The rest of my tour of the sights of Wapping included:-
Phoenix Wharf, one of the best preserved of the riverside warehouses, less poshed up and neo-Victorianised than the others. It turns out that it was designed by Sidney Smirke RA, the architect of our exhibition galleries, in 1840:-
I have been totally jinxed on a post at the weekend from Wapping. For some reason, it seems impossible to file.
Suffice it to say that I discovered, which I should have known, that it’s possible get down to the river by way of two small alleyways off Wapping High Street. The first is alongside New Crane Wharf:-
Much as I salute the arrival of a new organic market in Wapping, I can’t help but lament the closure of Wapping Pumping Station, which was opened in 1977 as an arts venue with restaurant attached, called The Wapping Project. It was an early sign of east end revival, on a lease with a restrictive covenant granted by the London Docklands Development Corporation. It has now been closed and apparently sold to a property developer. As Rowan Moore has pointed out in the Observer, it represents a considerable impoverishment of the public realm. Maybe the market could take it over?
Following my recent blog in which I lamented the difficulty of obtaining decent bacon from the shops, I was very touched to receive a brown paper parcel from Marie Willey, the co-proprietor of Old Town in Holt, containing a small package of the best black treacle bacon from Allards in Bull Street. But Marie needn’t fret, because I can now get bacon as well as Merguez sausages every Sunday from Wapping Market, where Jacob’s Ladder, a farm in the Ashdown Forest, have set up a stall normally only to be found at Druid Street:
We were just remarking how difficult it is now to buy good quality bacon (the decline of the butcher/the feebleness of supermarket bacon), when, lo and behold, we saw a farmers’ market rise up before us on the wharves of London dock. It’s the first day of a new farmers’ market just next to Wapping pumping station: fresh fish available in boxes (Soleshare), organic vegetables, flat bread, van food and Ruby Violet’s handmade ice cream:
