Summer Strolls: The Pleasures of Guided Group Walks
Trinity Buoy Wharf, Canning Town. Summer drinks with summer weather! Location of London’s only lighthouse and a steam powered iron-clad ship, with its own steam-powered cranes. Chasing the Tyburn River aka peering down many drain covers and manholes to see what we could see and if we could hear it, without getting run over! Walking along the Thames through Rotherhithe — all the way to London Bridge. Basically living my best John Rogers life.
London’s Only Lighthouse — A Save Heritage Tour with Eric Reynolds
I was so proud of myself for getting safely to somewhere new. Google Maps made it look much worse than it was and I’d had negative impressions on Canning Town. A fascinating place, it has manicured greenery; water, water everywhere; a wonderful ring-side view of the 02 Millennium Dome, the home of the English National Ballet, what looked like a store for the English National Opera — and a lighthouse.
Organised by Save Heritage and led by it’s very informative chair Eric Reynolds, this was no ‘pickled in aspic timey-wimey tour’. Instead it’s what architectural dreams are made of as we are shown how an intriguing site like Trinity Wharf can be practically adapted for useful modern purposes, and yet retain its integrity, history and beauty. And be sustainable.
Wondering where the ‘real people’ are and how much they were pushed away in all the Docklands and Olympic redevelopments, Trinity Wharf retains its links with its older communities as well as housing an affordable fee paying school. Containers have been repurposed to create artists workspaces, as have the chain-proofing sheds. Housing a variety of 19th- and 20th-century buildings, we can enjoy how different generations patched things up over time, such as the use of brick, stone and concrete in a sea defense wall, or wood being replaced by concrete on window frames. Deeply impressive, if you go at the right time there’s an American diner and a cafe on site, but first — to the lighthouse.
It really is! A training lighthouse, you could come here to learn your skills before being launched into the world solo. The whole area was a different place reeking of whale blubber processing and busy with boats and ships of all kinds. Including the steam powered SS Robin and those like her. Somehow this survivor has retained the majority of its original hand-created fixtures and fittings due to being sold a Spanish fishing family who never had enough money to update the vessel beyond small measures. Therefore the Captain steered the ship in an open area, with large wooden wheel and a full steam ahead option! The rest of the crew piled into a couple of interlinked rooms with tiny portholes, no light — and no water until the new owners installed a small sink.
Yet at the same time, SS Robin had its own steam-powered cranes (also doubling up as masts when needed) and beautiful tiles on the floor in all the bedrooms. Beautiful wooden built in cupboards and chests of drawers too, fully utilising all the space. And yet no electric lighting and a primitive looking toilet! Beautifully restored in Norway, its former Spanish owners family keep a tender watchful eye over proceedings.
There’s also a massive hall — a mish-mash of 18th, 19th and 20th century features, a joining wall re-used in a unique way by later builders. Which has a glitter ball crying out for the dancing to begin…Find the right views and you can enjoy another massive hall — the much maligned 02 Dome, and the cable cars going across in a hypnotic way. Enjoy the pontoon topped by a wavey roof, and windows which were used to form interview studios for victorious 2012 Olympian athletes, now re-used across the capital.
The weather was so good, there was even time for summer drinks afterwards. (Though at London prices!)
Chasing the Tyburn: The West End’s Lost River
Another Save Heritage tour — this time involving dashing down back streets, peering at drain covers listening for the sound of the hidden river and author Dr Tom Bolton’s fascinating narrative.
My second time of doing the tour — last time we ended up on Vauxhall Bridge, next to Bond HQ. This time we finished on a Northbank balcony overlooking an old outlet for the river.
I enjoyed darting back and forth across the more famous streets to find all these curious back alleys. Sadly, much of London was being dug up and rebuilt this time — so intriguing places such as South Moulton Street — are becoming more homogenous. Much of what we saw was previously marshland, the home of the poor and the outsider and much more industrial. There are Peabody buildings, sleek and a new kind of housing for the economically disadvantaged. It’s intriguing too that the developers of the past even tried to create Tyburnia, to rival Belgravia. But the associations of Tyburn were too strong — and this never came to pass.
This tour always makes me wonder why I don’t go to Baker Street and its surrounding area more often as there are several enchanting bakeries, a lovely park (with the Tyburn as its borderline delineating ownership) and further into Marylebone/Paddington — a truly splendid hat shop. Damp in the surrounding shops suggests that the workings of the Tyburn are not entirely dormant.
We crossed into Belgravia, enjoyed St Christopher’s Place, saved from demolition and soulless re-development by a visionary; the 18th century fixed rents in a now very expensive area indeed, as well as skittering down some cobbled streets lined with pubs and independent shops. It makes you hungry and hungrier as you pass Danish and Georgian food outlets! (Take a snack).
We considered the lives of those inhabiting these areas in the past — a mixture of industry, poets, writers, artists and playwrights. But also the tough lives of sex workers in an area where the May Fair was held — fairs were viewed as dubious pleasures and the municipal authorities and wealthy tried to close them down, or relocate them quickly. Somehow the gorgeous terracotta stucco of a former manufactory — now an antiques market — has survived the faddish facadism going on around it. (Opposite Green Park, some Edwardian/Victorian buildings are being eviscerated for the ‘now’). But the antiques market is worth paying a visit as there’s a trickle of Tyburn in its basement, covered by a charming bridge.
Having skirted Green Park, river valley of the Tyburn (which forms a lake in Regents Park), we didn’t as adventurers of old have done, head underground and follow the river under Buckingham Palace, emerging again in the road in Southwark/Pimlico! But we could have… Instead we avoided photo-bombing many a happy selfie around Buckingham Palace and whizzed through Southwark and Pimlico to arrive by the River Thames. If you like ducking and diving, weaving and dodging, then this is the walk for you! It’s also easy to get distracted by the Ferraris and Bugatti's (even the Bugatti baby stroller!!) in Soho. Sadly in an area being developed this time, we passed near to a hotel where Ian Fleming was a frequent visitor.
The fun of this walk is not only wheeling off of Oxford and Bond Street to the unknown back streets, but to enjoy the varied and changing architecture. Again there was an opportunity for a celebratory coffee or something stronger afterwards…
Rotherhithe to London Bridge: A Guildhall Library Walk
Led by author and tour guide Pete Smith, we started at the southern end of Marc Brunel’s tunnel under the Thames to the two most famous bridges over it.
Again, an incredibly informative walk taking in so many features along the way. We saw the Brunel Museum, the hint of Tower Bridge in the distance, the church (St Mary) with a Mayflower/Pilgrim Fathers connection. Here is the final resting place of the Mayflower captain Christopher Jones, and a statue to him. The Mayflower pub, which also doubled as a licensed post office, selling stamps to mariners for that essential letter home, and something of an American outpost/home-from-home. Equally admirable was the school with its 17th century pupils portrayed on the front of the building — who would now enjoy the lovely play area inside the church grounds. Enjoy too the ancient Watch House — now a cafe.
Bondian reference this time was that some of the timbers of his ‘big ship’ aka Turner’s famous (and dilapidated/redundant) ‘Fighting Temeriare’ were recycled into furnishings in the church.
Movingly there is a tomb in the churchyard commemorating Prince Lee Boo of Palau, one of the first Pacific Islands people to visit the UK. Sadly he contracted Smallpox whilst here and died. Prince Lee Boo’s tomb : London Remembers, Aiming to capture all memorials in London
The Brunel tunnel under the Thames was a feat of engineering, but didn’t suit the purpose for which it was designed. It became a tourist attraction — and then a train tunnel.
Although this is London, it’s positively bucolic in parts with cobbled streets and old buildings, the very green low-level housing. Lovely it was to see people enjoying the waterside, from cyclists to an on-street picnic and the number of families around, and to stand and appreciate the ruins of Edward III’s former palace. The steps and cranes hinted at a busier time, when the river was a vital form of movement and transport. Admire the leaning house which may or may not have been pushed into its slant by a crush of queueing dockers on pay day!
Next to The Angel (ancient smugglers den), were the poignant statues of a family who sought to positively change people’s lives, as well as some of the housing they inspired. Dr Salter’s Daydream shows Dr Salter, his wife and their much-loved daughter — as well as their cat! Mrs Salter was a keen promoter of gardens and green spaces as well as women’s rights. Dr Salter practiced as a doctor among the very poorest in London — their daughter went to a local school, meaning that she fatally experienced the same health inequalities as other local children and families did. However, the stayed, protected by the loyal local community for their Quaker-inspired Pacificism, and it was wonderful to remember people who truly did good for the community. However, their statues are less flattering than their photos!
Looking over the river we could see the possible location of where the pirates met their sticky end — unless you were as cunning as Jack Sparrow. Coming closer to Tower Bridge, we saw the community of canal boats, and the on-boat gardens, as well as the converted warehouses of Bermondsey which inspired Dickens in his setting of Oliver Twist. Looking down some side streets, we could see the connecting walkways from warehouses which enabled quick movement of goods — and people. You can also spot a plaque commemorating Derek Jarman’s home.
Wonderful to get a sense of the history of the place, to imagine a much busier shipping lane than today, and again to hear the story of how containers finished the London docks, moving everything further down to deeper waters (and around the UK, to places like Southampton). Skittering down past the Bridge Theatre, we paused to admire the modernity of Tower Bridge, hidden within Gothic cladding, and how in the past (for a fee, pedestrians could take a life, walk along a higher up gallery, and take another lift down again, speeding up the commute and avoiding the inconvenience of the bridge frequently going up for passing shipping).
Admiring the beautiful Hay’s Galleria, a fantastical and stunning creation originally built to store tea, we skittered to the back to appreciate St Olaf, terrifier of Vikings trying to maraud over London bridge (or a London bridge) through naval strategy. (He had boats roped to the bridge — when the Vikings got on the bridge, he got the boats to row for all they were worth and pull the Vikings down into the Thames!)
A hidden treasure — the Guildhall Library via Eventbrite offers frequent reasonably priced guided walks, revealing the history of London.
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@ Image illustrating Trinity Buoy Wharf from Time Out and used purely to illustrate the area visited. August, 2024.
