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.