Southwark

This is the 9th station I have visited on the Jubilee Line. It was opened in November 1999 as part of the Jubilee line Extension. When the extension was planned, a station here was not included as it is very close to Waterloo station. I am still not sure why they decided to build it. However, build it they did with the platforms underneath the main line viaduct between Waterloo East and London Bridge main line stations. This presented many technical difficulties which were resolved by building two concourses at different levels.

The stainless steel cladding inside the tunnel linking the platforms is very typical of the materials used in the Jubilee Line extension.
The escalators leading to the top concourse seem to be encased in their own tubes.
This is the magnificent upper concourse. It is 16m high with a glass roof allowing as much light as possible into the station. The award winning 40m wall on the left of this photo is lined with 660 pieces of blue glass. One end of this walkway takes you to Waterloo east station. The other direction leads you to the Southwark station exit.
Escalators bring you up to the ticket hall with its drum shaped ceiling and expanse of windows.

From the outside the station has a futuristic look about it.

I turned left out of the station onto Blackfriars Road and walked under the rail bridge. Across the road I could see the closed entrance to the old Blackfriars station. You can still see the original writing on the wall. There is a plaque on the wall giving you a bit more information about the station.

Also on the wall was this Plaque introducing the Low Line.

Not to be outdone by New York and its High Line, we have a Low Line! The line links walking routes running along the base of Victorian viaducts linking Waterloo and Bankside with London Bridge, Bermondsey and so on.

Blackfriars Road is full of many new office blocks and hotels but nestled amongst them just back from the road is Christ Church, blink and you might miss it and that would be a real shame. In 1627 John Marshall, a baker who made his fortune through building up his business of quality breads left money in his will for the building of a church. The church was to be called Christ Church. He also left money for the building of tenements which would be a source of income for the church. At the time the area was known as a place of poverty and prostitution. Consequently the housing that raised an income for the Diocese of Westminster was used for prostitution. No quite what he had in mind, I expect. The church, which was to be used a mission was built in 1671 with the steeple and spire completed in 1695. Due to poor drainage the church began to decay and was pulled down in 1738  just 50 years after being built. A new church was erected in 1738-41. As a result on incendiary bombing in April 1941, the church was completely gutted by fire and the present church was built in 1957.  I was fortunate that the church was open because inside there are some wonderful stained glass windows.
As you enter the church you walk past this series of windows commissioned in the 1980s that tell some of the changing history of this area. Each window was sponsored by a specific institution. From the late 1970s many of the traditional riverside activities such as printing, food processing and engineering, depicted in the church windows were closing down.

On either side above the pews are eight windows dating from 1959, depicting the different crafts and trades.

The windows show someone at work with a view of  a relevant part of the parish below.

This window shows a lighterman, who used to transport cargo from vessels in the river to the docks or the shore. The boats in which the goods were carried were known as 'lighters' or 'barges'. They would carry anything from corn and timber to groceries. The view of the Thames shown below the Lighterman no longer exists with St Paul's being the largest building. Nowadays there are so many high rise office blocks that dwarf the cathedral. So much has changed in a relatively short space of time.

I could have spent hours looking at these windows but I needed to move on and see more of this historic and interesting area.

Regeneration using public, private and charitable funds began just before the 2000 Millennium and the churchyard was landscaped as a green oasis for the new generation of local workers and residents.

This water fountain at the back of the churchyard was a gift from the Victorian philanthropist, J Passmore Edwards

The stone cross, in the grass, marks where the tower's cross fell during the bombing in 1941.

A building that did survive the bombings of WW2 is the Rose and Crown pub which backs onto the Churchyard. There has been a building here since the 15th century and is mentioned by Shakespeare in Henry VIII.

 

I walked past the Central Ballet school onto Hatfields. The name of the street is from the historic use of the site for drying animal skins that were made into hats. Across the road is Hatfields Green. Once an envelope factory which was replaced by a park in the 1960s.

It is not a large space but the mature trees give a sense of woodland in a very built up area.

The large buildings on the right hand side of Hatfields, house numerous different companies. This one at No 18 is home to talkSPORT, a sports radio station which was launched in 2000 and boasts that it broadcasts sport 24 hours a day.

I left Hatfields and walked round the corner onto Stamford Street. In the late 1800s there were seven  hat makers here. Most of the original houses were demolished in the early 1900s. 

On the corner of Hatfields and Stamford Street is Southbank Tower (I had to take this photo from a distance). This is a residential block that was completed in 1972 as a 30 storey building. Unusually it was extended in 2013 by adding eleven more floors. The redevelopment of the tower was awarded in 2015 and 2016 for 'Conservation and Retrofit'.

Also on Stamford Street is this hotel named the Mad Hatter. It was originally a hat factory called Tress & Co making Bowler and Top hats. Hat making dates back to the 15th century in Southwark with the making of felt hats. The name Mad Hatter is linked to the hat making industry and the use of mercury. In the 18th and 19th centuries, mercury nitrate was used as part of the process of turning the fur of small animals into felt,. Exposure to mercury caused the workers to develop a variety of physical ailments including tremors, speech problems and hallucinations.

This unusual frontage to an apartment block on Stamford Street was once the portico of a Unitarian Chapel built in 1821. The chapel fell into disuse and the main body was demolished in 1964. 

The next building along is the London Nautical School. It was built in 1820 for the 'Benevolent Society of St Patrick', an educational charity for the poor Irish children in London. The schoolrooms were planned as wings each side of a centre block containing committee rooms and living quarters for the master and mistress. An additional storey was built over each wing in 1909. In 1921 the property was bought by the London County Council for use as the Central Printing School. Since 1965 it has been occupied by the London Nautical School, a specialist sports and naval college.

Across the road are the Bernie Spain Gardens, named after Bernadette Spain, a campaigner on health and housing provision for the local community. Bernie was a leading figure in the 1970s/80s campaign which lead to the establishment of Coin Street Community Builders who own and manage the gardens.  The story behind the Coin Street Community is quite unique and inspiring. After the war this area was almost derelict due to extensive bombing. What was left was mainly demolished to make way for the Festival of Britain held in 1951. The Royal Festival Hall was the only permanent legacy of the festival and then later more media and arts buildings were built such as the National Theatre, the National Film theatre and ITV London. From the 1960s onwards more and more offices were being built and staffed by commuters with no connection to the local area. By the 1970s the local population numbers dropped by 90% consequently local shops and schools had to close. 

Residents decided to fight back and formed a community plan which centred around people, homes and community facilities. The straw that broke the camel's back was a plan to build Europe's tallest hotel and over I million square feet of office space between Waterloo and Blackfriars bridges. The Coin Street Action Group was born. It took seven years of campaigning and two, year long inquiries followed. The group managed to overturn the GLC (Greater London Council) support for the new development to support for the local residents. The Coin Street Community Builders was established and bought the 13 acre site from the GLC for £1,000,000 in 1984. That site now includes OXO Tower Wharf, Gabriel's Wharf, Riverside walkway as well as parks, galleries, restaurants, design studios, a family and children's centre and the co-operative homes adjacent to the garden.

I walked through the gardens to Gabriel's Wharf by the side of the Thames. In 1988 this was just 20,000 sq feet of empty Thames-side space.

 It was saved from yet more commercial development by the Coin Street community. It now houses small craft shops and bars and restaurants. Don't be fooled by the houses behind the shops as these are painted on to the old warehouse walls.

You exit Gabriel's Wharf onto the Thames Path.

This stretch of the river foreshore is named after local resident and community activist John Hearn, known as Ernie. When the tide goes out a little more it reveals a very sandy small beach. In the summer it is a favourite place for sand sculptures.

A plaque on the wall gives an explanation as to why it has been named after 'Ernie'.

 This is in recognition of his work gaining appreciation of the Thames as an asset and amenity for London. From his daily walks with his dog along the foreshore in the 1960s and 70s, Ernie became an expert in the archaeology and history of the river. He also became a tireless campaigner against the reclamation of the foreshore, as property developments replaced former dock activity. It was due to his campaigning that the Greater London Council agreed to retain the existing river wall before they sold the site to Coin Street Community Builders (CSCB) in 1984. The result is the much loved and well used foreshore and sandy beach revealed daily with the tide.

Ernie has lived in the local area for 50 years. A printer until retirement, Ernie was a founder member of the CSCB and also served on boards of other local organisations.

I continued alongside the Thames past the Oxo Tower development. 

This photo was taken by walking out onto one of the disused loading bays. Looking back you can see the Oxo Tower Wharf. This used to be a power station supplying the Post Office until the 1920s. It was then bought by the meat extract company who made OXO stock cubes. They demolished much of the old building to build this one. The architect incorporated the name OXO into the window design as there was a ban on advertising on buildings at that time. Very clever as  the word Oxo was and is an ever present name on the skyline. When built this was the second highest commercial building in London.

After their success developing Gabriel's Wharf the CSCB took on the refurbishment of Oxo Tower Wharf giving it 78 co-operative flats, design studios, galleries, cafes and restaurants. 

Behind the OXO tower is Bargehouse, part of the same development but left as an untouched, raw, industrial space used for exhibitions and events,


I walked on as far as Blackfriars Bridge where I left the Thames Path and turned right onto Blackfriars Road to discover a lot of new developments. This is One Blackfriars, a 50 storey mixed use tower block. It has 274 homes, a hotel and some retail space.No affordable homes here with one bedroom apartments costing from one million pounds.
This is a bar and restaurant next to another hotel.

It is all part of the Bankside Yards new development.  There will be eight new buildings altogether rising to a maximum of 50 storeys. 650 new homes will be built as well as a hotel and office space. 

The £2.5 billion development  which is located between the Tate Modern art gallery and Blackfriars Bridge will also restore and feature 14 railway arches which have been closed for 150 years. Bankside Yards says it will make a financial contribution of £65 million to Southwark council to deliver new affordable housing across the borough.

 

Of course, this was all planned and building started well before the pandemic hit the world. The reality now is that London has changed. The thousands and thousands of office workers that used to flow into London on a daily basis are now working from home. Businesses that depended on this workforce have had to close through lack of customers. It appears that the traditional 9-5 working day will no longer exist with many choosing to work at least part of their week from home. All these new office blocks will be superfluous before they've even been built. Transport For London is in a financial crises as the number of commuters into London has been so dramatically reduced and is discussing the closure of some parts of the system.

I didn't want to return to the river as I wrote about the next section of the Thames path when I visited Blackfriars station, so I wandered down a few roads until I found the original site of the Globe theatre. It is here beneath the cobbles of  a private car park between two blocks of flats.

There is a sign on the ground marking out a section of where the foundations of the theatre were found.

On the street there is a stone wall with a plaque commemorating Shakespeare and the theatre alongside four panels with information about the history of the Globe.
Here is some of the information from the panels:

In 1599 Richard and Cuthbert with William Shakespeare and four other players leased two plots of land on which they built the Globe playhouse.  The Globe became the most popular theatre of its day and witnessed the first performances of some of the greatest works of English literature  including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Documentary evidence suggests that from 1599 William Shakespeare lived for a while  near the Globe theatre. As a shareholder in a professional company,'The Chamberlain's Men' (later the King's Men), Shakespeare would have been closely involved in all aspects of the life of the theatre and would probably have performed in many of the productions staged here.   However, during a performance of Henry VIII on 29th June 1613 a stray spark from a cannon, fired as part of the performance, fell onto the thatched roof and the theatre was burnt to the ground. The Globe reopened in 1614 having been hurriedly rebuilt apparently on the same foundations but with a tiled roof replacing the original thatch.

After Shakespeare's death in 1616,  the Globe continued to be profitable but was finally  demolished by order of Parliament under the Puritans probably after 1644,

In 1989 the Museum of London carried out an archaeological evaluation on this site and uncovered the remains of a small part of the Globe Theatre as well as other archaeological features and deposits, The numerous later buildings that have stood on the site since the demolition of the Globe have severely damaged the archaeological remains, leaving only a small part of the theatre surviving. However they were able to establish that the theatre was a many sided structure, possibly with 20 sides.

Using information gleaned from the excavation the reconstruction of the Globe Theatre by the riverside was completed in the mid 1990s. Like the original it has a thatched roof - the first in London since the Great Fire of 1666. 

Also on Park Street,  where this modern housing estate is now situated , was the site of the largest brewery in the world. The history of the Anchor Brewery can be traced back as far as 1633 after which it was taken over by a succession of owners. In 1781 it was the Barclay Perkins Brewery then was taken over by Courage in 1955 and was finally closed in the 1980s. The scale of brewing was immense even by today's standards. In 1815 the brewery was the first  to produce 300,000 barrels a year. A quote from Cunningham's 1850 Handbook of London:

'The establishment in Park-street is now the largest of its kind in the world. The buildings extend over ten acres and the machinery includes two steam-engines. The store-cellars contain 126 vats, varying in their contents from 4,000 barrels down to 500. About 160 horses are employed in conveying beer to different parts of London.'

This plaque embedded into a wall between the railings on Park Street lists the different owners of the brewery.

The Anchor Pub on the riverside is the only connection left to the brewery as it started life as the 'brewery tap room' and was first established in 1616. It is said that the diarist Samuel Pepys watched the Great fire of London from here as his diary states that he took refuge ..'in a little alehouse in Bankside.... and there watched the fire grow'. The Great Fire never reached south of the river so the pub was safe. Ironically it was destroyed by fire sometime later. It was then rebuilt between 1770 and 1775 and this is the pub we see today with a number of additions over the years.

I returned down Redcross Way past this 19th century warehouse of a former engineering stores.
Looking through the windows it now seems to have become a pub/restaurant.

Walking back towards the station I couldn't resist walking down Great Guildford Street which once must have been part of Southwark's industrial past but this building caught my eye with this decoration between the windows. 
I couldn't discover any history of the building other than it was built pre 1900 and now houses a solicitors on the ground floor with flats above.

Next door was another small warehouse now used as offices.
At the end of the road I came across this archway and walked down the road to see if I could discover something of its history.

Around the corner was an archway leading into a garden. The garden and building are on the site of the original All Hallows Church. the church was built to a design by George Gilbert Scott Junior in 1879-80. After many years of service, the church was bombed twice in WW2. Gutted by a landmine it remained in its damaged state until well after the war. It was not until 1957 that any attempt was made to salvage the bombed remains. The main structure was demolished and the northern part incorporated into a new smaller church which opened in 1958. The new church was in use until 1971 when a dwindling congregation meant it was no longer sustainable. During the 1980s and 90s the church was used as a recording studio but the studios closed down in 2001. The building has been empty ever since.

 

The garden is entirely looked after and managed by community volunteers. It seems the site has been in dispute since 2005. The owners, Southwark Cathedral want to demolish it for flats. The locals want it to become a more creative centre incorporating artists workshops/dance studios/craft studios etc. It seems the discussions/arguments have not yet been resolved.

 On the other side of Copperfield Street is a row of Victorian cottages built by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners

An old street sign on one of the houses.

At the end of Copperfield Street I turned left and realised I was back on Great Guildford Street again but at the bottom end of it. This building, Duthy Hall was leased by Southwark council in 1963 and used as a theatre for amateur productions. It is currently being used as a photographic studio. The building next door dates from the early 1880s and was built to house 'vagrants and drunkards unfit to be admitted to the nearby workhouse'. In 1995, the lease of the building was taken over by St Mungo's, an organisation at the forefront of tackling homelessness. It is now a hostel for the homeless accommodating 52 people a night.

I seemed to be walking in circles so I made a determined effort to not wander off the route back to the station. I couldn't resist photographing this outburst of colour on a very boring looking building. The work is by Hannah Hill and is entitled He(art) is everywhere. She has painted a series of motifs celebrating local history to include people and trades that have existed in the area. It is part of a wider project of five new artworks created by emerging artists to celebrate the spirit of the Bankside neighbourhood.

Back on Blackfriars Road I noticed this impressive building. Now an architect's office, it  used to be the headquarters of the order of the Sons of Temperance Friendly Society. The Order was established in New York in 1842 as a tea totalist friendly society that provided insurance payments during ill health or death for its members The organisation spread to the UK in the 1840s with the first lodges established in Liverpool and other northern cities. By 1853 a national Division of Great Britain was formed. This large building became its headquarters in 1909. 

On my way home I reflected on today's walk which I thoroughly enjoyed. I thought it fitting that one of the first places I visited had the stained glass windows showcasing the area's history and then towards the end I came across a modern artwork celebrating the area as it is now.