‘Sweet Thames Flow Softly’.
Posted: December 31, 2015 Filed under: Architectural, Meteorological, The Thames, The Thames | Tags: Albert Bridge, Ewan McColl, fog on the Thames, James McNeill Whistler, London fog, pea souper, Sweet Thames Flow Softly 1 Comment
Albert Bridge in fog, 1st November 2015. © David Secombe
Happy New Year from The London Column.
Give a little Whistler.
Posted: November 6, 2015 Filed under: Architectural, Artistic London, Bohemian London, Meteorological, The Thames | Tags: 5th of November, Albert Bridge, flinging a pot of paint in the public's face, foggy day in London town, Guy Fawkes night, James Whistler, John Ruskin, Thames in fog Comments Off on Give a little Whistler.
The Thames at Chelsea in fog, November 2015. © David Secombe
From J.M. Whistler’s ’10 o’clock Lecture’, 1885, reprinted in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, 1892:
And when the evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairyland is before us …
The recent fog in London, despite its inconvenience for air travellers, commuters, etc., proved to be quite a popular meteorological event: instead of invoking Bleak House’s November gloom it made the city look impossibly glamorous. The above photo was taken on the evening of Sunday, 1st November, during a wander along the Chelsea Embankment: Whistler territory. The great American painter was a local from 1859 until his death in 1903, and his ‘Nocturnes’ of the Chelsea/Battersea foreshore transform the Victorian industrial Thames into a Japanese world of shadows and fugitive lights. (Whistler was fond of applying musical terms to painting, so his nocturnes derive from Chopin: by the same token, Debussy was a fan and his orchestral Nocturnes return the compliment, evoking the Seine in the same mood as the painter’s Thames.)
James McNeill Whistler: Nocturne: Blue and Silver (Battersea Reach) 1872.
James McNeill Whistler: Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Cremorne Lights, 1872.
James McNeill Whistler: Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea 1871
James McNeill Whistler: Nocturne: Blue and Gold (Old Battersea Bridge) 1872-5.
The final nocturne was ‘The Falling Rocket’, a sort of proto-Abstract Impressionist take on fireworks at Cremorne Gardens, a pleasure garden located roughly where Lots Road Power Station is now. You don’t need me to tell you that this is the painting condemned by Ruskin in terms incendiary enough (‘I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face’) for artist to sue critic. Whistler won the case but was awarded joke damages and went bankrupt. No matter. Posterity has found in Whistler’s favour; he even has his own statue now, on the north side of Battersea Bridge.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler: Nocturne: Black and Gold (the falling rocket) 1875.
This post is really a couple of years late, as there was a reportedly excellent show of Whistler’s Thames paintings at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. I say ‘reportedly’ because I was marooned on the south coast at the time and missed the bloody thing. But I’m back now, which is why I chanced to be walking along the Chelsea Embankment on Sunday night … (As it happens, I am writing this on Guy Fawkes night. Even in the pissing rain, I can look out of my 6th floor window and see the whole city lit up by sparkling lights. Some of them are even fireworks.) D.S.
Estates of Mind.
Posted: April 20, 2015 Filed under: Architectural, Class, Hospitals, The Thames, Vanishings | Tags: Isle of Dogs, Michael Mulcahy, Mike Seaborne, Samuda Estate, St John's Estate, Tarling Estate, Transition Group 3 Comments
Tarling Estate, 2002. © Mike Seaborne.
Tarling Estate, Shadwell:
Located immediately to the east of Watney Street Market, Shadwell, the Tarling Estate was built c. 1950 to replace overcrowded slums and reduce the population density by half.
The run-down estate was demolished in 2003 and replaced by a higher density mixed-use development intended to both regenerate the area and create what the developer, Toynbee Housing Association, described as ‘a more mixed and balanced community’.
Tarling Estate 2015. © Mike Seaborne.
Samuda Estate, Isle of Dogs:
Samuda Estate 2015. © Mike Seaborne.
The Samuda Estate, completed by the Greater London Council in 1967, is mainly comprised of four and six story blocks arranged around a traffic-free square. There is also a 25-storey tower block of maisonettes – Kelson House – situated on a prime site by the river. The estate is in need of refurbishment and some residents believe that the estate’s owner, One Housing Group, are deliberately running it down so it can be demolished to make way for private housing.
St John’s Estate, Isle of Dogs:
St John’s Estate 2015. © Mike Seaborne.
Planned in 1952 by Poplar Borough Council and described by John Betjeman as ‘one of the best post-war housing estates I have seen’, St John’s Estate was intended as a new self-contained neighbourhood along the lines of the award-winning Lansbury Estate in Poplar. In this it has largely succeeded but One Housing Group, owner of this and three other estates on the island, are considering the possibility of demolition and replacement by new high-density housing which might include several tower blocks of 50+ storeys.
Kingsbridge Estate, Isle of Dogs:
Kingsbridge Estate, 2015. © Mike Seaborne.
Originally known as the Millwall Estate, Kingsbridge was built by the London County Council in 1936-7, with an additional block being added in 1958-60. Despite their age, the blocks are structurally sound and are liked by many of the residents. However, their riverside location means that the value of the land they occupy is very high. The estate’s owner, One Housing Group, is currently consulting on ideas for the future, which may involve replacing the blocks with new housing for private sale.
Photos and text by Mike Seaborne, taken from Estates of Mind, photographs documenting 20th Century social housing by the Transition Group. Twitter feed: @TransitionLDN #TransitionProject. The pictures below are by Michael Mulcahy. Thanks to Mike and Michael.
Brandon Estate, Kennington. © Michael Mulcahy.
Lansbury Estate, Poplar. © Michael Mulcahy.
Lansbury Estate, Isle of Dogs behind. © Michael Mulcahy.
See also: Balfron Remembered, Balfronism, Robin Hood Gardens, Two Men And A Dog, Pepys Estate.
Flotsam and jetsam. Photo & text: David Secombe. (1/5)
Posted: April 16, 2012 Filed under: Housing, The Thames | Tags: Canary Wharf, corporate London, Isle of Dogs, Piers Gough, River Thames Comments Off on Flotsam and jetsam. Photo & text: David Secombe. (1/5)
Isle of Dogs, 1988. Photo © David Secombe.
From Without the City Wall, Hector Bolitho and Derek Peel, 1952:
No part of London endured more bombing during the Second World War than the Isle of Dogs. Anyone who has flown over the Thames at night will recall how the river makes a splendid curve here, and how the moonlight shining on the slow oily waters turns the peninsula into a perfect target. The German bombers came to know it well, and the dock and warehouses suffered night after night. The rebuilding has covered many of the scars, but also many of the old romantic streets …”
David Secombe writes:
The photo above – taken for a magazine assignment to illustrate the growth of London’s Docklands – gives a small indication of the speculative building frenzy which characterised the mid-1980s. The building on the right in the photo above, newly constructed when this picture was taken, is Cascades, designed by Piers Gough for CZWG architects. Cascades was the first private apartment block to be built on the Isle of Dogs – a trailblazer for all the other developments of ‘executive homes’ (marginalising the ‘indigenous’ population, naturally) which – despite the occasional market wobble – have followed in its wake. Elsewhere on the Isle of Dogs at the time of this image, the massive foundations of Olympia and York’s Canary Wharf were being laid; gradually, the ethereal, silver profile of 1 Canada Square (the “tallest habitable building in Britain” according to Wikipedia) rose into the sky, elegantly dominating the landscape for miles around – until it was crowded by a cluster of far more vulgar towers belonging to big, bad corporations like Barclays and HSBC. If anyone wants to look for physical manifestations of the arrogance of capitalism, the Isle of Dogs has to be London’s most conspicuous example.
… for The London Column.
The London Column 