Christ Church Spitalfields by Leon Kossoff
Today I present another extract from my new book EAST END VERNACULAR, Artists who painted London’s East End streets in the 20th century to be published by Spitalfields Life Books in October. Click here to preorder your copy
(Click on this image to enlarge)
Presiding over Spitalfields for three hundred years, Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Christ Church in Commercial Street is the East End’s most enduring landmark and it has caught the imagination of many artists. Yet perhaps Leon Kossoff (born 1926) has captured its awe-inspiring scale more effectively than anyone else in a recurrent series of paintings and drawings executed over the past half century.
Born just half a mile up the road in Shoreditch, Leon grew up on the Boundary Estate where his family ran a bakery but, at the age of nine, a trip to the National Gallery inspired him with a love of painting which was to become the consuming passion of a lifetime. When his school was evacuated to Norfolk in 1939, Leon had the good fortune to stay with the Bishop family in Kings Lynn who encouraged his interest in art, which led him to make his first paintings and, on his return to London in 1943, he enrolled for art classes at Toynbee Hall.
Even before he ever drew it, Christ Church was a landmark on Leon’s landscape, both culturally and literally. Built with the proceeds of a coal tax in the early eighteenth century, Christ Church was constructed as an emblem of power to impress the Huguenot immigrants of Spitalfields and encourage their conversion to Anglicanism. Its overbearing scale makes the onlooker feel small, yet equally it offers the converse experience to those leaving the church, to whom, elevated upon the steps of the portico, the world appears spread out below. For the child of first generation immigrants, such as Leon, the building was a constant reminder of his place in the continuum of successive waves of immigration which have come to define the East End.
Leon first drew Christ Church in the fifties when he was living in Bethnal Green and the building was derelict, returning to the subject again in the seventies when it was under threat of demolition. But it was not until the eighties, when he had moved from the East End to Willesden, that he undertook drawings which became the basis for his series of paintings of this monumental subject beginning in 1987.
This densely wrought painting completed in 2000 embodies both the complex emotionalism of Leon’s personal response to everything that Christ Church represents and the struggle of the onlooker to contain such titanic architecture.
“In the dusty sunlight of this August day, when this part of London still looks and feels like the London of William Blake’s Jerusalem, I find myself involved again in making drawings, and the idea of a painting begins to emerge. The urgency that drives me to work is not only to do with the pressures of the accumulation of memories and the unique quality of the subject on this particular day but also with the awareness that time is short, that soon the mass of this building will be dwarfed by more looming office blocks and overshadowed, the character of the building will be lost forever, for it is by its monumental flight into unimpeded space that we remember this building.” Leon Kossoff, March 1989
After serving in the Second World War, Leon studied commercial art at St Martin’s and then painting at the Royal College of Art. Despite winning international acclaim for his work in recent decades, Leon Kossoff remains a modest, reclusive figure and he has returned to Arnold Circus and the Boundary Estate in the last few years undertaking a series of affectionate, intimate drawings of the urban landscape of his childhood.
Prints of Leon Kossoff’s drawing of Saturday Afternoon, Arnold Circus are on sale at Leila’s Shop in Calvert Avenue in aid of the Friends of Arnold Circus.
Images copyright © Leon Kossoff
Reproduced courtesy of Annely Juda Gallery, London
Take a look at some of the other artists featured in East End Vernacular
Click here to preorder a copy of EAST END VERNACULAR for £25
In City Churchyards
In the churchyard of St Dunstan’s in the East, Idol Lane
If ever I should require a peaceful walk when the crowds are thronging in Brick Lane and Columbia Rd, then I simply wander over to the City of London where the streets are empty at weekends and the many secret green enclaves of the churches are likely to be at my sole disposal. For centuries the City was densely populated, yet the numberless dead in the ancient churchyards are almost the only residents these days.
Christopher Wren rebuilt most of the City churches after the Great Fire upon the irregularly shaped medieval churchyards and it proved the ideal challenge to develop his eloquent vocabulary of classical architecture. Remarkably, there are a couple of churches still standing which predate the Fire while a lot of Wren’s churches were destroyed in the Blitz, but for all those that are intact, there are many of which only the tower or an elegant ruin survives to grace the churchyard. And there are also yards where nothing remains of the church, save a few lone tombstones attesting to the centuries of human activity in that place. Many of these sites offer charismatic spaces for horticulture, rendered all the more appealing in contrast to the sterile architectural landscape of the modern City that surrounds them.
I often visit St Olave’s in Mincing Lane, a rare survivor of the Fire, and when you step down from the street, it as if you have entered a country church. Samuel Pepys lived across the road in Seething Lane and was a member of the congregation here, referring to it as “our own church.” He is buried in a vault beneath the communion table and there is a spectacular gate from 1658, topped off with skulls, which he walked through to enter the secluded yard. Charles Dickens also loved this place, describing it as “my best beloved churchyard”
“It is a small small churchyard, with a ferocious, strong, spiked iron gate, like a jail. This gate is ornamented with skulls and cross-bones, larger than the life, wrought in stone … the skulls grin aloft horribly, thrust through and through with iron spears. Hence, there is attraction of repulsion for me … and, having often contemplated it in the daylight and the dark, I once felt drawn towards it in a thunderstorm at midnight.” he wrote in “The Uncommercial Traveller.”
A particular favourite of mine is the churchyard of St Dunstan’s in the East in Idol Lane. The ruins of a Wren church have been overgrown with wisteria and creepers to create a garden of magnificent romance, where almost no-one goes. You can sit here within the nave surrounded by high walls on all sides, punctuated with soaring Gothic lancet windows hung with leafy vines which filter the sunlight in place of the stained glass that once was there.
Undertaking a circuit of the City, I always include the churchyard of St Mary Aldermanbury in Love Lane with its intricate knot garden and bust of William Shakespeare, commemorating John Hemminge and Henry Condell who published the First Folio and are buried there. The yard of the bombed Christchurch Greyfriars in Newgate St is another essential port of call for me, to admire the dense border planting that occupies the space where once the congregation sat within the shell of Wren’s finely proportioned architecture. In each case, the introduction of plants to fill the space and countermand the absence in the ruins of these former churches – where the parishioners have gone long ago – has created lush gardens of rich poetry.
There are so many churchyards in the City of London that there are always new discoveries to be made by the casual visitor, however many times you return. And anyone can enjoy the privilege of solitude in these special places, you only have to have the curiosity and desire to seek them out for yourself.
In the yard of St Michael, Cornhill.
In the yard of St Dunstan’s in the East, Idol Lane.
At St Dunstan’s in the East, leafy vines filter the sunlight in place of stained glass.
In the yard of St Olave’s, Mincing Lane.
This is the gate that Samuel Pepys walked through to enter St Olave’s and of which Charles Dickens wrote in The Uncommercial Traveller – “having often contemplated it in the daylight and the dark, I once felt drawn towards it in a thunderstorm at midnight.”
Dickens described this as ““my best beloved churchyard.”
In the yard of St Michael Paternoster Royal, College St.
In the yard of St Lawrence Jewry-next-Guildhall, Gresham St.
In the yard of St Mary Aldermanbury, Love Lane, this bust of William Shakespeare commemorates John Hemminge and Henry Condell who published the First Folio and are buried here.
In the yard of London City Presbyterian Church, Aldersgate St.
In the yard of Christchurch Greyfriars, Newgate St, the dense border planting occupies the space where once the congregation sat within the shell of Wren’s finely proportioned architecture.
In the yard of the Guildhall Church of St Benet, White Lion Hill.
In St Paul’s Churchyard.
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Libby Hall, Collector of Dog Photography
Libby Hall
Between 1966 and 2006, Libby Hall collected old photographs of dogs, amassing many thousands to assemble what is possibly the largest number of canine pictures ever gathered by any single person. Libby began collecting casually when the photographs were of negligible value, but by the end she had published four books and been priced out of the market. Yet through her actions Libby rescued an entire canon of photography from the scrap heap, seeing the poetry and sophistication in images that were previously dismissed as merely sentimental. And today, we are the beneficiaries of her visionary endeavour.
A joyful iconoclast by nature who has recently had, “Stop! Do not resuscitate, living will extant,” tattooed on her chest – Libby Hall is a born and bred New Yorker originating from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, who moved into her house in Clapton in 1967 with her husband the newspaper cartoonist, Tony Hall, and has stayed ever since.
“My husband Tony and I used to go to Kingsland Waste, where we had a friend who did house clearances, and in those days they sold old photo albums and threw away the pictures. So I used to rescue them and I began sorting out the dogs – because I always liked dogs – and it became a collection. Then I started collecting properly, looking for them at car boot sales and auctions. And eventually a publisher offered me an advance of two thousand pounds for a book of them, which was fantastic, and when each of my books was published I just used the royalties to buy more and more photographs. I had a network of dealers looking out for things for me and they would send me pictures on approval. They were nineteenth century mostly and I only collected up until 1940, because I didn’t want to invade anyone’s privacy. Noboby was interested until my first book was published in 2000, and afterwards people said I had shot myself in the foot because everybody started collecting them and they became very expensive, but by then I had between five and six thousand photographs of dogs.
Dogs have always been powerfully important to me, I’ve lived with dogs since the beginning of my days. There’s a photo of my father holding me as baby in one arm and a dog in the other – dog’s faces were imprinted upon my consciousness as early as humans, and I’ve always lived with dogs until six weeks ago when my dog Pembury died. For the last month, friends have been ringing my bell and there’s only silence because he doesn’t come and I open the door to find them in tears. It was an intense relationship because it was just the two of us, Pembury and me, and as he got older he depended on me greatly. So it is good to have my freedom now but only for a little while. At one point, we had three dogs and four cats in this house. We even had a dog and a cat that used to sleep together, during the day they’d do all the usual challenging and chasing but at night they’d curl up in a basket.
When I was eleven, I wanted a dog of my own desperately, I’d been campaigning for five years and I wanted a cocker spaniel. My father contacted a dog rescue shelter in Chester, Connecticut, and they said they had one. But as we walked past the chain link fence, there was a dog barking and we were told that it was going to be put down the next morning. Of course, we took that dog, even though he wasn’t a cocker spaniel. We wondered if they always told people this, but Chester and I were inseparable ever after.”
With touching generosity of spirit, Libby confided to me that her greatest delight is to share her collection of pictures. “What matters to me is others seeing them, I never made any money from my books because I spent it all on buying more photographs.” she said.
These photographs grow ever more compelling upon contemplation because there is always a tension between the dog and the human in each picture. The presence of the animal can unlock the emotional quality of an image of people who might otherwise appear withheld, and the evocation of such intimacy in pictures of the long dead, who are mostly un-named, carries a soulful poetry that is all its own. Bridging the gap of time in a way that photographs solely of humans do not, Libby’s extraordinary collection constitutes an extended mediation upon mortality and the fragility of tender emotions.
“I put my heart and soul into it, and it was very hard giving up collecting, but my fourth book was the ultimate book, and it coincided with the realisation that my husband Tony was dying, so I realised that it was the end of a period of my life.” Libby concluded with a melancholy smile, sitting upon the couch where Pembury expired and casting her eyes thoughtfully around the pictures of dogs lining the walls. I asked Libby how she felt now that her collection is housed elsewhere. “I’ve got the books,” she reminded me, placing her hand upon them protectively, “I have no visual memory at all, so I keep going back to look at them.”
The two stripes on this soldier’s sleeve meant he had been wounded twice and was probably on leave recovering from the second wound when this photograph was taken.
HRH the Princess of Wales with her favourite dogs on board the royal yacht Osborne.
John Brown 1871. The dogs are Corran, Dacho, Rochie and Sharp, who was Queen Victoria’s favourite.
George Alexander, Actor/Manager, with his wife Florence.
This photograph of Mick came with the collar he is wearing.
Queen Victoria and Sharp (pictured above with John Brown) at Balmoral in 1867.
Ellen Terry.
Charles Dickens with his devoted dog Turk.
Libby’s recently deceased dog Pembury wearing the vest that was essential in his last days.
Libby on the couch where Pembury died six weeks ago.
One of Libby’s six dog dolls’ houses. – “I think dolls’ houses with dolls are rather scary but dolls’ houses with dogs are ok.”
Libby Hall – “I put my heart and soul into it.”
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Portraits of Libby Hall copyright © Martin Usborne
Dog photographs copyright © The Libby Hall Collection at the Bishopsgate Institute
Libby Hall selected these favourite dog photographs from her books – Prince and Others, Prince and Other Dogs II, Postcard Dogs, Postcard Cats and These Were Our Dogs, all published by Bloomsbury.
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The Dogs of Spitalfields in Spring
The Dogs of Spitalfields in Winter
Spitalfields In Kodachrome
Photographer Philip Marriage rediscovered these colourful images recently, taken on 11th July 1984
Brushfield St
Crispin St
Widegate St
White’s Row
Artillery Passage
Brushfield St
Artillery Passage
Brushfield St
Fashion St
Widegate St
Artillery Passage
Gun St
Brushfield St
Gun St
Brushfield St
Parliament Court
Leyden St
Fort St
Commercial St
Brushfield St
Photographs copyright © Philip Marriage
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In Old Bermondsey
The horse’s head upon the fascia reveals that RW Autos was once a farrier
Twenty-five years ago I had reason to visit Bermondsey St frequently but I have hardly been there since, so I thought it was time to walk down across the river and take a look. Leaving the crowds teeming like ants upon the chaotic mound that is London Bridge Station in the midst of reconstruction, I ventured into Guy’s Hospital passing the statue of Thomas Guy, who founded it in 1721, to sit with John Keats in a stone alcove from old London Bridge now installed in a courtyard at the back.
From here, I turned east through the narrow streets into Snowsfields, passing the evocatively named Ship & Mermaid Row, and Arthur’s Mission of 1865 annotated with “Feed my Lambs” upon a plaque. An instruction that has evidently not been forgotten, as the building adjoins the Manna Day Centre which offers refuge and sustenance to more than two hundred homeless people each day.
At the end of Snowsfields is the crossroads where Bermondsey St meets the viaduct carrying the railway to and from London Bridge, and the sonorous intensity of the traffic roaring through, combined with the vibration from the trains rattling overhead, can be quite overwhelming. Yet the long narrow street beckons you south, as it has done for more than a thousand years – serving as the path from the Thames to the precincts of Bermondsey Abbey, a mile away, since the eleventh century. When I first came here, I never ventured beyond Bermondsey Sq. Only when I learned of the remains of the medieval gatehouse in Grange Walk beyond, with the iron hinges still protruding from the wall today, did I understand that Bermondsey St was the approach to the precincts of the Abbey destroyed by Henry VIII in 1536.
There is an engaging drama to Bermondsey St with its narrow frontages of shops and tall old warehouses crowded upon either side, punctuated by overhanging yards and blind alleys. A quarter of a century ago, everything appeared closed down, apart from The Stage newspaper with its gaudy playbill sign, a couple of attractively gloomy pubs and some secondhand furniture warehouses. I was fascinated by the mysteries withheld and Bermondsey St lodged in my mind as a compelling vestige of another time. Nowadays it appears everything has been opened up in Bermondsey St, and the shabbiness that once prevailed has been dispelled by restoration and adaptation of the old buildings, and the addition of fancy new structures for the Fashion & Textile Museum and the White Cube Gallery.
Yet, in spite of the changes, I was pleased to discover RW Autos still in business in Morocco St with the horses’ heads upon the fascia, indicating the origin of the premises as a farrier. Nearby, the massive buildings of the former London Leather Exchange, now housing dozens of small businesses, stand as a reminder of the tanning industry which occupied Bermondsey for centuries, filling the air with foul smells and noxious fumes, and poisoning the water courses with filth.
The distinctive pattern of streets and survival of so many utilitarian nineteenth and eighteenth century structures ensure the working character of this part of Bermondsey persists, and you do not have to wander far to come upon blocks of nineteenth century housing and old terraces of brick cottages, interspersed by charity schools and former institutes of altruistic endeavour, which carry the attendant social history. Thus Bermondsey may still be appreciated as an urban landscape where the past is visibly manifest to the attentive visitor, who cares to spend a quiet afternoon exploring on foot.
John Keats at Guy’s Hospital
Arthur’s Mission in Snow’s Fields seen from Guinness Buildings 1897
In Bermondsey St
At the Woolpack
Old warehouses in Bermondsey St
St Mary Magdalen Bermondsey – the medieval tower is the last remnant of the Abbey founded in the eleventh century
In St Mary’s Bermondsey St
In St Mary Magdalen Graveyard
This plaque marks the site of the abbey church
Old houses in Grange Walk – the house on the right is claimed to be the Abbey gatehouse with hinges of the gates still visible
Bermondsey United Charity School for Girls in Grange Walk, 1830
In Grange Walk
Bermondsey Sq Antiques Market every Friday
A cottage garden in Bermondsey
The Victoria, a magnificent tiled nineteenth century pub with its original spittoon, in Pages Walk
London Leather, Hide & Wool Exchange built 1878 by George Elkington & Sons, next to the 1833 Leather Market, it remained active until 1912.
At the entrance to St Thomas’ Church
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Street Scene by Barnett Freedman
Today I present another extract from my new book EAST END VERNACULAR, Artists who painted London’s East End streets in the 20th century to be published by Spitalfields Life Books in October. We still need a couple more investors, so please click here to learn how you can support the publication of EAST END VERNACULAR
Street Scene by Barnett Freedman (Click this image to enlarge)
When I first saw Street Scene by Barnett Freedman (Reproduced courtesy of the Tate Gallery), I thought I half-recognised the location as either Whitechapel or Bethnal Green and I delighted in the painting as an evocation of the streetlife of the Jewish East End in the early twentieth century.
Surely that is The George in Bethnal Green Road in the background? In particular, the two ostentatiously dressed woman in their contrasting outfits recalled for me the custom of people to promenade along Aldgate to Whitechapel at weekends in their finery, window shopping and greeting friends, enjoying their social life in public. Indeed, Pearl Binder included a similar pair of young women togged up to the nines in one of her lithographs of Aldgate in the twenties. I also wondered if the shabby old street musician with his violin was a Russian immigrant who had arrived like Barnett Freedman’s parents at the end of the nineteenth century.
Barnett Freedman was born in Lower Chapman St, Stepney Green in 1901. A sickly child who endured extended hospital stays, he was confined to bed between the ages of nine and thirteen, yet managed to educate himself, learning to read, write, play music and draw and paint while sequestered in a hospital ward.
By the age of sixteen, Barnett was earning his living as a draughtsman to a monumental mason for a few shillings a week, while for the next five years he spent his evenings undertaking classes at St Martin’s School of Art. Before long, he moved to an architect’s office, creating attractive drawings from his employer’s rough sketches and, taking the opportunity offered by a surge in demand for the war memorials to hone his skill as a letteringh artist.
With remarkable tenacity and self-belief, Barnett applied over three successive years for a London County Council Scholarship that would enable him to study at the Royal College of Art under the direction of Sir William Rothenstein. Experiencing rejection on each occasion, Barnett summoned the courage to present his portfolio in person to Rothenstein who recognised his talent and applied to the London County Council Chief Inspector himself on behalf of the young artist. As a consequence, a stipend of £120 a year was granted, enabling Barnett to begin his studies full time in 1922.
At the Royal College of Art, Barnett’s talent flourished among fellow students including Edward Bawden, Raymond Coxon, Henry Moore, Vivian Pitchforth and John Tunnard. Yet even after graduating in 1925, he continued to struggle to support himself and in 1929, ill-health prevented him working for a year. This situation as resolved when William Rothenstein took Barnett onto the staff of the Royal College in 1930. In the same year, he married fellow illustrator, Claudia Guercio, and, during the thirties, enjoyed an increasingly successful career as an illustrator and commercial artist.
Barnett’s lithographs for Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, published in 1931, were one of many highlights during his long association with Faber and Faber, for whom he also illustrated works by the Brontës, Walter de la Mare, Charles Dickens, Edith Sitwell, William Shakespeare and Leo Tolstoy. As a commercial artist, he undertook prestigious commissions for Ealing Films, the General Post Office, Curwen Press, Shell-Mex, British Petroleum, Josiah Wedgwood and London Transport, earning popular success.
Appointed as an official War Artist, along with Edward Ardizzone and Edward Bawden, Barnett accompanied the expeditionary force in the spring of 1940 before the retreat at Dunkirk, and was awarded a CBE for this work in 1946. Yet Barnett always retained his East End accent and once, when he hailed a taxi to the Athenaeum Club, the incredulous cabbie famously retorted, “What, you?”
Street Scene was painted between 1933 and 1939, and subsequently he reworked the image as a lithograph for Lyons Corner House. Barnett’s son Vince, who was born in 1934, recalled his father working on the picture in the first floor studio of the family home in a back street of Gloucester Rd, West London. Vince revealed to me that the building on the right of the painting was based their house, 11 Canning Place. “The fiddler was to be found at the Gloucester Road end of Canning Place just about every day, and was a figure of some threat to me at the age of four!” he recalled, “The small person on the right, with his nanny Miss Wiggle, is a reference to me!”
No wonder that I was unable to place the location of this painting precisely in the East End because it is not a literal scene at all but a composite of Bethnal Green and Gloucester Road. I often wonder if the East End itself is actually a place or a culture, and this painting proposes an answer to my quandary. Barnett Freedman employed diverse topographic elements create a portrait of a society he knew intimately, constructing an entirely subjective portrayal of his environment and personal heritage. Look in the left top corner of the painting and you will see the artist raising his hat to you, ambling happily along the pavement and eternally at home in his own East End universe. Vincent Freedman summed up his father’s achievement in these words, “A huge optimism and compassion shows itself to me in all his work and life. Humanity was his central driving force.”
The Old George in Bethnal Green
Barnett Freedman’s house at 11 Canning Place, Gloucester Rd
Barnett Freedman in Hyde Park
Take a look at some of the other artists featured in East End Vernacular
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In Old Rotherhithe
St Mary Rotherhithe Free School founded 1613
To be candid, there is not a lot left of old Rotherhithe – yet what remains is still powerfully evocative of the centuries of thriving maritime industry that once defined the identity of this place. Most visitors today arrive by train – as I did – through the Brunel tunnel built between 1825 and 1843, constructed when the growth of the docks brought thousands of tall ships to the Thames and the traffic made river crossing by water almost impossible.
Just fifty yards from Rotherhithe Station is a narrow door through which you can descend into the 1825 shaft via a makeshift staircase. You find yourself inside a huge round cavern, smoke-blackened as if the former lair of a fiery dragon. Incredibly, Marc Brunel built this cylinder of brick at ground level – fifty feet high and twenty-five feet in diameter – and waited while it sank into the damp earth, digging out the mud from the core as it descended, to create the shaft which then became the access point for excavating the tunnel beneath the river.
It was the world’s first underwater tunnel. At a moment of optimism in 1826, a banquet for a thousand investors was held at the bottom of the shaft and then, at a moment of cataclysm in 1828, the Thames surged up from beneath filling it with water – and Marc’s twenty-two-year-old son Isambard was fished out, unconscious, from the swirling torrent. Envisaging this diabolic calamity, I was happy to leave the subterranean depths of the Brunels’ fierce imaginative ambition – still murky with soot from the steam trains that once ran through – and return to the sunlight of the riverside.
Leaning out precariously upon the Thames’ bank is an ancient tavern known as The Spread Eagle until 1957, when it was rechristened The Mayflower – in reference to the Pilgrims who sailed from Rotherhithe to Southampton in 1620, on the first leg of their journey to New England. Facing it across the other side of Rotherhithe St towers John James’ St Mary’s Rotherhithe of 1716 where an attractive monument of 1625 to Captain Anthony Wood, retrieved from the previous church, sports a fine galleon in full sail that some would like to believe is The Mayflower itself – whose skipper, Captain Christopher Jones, is buried in the churchyard.
Also in the churchyard, sits the handsome tomb of Prince Lee Boo. A native of the Pacific Islands, he befriended Captain Wilson of Rotherhithe and his two sons who were shipwrecked upon the shores of Ulong in 1783. Abba Thule, the ruler of the Islands, was so delighted when the Europeans used their firearms to subdue his enemies and impressed with their joinery skills in constructing a new vessel, that he asked them to take his second son, Lee Boo, with them to London to become an Englishman.
Arriving in Portsmouth in July 1784, Lee Boo travelled with Captain Wilson to Rotherhithe where he lived as one of the family, until December when it was discovered he had smallpox – the disease which claimed the lives of more Londoners than any other at that time. At just twenty years old, Lee Boo was buried inside the Wilson family vault in Rotherhithe churchyard, but – before he died – he sent a plaintive message home to tell his father “that the Captain and Mother very kind.”
Across the churchyard from The Mayflower is Rotherhithe Free School, founded by two Peter Hills and Robert Bell in 1613 to educate the sons of seafarers. Still displaying a pair of weathered figures of schoolchildren, the attractive schoolhouse of 1797 was vacated in 1939 yet the school may still be found close by in Salter Rd. Thus, the pub, the church and the schoolhouse define the centre of the former village of Rotherhithe with a line of converted old warehouses extending upon the river frontage for a just couple of hundred yards in either direction beyond this enclave.
Take a short walk to the west and you will discover The Angel overlooking the ruins of King Edward III’s manor house but – if you are a hardy walker and choose to set out eastward along the river – you will need to exercise the full extent of your imagination to envisage the vast vanished complex of wharfs, quays and stores that once filled this entire peninsular.
At the entrance to the Rotherhithe road tunnel stands the Norwegian Church with its ship weather vane
Chimney of the Brunel Engine House seen from the garden on top of the tunnel’s access shaft
Isambard Kingdom Brunel presides upon his audacious work
Visitors gawp in the diabolic cavern of Brunel’s smoke-blackened shaft descending to the Thames tunnel
John James’ St Mary’s Rotherhithe of 1716
The tomb of Prince Lee Boo, a native of the Pelew or Pallas Islands ( the Republic of Belau), who died in Rotherhithe of smallpox in 1784 aged twenty
Graffiti upon the church tower
Monument in St Mary’s, retrieved from the earlier church
Charles Hay & Sons Ltd, Barge Builders since 1789
Peeking through the window into the costume store of Sands Films
Inside The Mayflower
A lone survivor of the warehouses that once lined the river bank
Looking east towards Rotherhithe from The Angel
The Angel
The ruins of King Edward III’s manor house
Bascule bridge
Nelson House
Metropolitan Asylum Board china from the Smallpox Hospital Ships once moored here
Looking across towards the Isle of Dogs from Surrey Docks Farm
Take a look at
Adam Dant’s Map of Stories from the History of Rotherhithe
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