering the site of the Royal Festival Hall and the area towards Waterloo Station before construction started which can be found here.

alondoninheritance.com

Walking Brunel’s First Thames Tunnel from Rotherhithe to Wapping

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I have always been fascinated by what is beneath the surface of London and I can trace this interest back to the late 1970’s when I read one of my father’s books “Under London, A Chronicle Of London’s Underground Life-Lines And Relics” by F.L. Stevens and published in 1939. This contained stories of the infrastructure hidden under the streets of London including the Thames Tunnel.

Within this book, there were chapters on the Fleet Drain, Tube Tunnels, Roman London, Crypts and Vaults, Rivers, Wells and Water and Tunnels under the Thames. There is also a final chapter titled “London Takes Cover” which at only 10 pages looks to be a last-minute addition and starts “Queer things are happening under London to-day” and then talks about the preparations being made for Londoners to seek shelter underground from possible terrors on top. I wonder if they could have imagined what would happen to London over the next few years and what those terrors would be?

The chapter on Thames Tunnels starts with Brunel’s tunnel connecting Wapping and Rotherhithe, not only the first tunnel driven under the Thames, but also that the Thames Tunnel was the first tunnel under any river. It was an opportunity to walk this tunnel during closure of the line for maintenance work that I found on the London Transport Museum web site and tickets were ordered.

And so today, Saturday 24th May I was in the queue at Rotherhithe station for the 1:40pm walk through the Thames Tunnel. Blue disposal gloves were provided (there is still a risk of picking up a virus despite a much cleaner Thames. Demonstrates what the risks would have been during construction) Once in the station it was down a short flight of stairs, on to the platform and at the entrance to the tunnel.

The Rotherhithe – Wapping Thames Tunnel was not the first attempt at a tunnel under the Thames. In 1799 a tunnel between Gravesend and Tilbury had been started, given up as a bad job then started again a couple of years later. A shaft was sunk and the tunnel reached within 150 feet of the other side of the river but was again abandoned.

A Thames Tunnel was badly needed. It was a four mile circuit between Rotherhithe and Wapping via London Bridge and ferries carried 4,000 people across the Thames every day at Rotherhithe.

Marc Brunel was convinced that a tunnel could be built and had the concept of a shield to protect workers at the face of the tunneling work. A meeting with investors was held on the 18th February 1824 and a company formed with Brunel appointed as engineer.

The shaft was started in March 1825 and all appeared to be going well, however in January 1826 the river burst through, but work pressed on and by the beginning of 1827 the tunnel had reached 300 feet.

As work progressed, in addition to the risk of the river breaking through, there were all manner of problems including strikes, mysterious diseases (the River Thames was London’s main drain, polluted with a considerable amount of sewage) and explosions from “fire-damp”.

The river continued to burst through. On Saturday 12th January 1828 six workman were trapped and drowned and despite the hole being filled with 4,000 bags of clay the project was temporarily abandoned due to lack of funds. The tunnel was bricked up and no further work carried out for seven years.

Work started again on the 27th March 1835 and carried on for a further eight more years.

In March 1843 staircases were built around the shafts and Marc Brunel led a triumphant procession through the tunnel. Marc Brunel’s son Isambard worked with his father during the construction of the tunnel and was appointed chief engineer in 1827, however his work with the Great Western railway took him away from the tunnel during the later years of construction. Marc Brunel worked on the tunnel from start to finish.

As one of the sights of London, the Thames Tunnel was a huge success. Within 24 hours of the tunnel’s opening fifty thousand people had passed through and one million within the first fifteen weeks.

The Thames Tunnel was purchased by the East London railway in 1866 and three years later was part of London’s underground railway system.

Looking through one of the arches between the two tracks in the tunnel:

Starting from the Rotherhithe end of the tunnel, we walked down the centre of the rail tracks avoiding carefully marked obstructions and walking over small bridges put in to avoid signaling equipment. The tunnel started with a gentle downwards slope towards the halfway point where an upwards slope took us into Wapping station.

Regular archways between the two tracks appeared to be spaced equally the length of the tunnel.

Walking through the tunnel from Rotherhithe to Wapping:

Looking back down the tunnels from the Wapping end. The walk from Rotherhithe was through the tunnel on the right, walk back through the tunnel on the left:

Looking back on an empty Wapping station:

I am glad they turned the power off !! Signpost and distances in the tunnel:

Looking down the tunnel from Wapping:

Original brickwork exposed:

At the Rotherhithe end of the tunnel large pipes with the sound of running water descended below the level of the tunnel. According to the guide, if the pumps that drain this water failed then the tunnel would flood within a matter of hours.

Large pipes at the Rotherhithe end of the tunnel with the sound of water running through them:

All too soon we had returned to Rotherhithe station and it was time to leave the tunnel. A fascinating glimpse of what is beneath London and the challenges of pushing the boundaries of early engineering.

The building that was originally the boiler house during the construction of the tunnel has been restored and is now an excellent small museum. It has a very well stocked bookshop with what must be one of the largest collection of books on Brunel I have ever seen.

The following picture shows a mural at the museum which illustrates the shield method of digging used by Brunel. This surrounds the original shaft down to the tunnel. It is now empty and the original stair case long removed. It was originally left open to the skies however fears that tunnel lights would act as guides to enemy aircraft in the 1940’s resulted in the shaft being capped.

The tunnel passes underneath the paved area outside of the museum and heads towards the Thames.

Just to the north of the museum is a paved area that overlooks the river and provides an excellent view back towards the city.

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Lower Thames Street and the view to the Tower of London

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A few weeks ago I was at the Monument and comparing how Monument Street has changed over the past 60 years. This week, I am still at the end of Monument Street, but now looking along Lower Thames Street towards the Tower of London.

The following is my father’s photo from about 65 years ago:

The building on the right is Billingsgate Market. The building on the left with the colonnades is the Coal Exchange and the building straight ahead with the sign on the wall is a pub, the Yarmouth Arms.

My 2014 photo from roughly the same position is shown below:

Rather than standing on the left side of the road, this is now a thin strip in the middle of a considerably widened road. The corner of the pub in the original photo is roughly where the green traffic light in the centre of the road is now.

The buildings on the right of Lower Thames Street are the same (or at least the front of the buildings), however the big difference is the demolition of the buildings on the left to allow for the considerable widening of the road, along with the buildings at the end of the street which totally obscure the Tower of London.

The following photo taken around 1900 shows the Coal Exchange taken from the opposite side of Lower Thames Street.

Lower Thames Street and Upper Thames Street were originally just Thames Street, the main thoroughfare that ran east – west through the city and against the buildings that faced the River Thames.

The following map is the 1720 Tower Street Ward map and shows Thames Street as it was with the Customs House and Billingsgate Dock. The illustrations of ships tied up against the side of the Thames shows the main functions of the buildings along this stretch and the activities that would have taken place.

The first customs house (which stood a little to the east and was built in 1275) was rebuilt on the current location in 1385. Since then there have been four successive buildings on the same location. In excavating the foundations for the 1814 building, numerous Roman relics were found along with three lines of wooden embankments which demonstrated how the position of the bank of the Thames had moved further into the river thereby reclaiming more land.

In building the Coal Exchange in 1847 the remains of a Roman villa were discovered 13 feet below the level of Lower Thames Street on a foundation laid upon wooden piles driven into the marshy ground.

The Billingsgate Fish market ceased trading in Lower Thames Street in 1982 when it moved to east London (now in the shadow of Canary Wharf). It was the oldest market in London, dating from the ninth century and was a general market until the 17th century when it became a specialist fish market.

The Yarmouth Arms was at 88 Lower Thames Street. There are records of publicans for the Yarmouth Arms starting with a Lydia Estridge in 1816 through to Mrs Lily May Blow in 1944.

In “A Survey of London” by John Stow in 1603, he refers to the area as Belinsgate saying that “it to be builded by King Beline a Briton, long before the incarnation of Christ” and that it is “a large Watergate, Port or Harbrough for shippes and boats, commonly arriving there with fish, both fresh and salt, shell fishes, salt, Orenges, Onions, and other fruits and rootes, wheate, Rie and grain of divers sorts for service of the Citie, and parts of the Realme adioyning“.

Referring to the Customs House, John Stowe mentions “the auncient customes of Belinsgate in the raigne of Edwarde the Third everie great ship landing there, payd for standage two pence, every liitle ship with Orelockes a penny, and lesser boat called a Battle a halfpenny“.

Customs payments were also due on corn, coal, ale and herring.

Thames Street was also instrumental in the spread of the Great Fire of 1666. from the records of the cause of the fire “a strong east wind carried sparks from the burning timbers (of the bakers) across the narrow lane on to hay piled in the yard of an inn opposite. The inn caught, and from there the flames quickly spread into Thames Street, then, as now, a street famed for its wharfs. Stores of combustibles – tallow, oil and spirits – were kept in its cellars, whilst hay, timber and coal were stacked on the open wharfs nearby. The fire leapt to life.”

Today, Lower Thames Street is a dual carriage way with the main aim of getting traffic quickly between the east and west sides of the City, with little time to appreciate the history of the area, which is a shame as it perfectly sums up the layered history of the city and the dependency of the City on the Thames in becoming such a major centre of trade.

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The View from Greenwich Park and the Isle of Dogs

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There are a number of locations across London where the juxtaposition of areas where there has been really significant changes with those where there has been almost no change over many decades can be seen. One of the best locations for this is from the top of the hill next to the old Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park.

My father took the following photo in 1953 looking out across the Queen’s House and the old Royal Naval College across to the Isle of Dogs.

I took the following photo 61 years later in 2014 from the same location. Greenwich Park, the Queen’s House and the buildings of the old Royal Naval College have not changed. Even the paths across the park have stayed in the same position, despite the Equestrian events held on this area during the 2012 Olympics.

The view across to the Isle of Dogs is where the changes have been significant. Not just in the buildings that have changed what was a flat landscape into one where tall office blocks fill the horizon, but also in the core function of these areas, employment, traffic on the River Thames and how the landscape of London has changed over the decades.

The area just across the River Thames from Greenwich Park is the Isle of Dogs. Here were some of the major docks that during the 19th and much of the 20th centuries were part of the complex of docks along the Thames that made London the busiest port in the world.

I took the following photo in the early 1980s. This was just after the docks had closed in the 1970s, but before the significant re-development of the docklands had started. At the time I was flying regularly between London and Amsterdam and always got a window seat as when the approach was over London the views were fantastic. I was always the one glued to the window! This is an evening photo on a route which took the flight in over Essex. across east London to the south of London to Heathrow.

The Isle of Dogs is in the centre of the photo. The loop of the Thames (if I remember Geography from school this is a “meander”) around both the Isle of Dogs and the Greenwich Peninsular (future home of the Millennium Dome, now the O2) is very clear from this height.

I have added the names of the docks and the location of Greenwich Park where my father and my photos were taken in the following graphic.

The West India Docks were opened in 1802 and in total consisted of 54 acres of water. The Millwall Dock was opened in 1868 and consisted of 36 acres of water in the shape of an L (visible in the above photo).

The docks further east in the photo (Victoria, Albert and George V) were the last to be built in London and were the largest area of enclosed dock water in the world. The Victoria was opened in 1855, the Royal Albert in 1880 and the George V dock was opened in 1921, its’ construction having been delayed by the 1st World War. The soil excavated from the Victoria dock was used to complete the construction of Battersea Park, which until then had been partly marsh land.

The Regents Canal Dock is at the end of the Regents Canal were it enters the Thames at Limehouse. The canal connects the Grand Junction Canal at Paddington with the Thames. The canal was opened in 1820 with the dock constructed soon after.

The Greenland Dock is almost all that remains of the Surrey Commercial Docks that once covered most of the peninsular. The core of these docks was started in 1697 and with various developments lasted until 1970.

The complex of office blocks in Canary Wharf which now dominate the view from Greenwich Park have been built across the area that was occupied by the West India and South Docks. Parts of these docks remain but are now confined within an ever growing number of very tall office blocks.

The following map is from the 1940 edition of Bartholomew’s Reference Atlas of Greater London and shows this area of dockland in detail. Compare the significant number of docks that made up the Surrey Commercial Docks on the left page with the 1980s photo. These have almost all disappeared.

There is a description of the Isle of Dogs in a “Peepshow of the Port of London” by A.G. Linney published in 1929:

“As has been established, its island area has been halved, but within the truncated region remaining cut off from the “mainland” many industries, mostly of a smelly sort (oil refining, chemical manufacture, candle making) are carried on; there are some timber yards and foundries. Poverty is not discernible on any wide scale, but it has to be admitted that the streets are sombrely depressing, though to my view the small streets of Millwall and Cubitt Town are boulevards when compared with the utterly drear, blank depression of those rows of houses such as one finds in pit villages of South Yorkshire and Durham”

The reference to “its island area has been halved” is to the area occupied by the docks which as can be seen from the map occupy a significant percentage of the Isle of Dogs.

The closure of the docks from the end of the 1960s to the 1970s resulted in the loss of a culture, often unique to a specific set of docks, and a chain of related industries that had made this part of London a major trading and industrial community.

It would take until the mid 1980s for any form of redevelopment to start across the acres of derelict land left after the closure of the docks, the results of which can now be seen from Greenwich Park.

Quite what the residents of the “small streets of Millwall and Cubitt Town” would have thought of the Canary Wharf development and the financial services industries that have now replaced the docks would be interesting to know.

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Tideless Thames In Future London

The Thames From Hungerford Bridge And A London Bridge Across The Rhine

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After leaving St Mary Aldermanbury, I found another location nearby from where one of my father’s photos had been taken, however I am still checking a couple of facts about this location, so lets head out of the City of London, along the Embankment and down to Hungerford Bridge and stand on the footbridge over the Thames looking east.

If we had stood here in 1950 the view from Hungerford Bridge would have looked like this:

View from Hungerford Foot Bridge looking east in 1950.

The foot bridges alongside Hungerford Bridge (there is one on either side of the railway bridge and they are more formally known as the Golden Jubilee Bridges) were opened in 2002 and replaced the original narrow footbridge from where this photo was taken. Looking towards the city we can see the Portland Stone of the newly constructed Waterloo Bridge gleaming in the sun. The bridge had been completed 5 years previously in 1945 and due to construction during the war, it was built mainly by women.

This is not the first Waterloo Bridge, the stone for the first was laid on the 11th October 1811 and the bridge opened on the 18th June 1817, the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo. If it was not for this historical event, the original proposal for the bridge was for it to be named the Strand Bridge.

The first bridge was weakening in the early decades of the 20th century and in May 1924 the bridge had to be closed to vehicular traffic owing to the weakening of the main archway and sinking of part of the roadway.

A temporary bridge was constructed and repairs undertaken to the main bridge. The temporary bridge was taken down in November 1943 and stored for use in the war effort. After the capture of Antwerp, the temporary bridge was transported across the channel and after the Germans had destroyed the Rhine bridges, the temporary bridge, with some additional sections, was built across the Rhine at Remagen, and within weeks, tanks, guns, lorries and troops were streaming over the bridge that had originally carried Londoners from the south of the river to the north.

St. Paul’s stands clear above the city, to the right we can see the OXO tower, built in the late 1920’s by the owners of the OXO brand. If we had turned further to the right we would see the Royal Festival Hall under construction as part of the Festival of Britain development. I will cover this in a future post.

Although the footbridge I am standing on is new, I try to find the position from where this photo was taken. It is an unusually sunny February afternoon, without the dramatic cloudscapes of my father’s photo. I find the position, not far from the north bank, and take the following photo:

Looking east along the Thames – 2014

Despite 65 years of building, and thanks to some intelligent city planning, St. Paul’s Cathedral still stands clear of its immediate surroundings, however to the right the march of steel and glass is clearly visible. The angled shape of the Cheesegrater (or 122 Leadenhall Street to use its official name) and further to the right the Walkie Talkie building (or 20 Fenchurch Street) now dwarfs the OXO Tower.

Whilst there has been very little change along the north bank of the Thames, the south bank has changed dramatically. In the original photo, the chimney is a sign of the industrial activity that ran along the south bank of the river. Wharfs, factories, warehouses have now been transformed into theatres, offices, television studios, shops, restaurants and residential flats.

Comparing the south bank in the old and new photos, it is just possible to see how the Thames is now far more constrained than in the past. Originally along the Thames there were many inlets, wharfs etc. (and centuries ago much of the south bank was marshland), but now the Thames runs through the city constrained by stone and concrete walls.

Time to leave Hungerford Bridge and the Thames and a quick walk back past St. Pauls and to find a location which has changed beyond all recognition.

alondoninheritance.com

A London Inheritance

A Private History of a Public City

Category Archives: The Thames

Unilever House, De Keyser’s Royal Hotel and the Drinking Fountain Association

Cannon Street Station and a Lost Roof of Iron and Steel

Building the Foundations of the Royal Festival Hall

Queen Victoria Street and Upper Thames Street – A Lost Road Junction

The Royal Festival Hall – Before, During and After Construction

Walking Brunel’s First Thames Tunnel from Rotherhithe to Wapping

Lower Thames Street and the view to the Tower of London

The View from Greenwich Park and the Isle of Dogs

Tideless Thames In Future London

The Thames From Hungerford Bridge And A London Bridge Across The Rhine

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