Since it was such a spectacularly beautiful morning, I decided to potter round some of my old haunts in Limehouse where we used to live. I got a good view of 5, Newell Street which was, and remains, a monument to early post-modernism, designed by Tom Brent in 1977 when he bought the whole of Nelson’s Wharf as an experiment in semi-communal living:-
Nearly opposite is St. Anne’s Passage where Arthur and May lived, the last of the old residents:-
St. Anne’s itself, as always, looked good:-
In the churchyard is the pyramid which helped to inspire Iain Sinclair’s Lud Heat, which in turn inspired Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor (or more):-
Nearly opposite is the last of the old warehouses on the Limehouse Cut, just surviving redevelopment:-
Then, past Nelson’s Wharf which retains a plaque remembering its use as a naval training school under the auspices of the British and Foreign Sailors’ Society:-
Past Our Lady Immaculate with its oak statue of Christ the Steersman:-
Past the Accumulator Tower, a piece of residual industrial archaeology:-
To the old railway bridge across the Commercial Road, built in 1880 to carry the London and Blackwall Railway up to Bow:-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
v nice pix; a lot more intresting than the contents of Tate Modern extension, which i’m amused to see none of your bloggisti has yet lept to defend… perhaps people are finally realizing that the Emperor is stark naked (albeit well-fed on 300kg of mouldy couscous)? xe
When I was a kid regularly walking from our flats to Limehouse Library I used to avoid looking at the statue on top of Our Lady Immaculate. Like many Catholic girls of about eleven or twelve I lived in anticipation of ‘the call’: the sign that would come to confirm that you had been chosen by God to have a religious vocation. While the nuns would tell us that to become one of their number was a huge honour most of us hoped that ‘the call’ would not land on us. For some reason I became convinced that the Steering Jesus would somehow give me the sign that I was indeed chosen and so I avoided all eye contact! It always makes me laugh now when I see it from the DLR!
The tower of the old pumping station next to the railway bridge by Island Row in your photograph sits within Bronze Age Foundry, where many London monumental bronze sculptures have been and continue to be cast, including my Fast Bowler at the nursery end of Lord’s cricket ground behind the media centre.