Rotherhithe

LondonLife – Award-winning Thames views…

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Overall winner – Andy Sillett’s Misty Morning

Andy Sillett’s Misty Morning was the overall winner of this year’s Thames Lens competition. The Thames Festival Trust received more than 350 entries to the competition between July last year and January this year which was held under the theme of ‘Thames Unlocked’. As well as submitting new images, photographers were encouraged to consider past photos for submission given the impact of coronavirus related restrictions. Other notable images, which were selected by representatives of the Thames Festival Trust and Port of London Authority, included Fraser Gray’s LV 21 and Royal Terrace Pier Gravesend (the runner-up – pictured below), and Sarah Gannon’s highly commended image Costa del Rotherhithe (pictured far below). For more, see https://thamesfestivaltrust.org/read-watch-listen/thames-lens-2020/.

Runner-up – Fraser Gray’s Royal Terrace Pier and LV 21 Light Vessel in the early morning fog.
Highly commended – Sarah Gannon’s Costa del Rotherhithe

Lost London – ‘Canute’s Canal’…

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A waterway said to have been cut by the Viking Canute (also spelled Cnut) in the 11th century, the canal, according to the story, was constructed so his fleet of ships – blocked by London Bridge – could get upstream.

The entrance to Greenland Dock from The Thames in 2012 – one of the many places posited as the location where Canute’s Canal started. PICTURE: Public Domain

The story goes that in May, 1016, the Dane Canute (and future King of England), led an army of invasion into England to reclaim the throne his father, Sweyn Forkbeard, had first won three years earlier.

Canute needed to get his ships upriver of London Bridge to besiege the city which was held by the Saxons under Edmund Ironside (made king in April after his father Athelred’s death) but was blocked by the fortified, although then wooden, London Bridge.

So Canute gave orders for the digging of a trench or canal across some part of Southwark so his ships could pass into the river to the west of the bridge and he could encircle the city.

The canal – also known as ‘Canute’s Trench’ – was duly dug and the city was besieged – although the Vikings lifted the siege without taking the city (which does seems like a lot of work for not much result in the end) and the war was eventually decided elsewhere.

Various routes of the canal have been posited as possibilities – including the suggestion that there was an entry at Rotherhithe (Greenland Dock has been sited as one location) and exit somewhere near Lambeth or further south at Vauxhall (and one possibility is that Canute, rather than digging a long canal, simply cut through the bank holding back the Thames on either side of London Bridge and flooded the lands behind).

Various waterways have also been identified with it including the River Neckinger, parts of which survive, and the now lost stream known as the Tigris.

Whether the canal actually existed – and what form it took – remains a matter of some debate (although the low-lying, marshy land of Southwark at the time surely would have helped with any such project). But whether lost or simply mythical, the truth of ‘Canute’s Canal’ remains something of a mystery. For the moment at least.

A Moment in London’s History…The Mayflower leaves London

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This year marks 400 since the Mayflower set off from Plymouth in England’s south to Massachusetts in North America.

But what isn’t as well known is that the ship was hired in London and so it is from London – commonly believed to be from Rotherhithe on the south bank of the Thames – that the ship set off for Plymouth to pick up its passengers and supplies.

The Mayflower departed from London in mid July, 1620, and was already in Plymouth by the time another ship, the Speedwell, arrived from Delfshaven in the Netherlands in late July. The two ships would depart Plymouth for their journey across the Atlantic Ocean on 5th August (although the Speedwell proved less than seaworthy and so, after a couple of aborted attempts, the Mayflower eventually proceeded alone).

Rotherhithe was home to many of the 30 crew of the Mayflower including Captain Christopher Jones.

As a result, there’s numerous memorials to the voyage in the area, including, most famously, the pub, The Mayflower, which is said to overlook the site from where the ship sailed (pictured above). There’s also a statue  of Jones himself in the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin where he was buried in an unmarked grave – he died soon after returning from America.

A series of events, including the Mayflower 400 London Lectures, had been planned to commemorate the event this year but are currently suspended. We’ll keep you informed.

10 sites from London at the time of the Magna Carta – 8. Bermondsey Abbey…

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Bermondsey Abbey, which was more than 130-years-old by the time King John put his seal to the Magna Carta in 1215, has an unusual connection to the unpopular king – it is one of a number of buildings in London which has, at various times in history, been erroneously referred to as King John’s Palace.

This suggestion – that it was a palace which was later converted into an abbey – may have arisen from a site on the former abbey grounds being known at some point in its history as King John’s Court (that name was said to commemorate the fact that King John visited the abbey).

Putting how King John’s name came to be linked with the abbey aside, we’ll take a quick look at the history of the abbey which rose to become an important ecclesiastical institution in medieval times.

While there was a monastic institution in Bermondsey as far back as the early 8th century, the priory which was here during the reign of King John was founded in 1082, possibly on the site of the earlier institution, by a Londoner named as Aylwin Child(e), apparently a wealthy Saxon merchant who was granted the land by King William the Conqueror.

In 1089, the monastery –  located about a mile back from the river between Southwark and Rotherhithe – became the Cluniac Priory of St Saviour, an order centred on the French abbey of Cluny, and was endowed by King William II (William Rufus) with the manor of Bermondsey.

It was “naturalised” – that is, became English – by the first English prior, Richard Dunton, in 1380, who paid a substantial fine for the process. It was elevated to the status of an abbey by Pope Boniface IX in 1399.

It had some important royal connections – King John’s father, King Henry II and his wife Queen Eleanor celebrated Christmas here in 1154 (their second child, the ill-fated Henry, the young King, was born here a couple of months later), and Queen Catherine (of Valois), wife of King Henry V, died here in 1437. It was also at Bermondsey Abbey that Elizabeth Woodville, the widow of King Edward IV and mother of the two “Princes in the Tower”, died in 1492 following her retirement from court.

The abbey, which grew to have an enormous income thanks to its acquisition of property in a range of counties, survived until the Dissolution when, in 1537, King Henry VIII closed its doors. It was later acquired by Sir Thomas Pope who demolished the abbey and built a mansion for himself on the site (and founded Trinity College in Oxford apparently using revenues from the property). We’ll deal more with its later history in an upcoming post.

The ruins of the abbey were extensively excavated in the past few decades and some of the remaining ruins of the abbey can still be seen buildings around Bermondsey Square and a blue plaque commemorating the abbey was unveiled in 2010. Bermondsey Street runs roughly along the line of the path which once led from the abbey gates to the Thames and the abbey had a dock there still commemorated as St Saviour’s Dock. The abbey’s name is commemorated in various streets around the area.

For more on the history of the Magna Carta, see David Starkey’s Magna Carta: The True Story Behind the Charter.

PICTURE: An archaeological dig at the ruins of Bermondsey Abbey in 2006. Zefrog/Wikipedia.

LondonLife – Rotherhithe from the Thames…

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Wapping

 

Pictured is the south bank of the Thames showing the buildings of the former Thames Tunnel Mills (now converted to residences). The tower of the Church of St Mary the Virgin is in the background – the church dates from 1716 and was designed by John James, an associate of Sir Christopher Wren.

This Week in London – A rare chance to walk through a Thames tunnel; Matisse at the Tate; and, Spitting Image on show…

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• It’s a rare chance to walk the historic Thames Tunnel between Wapping and Rotherhithe – the first tunnel ever dug under a navigable waterway. Transport for London and London Overground are offering the chance to purchase tickets to walk the tunnel – built by Marc Brunel, it’s now used by the London Overground – over the May Bank Holiday weekend on 24th to 26th May. Tickets, which cost £18 plus booking fee, go on sale today at 10am via the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden and are strictly limited (with no on the day admissions allowed). Proceeds from the day will go to the Railway Children’s Charity and the Brunel Museum. Also, worth noting is that the London Transport Museum is offering tours of its depot this Friday and Saturday. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.ltmuseum.co.uk.

Matisse• The paper cut-outs of Henri Matisse are the focus of a landmark exhibition which opened at Tate Modern last week. Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs features about 130 works created between 1937 and 1954 with many seen together for the first time. Highlights include maquettes featured in the 1947 book Jazz, The Snail and its sister work Memory of Oceania (both 1953) and the largest number of the Blue Nudes ever shown together. The display takes an in-depth look at the methods and materials Matisse used in the production of the cut-outs. Runs until 7th September (and keep an eye out for the accompanying film, Matisse: Live in cinemas). Admission charge applies. For more, see www.tate.org.uk. PICTURE: Henri Matisse, Icarus 1946, Maquette for plate VIII of the illustrated book Jazz 1947, Digital image: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM–CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Jean-Claude Planchet, Artwork: © Succession Henri Matisse/DACS 2014.

• On Now: Spitting Image. This exhibition at the Cartoon Museum in Bloomsbury centres on the partnership of three dimensional artists Peter Fluck and Roger Law and their key role in the creation of what became known as Spitting Image. It features caricature drawings and photographs created for magazines in the 1970s and 1980s of the likes of Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Kate Moss, Saddam Hussein, Billy Connolly, Rupert Murdoch, Jo Brand and John Paul II as well as members of the Royal Family and politicians including Margaret Thatcher. Also present are some of the puppets used in the TV show which ran for 18 series between 1984 and 1996 – these include those of Thatcher, The Queen, Princess Diana and Mr Spock. Runs until 8th June (with selected late opening nights). Admission charge applies. For more, see www.cartoonmuseum.org.

Send all items of interest for inclusion to exploringlondon@gmail.com.

Where’s London’s oldest…Thames tunnel?

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While the Greenwich foot tunnel may these days be more well-known due to the fact it is still open to pedestrians, London’s oldest under-Thames tunnel (also credited as the oldest underwater tunnel in the world) actually runs between Rotherhithe on the river’s southern bank and Wapping on the northern.

Thames_Tunnel-in-2010First opened in 1843, the Thames Tunnel (pictured left during a brief reopening to pedestrians in 2010) was the first major project of star Victorian engineer (and delightfully named) Isambard Kingdom Brunel (who, at the age of just 19 started work on the job with his father, a French engineer named Marc Isambard Brunel) and was known for a time as the eighth Wonder of the World.

It was constructed after demand grew for a way to transport goods across the crowded Port of London to the east of London Bridge. Given the height of the masts of larger ships, a bridge was deemed impracticable with the ramps required to take wheeled transport to the necessary height far too long (although this problem was overcome at the end of the 1800s by the use of new bascule technology in the construction of Tower Bridge).

Following several failed attempts to dig a tunnel under the Thames, Marc Brunel was given permission to build the new tunnel in the mid 1820s. The project relied on the use of a ‘tunnelling shield’, a then state-of-the-art technological solution to under river tunnelling which had only a few years earlier been patented by Marc Brunel and Thomas Cochrane, and Brunel initially thought the project would only take three years (it ended up taking as many as 18).

Construction by the newly formed Thames Tunnel Company, which had the support of none other than the Duke of Wellington, commenced in early 1825 at the Rotherhithe end. The shield enabled miners to dig out the tunnel while bricklayers came along behind them. While it significantly reduced the risk of a collapse (although several floods still did occur, taking the lives of six men – a fact which didn’t apparently much deter the sightseers who paid for the privilege of seeing the shield in operation), working conditions remained terrible with the men constantly showered with water from the river which was at that time the city’s main sewer. How many died indirectly as a result of working on the project is unknown.

Brunel-plaqueIndeed, such was the stress of the project that Marc Brunel, later knighted for his efforts in building the tunnel, himself suffered a stroke during its construction. Isambard Brunel, who took over as the project’s engineer when the resident engineer fell ill in 1826, himself came close to being killed when he had to flee the flooding tunnel.

After much delay (including seven years in which the unfinished tunnel was left untouched) and several more disasters, the tunnel was finally completed in November, 1841.

After being fitted out with lighting, spiral staircases and roads in the following years, it was finally opened to pedestrians only on 25th March, 1843. While it was originally envisaged that the primary purpose of the tunnel would be to transport goods under the river, this never occurred.

Still, it did capture the public’s attention and as many as 50,000 people walked through the tunnel on the opening day (among the initial visitors to the tunnel was Queen Victoria herself). Within 10 weeks of its opening, a million people (a figure equal to what was then half the population of London) had reportedly passed through it.

Despite the number of people initially using it, however, the tunnel was still not a financial success and over the ensuing years became noted as a gathering place for unsavoury types. In 1865 it was purchased by the East London Railway Company which subsequently incorporated the tunnel into its railway network with both the Wapping and Rotherhithe entrance shafts converted into stations. It later become part of the London Underground network – the  – and since 2010 has been part of the London Overground.

Both stations are still in use and you can get a good sense of what the tunnel was like by riding the overground between Rotherhithe and Wapping. The Brunel Museum in Rotherhithe – actually housed within a building originally used to house machinery for draining the tunnel – see plaque above – is also a great place to find out more about the project and Brunel. Visit www.brunel-museum.org.uk for details.

PICTURES: Top – Lars Plougmann (Wikipedia)/Other – David Adams

For more on the life of Brunel, see Steven Brindle’s Brunel: The Man Who Built the World.

Lost London – King Edward III’s Thames-side manor house…

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The remains of one of the lesser known former royal residences in London, King Edward III’s manor house, sit amid a grassy park on the south bank of the Thames at the corner of Bermondsey Wall East and Cathay Street in Rotherhithe.

Believed to have been built in about 1350 during the reign of the king (1312-1377), the 14th century property – which consisted of stone buildings arranged around two courtyards – was originally built on what was then an island surrounded by marshes.

The premises was surrounded on three sides by a moat – the fourth side opened directly to the river, allowing the king to travel to the property by boat.

Among the buildings in the complex were a hall with a fireplace as well as private chambers for the king and utility spaces like kitchens (pictured below is a reconstruction of the property as depicted on an information plaque located at the site).

The function of the building remains somewhat a mystery – with no nearby royal parks it is unlikely it was a conventional hunting lodge although documentary evidence does point to falcons being house there so perhaps it was a place where the king hunted with falcons.

As the Thames riverbank was pushed northward over the following centuries, the residence became completely surrounded by a moat. It was eventually sold into private hands.

The site was apparently used as a pottery in the 17th century and warehouses occupied it in the 18th and 19th centuries (in fact a 14th century wall was incorporated into one of these and was still standing in 1907).

The warehouses were demolished in the 1970s and the remains of the palace confirmed on the site during an excavation by English Heritage 1985 (they also found a lot of Delftware on the site apparently related to its days as a pottery).

London Pub Signs – The Mayflower

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Located on the Thames waterfront in Rotherhithe, The Mayflower’s history is intertwined with that of the more famous ship of the same name.

For it was from a quay near the pub (then named The Shippe) that in July, 1620, Captain Christopher Jones embarked upon the vessel, The Mayflower, and set sail for Southampton to load supplies before boarding the Pilgrim Fathers and making the journey to what is now the United States of America, landing in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on 21st December of that year.

Captain Jones was to return to Rotherhithe the following year and died shortly after. He and the ship’s co-owners are buried in an unmarked grave in the nearby churchyard of St Mary’s where a modern monument to Jones has been erected.

The pub, meanwhile, was rebuilt the following century – in 1780 – and renamed the Spread Eagle and Crown. It took on the name of Mayflower following a restoration in 1957, thanks to its associations with the historic voyage of The Mayflower.

Now part of the Greene King family of pubs, inside the building features oak beams and wooden panelling and boasts fine views of the Thames from an outside deck.