Dalston to Wapping (not all on foot)

Starting off at Dalston Junction station for a short trip down Dalston High Street and then up to Clapton seemed like a worthwhile walk. Passing Marie Lloyd's house too, which was surprisingly modest for a music hall star, especially one who fell foul of Mr Blushington of the London County Council on a mission to clean up the halls. "It's not what she said, it's the way that she said it!" But who can forget such classics as "She sits among the cabbages and peas" or "I always hold in having it if you fancy it". They don't make them like that any more. Arriving at Clapton I noticed a sculpture of some wires on poles next to a mosque, which looked rather like an eruv. Judge for yourself. The JC reported a rouge eruv round Clapton but this had been torn down. Nobody would say who by.
The next bit led through Springfield Park, next to Lea View House a model example of tenant participation. the Park cafe comes out well in this shot. A walk by the Lea or Lee River past where Avro aircraft were first flown on Hackney marshes led me to the abandoned Middlesex filter beds. These were filtre beds for water extracted from the river and were closed in the 1980s and left to nature.

Nature has taken over but it is managed, and there are one or two artworks in the filter beds. The whole place is rather sculptural though. After that a walk further along the River Lea or Lee to where the Lesney factory had been. This was where Matchbox toy cars were built and the developer has called the flats Matchmaker House. Matchbox House would be more apt given the size of the flats.
And speaking of matches I caught a bus to Bow and the former Bryant and May factory, with it's appropriate designs in the brickwork.
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After Bow a walk down the Highway and past the Royal Foundation of St Katherine to Wapping. There in an old hydraulic power station is a work of art called 'making waves. It is a pool of water reflecting a structure which is like an illuminated ball gown. Very pretty.
After a drink in the Captain Kidd near execution dock it was time to go home.

Rainham to Purfleet London Loop Extension completed!

A long time ago I did the London Loop ending at Coldharbour point, the boundary of Greater London. That was as far as the loop went then but it has since been extended to Purfleet passing these old concrete barges that were dumped there after the war.
The loop follows the Thames at this point and includes the RSPB bird reserve which served as a convenient stopping point for coffee and scone or soup.
This building is just on the edge of Purfleet, where there is a military heritage centre and lots and lots of new flats. Come to think of it there were lots of new flats in Rainham too since I was last down that way - Messrs Chuckemup, Builders and decorators have been at it again.
The picture shows a surviving gunpowder store that hasn't been converted to flats.

A Ramble round Caterham

I've been to Caterham before but this was a chance to see some spectacular views. Well if there were no hedges in the way and I hadn't got lost in the Devil's Hole.
A steep climb out of Caterham took me along a ridge and out of the town to some rural farms, although passing the church in the valley. Walking through open countryside a slight deviation took me away from the Devil's Hole, a steeply wooded valley but I managed to regain it and end up back on the right track. After some farms and a clearing on Gravelly hill with a dog drinking fountain dedicated to Toby, I walked down through some woodlands to come to War Coppice Road with some houses that looked like they had been designed by Frank Baines for the Ministry of Works with street names like Woodland Way. After this I came to Whitehill Tower, an observation tower little more than a ruin. This was enclosed behind high walls due to be even higher but perhaps the country habit of leaving stuff unfinished will prevail.
After a few more miles of walking, past an interesting looking farm, I came to Caterham on the Hill, walking past some excellent homes for heroes and into Queens Park, with its tree planted to commemorate the relief of Mafeking, and a garden with a clock tower in it. The Old Church of St Lawrence was open and serving teas so I had a couple of pieces of cake in this 11th Century church. The church was found to be too small in the 1860s and a new church was built opposite the old one.
I went back down the hill into Caterham not on the hill and caught a train home. Not much to see on this walk but a few points of interest.

Kelvedon Hatch

A trip to the wilds of Essex to visit Kelvedon Hatch. Kelvedon Hatch has a pleasant Arts and Crafts Church of the 1890s with some memorial brasses from the previous church added to the walls. However, just outside the village lurks a secret Regional Government HQ, built into the side of a hill. The start of the bunker is an innocuous looking bungalow, a little bit reminiscent of Empire, but once inside the similarity stops. Not many bungalows have a wire cage guarding a long passage lined with bunk beds and ending in blast doors. Inside the bunker was like a government office from the 1980s with a broadcasting studio and several dummies representing Margaret Thatcher and assorted civil servants. The commentary was artfully done and kept visitors almost out of site of others, everyone coming together in the canteen. The depressing commentary was all about being killed, and I wish I’d taken a children’s wand instead. All in all for the money it was not bad value, but the extras - £5 to take a photograph – were too much to bear, so I didn’t take any.

Dorset - in Bethnal Green

A visit to the Dorset Estate in Bethnal Green. The Dorset Estate is two Y shaped towers with some low rise blocks with a library (closed and maybe never to re-open) and social club. The estate was designed by Skinner, Bailey & Lubetkin and was the first in Bethnal Green to feature high-level blocks, with two 11 storeyed Y-shaped buildings (George Loveless and James Hammett houses) on the north, four 4-storeyed blocks (James Brine House) to the south and two more (Robert Owen and Arthur Wade houses) on the south side of Baroness Road. The estate was officially opened with 266 flats in 1958, marked a change in municipal housing, with the emphasis on height and reinforced concrete. The estate has worn well and has a plaque with the blind beggar of Bethnal Green on the roof. The houses on the Dorset Gardens Estate were named after the Tolpuddle martyrs with Robert Owen House named after the father of coöperation and Arthur Wade House named after a chartist.

Three Mills Island, Bromley by Bow

A Sunday visit to Three Mills Island on national mills weekend to see the large former tide mill

From Travels around London

I didn't know what a tide mill was but the mill works with the ebbing tide, that turns the mill wheel and thus powers the mill. The mill has been on an artificial island for more than a thousand years, but was rebuilt in the Georgian times and again after a fire in the early 19th century. Originally a flour mill it started producing spirits and was complete with a custom's house. My mate's dad used to work there when it was a bonded warehouse for alcoholic drinks and he saw them bottling wine from tanker barges.

The trust that owns the mills runs guided tours every Sunday with costumed guides telling the story of the mills, and very interesting they are too, all the millstones were stolen after an incendiary bomb dropped on the mill in 1941 and that was the end of milling. They plan to restore the mill and use the tides to generate electricity.

Cuddington and Ewell, Surrey

You might have thought the area round Worcester Park station was called Worcester Park, but you would be wrong. Raynes Park, Motspur Park, Worcester Park, Stoneleigh only escaped being a park because the Railway Company thought this was a park too far. So, north of the Worcester Park station is the Parish of Cuddington, part of the borough of Epsom and Ewell. The original church of Cuddington was demolished in the reign of Henry VIII, so he could build the Palace of Nonesuch, and only rebuilt in 1895 - a 329 year interregnum that our current Church leaders can only gaze at with envy. The current church is built with brick and knapped flint and very nice it is too.

The walk meandered round the London and Surrey borders keeping close to the Hogsmill River where Millais painted the Death of Ophelia. There are two packhorse bridges over the Hogsmill in Ewell including this one
although neither are medieval both convey history underfoot.

We have met Ewell before on the London Loop and it is a pleasant and interesting town with a 1960s library, Bourne Hall, with a museum. This is where the Hogsmill River rises from springs in the ground forming into ponds. There is a detached church tower and a castle. there is also a remnant of an old justice system in the lock up.

We walked further on to Cheam, (I've been before) and then on to the station and a weary return home.

Heronsgate, Hertfordshire, Land of Liberty, Peace and Plenty?

A pleasant walk in the Hertfordshire countryside, taking in the Grand Union Canal, gravel pits and a charter land colony.
Beginning at Rickmansworth with a coffee in the Wetherspoons then a walk down the Grand Union Canal for a few miles (76 miles from Braunston)

From Travels around London

From Travels around London

until we reached the gravel pit that is now flooded and called Stocker's lake. Walking round Stocker's lake and having a rest on a lovely sunny landing stage with Canada Geese and Coots turned a pleasant day into a heavenly one. Walking back into Rickmansworth (Mill End) and past some particularly good homes for heroes we got slightly lost sand had to back track, but eventually we passed under the M25 and headed off through fields to Heronsgate.

Heronsgate was partially laid out as an estate by the Chartist Coöperative Land Company. The intention was to enfranchise working people by allowing them to buy freehold land. The chartists obtained 2-4 acres of land with a luxuriously equipped cottage on roads named after the industrial towns they were drawn from. Stockport Road, Nottingham Road, Bradford Road being examples used there. The Estate was named O'Connorville after Feargus O'Connor MP who led the company. Of course like many other back to the land movements it failed, not least because the people attracted to the scheme were industrial workers, rather than farmers, and that 2 acres is not really enough to support a family. Somebody living in Rickmansworth in the 1840s could hardly take a job in London to support themselves.

From Travels around London

The estate is now an exclusive development of housing for the wealthy but one or two charterville cottages remain. There was a plaque on one cottage celebrating the Estate's 150th anniversary of 1997, and a plaque on the village hall of 1884 that reads: 'In proud memory of O'Connorville founded here in 1847 by Feargus O'Connor MP Chartist, Idealist and Social Reformer'. The church's foundation stone was laid in 1886.
The local pub, which is not on the Estate, bears the name 'The land of liberty, peace and plenty', which I thought was a fitting tribute to those pioneers who came from the industrial north with high hopes of freedom.

Margate and Walpole Bay

A bank holiday visit to Margate with a mate in the London tradition.

Margate is a pleasant seaside resort on the Kent coast now with the added attraction of an art gaallery. Quite by chance me and my mate met one of the trustees of the gallery but tht's a story for later.

Walking along the beach Mate and I were speculating about the nubers who would actuaally be in the gallery, with 10 being packed solid and 1 being empty. I suggested 4 and mate suggested 3. We were both wrong. First impression of the gallery was the cafe, crowded and with people sitting with their cups of tea on the steps - lots of people on the steps. In fact lots of people in the gallery with a very busy but slightly confusing entranceway. We didn't really know where to go

The Turner Contemporary only has one Turner of it's own but puts on exhibitions of contemporary art and shows off a picture of Margate showing the scene before the gallery was built - a pier. The best exhibit was called Arcadia and was scenes of Margate etched into plastic and coloured black in a similar way to a woodcut. Very expressive images that delighted. The knowledgeable attendent explained how they had been done, I think delighted to be asked for her knowledge rather than just telling people to keep their fingers off. All in all a very worthwhile experience.


After lunch in a beer and cider pub with sawdust on the floor and a bell rung if anyone asked for lager (whose location I an not idiot enough to disclose) and a chance to pick up some post lent books (giving up buying books for lent was hard to do) we had a stroll up to another attraction of Margate, The Walpole Bay Hotel.

This is a hotel with a difference, with the proprietor on the reception desk treating her guests like old friends and very enthused about her hotel. The difference being that the hotel was also a museum with many things related to the hotel and the town of Margate. The gallery of napery in the hotel dining room was a tribute to the artits who had stayed in the hotel and had decorated a napkin in their style of painting or particular branch of the arts. Taking the 1927 gated lift to the second floor we looked round the rooms and cupboards filled with artefacts and photographs. The rooms are furnished in period styles, but the bathrooms are very up to date. I wonder if they have a room furnished in utility style?
The proprietor was a trustee of the Turner contemporary and asked us what we thought of the place - so our experience of Margate turned full circle. We left having had a really pleasant day, and hope to come back.

West Ham to Wapping pleasant Sunday afternoon

Although the weather wasn't very promising. The first picture shows the foundation stone of the first London Docks built in the reign of George III.

This picture shows Robin Hood Gardens, a housing estate by the Smithsons that Tower Hamlets Council want to demolish but Architectural societies think should be refurbished. The reactions of the tenants are unclear but different surveys will bring in different results depending on the way the questions are framed.

The third picture shows the non-conformist church on the Festival of Britain exhibition of architecture, the Lansbury Estate.

Romantic Hendon (and Barnet)

A former teacher I knew once wrote
"Romantic is a word that's seldom used
Of Hendon: grey, dull, dried,
Might be more appropriate prose words alright"

And he's right I don't think that Hendon has much romance in its soul. I began my birthday treat in the Barnet Museum (threatened with closure) with a display of the history of Chipping Barnet. I did not ask about the East Barnet Folk Museum which I have found very few references to. All in all a good little display that has become victim of the cuts. The Barnet Council have decided to charge a market rent for the building. The trouble is that the building is a museum and it is difficult to set a rent for a museum. Let's just see Barnet council have responsibility for an empty, crumbling 18th century farmhouse shall we?



After that I went to look at the Well Head, walking down WellHouse Lane, leading into Well Road then Well approach all through some rather fine homes for heroes. The chalybeate well was locked and barred and the actual well house itself dates only from 1937, presumably to give a pleasant feature on the estate.

I also have to give a big thumbs down to Barnet Libraries. I asked at the enquiry counter if I could see a street map and was told they didn't have one. I thought this was unusual so I asked to use the internet to look up the street information. I would have to join the library for that. OK I'll join - why not? So I filled in the form and somebody else was summoned who asked me if I worked in Barnet - no - so I eplained why I wanted to join. Lo and behold a street map was produced! I was advised that the original person would not have known where it was. 2 out of 10.

After that, off to see the Church Farmhouse Museum in romantic Hendon.

Another museum to be closed by Barnet Council withdrawing funding, it had an exhibition of tube memorabilia and maps designed by Henry Beck and others. Transport for London persist in calling him Harry but if you'd said Harry to him when alive he wouldn't have known who you meant. The museum was a tudor hall house once lived in by the Editor of Punch, built of lovely mellow brick.
Both museums were small and intimate with good collections of kitchenware and local items and really don't deserve to be broken up.

There's not really time to describe all the almshouses I came across but I will give you a representative picture.

The North London Line

Stratford to Richmond might be considered to be not the journey most people would like to make (or the other way round) but there is a railway line that runs between those two places, taking in various others. I wanted to use the line and by a happy chance was able to do so today. Except that it wasn't running and a replacement bus service was in operation, Stratford to Hampstead Heath and Hampstead Heath to Gunnersbury. For the sake of completeness I took the service bus to Richmond from Gunnersbury. All in all the journey took three hours by bus. The only benefit was that it was free, indoors and at least had the potential to be warm.

Begining at a bleak bus stop in Stratford I secured the prime top front seat, not that there was any competition for that prime look out. From West Ham to Bow was as dreary as always with factories nestled close to new flats, seemingly repeating the mistakes of the Victorians in town planning and a deliberate thumbed nose at Patrick Abercrombie. Entering Hackney things became more interesting: I have just bought a book about the twentieth century Buildings of Hackney and saw some examples of these en route, including the Rio Cinema, in Dalston High Street, The Beckers Council Estate and Haggerston Baths. The route meandered on through Canonbury and Gospel Oak to the bit of Hampstead near the Heath Station with its spectacular underground public lavatory where I had to change bus.

From Travels around London

From places of worship

We drove through some more uninteresting suburbs and Park Royal industrial estate and came to Old oak estate, an early LCC development of cottages, very small cottages for London workers. Planned on garden city lines and with interesting house forms the estate is picturesque and seems to have worn well.

Eventually, after another change of busses at Gunnersbury I came to Richmond and a happy ending. I kept warm and dry for 3 hours on an otherwise dull afternoon.

Welwyn Garden City

After Letchworth comes Welwyn. Letchworth was founded in 1902 and so could take advantage of depressed land prices and few building restrictions. By the time Welwyn was begun in 1920 landowners had got wise to the fact that if people wanted to build a new town there had to be something in it for them. Eventually the state took over Welwyn and designated it a new town in the years after the second world war.

You enter Welyn Garden City through the Howard Shopping Centre, with the station built in. You find the usual shop suspects here and leave to go into a wide grassed area terminating in a fountain. This fountain is on Parkway which is a broad grassed boulevard leading up to the library and theatre. The houses are in classic garden city style and the master planning architect was Louis De Soissons.

The Church of St Francis (Church of England) was also designed by Louis De Soissons and has a very wide table - you could have about six clergy standing behind it. The church is quite plain but has a relief of st Francis above the former door.

There are various works of art around the town and a town trail incorporating a cheap cottages exhibition, but I didn't really have a lot of daylight left to do that in.

A really dull day for pictures though so no good ones

Millom.

I've seen Millom described as the "set of a social realist film set in the thirties depression" and that's fairly true. It only needs factory chimneys and goods trains to make things complete, but of course the factories and mines closed years ago. The folk museum explained why - the foundry was still using machinery bought in 1892 in 1968! Failure to invest has always been a hallmark of declining British industry. This sculpture of a miner is all that is left of the industry in Millom.


Millom is very proud of their deceased local poet Norman Nicholson, who looked every bit the part with unkempt sideburns and long hair. His house, formerly a drapers now a cafe, bears a blue plaque, and the library has a selection of his books, although in my opinion his prose is better than his poetry. Nicholson became the first freeman of the Copeland Borough Council. The Church of St George has a commemorative window in the modern style which is exceptional.

Millom Co-operative Society was the victim of some outrageously biased BBC reporting when Nationwide, a predecessor of the One Show and tabloid TV at its worst, reported in 1970that the Co-operative Society had gone bust. They neglected to mention that this was MILLOM Co-operative Society representing a town of 6500 people and so caused a run on co-ops everywhere. Never known for responsible reporting this is the BBC at its lowest. I should point out that the other co-op societies rallied round Millom and repaid the members IN FULL.

The folk museum in the town's railway station has interesting displays about the history of Millom works, its social life and Norman Nicholson.

Southport Merseyside, G*ds waiting room

I've been to Southport before but that was in pre-blog days at a conference in the Floral Hall. I think though that because of a high proportion of people the wrong side of seventy has led to a certain complacency amongst the traders of the town. One of the tea rooms was charging more than twelve pounds for afternoon tea - which is half the price of the Savoy. Second hand bookshops are also too wedded to their stock to want to part with it, refusing discount. That said, places of this nature usually have very good gardens as that is what the population are bothered about. On the inner outskirts of Southport is Hesketh Park, a pleasant spot that is being restored to its former victorian glory. There is a fountain and a lake currently being dredged and cleaned, a glasshouse and an observatory. All rather pleasant.

The sea front on the Irish sea is also rather far away from the town and the claim of the longest pier on the West Coast is probably true - especially as it seldom reaches the sea. Instead there are promenades and lakes inland for people to walk along and here is a misty shot of the lake and a bridge.

Southport is quite good for shopping although the charity shops are practically useless- everybody moves to Southport, (as did my host) and has already got rid of most of their stuff before they arrive, making for very slim pickings.

The Art Gallery was closed for refurbishment but I seem to recall it was quite good when I went last time. However I hope to see it again at some stage.

Gosport and HM Submarine museum

My best mate used to work building submarines and I'm pretty curious about these ultimate stealth weapons. So a visit to HM Submarine Museum at Gosport was called for during a recent visit to Hampshire. Gosport is a bit chavvy being just across Portsmouth Harbour from Portsmouth but has an art nouveau/arts and crafts former grammar school and a reasonable bus service to Southampton.
However the submarine museum took up most of my day there so only got a glimpse of the discovery centre (which I think was really the town library) and the tiny art gallery. The high point of the submarine museum was HMS Alliance, which had been built for the war in the pacific and is the only submarine from that era still existing.

The guide was an ex submariner who had worked loading torpedos and knew his stuff.
The cramped quarters were something to behold but there were thankfully, four 'heads'.
The museum also had the first ever navy submarine - the Holland 1. This had been dredged up from the bottom of the sea off Devon and was displayed in its existing condition. Much smaller than the ALliance it was kept in a special atmosphere controlled environment, although as it survived at the bottom of the sea for eighty years one might assume it can survive in a shed for quite a long time. All in all not bad for a tenner.

Woodcote - homes for heroes?

A suburb of Purley hides some very exclusive developement- the Webb Estate. Said to be a garden village before the time of the Garden cities it hardly carries the radical message of the real garden cities and suburbs - Freedom and Co-operation are not represented here. It is an exclusive development for city men and the unfriendly notices forbidding all kinds of activity including driving tuition and frequent gates deter all those who might even walk here. I am undeterred by such notices and claim the right to walk. I came here to see the Promenade de Verdun, a memorial To the French soldiers who died in glory during the Great War. The road is planted with poplars and they are planted in soil from the battlefield of Armentieres.

This soil (ten tons of it) had to be sifted in order to remove bullets and shrapnel to prevent damage to the trees by souvenir hunters. The sifters found 2 sacks full.

The memorial is a simple granite obelisk from Cornwall with lettering in French.

A short walk brings one to the heart of the Estate, the Village Green complete with stocks (installed in 1937 presumably). I shouldn't think they've seen any prisoners.

It's unlikely anyone would be in the stocks after an evening at the Lord Roberts Temperance Inn either.

I wonder what Bobs would have made of that?
The village green was intended to be inhabited by the men working on the estate but they proved too expensive for the working men.

All in all the Webb Estate did what it set out to do - an exclusive home for city men, and now no doubt houses similar people, TV and film stars and perhaps government ministers all in leafy exclusivity.

The Camber Well

Strange things lurk behind suburban houses, and the lady who lives in this house has a historic monument in her back garden.

A rare opportunity arose to see this today, so I set off in the gloom of an autumnal day to see the Camber Well. After a trek round the whole of Grove Park off Camberwell Grove I managed to find the right house with a small printed notice on the gate. I joined a small group and Noreen introduced the well and John, who has been digging it out. All they have recovered so far is Victorian back fill when the well was filled in got building land. The great slab of York Stone you can see in the picture is an attempt by a Victorian builder at a cap. You can also see the round brick work of what must have been a substantial well at least four feet in diameter.

John, who is digging it out supported by donations from coffee supplied to visitors, I had a cup as it was rather too cold for a beer or a wine, thought that the well might be pre Roman although all he has found so far is Victorian backfill. The well has been there for a very long time and is marked on some old maps. Other speculation is that "Camberwell Grove" might be something from prehistoric religion 'druid', or of course it might be eighteenth century romanticism. Never the less the dig is of great interest for the insight into the lives of the early inhabitants of London. John's website is here and you can read more about the well there, as well as some other aspects of London'd history.

Cheam, Dorking and Leatherhead

A visit to Cheam as a convenient stopping off point to buy a fare to Dorking led to an interesting hour or two in the Sutton Museum and the Lumley Chapel. There are a few interesting old weatherboarded buildings in Cheam and one of these is called 'White Hall' and was home to one family from the 17th Century until the 1950s.
The display there was quite interesting and encompassed the history of the house and Cheam in general.

After Cheam it was time to take the train to Dorking and Leatherhead. Leatherhead did not have much of interest about it but Dorking had a massive cock.

Barrow in Furness and the Lakes - Semper Sursum

Barrow is an industrial town with some reasonably good bus services into the Lake District. I went there for my holidays this year, which was quite fun in spite of the diurnal rain. The main photographic highlight was a tour of the Barrow Town Hall with its ballroom, council chamber, retiring room and Mayors Parlour. There were lots of things with Bees and arrows on them (B-arrow) and some furniture which had come from Mr Ramsden's house, the first mayor, which had R on them. The first mayor was the promoter of the Furness Railway and he and other industrialists, including the Duke of Devonshire, got together to promote the first town council. The history of the town is writ large in the town hall in stained glass and oil paintings.


A day in Kendal was wet so no pictures there alas. We did not stay for the torchlight carnival as that would have meant taking a bus back at eleven at night. Some fine cafes in Kendal though, and a very fine Quaker tapestry exhibition. This showed aspects of the Friends history and works, and I was impressed to see a panel depicting the Scott-Bader Commonwealth. This was a fine insight into the beliefs and practices of the Friends. You can read about, and see it here.

A day at Ambleside and Windermere was fun with a cruise on the lake. Ambleside has the quaint bridge house and also the Armitt Library and Museum where we hid during the downpour and looked at Beatrix Potter's paintings of fungi.

Another day saw us go into Ulverston and look from afar at the Sir John Barrow monument.


I also saw Swarthmoor Hall which I had met at the Quaker Tapestry exhibition.

All in all a good holiday even if the weather was unkind.