Johnny's View Over the Canal (& Chris's): Down to London for Eye Monitoring

At varying intervals we have to visit King's College Hospital eye out-patients clinic at Denmark Hill in Camberwell. Chris's DSEK is monitored by their wonderful eye specialists.

However there's lots we can do whilst in London. Most often we stay at the Abbey Wood Caravan Club site, which, as it's south of the river, very near a station and on major bus routes is convenient for London and the hospital.

We travel around on public transport and look-out for such art deco LT relics as these at Bank.

We thought that it would be nice to visit the Tower of London because I've never been and it's ages since Chris was there. However we looked at the queues and the cost and changed our minds.

There is another reason for having a look round and that's about where Chris's dad worked after de-mobbed. Across from the tower down stream, not in the Pool of London, is Butler's Wharf where Chris's dad Eddie worked first as casual dock labour and later was employed as a clerk in the tea warehouses which line the south bank of the Thames.

It's very different now that Conran and the new wealth of the city have upgraded this property into prime riverside apartments, studios, atelier, restaurants and such.

Though we eschewed the Tower itself we did take the tour of Tower Bridge. The views were splendid.

Especially thrilling was the glass floor.

The Tower and St. Pauls both look very insignificant against the new architecture of the City of London.

The bascules of Tower Bridge are now raised electrically, but still using counter-weights. Originally steam power and hydraulics operated the bascules. Much of that machinery is still in place; painted, polished and extremely complicated looking.

What I think we would all like to see is Harding's Unimproved Counter.

Chris thought that some parts of the mechanism looked like a musical instrument.

Then we were on the south bank and went exploring Bermondsey.

I've already pointed out that the whole area has been thoroughly renovated and commands high purchase or rental prices. Obviously no-one actually does any shipping or warehousing.

This whole warehousing area is known as Shad Thames. Butler's wharf is the largest of many warehousing complexes, many of which were linked by walk-ways for rolling barrels of tea, coffee and spices from one building to another. In Tudor times this area, just 350m x 250m, was called 'Horssey Down'. The name 'Shad Thames' appears on a 1747 map, though the definitive OS map of 1872 names it 'St. John Horselydown'. Those who claim to understand this stuff think 'Shad Thames' is a south London watermen's corruption of 'St. John-at-Thames' which used be on the site now occupied by the London City Mission, apparently.
The warehouses were completed in 1873. Just one hundred years later the whole complex was closed and derelict as the good old city declined under Labour's mal-administration.

Things looked up with the coming of Thatcherism, as wealth and the power of the market dominated political thinking and social planning. So now everything is all right because the disused but picturesque warehouses have been converted into expensive flats.

This is St. Saviour's Dock which most experts believe marks the eastern boundary of Shad Thames. This area has been used as a film and TV location for 'authentic' south London colour for ages.

It was getting late in the afternoon and Johnny was weary of tramping round London, but Chris had to find her first school, Dockhead. What we did find first of all was The Dicken's Estate; a complex of 1934 LCC walk-up blocks, named after Dicken's characters who fictitiously lived in the district during the mid 19th century. Though from what Dickensian character names I saw on the blocks that is hard to believe.

So why would the wonderful old London County Council so name an estate here, right next to Shad Thames? In Dicken's novel Oliver Twist the lodgings of Bill Sykes, the Dodger and Fagin were on Jacob's Island, the real-life notorious 'rookeries' of south London's wicious criminal gangs. The Dicken's Estate was built on Jacob's Island.

Above is an 1840s view of Jacob's Island before any 'improvement' work had commenced by the Metropolitan Board of Works and maybe just as Dickens saw it, in the capable company of London River Police, by the way.

And, below, Bill Sykes about to (spoiler alert) inadvertently hang himself as the hapless hound looks on. Don't go looking for Bill Sykes House, or Fagin House on the estate. The LCC Housing Department had more sense.