Day 60 – Tower Bridge Road – Tanner Street – Tooley Street

If all goes to plan this will be the penultimate post documenting this project. Recording a journey through the streets in the far south-eastern corner of the designated target area, this one covers the part of the capital stretching roughly from Bermondsey Square to Butlers Wharf going south to north and intersected by Tower Bridge Road. The walk took place on another glorious spring day with the sun beaming down and the cherry blossom out in full force. It was also the day the UK was supposed to be cutting itself adrift from the European Union, notwithstanding the postponement of which the hordes of Mordor still descended on Parliament Square. But let’s return swiftly to the sunlit and verdant streets of SE1.

Day 60 Route

We begin on the east side of Tower Bridge Road with Grange Walk. The south side of the street is home to a number of listed houses dating from the late 17th century and, on the corner with Grigg’s Place, the former Bermondsey United Charity School for Girls built in the 1830’s.

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A short way further along is another converted schoolhouse, the Grange Walk Infants School of late Victorian vintage.

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The north side of the street marks the southern end of the massive St Saviours Estate which we dip into briefly by way of Fendall Street before continuing east on Grange Walk as far as Bridewain Street.

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Bridewain Walk connects Grange Walk with Abbey Street as do, moving back westward, Maltby Street and The Grange. From the northern end of the latter we return along Abbey Street to the former and continue on its northern section down to Millstream Road which after a brief diversion into Stanworth Street takes us under the railway arches and into Druid Street.

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The plaque you see in the photograph above commemorates the WW2 bombing of the railway here which took seven lives.  We head back under the railway via Tanner Street and wander up Rope Walk which runs alongside the arches on the west side. A timely celebration of London’s international diversity here.

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We loop back to Tanner Street taking the final stretch of Maltby Street and turn west which takes us past Ugly Duck a for-hire venue for creative projects housed in a former Victorian warehouse and polythene bag factory. (bit of a cheat here – some of the photos in the sequence below were taken in 2017 when I was helping out with an installation for an exhibition).

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From here we snake round Pope Street, Riley Road and Purbrook Street to get back on Tower Bridge Road just north of where we started out from. Just beyond Stevens Street on the corner with Abbey Street a plaque fixed to the side of the end house of a row of council properties marks the site of the 11th century Cluniac priory that evolved and expanded to become Bermondsey Abbey. The priory and then the abbey played host to a number of notable royal occasions until the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII (yes that again) instigated its eventual break up. The newly crowned King Henry II and his Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, held court here at Christmas in 1154 shortly before the birth of their second son. Elizabeth Woodville, the widow of Edward IV and the mother of the young princes murdered in the Tower at the behest of Richard III, registered as a boarder at the Abbey in 1487, after retiring from the court of Henry VII (who had defeated Richard and also married her daughter, Elizabeth of York). She died there on 8 June 1492. Today all that remains of the Abbey is a small section of the medieval gatehouse which forms part of the structure of some of those 17th century houses on Grange Walk.

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Just beyond the junction with Abbey Street we cut back through Bermondsey Square, where the weekly antiques market is underway, to the eastern end of Long Lane.

Across the road is the churchyard of St Mary Magdalen Bermondsey. The church itself we discussed in the last post. The churchyard, which stands on part of the site of Bermondsey Abbey, is now an open space having been largely cleared of gravestones after closing as a burial ground in the mid 19th century. A few large chest tombs remain along with an obelisk which commemorates the granting of the space to the vestry of Bermondsey in the 1880’s. There is also a typically Victorian (though it dates from 1902) shrine-type fountain, a gift of one Colonel Bevington.

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After crossing the churchyard we head briefly south again to the waggishly named Long Walk which dog-legs between Tower Bridge Road and Abbey Street and must be all of 50 metres from one end to the other. Final stop off on Abbey Street is Radcliffe Road and then it’s back to Tower Bridge Road and a good leg stretch north back to Tanner Street.

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So we head west on Tanner Street (with a short diversion to take in Archie Street) and find ourselves briefly on Bermondsey Street from where we make a circuit of Whites Grounds and Brunswick Court before ending up back on Tower Bridge Road. Continuing north there are some splendid examples of the cherry blossom, we referred to at the outset, leading up to Roper Lane which runs once again beneath the railway.

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At the end we turn right on Druid Street and follow this east across TBR and alongside another set of railway arches that are largely occupied by specialist motor vehicle service providers (car mechanics to you guv’).

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We make a left next onto Coxson Way and at the end of this follow Fair Street back to TBR. A few paces further north and we arrive at Tooley Street which takes us eastward again. Almost straight away we pass the Dixon Hotel which has made its home in the 1906 edifice that formerly served as the Tower Bridge Magistrates Court. The hotel takes its name from John Dixon Butler who was the architect of the Grade II listed Edwardian building.

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We continue east as far as Three Oak Lane and then use this, Lafone Street and Boss Street to weave our way back west between Tooley Street and Queen Elizabeth Street. Horselydown Lane then takes us further north as far as Gainsford Street where we switch east again before taking a left on Curlew Street which carries us down to Shad Thames, Butler’s Wharf and the river. Butler’s Wharf was built between 1865 and 1873 as a shipping wharf and warehouse complex dealing in commodities such as grain, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, rubber, tapioca and tea. The warehouse used for the latter was reputedly the largest of its kind in the world. The buildings gradually fell into disuse during the 20th century and their original commercial purpose was finally redundant when the Port of London closed in 1972.

In the 1970’s artists such as David Hockney, Andrew Logan and Derek Jarman used the empty buildings as a space for the creation of video and performance art. Then in 1981 Terence Conran led a consortium that bid successfully to redevelop the Grade II listed site for mixed use. The renovation of Butler’s Wharf was a 20 year project that involved renovating and developing six buildings: the Butlers Wharf building itself, and the renamed Cardamom, Clove, Cinnamon, Nutmeg and Coriander warehouses. Conran’s pet project the Design Museum was included alongside the residential, retail and restaurant developments (though it has recently moved to a new building in Kensington).

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Looking east from Butler’s Wharf
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Looking west from Butler’s Wharf

In an earlier post we talked about the Barclay Perkins Brewery on Bankside which was also known as the Anchor Brewery. Well they obviously had trouble coming up with original names back in the 18th century because when John Courage founded his eponymous brewery in 1787 he gave it the exact same alternative monicker. At first his brewery consisted of just a small building on the foreshore, adjacent to what would be the southern end of Tower Bridge when that was built in 1886, but he and his son (after his death) rapidly built up the surrounding site. Some of the land had to be surrendered when the bridge was constructed and then in 1891 a spark in the malt mills caused a fire that razed the brewery to the ground. It was rebuilt to what were at the time state-of-the art specifications and was soon producing 300,000 barrels a year. The Courage family were still in full control of the business at this time even though it had floated on the stock market in 1889. By 1955 however it was forced to merge with the Barclay Perkins Brewery and in 1972 the combined entity was acquired by Imperial Tobacco. The writing was probably already on the wall by then and it 1981 both the Anchor Breweries were closed down. The Bankside site was demolished completely but in the case of the Courage Brewery the riverside frontage was retained (including the chimney which you can see in the picture above) while the buildings to the rear were torn down for redevelopment. As of 2017 the Courage brand is in the possession of Marston’s Brewery.

It’s fitting then that today’s pub of the day is the Anchor Tap on Horselydown Lane which was the Courage Brewery’s Tap (though it claims to originate from 1761 a couple of decades and some before John Courage set up). It’s now part of the Sam Smith’s estate and provided me with a very decent pint of cider and an excellent B.L.T.

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On leaving the pub we go back down Tower Bridge Road as far as St John’s Church park on the west side. Cutting through this brings us back onto Fair Street and then Tooley Street again.

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Continuing west we visit a sequence of streets that run off Tooley Street to the south – an orphan section of Druid Street, Banham Street and Shand Street. At the end of the latter we turn onto Holyrood Street, another that skirts the rail lines out of London Bridge.

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We double sharply back down Magdalen Street to return to Tooley Street, dipping into Gibbon’s Rent and Bursar Street en route. Then it’s west on Tooley Street as far as Bermondsey Street where we negotiate its northernmost section that includes the long tunnel under the railtrack and finishes at the junction with St Thomas St. We’ve visited St Thomas Street before of course but on that previous occasion I overlooked the London Science Gallery which is sited on part of the Kings College campus by Guy’s Hospital and only opened last September (2018) with a mission to connect art, science and healthcare. The photos below are from a video work that forms part of the current (until 12 May 2019) exhibition Spare Parts which explores the art and science of organ transplantation and tissue regeneration.

The other reason for trekking all the way along St Thomas Street for a second time is that although it has loomed large in the background of many of the photographs in this and previous posts we haven’t yet dealt properly with the elephant in the city that is the Shard. So here, in no particular order, are the facts. It’s the tallest building in the UK and the European Union (which at the time of writing are still one and the same thing). Construction began in 2009 and it topped out three years later at 309.7 metres. It is 95 storeys tall with 72 habitable floors the uppermost of which at 244 metres incudes the UK’s highest viewing gallery. Floors 53 to 65 are taken up with residential apartments while the Shangri-La Hotel occupies floors 34 to 52 and the rest is mainly offices. These floors are served by a total of 36 lifts which can travel at speeds up to 6 metres a second. Its exterior is covered by 11,000 glass panels – equivalent in area to eight football pitches or two and a half Trafalgar Squares. The lead architect was the Italian, Renzo Piano who also designed the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Towards the end of construction a fox was found up on the 72nd floor; nicknamed Romeo by staff, the fox is believed to have survived on food left by construction workers.

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And finally, in a nod to the opening comments above I should mention that some people like to refer to The Shard as the Tower of Mordor.

 

Day 58 – Southwark Cathedral – Borough Market – Guy’s Hospital

Back after an extended hiatus with a fairly brief excursion just south of the Thames but as you can see from the title there’s quite a bit packed into this short space. Inevitably that includes more Shakespeare and Dickens but we’ve also got Geoffrey Chaucer, Francis Drake and John Keats in the mix along with a (literally) cracking legend.

day 58 route

Starting point for today is on Bankside, just to the east of Southwark Bridge and we kick things off by heading eastward along Clink Street towards the Clink Prison Museum. This area was once the site of Winchester Palace, built in 1144 for Henry of Blois, brother to King Stephen, which contained within its grounds two prisons; one for men and one for women. The name ‘Clink’ which eventually became a synonym for houses of incarceration in general seems to have been attributed to the prison here in the 14th century. One suggested derivation is the of the sound of a blacksmith’s hammer closing the irons around the wrists or ankles of the prisoners. Alternatively it could come from the Flemish word ‘klink’ meaning ‘latch’ (on a jail door for instance). The Clink suffered several attempts to destroy it during medieval times, principally during the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381 and Jack Cade’s rebellion of 1450, both of which resulted in its rebuilding. The latter rebuilding survived until 1780, when Lord George Gordon, dissatisfied with the favours granted upon Catholics during the ‘Papists Act’ assembled The Protestant Association and broke into The Clink, releasing all of the prisoners before burning it to the ground. Today, all that remains of Bankside’s once most notorious prison is the stonework of Winchester Palace that has been preserved within The Clink Prison Museum.

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At the end of Clink Street we take a right into Stoney Street and then a left down Winchester Walk which leads into Cathedral Street at the western end of Southwark Cathedral. It is believed that there was a community of nuns living on the site of the cathedral as far back as the 7th century and by the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 this had developed into a some form of church. In 1106 the church was ‘re-founded’ by two Norman knights as a priory, whose members lived according to the rule of St Augustine of Hippo. The church was dedicated to St Mary and later known as St Mary Overie (‘over the river’). Perhaps the most famous resident of the priory was the court poet John Gower who lived there at the start of the 15th century and was a friend of Chaucer whose Canterbury Tales begin in Southwark (more of that later). When Henry VIII dissolved the Monasteries in 1539 the church became his property, and he promptly rented it back to the congregation. It was re-named St Saviour’s, though the old name remained in popular usage for many years. Shakespeare was a resident of the parish of St Saviour’s and his brother Edmund who also lived in the parish died in 1607 at the age of 27. A payment of 20 shillings was paid for his burial (possibly by William) at St Saviour’s “with a forenoone knell of the great bell”. His ledger stone is situated in the Cathedral Choir. In 1611 during the reign of James I a group of merchants from the congregation, known as ‘the Bargainers’, bought the church from the king for £800. Having gone through as series of repairs and alterations in the 17th and 18th centuries and a major restoration in the 1820’s St Saviour’s Church became Southwark Cathedral in 1905. The diocese which it serves stretches from Kingston-upon-Thames in the west to Thamesmead in the east and Gatwick Airport in the south. It has a population of two-and-a-half million people, served by over 300 parishes.

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On leaving the Cathedral we continue north on Cathedral Street through Winchester Square and past Pickfords Lane down to the river and the replica of Sir Francis Drake’s “Golden Hinde“.  The original was the vessel on which Drake and his crew circumnavigated the globe during 1577-1580 (though it was called “The Pelican” at time of departure). A fleet of five ships in all sailed south to the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa before crossing the Atlantic to Brazil then traversing the straits of Magellan to reach the Pacific. By then the other ships had been either lost or returned to England the way they came leaving the Golden Hinde to complete the round trip alone via the East Indies and the Cape of Good Hope. In the 17th century, the original Golden Hinde which had been kept at the Deptford dockyard rotted and was broken up. 400 years later naval architect Loring Christian Norgaard was commissioned by The Golden Hinde Limited of San Francisco, a company formed by two other Americans, Albert Elledge and Art Baum, to design a replica. All components were handcrafted using traditional techniques and materials from the 22 cannons to the furniture and the hinde figurehead and in 1973, the new The Golden Hinde was launched. After crossing both the Atlantic and the Pacific in the 1970’s the ship completed a “second circumnavigation” in the 1980’s (this time with the aid of the Panama Canal) before being retired here to St Mary Overie Dock in 1996 to operate as a museum.

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Beside the ship, and I have to confess to never having properly noticed this despite passing this way umpteen times, is a plaque commemorating the Legend of Mary Overie (her that Southwark Cathedral was once named after if you were paying attention earlier). It’s a cracking story so I make no apologies for copying it out (almost) in full here.

“Legend suggests that before the construction of London Bridge in the tenth century a ferry existed here. Ferrying passengers across the River Thames was a lucrative trade. John Overs who, with his watermen and apprentices, kept the “traverse ferrie over the Thames”, made such a good living that he was able to acquire a considerable estate on the south bank of the river. John Overs, a notorious miser, devised a plan to save money. He would feign death believing that his family and servants would fast out of respect and thereby save a day’s provisions. However, when he carried out the plan, the servants were so overjoyed at his death that they began to feast and make merry. In a rage the old man leapt out of bed to the horror of his servants, one of whom picked up a broken oar and “thinking to kill the Devil at the first blow, actually struck out his brains”. The ferryman’s distressed daughter Mary sent for her lover, who in haste to claim the inheritance fell from his horse and broke his neck. Mary was so overcome by these misfortunes that she devoted her inheritance to founding a convent into which she retreated.” (see above).

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After that diversion we retrace our steps to the Cathedral and skirt round the north side via Montague Close before ascending the steps up to where London Bridge meets the west side of Borough High Street and from here we head south down to Borough Market. Borough Market is reputed to have existed in one form or another for around 1,000 years since, roughly, 1014 the date used as the basis for the Market’s millennium celebration. This was a prime location for a market at the time due to its position at the southern end of London Bridge—for centuries, the only route across the river into the capital. The market incurred the wrath of the authorities across the river by undercutting the City of London’s own traders such that in the 1270s the City forbade its citizens to go to Southwark to buy “corn, cattle, or other merchandise there”. As a consequence, over the course of the following three hundred years, the market fell increasingly under the aegis of the City thanks to a series of royal charters, culminating in 1550 with Edward VI selling Southwark to the City for around £1,000. As London grew in size and stature, the bedlam on Borough High Street began to arouse significant opposition within the corridors of power and in 1754 a bill went before parliament declaring that as “the market obstructs much trade and commerce”, it would have to cease trading by 25th March 1756. Residents of Southwark then began petitioning to be allowed to start a new market, independent of the City and a second act was passed through parliament declaring that the parishioners of St Saviour’s could acquire land away from the main road and set up a market of their own, and that this market would “be and remain an estate for the use and benefit of the said parish for ever”. The market expanded rapidly in the 19th century becoming a major hub of the wholesale fruit and vegetable trade. The present buildings were designed in 1851, with additions in the 1860s and an entrance designed in the Art Deco style added on Southwark Street in 1932.

By the latter date it is estimated that 1,750,000 bushels of fruit and vegetables were sold here from 188 pitching stands let to 81 different wholesale companies, with a further 203 stands in the uncovered periphery manned by farmers from the Home Counties. Borough Market’s days as a vital wholesale hub were ended in part by the construction of New Covent Garden market in Vauxhall in the 1970s, but mainly by the relentless growth of the supermarkets which, by killing off independent greengrocers, destroyed the ecosystem in which fruit and vegetable wholesaling had thrived. The market’s renaissance into its present incarnation was inspired by the boom in artisan foods which kicked off in the 1990’s. A regular specialist retail market started on a monthly basis at the end of the decade, swiftly becoming a weekly occurrence and then the six days a week operation that exists today. In the process BM has reinvented itself as possibly the most well-known food market in the country and a tourist hotspot. We traverse the market by way of Bedale Street and Rochester Walk before returning to Borough High Street via some more of Stoney Street.

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Historically the east side of Borough High Street has been associated with coaching inns, many of which dated back to the medieval period. There were once 23 in total with their own courtyards surrounded by multi-tiered galleries. Many of the yards still remain and retain the names of the inns to which they gave access. However of these only Kings Head Yard and George Inn Yard are still home to eponymous hostelries.  The George Inn in its current form dates back to 1676 when it was rebuilt following a fire that destroyed the 1542 original. It is the last surviving galleried coaching inn in London. Naturally enough it claims both Shakespeare and Dickens as former regulars though since it gets a reference in Little Dorrit the latter at least should be conceded with good grace.

Both White Hart Yard and Talbot Yard are now pub-free. The latter however was once the site of the Tabard Inn from whence (as we learned earlier) Chaucer’s pilgrims set off on their way to Canterbury in April 1386.

Bifel that in that season on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay
Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,

The Tabard was also burnt down in the 1676 fire and it too was rebuilt, though renamed the Talbot, hence the name of the yard. The Talbot, like most of the other coaching inns, failed to outlive the coming of the railways and was demolished in 1873. The plaque below was unveiled by Monty Python’s Terry Jones in 2003.
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Opposite Talbot Yard is the St Saviours Southwark War Memorial with its bronze sculpture designed by Philip Lindsay Clark who won the Distinguished Service Order in WW1.

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Next we take a brief excursion away from Borough High Street to the east looping round Newcomen Street, Tennis Street and Mermaid Court. On our return we find ourselves opposite Maya House which since 2007 has been embellished by Ofra Zimbalista’s climbing Blue Men.

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Continuing south on the east side we arrive at Angel Place another of London’s misnomered alleyways. You wouldn’t get many angels down here unless they were caught very very short. It is however the site of the old Marshalsea Prison (as we alluded to in the post before last) where Dickens’ father was incarcerated and which features heavily in Little Dorrit. Part of the old prison wall is still standing on one side of the alleyway and there is  somewhat low-key memorial in the form of illustrated pages from the novel.

Across from Borough tube station, on the corner of the High Street and Great Dover Street stands the church of St George the Martyr. This is believed to be the third church on this site and was built in a Classical style to the designs of John Price between 1734 and 1736. Several of the major City Livery Companies and the Bridge House Estates gave their support to the project and their arms decorate the nave ceiling and some of the stained glass windows. The rather blingy ceiling painting of gilded cherubs breaking through a clouded sky accompanied by texts on a ribbon was created by Basil Champneys (1842 – 1935) in 1897. Champneys was principally an architect and designed a number of college buildings in Oxford and Cambridge.

 

On the north side of the church Tabard Street cuts through from the High Street into Long Lane which we follow east as far as Crosby Row. Here we head back north to reach Guy’s Hospital, the third and final member of the triumvirate of major central London hospitals following St Barts’ and St Thomas’ (though it should be noted that Guy’s and St Thomas’ are twinned as a single NHS Trust). The hospital dates from 1721, when it was founded by philanthropist Thomas Guy (1644 – 1724), who had made a fortune from the South Sea Bubble and as a publisher of unlicensed Bibles. It was originally established as a hospital to treat “incurables” discharged from St Thomas’ Hospital and the first hospital building was situated just to the south of St Thomas Street. This was soon complemented, in 1738, by the construction of a courtyard known as the General Court with an east wing. In 1780 a west wing comprising the chapel, the Matron’s House and the Surgeon’s House was added on the other side of the courtyard. The site was then extended to the south in 1850, the new buildings being named after one of the governors, William Hunt, who had made a bequest of £180,000 twenty years earlier. All of these buildings now form part of the Guy’s Campus of Kings College London which also incorporates a further group of buildings erected yet further south in the early part of the 20th century. These include Henriette Raphael House opened in 1902 – the first purpose built nurses’ home in London; the Hodgkin Building, named after Thomas Hodgkin, the demonstrator of morbid anatomy and best known for the first account of Hodgkin’s disease and Shepherd’s House, completed in 1921. Guy’s Campus sits to the west of the Great Maze Pond, which is the street that cuts through the extended hospital site. All medical services are now provided in the new buildings on the east side which were mostly constructed in 1974, including the 34 storey Guy’s Tower and 29 storey Guy’s House. The former, now dwarfed by the Shard, was for a brief time the tallest building in London and for a much longer time the tallest hospital building in the world.

We follow Great Maze Pond past the modern hospital buildings down to Collingwood Street where we turn left and then left again into the heart of Guy’s Campus. Having completed a circuit of the main campus we cross over Collingwood Street and go through the colonnade that runs between the two courtyards of 1850. In the eastern courtyard is a round-hooded Portland stone alcove which was originally part of, and is one of the surviving fragments of, the old London Bridge that was demolished in 1831. It now houses a statue of John Keats who studied at Guy’s Hospital from 1815 to 1816 to become an apothecary. (And whom some waggish student has inducted into the festive spirit). In the western courtyard is a statue of William Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield, another major benefactor of Guy’s Hospital. Continuing north we arrive in the General Court with the brass statue of Thomas Guy by Peter Scheemakers standing in the centre upon a pedestal with bas-reliefs of “Christ Healing the Sick” and the “Good Samaritan”.

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We exit the hospital grounds onto St Thomas Street and complete today’s journey by heading west back towards London Bridge. On the way there is just time to pause for a look at (but not inside) the Old Operating Theatre Museum & Herb Garret which is housed in the attic of the early eighteenth-century church of the old St Thomas’ Hospital.  The original timber framed Herb Garret was once used to dry and store herbs for patients’ medicines and in 1822 an operating theatre was included. Predating anaesthetics and antiseptics, it is the oldest surviving surgical theatre in Europe. So perhaps worth a visit another time.

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