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Post by tod2 on Jan 2, 2015 11:48:57 GMT
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Post by htmb on Jan 2, 2015 13:14:04 GMT
Nice thread, Tod. Had you crossed the Thames before getting to the pub?
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Post by tod2 on Jan 2, 2015 15:52:09 GMT
No Htmb. If you have a map of London and surrounds you will see we were on the same side as the pub. I was tempted to go down the spiral stairs across to Greenwich but it would mean getting the tube back from there anyway. We were there on our last trip and saw the Cutty Sark etc. Instead we head for another well known venue on our last day....Camden Town.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 2, 2015 20:05:15 GMT
It is amazing how you dig up these quirky little areas, tod2. I know that all of the "secret area" books exists for London and Paris and many other cities, but the big difference is that you actually go to the real unexplored areas rather than the "fake" secret areas that everybody actually already knows about. And yet your final photos along the river completely show that this place is totally accessible and easily within reach of the rest of the city.
I very much like the photos of the mysterious isolated statue, whose aura generates a huge quantity of questions. A person longing for the delights of the city? Someone looking upon it with complete disdain? Dr. Who? Jack the Ripper?
And as you know, I love Camden Town.
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Post by mossie on Jan 2, 2015 21:07:05 GMT
Well you really take me back. I left home in late 1948 or early 1949 to live in the Barnados hostel for boys in Bower St Stepney. Limehouse was just round the corner and was the Chinese quarter, where ships laundrymen and cooks and their families lived when not aboard. It was not uncommon to see opium being smoked and the whole area had a pretty poor reputation, Cable Stree and Ratcliff Highway spring to mind as places not to go on pay night for fear of being mugged for ones wage packet.
When I walked through the area a few years back it had become yuppified with the old riverside warehouses having been transformed into expensive flats. As I was able to walk to my job in the City when broke it is obvious why these places are now sought after, mind you walk inland towards Commercial Road and it soon becomes tatty.
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Post by tod2 on Jan 3, 2015 6:45:38 GMT
Mossie, It is wonderful to hear that you actually experienced what Fletcher describes in the opening chapter on Limehouse. He says that by tradition Limehouse is a Chinese quarter, but on his recent visits few Chinamen, sinister or otherwise, have showed up. In a later paragraph he says one could devote a curious day to a tour of London laundries - not the actual laundries in the sunset lands beyond Euston, but the collecting offices. Chinese laundries are still to be found in the East End, though not many Laundrettes, a choice study in themselves, have taken their place. Of the collecting offices, the Sunlight Laundries, displaying a rising sun and tiles of an intense ultramarine are interesting and needless to say, those displaying the magic word 'Bagwash'. The word, although in a class by itself, is one of those one would like to use for its own sake, irrespective of the meaning, simply because they sound interesting. 'Bagwash' is pure East End, and suggests fat old women pushing prams of underwear.
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Post by patricklondon on Jan 3, 2015 7:21:32 GMT
There used to be a character in a radio comedy series called Nausea Bagwash. But by the by: old-style East End funerals do still happen - actadman.co.uk/your-choice/transportThe statue by the Grapes is one of Antony Gormley's Another Time series, where he places these figures in various striking places: www.antonygormley.com/projects/item-view/id/304#p0linkI rather think the scruffiest bit of the Commercial Road, as in tod's photos, is just waiting for the last leaseholder to move out before there is comprehensive redevelopment: that's a prime site for posh flats, since it overlooks the Limehouse Cut canal at the back and is close to good public transport links. And [cough] if I might piggy-back on tod's thread: autolycus-london.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/speaking-of-limehouse.htmlSt Anne's churchyard is worth a visit in early spring, when for a couple of weeks it's a sea of crocuses: My blog | My photos | My video clips"too literate to be spam"
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Post by tod2 on Jan 3, 2015 13:19:22 GMT
Thank you Kerouac for lauding me with a bit of imagination and incurable curiosity!
Patrick your contribution would be more than welcome! I am blown away by the scene of those beautiful crocuses!
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Post by htmb on Jan 3, 2015 14:08:25 GMT
I see you've added more photos and information above, Tod. Thanks! I found this part of London to be very interesting and would love to go back and explore it some more. I recognize the dome-shaped building in you photos of the park as the entrance to the walkway under the Thames. Being able to "cross" the river via an underground passage was fascinating to me. I'm looking forward to seeing more of your posts!
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Post by tod2 on Jan 3, 2015 14:20:03 GMT
Yes indeed htmb. I missed half the photos when first sending them to ImageShack. Have slotted them in now. Yes the Rotherhithe tunnel is a very good challenge for the squeemish! You must do it if you go to Greenwich to see the fabulous Cutty Sark. There is a pub there and several other places. I would not purposely head for The Grapes, it's very small and pokey but still has it's character.
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Post by htmb on Jan 3, 2015 14:41:19 GMT
Oh, I've walked the tunnel, but came from the other side. It was one of tne of the highlights of my trip, but I tend to get excited by the odd bits of things.
It was from that park, once I'd come up out of the tunnel, that I wandered around and found Mudchute Farm, as recommended by you and Patrick.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 3, 2015 20:33:03 GMT
Wonderful, Tod, wonderful! I love the way this thread is simultaneously a travelogue and a time machine. Many of the photos seemed to transport us back to a previous century. And Mossie's contributions opened a window on how the area was in the not-too-distant past. (which come to think of it, was in a previous century)
I would guess the iron thing is either a bollard (if close to an existing or covered-over canal) or a way to keep carriages from jumping the curb.
The lone statue strongly suggests a diver to me.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 3, 2015 20:59:28 GMT
The Greenwich tunnel has been on my list for a while now, but I'm still not sure when I will ever actually do it.
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Post by htmb on Jan 3, 2015 21:11:16 GMT
I'm hoping to revisit that area again in the summer if it can be fit into the schedule.
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Post by mossie on Jan 3, 2015 22:43:32 GMT
This has opened a whole can of worms. The tunnel one should see is the Rotherhithe Tunnel opened in 1908 with its breathing hole in the scruffy little King Edward VII Memorial Park off The Highway and Glamis Road. One should then have lunch, or at least a drink in the old riverside pub The Prospect of Whitby. Last time I visited it still had the old zinc bar counter, but, as I reminded the landlady, had lost the parrot which used to reside in its cage at the end of the bar.
The Prospect is named after an old sailing barge which had been beached and become derelict. At this beach pirates were executed in the good old days, the pub have erected a gibbet to remind us. But the story I know of these executions is that the pirate was staked down on his back on the beach below the high tide level. He was then left for three tides to pass over him. If he was still alive then he would be pardoned. Who says the English do not have a sense of fair play?
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Post by bjd on Jan 4, 2015 6:52:15 GMT
A former friend of mine (from high school days) spent 3 years in London at the end of the 1960s/early 1970s. She and her roommates would occasionally go to the Prospect of Whitby -- I remember her mentioning the pub but not the parrot.
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Post by tod2 on Jan 4, 2015 8:37:55 GMT
Mossie, That was a very interesting anecdote about the Prospect of Whitby! I think I have tried to go there many years ago but it was not open for business at the time we arrived. I know it was sometime in the morning.
Please do let us have any information about the East End you may have experienced. The author maintains that many old East End dwellers seldom found their way beyond Whitechapel. Do you remember The Queen's Music Hall that was demolished in 1964?
We saw many buses with Poplar on the front and I read here in my book that it was chosen as the site of a large rebuilding scheme, Lansbury. The market square he says, completed about 1951, had a depressing air about it, quite unlike most London markets.
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Post by tod2 on Jan 4, 2015 9:47:10 GMT
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Post by lagatta on Jan 4, 2015 12:45:07 GMT
Thanks, Tod (and all), that was lovely!
I've scarcely been to London at all, only once to work at a conference. Hope that can be remedied (though I find London EXTREMELY expensive, much more so than Paris).
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Post by tod2 on Jan 4, 2015 13:02:56 GMT
And thank you Lagatta for your comment. Yes, London is an expensive city but for us it's on a par with Europe and America. Our currency is so weak it makes no difference. I saw the rate is now R17.96 for 1 pound. R14.06 for a Euro and R11.72 for a US Dollar. I wouldn't mind having dollars as my base currency. That would make it a very affordable holiday for us! You'd better come over here and live it up
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Post by mossie on Jan 4, 2015 15:17:00 GMT
If you can bear any more I am off on another nostalgia trip, just been listening to Barbara Windsor on the radio and you cannot get any better East Ender than her. Anyhow here is the gibbet at the Prospect of Whitby, framing Canary Wharf, many of whose inhabitants should be swinging from such a thing. On a pleasanter note here is the lifting mechanism which lifted a section of Glamis Road to enable ships to enter Shadwell Basin which was part of the London docks. This was just up from the Prospect You must realise that this area made a very deep impression on a naive 16 year old, transported from working on a farm in very rural East Kent to the grottiest East End of London. Chalk and cheese had nothing in it, East Kent was chalk but Ratcliff was sooty brickwork. I never forget walking down Commercial Road to work one morning when shanks pony was the quickest form of transport. The fog was so dense, and dirty yellow, that it was impossible to see across the road, and policemen were controlling traffic. All around were derelict sites where bombed buildings had been roughly cleared away. Such rebuilding that had taken place then was purely to make buildings weatherproof and useable. Most men worked on the docks or wharehouses and markets, and the area was represented by one of the only two Communist MPs in the Parliament. From the hostel dormitory on the top floor we could see over into the tatty Albert Gardens with its row of pollarded plane trees, just stumps with a round ball on top developed over years of close pollarding, all completely black. I was totally shocked to see green shoots poking out when spring came. Sorry to hijack your thread Tod, but I find reminiscence much preferable to contemplating the future.
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Post by patricklondon on Jan 4, 2015 18:25:39 GMT
I would guess the iron thing is either a bollard (if close to an existing or covered-over canal) or a way to keep carriages from jumping the curb. It's one of several different anti-parking devices the local council has experimented with, I think, with a vaguely nautical/industrial look about it. I'm not convinced, I suspect much of that sort of thing is just clutter in the end. My blog | My photos | My video clips"too literate to be spam"
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Post by lagatta on Jan 5, 2015 1:52:54 GMT
Tod, remember Canadian, not US dollars.
South Africa is one of the most beautiful countries in the world, with one of the best climates, but while I'm far from paranoid, the high crime rate (in all communities) would make me hesitate, even if I could afford the air fare across the Atlantic and down to the tip of Africa. Because, even according to SA friends (Black, White and Indian) it is not a place where it is easy to stroll about all day, and I don't drive.
Perhaps I simply have more "leads" for places I can stay for little in Paris, and I'm past the age for couch-surfing.
I have a dear friend from London who lives here; perhaps if she returns we can think of something. Life is funny; I remember her with a little girl, but now little girl is a teenager, almost a young adult, and she is far from little. Not only is her mum almost 6 ft dall, so is her grandmum. Like those stately Dutch ladies. Her dad is Russian, so she speaks Russian as well as French and English.
Another friend's kid, in Paris, is a bit older and is articling in law; wants to be a human rights lawyer at the Hague. Speaks French, English, Hebrew, Arabic, Ladino and doubtless other languages... funny how life goes.
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Post by tod2 on Jan 5, 2015 9:23:08 GMT
Mossie you are more than, actually most welcome, to hijack anything of mine on Anyport... Please add to this Limehouse thread as you feel a memory coming on! Lagatta - Ya, any kind of dollar even Singaporean! You don't have to be afraid of coming here for the first time on a guided tour. If you don't drive, that saves our motorists from seeing this vehicle coming at speed on the wrong side of the road...ha ha! No seriously, you wouldn't like it. And local transport would not be for you. It's not for me and I live here....far too scary.
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