Into Rotherhithe

We began to explore. First, down to the river, then turning right, along the Thames path,  into Rotherhithe.  This is where Anthony Armstrong-Jones romanced Princess Margaret, in his photographer's studio near the Rotherhithe Tunnel.  The houses are all gone now but the warehouses onto the Thames remain, re-invented as up-market apartments.
 

Old Rotherhithe church, St. Marys, is where the captain of the Mayflower is buried.  The Pilgrim Fathers first set sail from Rotherhithe; this is where the ship was built.  They sailed from a jetty near the Anchor & Hope pub.  Just across the road is the Brunel Museum, in the old pumping house for Brunel's tunnel under the river Thames.  Started by Brunel's father, it was finished many years later by his son.  Cutting out the tunnel involved inventing the kind of cutting equipment which built the Channel Tunnel.  On Tuesdays at 6pm the curator takes visitors down into the actual tunnel which is now part of the London Underground system.  When it was built the idea was that there would be two massive spiral roadways down to the tunnel on either bank of the Thames and that goods wagons and carriages could trundle under the river.  The tunnel was completed but the money ran out before the spiral roadways could be constructed.  The tunnel became a place for sightseers with  stalls selling knick-knacks such as paper panoramas of the tunnel and the river Thames above it.

Further along the river are the massive remains of one of the locks which used to allow cargo ships into the Rotherhithe docks.  These once covered the whole peninsular and most local people worked there as dockers.  It was a rough, filthy place, where cargoes from all over the world were unloaded.  Canada Water specialised in timber from Canada and the Baltic and the workmen prided themselves on being able to carry the huge planks over their shoulders.  There is a memorial statue to them by Canada Water, near the new library. Beyond Canada Water and behind Surrey Quays shopping centre is Greenland Dock, where whale carcases were once unloaded. It was the first dock built on the peninsular, in 1695, and was originally Howland Dock, built by the 1st Duke of Bedford on land given in the dowry of Elizabeth Howland, granddaughter of the fabulously wealthy Sir Joseph Child, Chairman of the East India Company. The Bedford family mansion was once at the western end.  Now there is a small marina in South Dock and watersports for disadvantaged young people.  The industry is all gone, new houses have been built, and it is a beautiful place to walk and boat-watch. 

Here is Canada Water library from Canada Water with the statue of the timber-dockers on the left.


I had coffee in a pub by the dock and heard about the bombing which devastated the area in the 1940s, then walked round the marina to the quay and caught a Thames clipper to Canary Wharf.

Buying in Bermondsey

I had never been to Bermondsey in my life until Jim took me to the Zandra Rhodes Fashion and Textile Museum.  We walked across Tower Bridge, another first for Brummy me, and into old streets of Georgian houses, warehouses, a but tatty, but definitely exciting. Pink and blue painted doors and window frames.  Enticing little cafes.  The museum was showing bras and corsets, how often do you get the chance to look at Victorian intimates?  

Then he took me to his friend's house near Grange Road.  A Georgian house with Elizabethan cellars.  Magic.  I really liked this area.

Plotting my partial move from Bournville to London, I researched cheap London property on the web.  Never defeated by people telling me I couldn't afford London, I started at the bottom.  The bottom, the absolute bottom, is interesting; garages, lock-ups, shops, cafes.  I speculated on sleeping rough in a garage but was defeated by the toilet problem.

I mapped the cheap properties I found across London on that wonderful invention Google Maps and got on a train with just one viewing in my diary and a lot of addresses.  That one viewing was a could-not-pass up.  On the map it was ten minutes from the river Thames.  Getting to Bermondsey tube station a good hour early for my appointment I went straight down to the river, at Cherry Gardens pier.  Once there were cherry orchards, and Pepys and his wife used to be rowed across the river to picnic there.  I looked down the river and there were walls of warehouses, across the river I could recognise Wapping and up river, well, upriver the view was Tower Bridge.  I  walked along the river and found a park.  It was a bit scary, as always, being in a strange place, possibly hostile, possibly dangerous, but the people seemed OK.  I skirted the park, not knowing whether it was a muggers' paradise, and crossed Jamaica Road.

The estate agent picked me up and we drove into a hinterland of council properties, to a great barracks like block of flats, with broken, boarded up garages, looking ripe for demolition.  But there were plane trees all along the street and the people didn't look bad.  The entrance stairs were rough and covered in graffitti, but the lift worked.  When we got to the top floor I looked out, right across London, to the sun glinting on the Gherkin building across the river. And I fell in love, fell in love with Bermondsey.

I spent the rest of the day on London buses following my trail of cheapish property through Deptford and out to  Woolwich and Thamesmead.  I loved the river but it was too far.  The train from Birmingham takes 1.30 hours to central London, and this was a benchmark for travel times.  I came back to Birmingham and put in an offer.

The long and the short of it is that my offer was not succesful.  A bidding war and several other viewings later I took possession of another flat.  By they I was a bit wiser on the question of security and this was in another barracks but one which had already had excellent security put into place by Southwark Council. As I viewed it the estate agent apologised for the lack of that spectacular river view.  Over her shoulder I could see the Shard and St. Pauls. I felt that was good enough.

Like a fortress

The Shard

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