Bermondsey

This is the 7th station on the Jubilee Line that I have visited and the 150th out of 272 stations that I am challenging myself to photograph and research in my ' Above the Underground' challenge. Even though I have entered my 7th year of doing this, I am still finding it interesting as there is always something or somewhere new to discover. I try to visit these stations when there are as few people as possible around, usually that means early on Saturday or Sunday mornings.  

Bermondsey station was opened in 1999 as part of the Jubilee Line extension. In line with the other stations on this line's extension it is noted for its use of natural light. 

 

The escalators are lined with concrete and have a high ceiling giving the station a feeling of spaciousness.

 

It was intended that the station would have a multi-storey office building above it but as yet that hasn't happened. I turned right out of the station onto the Jamaica road. The name is a reference to goods arriving in the nearby docks from Jamaica.

I walked past a row of shops. Although not that old it all looked a bit run down although it might be that these shops were not yet open.

There is very little housing that has survived from the 19th century. At the end of that century much of the housing in Bermondsey was in an appalling state and parts of it had been condemned as being unfit for human habitation. By the late 1920s land had been cleared and work begun on building five storey blocks of flats on what became known as the Dickens estate. A large investment from the London County Council saw further redevelopment in the interwar years and the building of more five and seven storey blocks.

The one exception is this 21 storey building which was completed in 1964 and seems out of place amongst the low rise blocks surrounding it.

I turned left onto Southwark Park Road and into the park. Southwark Park was one of the earliest parks to be opened by the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1869.

When the park first opened in 1869 there was no provision for public music but the local community wanted to listen to music in the park. The Crown Brass band was given permission in 1878 to play on Saturdays. A permanent wooden grandstand was installed in 1883. This was replaced in 1889 by an iron structure which was bought by the London County Council from the Great Exhibition.. The bandstand was designed by Captain Francis Fowke and remained in situ until the late 1950s when it was replaced by a functional rectangular bandstand which was later removed. In 1999 the Heritage Lottery Fund awarded a grant for the restoration of historic features in the park and a replica of Fowke's bandstand  was built which is the one we can see today.

This fountain is London's first public memorial to honour a working class man. Jabez West, a blacksmith's son, came to Bermondsey in the 1830s. He worked in the leather trade but became known in the area for devoting his time to political reform and the temperance movement. The drinking fountain was paid for by public subscription.

The park also has a bowling green, although you would have to be a member of the club to play. Many public parks have bowling greens. I remember going to watch my father play bowls in our local park during the summer months in the 1950s and 60s. Woe betide me if I ever stepped onto the green!

The objective of the game is to roll biased balls so that they stop as close as possible to the 'jack', a much smaller ball. Usually played outdoors but nowadays there are a number of indoor venues especially during the winter months. 

These sculptures are caryatides (Greek architectural supports used instead of a pillar or column). These caryatides were built to flank the main entrance of Rotherhithe Town Hall in 1897. The building was severely damaged during WW2. Although the caryatides remained after the rest of the building was demolished they were eventually found a permanent home here in 2011.

With its close proximity to the docks and  import of foodstuffs from around the world, a lot of food processing industries grew in Bermondsey. There was Cross and Blackwell, Liptons, Pearce Duffs and Peek Frean. These have now mainly relocated but this huge biscuit factory, on Drummond Street, still remains although it no longer produces biscuits.

Peek Frean biscuit factory moved to this site in 1873. Some of its most memorable biscuits are still just as popular today - Garibaldi, Marie, Bourbon as well as Twiglets and Cheeselets which were developed here during the interwar period. The Peek Frean factory closed here in 1989. It is now a global brand and is owned by various food businesses. The biscuit factory site and buildings are now the Tower Bridge Business Complex which  includes many other businesses, a gym and residential apartments.

This mural beneath the railway bridge is known as The Bermondsey Mural.

Painted by Sean Thomas in 2020 it features a collection of signs and phrases using a wide range of typefaces.

Although a number of pubs have closed down in recent years in this area there seems to be a rise in these craft beer pubs which appear to be springing up in the locality. 

The large church of St James is a local landmark. It was completed in 1829 and was one of the most expensive of the 50 new churches built by the Commission for building new churches. It became a Grade II listed building in 1949.

In 1855 the churchyard was closed to burials as part of the need to move cemeteries away from built up areas in an effort to prevent the spread of the plague. After its closure local people used the churchyard to dry clothing.  With no income from burials the church found it difficult to maintain the churchyard and over the next 30 years it became neglected and overgrown. In 1886, the churchyard was landscaped and the following year the management of the park was transferred to the Borough Council. However the park was small and short of play space for the children. Undeterred the children used the granite balustrades of the front steps of the church as slides. Arthur Carr the chairman of Peek Frean biscuit factory used the churchyard as a short cut to work. He was so impressed with the fun the children had sliding down the balustrades that he funded the building of a 'joyslide'. The slide was opened in 1921 and went on to give years of fun to local children. The worn out, delapidated slide was removed in the 1980s.

 

I crossed back over Jamaica Road making my way towards the Thames. On the way, I passed this house with a blue plaque on the side, in honour of Tommy Steele. An English entertainer he was regarded as Britain's first teen idol and rock and roll star. My very first record was 'Little White Bull' by Tommy Steele which my father gave me when I was about 11 or 12. I have never forgotten it as it was very rare to be given a present when it wasn't your birthday or Christmas.

I came out at the Thames opposite this building known as the 'Leaning Tower of Rotherhithe'. Standing on its own it's a building you can't miss either from the riverside or the embankment. This was once one of many buildings along here owned by Braithwaite & Dean, a barge company. It is thought that this sole building survived demolition in the 1960s because it was brick built whereas others were predominately wooden. The barge company used the building until the early 1990s. It is now a private residence.

This is the Angel Inn. There has been an inn on this site since the 15th century which was built by the monks of Bermondsey Priory. The present building dates from the early 19th century. Captain Cook visited the inn before travelling to Australia.

Just across from the Inn  are the remains of a manor house (c.1350) built for Edward III. They were discovered in the 1980s when archaeologists from the Museum of  London  were excavating this area. 

This sculpture 'Dr Salter's Daydream' by Diane Gorvin, shows an older Dr  Alfred Salter imagining his young wife Ada and their daughter Joyce in happier days. Throughout Bermondsey there are many references and memorials to the Salters.

The Salter statues. Alfred Salter (1873-1945) was a doctor at Guy's Hospital and Ada Salter, his wife,  worked to improve housing and environmental conditions. He treated his poorest patients without charge whilst Ada opened social clubs to help transform the lives of Bermondsey's prostitutes.  The Salters' lives were marred by personal tragedy when their 8 year old daughter, Joyce, died from Scarlet fever. To win trust and to avoid privilege, they had chosen to live amidst the disease ridden slums and have their daughter educated locally but the cost proved high. Though Joyce's death bonded the Salters for ever with the people of Bermondsey, they were inconsolable. 

Alfred later became active in politics and became an MP for the area in 1922 and worked tirelessly to improve  conditions in the area and helped to establish a local health service previously unknown in the area. Whilst living in Bermondsey in 1898 he described the conditions he found: 'Water was drawn from one standpipe for 25 houses, 'on' for two hours daily but never on Sundays. There was no modern sanitation and only one WC and cesspool for 25 houses. Queues lined up each morning, often standing in the rain or snow. It was utterly impossible to maintain bodily cleanliness. The conditions of thousands of homes were the same at the time.'

  

This is Cherry Garden Pier. It is used by City Cruises, a company that runs trips up and down the Thames either for sightseeing or private functions. It used to be a popular night out to go for a meal and/or disco on one of these privately chartered boats as it motored up and down the Thames. 

The name can be traced back to the 17th century when there was a large garden here that was part of a cherry orchard. It is mentioned in Samuel Pepys diary ( a great source of information about London in the 17th cent) on the date 13 June 1664'.....down to Greenwich and there saw the King's Works...and so to the Cherry Garden and so carried some cherries home'. The Cherry Garden was closed in 1708 and the pier built c1860. Although there is a small green area planted here now there are no cherry trees.

Continuing my walk along the Thames I past this newish housing development with this line of trees. Are they cherry trees I wonder? I must remember to return in the spring and see them in flower.

This structure jutting out into the Thames is part of London's super sewer, a 25km tunnel that will run below the Thames from west to east. It will prevent sewage pollution that currently enters the Thames. At its deepest point the tunnel will be 65m below London.

Six Tunnel Boring Machines (TBM) are being used to build the super sewer. The tunnel is due to be operational in 2025. 

I walked around the large Tideway building and back onto the Thames path as I just couldn't resist walking a little further before returning to Bermondsey station.

Just ahead of me is St Saviour's Dock and along the river at this point is where a number of barges are moored. A few years ago there was a campaign to have the barges and boats removed even though barges and similar vessels have moored here for over 200 years. Local land residents objected to the noise from the increase in houseboats and their renovations that a petition was made to have the moorings removed. It turned into a highly publicised and celebrity led fight against the removal which focused on the enhanced greenery the houseboats brought to the area with their onboard gardens.

They won their case and the houseboats and other barges remain although they did make some adjustments to the rules surrounding the moorings.

A short walk from the barge moorings is the bridge over the mouth of one of London's 'lost' rivers, the Neckinger. This hydraulic cable stay swing bridge across the Dock was installed in 1995 to connect up the Thames path.

In the 18th century the Thames was so busy that cargoes were often stranded on ships for weeks. The area became notorious for pirates who attacked moored vessels. If caught they were hanged at the mouth of this dock. The river that fed the inlet took the name Neckinger, from the 'Devil's Neckinger'. Neckerchief was London slang for the noose used to hang the pirates. 

I left the Thames path and retraced my steps over the small bridge to have a look at the old warehouses as I make my way back to Jamaica Road and the tube station. In the early 19th century this area was a notorious rookery or slum. Dickens used it in his novel 'Oliver Twist'. He set Fagin's den in one of the warehouses and Bill Sykes met his end in the ooze bed of Folly Ditch.

 Folly Ditch, a loop of the River Neckinger encircled this area which was originally called Jacob's Island. Described by Charles Dickens as 'surrounded by a muddy ditch, six to eight feet deep' the island contained many mills, warehouses and wharves. The worst housing on Jacob's Island was cleared in the nineteenth century to make way for warehouses. However, this was not before a major cholera epidemic in 1849-50 and a fire that raged for two weeks or more in 1861.  Most of the early buildings were demolished and replaced by Victorian buildings, many of which have now gone or been redeveloped. 

New Concordia Wharf  was the first to be redeveloped into residential accommodation. This wharf was originally a grain store.

The redevelopment of New Concordia Wharf was completed in 1981.Further developments followed all mainly luxury apartments with a few offices. I wonder what Dickens would think of this area now. When I first read 'Oliver Twist' I had no idea that the squalid area Dickens  described was very much a real place and not just a figment of his imagination.

An extract from chapter 50 'Oliver Twist' 

… beyond dockhead in the Borough of Southwark, stands Jacob’s Island, surrounded by a muddy ditch, six or eight feet deep and fifteen or twenty wide when the tide is in, once called Mill Pond, but known in the days of this story as Folly Ditch….at such times, a stranger, looking from one of the wooden bridges thrown across it at Mill Lane, will see the inhabitants of the houses on either side lowering from their back doors and windows, buckets, pails, domestic utensils of all kinds, in which to haul the water up…….and when his eye is turned from these operations to the houses themselves, his utmost astonishment will be excited by the scene before him. Crazy wood galleries common to the backs of half-a-dozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud, and threatening to fall into it, as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations; every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage; all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch.

Some of the street names still reflect the history of the area. I walked down Mill Street and back onto Jamaica Road. I had enjoyed my walk around this historical part of  Bermondsey.