In looking across at Greenwich Peninsula yesterday morning, I thought of something I was told about Michael Heseltine earlier in the week: that he had not minded the failure of the dome because his primary interest had always been in the opening up of the Greenwich Peninsula to new development through a programme of decontamination; and that he, more than anyone in government, had been responsible for the gradual opening up of, first, the Isle of Dogs, then Greenwich Peninsula, and so on to the Lea Valley beyond:-
Tag Archives: England
Limehouse
In wandering round Limehouse this morning, I found my way into Roy Square (originally named after its developer and now coyly called The Watergarden), another of the early examples of docklands housing, designed by Ian Ritchie in 1986. It wasn’t helped by being used for the displacement of tenants from the Barleymow Estate five years later:-
Limehouse Basin
Limehouse Basin is much shrunk from what it once was. It was originally constructed as the Regent’s Canal dock in 1812, but the Regent’s Canal itself was not completed for another eight years, by which time the dock had been enlarged to accommodate the coasters which brought food and coal from East Anglia and the north of England to feed and heat the greedy capital. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was already too small for the new steamships and so was used instead for the construction of lifeboats. When we moved to Limehouse in the early 1980s, it was much larger than it is now, a disused expanse of vacant water, subsequently filled in and converted into a marina:-
Isle of Dogs
I took myself on a giro round the Isle of Dogs this morning. Partly because it’s a while since I’ve travelled on the squeaky Docklands Light Railway as it winds its way through the tower blocks. Partly because I wanted to remind myself of the false rusticity of the Mudchute (actually, at least in its allotments, a remarkably effective illusion of rusticity):-
Spiegelhalter’s
I have been alerted to anxieties round the fate of Spiegelhalter’s, the small jewellery store, which resisted the blandishments of Wickham’s, the neighbouring department store, to sell up and so Wickham’s simply constructed its grand 1927 neoclassical façade round it. In the 1960s, this was celebrated by Ian Nairn as a ‘triumph for the little man, the blokes who won’t conform. May he stay there till the bomb falls’. Now, the bomb may be about to fall and what little survives of Spiegelhalter’s replaced by a glass atrium. It can’t be listed because it’s of no obvious architectural importance (and Wickham’s itself hasn’t been listed despite its significance as a building type), so there is pressure instead to persuade Tower Hamlets to resist any such plans. There is a form to sign online.
Thomas Okey
One of the people I wasn’t familiar with in the William Morris exhibition was Thomas Okey, whose portrait is shown when he was Master of the Art Worker’s Guild and who remembered Morris lecturing at Toynbee Hall. What I hadn’t realised in seeing the portrait is that Okey was an early product of an east end education: the son of a basketmaker in Spitalfields, he was educated at St. James the Less National School in Sewardstone Road. Whilst working as a basket maker, he taught himself French, German and Italian, attended evening classes at Toynbee Hall, and began to write books about Italian architecture, as well as An Introduction to the Art of Basket-Making, published in 1911. In 1919, he was appointed as the first Serena Professor of Italian at Cambridge. Quite a career.
Boundary Estate
The Boundary Street Estate was built in the 1890s by the London County Council as a way of clearing out The Nichol, a largely criminal district which was the subject of Arthur Morrison’s A Child of the Jago, published in 1896, and Raphael Samuel’s classic East End Underworld. It was the first big estate designed by the Working Classes Branch of the Architect’s Department at the LCC and has blocks designed by different architects, all of which are centred on Arnold Circus and its bandstand. I hadn’t previously noticed the quality of some of its Arts-and-Crafts detailing, including the lettering:-
Moths
As the season of moths approaches, I was tipped off that the best place to buy all sorts of moth repellent, including moth balls, is an old fashioned hardware shop called A.W. Bradbury at the top end of Broadway market. There, indeed, just inside the door on the left, is a whole section devoted to the destruction of moths – balls, spray and traps. I plan to use them all.
Lakeview Estate
I was reminded by Otto (or maybe it was castigated for my ignorance) that there is another estate by Lubetkin just south of Victoria Park. Indeed, there is, with some of the same hallmarks as the nearby Cranbrook Estate, which is visible along the Hertford Union canal, but Lakeview has distinctive side pavilions which look as if they derive from rural Slovakia:-
William Morris (2)
I realised last night that I was in danger of missing Fiona MacCarthy’s admirable exhibition Anarchy and Beauty: William Morris and His Legacy 1860-1960, which closes this weekend. So, I made my way back to the NPG amidst the Friday evening crowds (there’s a lot of reading as well as looking to be done). What comes across very forcefully is the amazing range of his activities: writer (now neglected); weaver; printer; manufacturer; political agitator; designer. Of course, he was helped by having a private income, but it’s still an amazing record. Not least, I hadn’t realised the extent of his influence on the Garden City movement, Ebenezer Howard, Henrietta Barnett, George Lansbury et. al.
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