Comments on: Tony Bock on the Thames

By: dave

dave — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 16:41:07 +0000

i can remember the royal Albert dock and every time i visited the east end the cranes were vanishing until they had all gone id have liked to have seen something left to remember the dockers and lighter man who worked in the royal group of docks after all they helped our country during the war

By: Alan Gilbey

Alan Gilbey — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 11:31:52 +0000

Elizabeth, the Tilbury Docks aren’t really in London. They’re in Tilbury, twenty miles towards the sea. But you could start your search for more info about the area around them here…

http://www.tilburyandchadwellmemories.org.uk/page_id__57_path__0p2p16p.aspx

By: sprite

sprite — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 01:07:39 +0000

Wonderful pictures. The present series of Call the Midwife depicts quite well IMO the area in the 50s when the docks were still in use.

One of my first neighbour in East London, Mrs Wiggins, lost her son to an accident in the docks. He had to be there every morning by 5AM not garanteed a job as only a certain number would be called to unload ships when and if necessary. She had lived her entire live round Bethnal Green being the first occupant of newly built social housing, on the site of an old work house near Regent’s canal. She had become the rent collector of the dwellings during the war and appeared very proud of the responsability. She talked of the West End as if another world. I doubt she’d been west more than a couple of times in her whole life’s time. She totally refused to move in with her daughter in Oxfordshire when things got too hard for her and she felt lonely and abandonned with all old neighbours moved away and not knowing who to trust amongst the new comers. Sadly she was mugged and declined very quickly thereafter. The lives of the docks she used to talk about was a big mystery to me, one of the newcomer in the area in the early 70s to train at the London not yet Royal.

foghorn –
there ought to have been one
in smog enfolding docks
just shredds of memories now
linger in silvered snaps

sprite

By: Elizabeth Varadan

Elizabeth Varadan — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 16:57:05 +0000

Wonderful pictures about an area of London that interests me: The Docks. Do you have more information about what the Docks were like in 1890? I’d be interested to know more, especially about Tilbury Dock. Anything you can tell me about the area around Tilbury Dock. Thanks.

By: Peter Holford

Peter Holford — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 15:10:07 +0000

More great photos from Tony Bock – let’s hope there are many more to come! The last photo is almost surreal with a scene of derelict land in close proximity to Tower Bridge and the City. It emphasises how recent it is that City workers have looked to the east of the City as an area fit for encroaching into and even living.

The barges are a nice reminder of growing up in Putney. At times they seemed to be non-stop, one after the other. I moved away from the river in 1961 so I never witnessed the decline. But as a teenager would I have noticed?