Comments on: John Claridge Along The Thames

By: Valerie-Jael

Valerie-Jael — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 17:29:39 +0000

Wonderful photos of my childhood playground. Valerie

By: Carolyn Badcock - nee Hooper

Carolyn Badcock - nee Hooper — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 11:01:32 +0000

The photo of New Canning is simply magnificent…… A stage with props set ready for the actors to enter, and behind, such a beautifully “painted” backdrop. I could stare at the magic in this photo for a long long time.

By: pauline taylor

pauline taylor — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 18:51:44 +0000

This photographer is also an artist, anyone who wants to learn about photography now would do well to study these, the composition is brilliant!! Well done John.

By: Greg Tingey

Greg Tingey — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 07:51:17 +0000

Well do I remember this.
I took half-a-dozen ( bright daylight) photos of the docks in ’63 … all gone.
When I was a child, in winter, we could almost always tell if it was going to snow – you could hear the ship’s hooters in Walthamstow, which meant there was a gentle SE-wind.

By: Robert Green

Robert Green — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 01:17:51 +0000

Looking at these photographs now it’s all to easy to forget that the scenes depicted here and indeed the whole way of life that went along with them are even now still part of relatively recent history, living in Upton Park the docks were always an integral part of my life in East London, many of my relations worked in the docks and on the river, as a young boy I too was always facinated by the perceived glamour and excitement of seeing the big ships come in from exotic lands all around the world and as a boy my father would often walk me down to the Royals and we would stand for literally hours watching the ships gliding in and out of the docks, watching admiringly I was always fascinated and impressed by the graceful elegance of those colossal structures as they sedately glided through the locks sometimes with breathtakingly small clearance, as a young boy the sight of those mighty ships leaving the docks and sailing off to all kinds of (to my mind) exciting adventures around the globe would transport my imagination far away from the real life everyday reality of living in the East End, of course both pictures and memories can blinker the often grim reality of bygone times and I know from personal experience for many including myself those days were often hard days and not without problems, but having said that, how I lament their passing, how my heart yearns to once again have that feeling of belonging to the history of it, history that succeeded generations before me, a feeling of belonging to a way of life that has now quite literally been completely obliterated.