Snow in Mudchute Park…

As I’ve written before, living here on the Isle of Dogs, it’s sometimes easy to forget that you’re in Zone 2, a short journey to central London and within sight of Canary Wharf.

I took these photos of footpaths and routes around Mudchute Park and Farm whilst I was out walking yesterday morning. I was taken with the way the trees and fences seemed to point towards something unspecified in the distance, enticing me onwards towards the end of the track…

The grey skies, white snow and dark trees all conspired to create a monotone landscape that only heightened the sense of the unfamiliar, so that for an hour or so on a Monday morning, I was able to step out of my usual surroundings and be somewhere I hardly recognised, only 5 minutes walk from home…

(And no I didn’t use Photoshop to remove any people.. there really was no one about at all)

Home…

A quick post of an amazing photo I’ve just found online of the place I call home.. The Isle of Dogs in London. That’s us bottom right, with Canary Wharf at the top in the centre, and Greenwich just out of shot at the bottom…

How wonderful the River Thames looks as it lazily meanders its way west, under Tower Bridge, past the City and on into the distance…

Where has the Traffic Light Tree gone?

The old roundabout at the top of the Isle of Dogs (over on the west where Marsh wall meets Heron Quays) has just undergone extensive regeneration. The roads and junctions have all been reconfigured and it looks pretty tidy now it’s all finished, offering swathes of beautiful flowers and expensive looking street furniture. There’s even some new trees… which is always a good thing…

However one of the biggest and best trees seems to have gone missing… The iconic Traffic Light Tree sculpture (Pierre Vivant/1998) that has stood in the center of the roundabout, and welcomed us back onto the island for the last 11 years we’ve lived here, is no longer there. I for one am disappointed that the designers and engineers couldn’t find a new new home for it, at what is effectively the main entrance to the island from the west.

On the plus side, Wikipedia tells me that Tower Hamlets have promised to relocate it elsewhere on the island, so lets hope they chose a suitably prominent place where everyone can enjoy this rather excellent piece of public art

It’s staggering how quickly our bit of London has developed in the time we’ve been here (and is still developing in fact). Much of it has changed  beyond recognition: Ever higher and ever more dense blocks now dominate the central spine of the island and whilst not all bad by any means, almost all of it is very obviously driven by the voracious need to make ever more and more amounts of cash…

Take the intriguing red buildings behind the Traffic Light Tree in the photo above (taken a couple of years ago) as an example. Known as Heron Quays, they were one of the very first developments at Canary Wharf by the old London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) and consisted of  small groups of rather odd, but strangely alluring, low key/ low density buildings which reflected the cautiousness of the early developments at Canary Wharf. Sat out on columns over the dock side water they came in a fine range of 1980′s colours: blue, red, brown and purple. All but the two purple ones have now gone, leveled in the short term for the temporary park described above, but in the long term to make way for some 30+ storey Richard Rogers towers.

Progress indeed…

Mudchute Park and Farm to close forever. “It’s H&S gone mad… again” (says Daily Mail reader Joe Blogs, 15)

After my post last week about the wonders at the heart of the Isle of Dogs, I was very saddened to read this article in last Tuesday’s edition of The Evening Standard…

Its a well argued piece by Simon Jenkins and is about the distinct possibility that Mudchute Park and Farm will no longer be allowed to let its animals loose in the meadow due to the possibility of e-coli in their poo. This is of course as decreed by that favourite scourge of common sense, The Man from The Health and Safety Executive…

I must say after taking the photos week before last, I was definitely wondering where all the sheep had gone this week, and this was not the answer I was expecting.

It will be very sad indeed if the sheeps will no longer be allowed to roam about. I liked having them about.

And at the risk of over doing the whole Daily Mail parody thing, it would be nice if, as grown ups, we could be allowed to take some responsibility for our own lives. I mean it’s not a difficult concept to grasp; you eat poo, you get sick… how hard can it be….

I will be following this story and fingers crossed that common sense and cheap grass cutting triumphs over petty bureaucracy and small mindedness…

A Walk through the Heart of the Isle of Dogs….

When we first moved to the Isle of Dogs about 11 years ago, I was not sure if it would be a place to stay long term.  It was very handy for getting to work in Greenwich, walking through the foot tunnel, but it seemed to lack a heart, not having a discernible local high street that previous places I’d lived like Crouch End, Wood Green and Putney thrived upon. Moreover, the whole place was associated in my mind with the seemingly unstoppable Canary Wharf Development…

11 years later, we’re still here and I must say, I’m now rather a fan of the place. All right, it’s pretty polarised: the wealthy are over on the west side with that winning river view/ sunny aspect combination, the people like me & And who are doing OK are over here on the east (“making do” with only the river) and everyone else is plonked in a ring of social housing around the inside edge… but one of the main reasons I enjoying living here is the proximity to the River Thames…  I really do “live by the river” as my namesake Joe Strummer memorably sang back in the day, and it’s a surprisingly good feeling to see it everyday meandering past our bedroom window..

One of the other reasons is that I’ve now discovered the islands’ heart, and it has nothing to do with retail. Through the centre of the Isle of dogs runs an amazing mixture of things that as far as I know, is unique in Zone 2… There are the docks, with their water, boats and wildlife, the new developments, an open meadow, three parks, Mudchute City farm, Canary Wharf and Foster’s magnificent Jubilee Line underground station…

I’ve been walking to CW every morning for a while now, and in the 20 minutes it took to walk it on a typical day last week, I saw (in no particular order): squirrels, sheep, goats, llamas, turkeys, chickens, ducks, geese, seagulls. moorhens, swans, a robin, crows, magpies, several dogs and a crested grebe. (Last year I could have added cows and pigs to the list as well, but sadly, I suspect they’ve gone to visit the big man with the straw boater and the blue and white striped apron…)

This walk is also a great way to introduce yourself to the day as well.. At this end, there are only a few people around and I usually have the meadow to myself (other than the odd dog walker). Then as I get closer to CW and my fitness, wakefulness and tolerance start to increase, so too does the number of people, so that by the time I’m crossing the swing bridge, there’s a spring in my step and I’m more than prepared to meet the masses on the Jubilee line (so to speak).

The photos below are a visual record (in a Richard Long documentary type style) of my walk on Tuesday 13th March 2012, a day that was misty, dry and cool and perfect for a morning stroll…

Quietly Famous – The Watermans Arms on the Isle of Dogs.

There’s a pub not far from us that closed down around Christmas time, which in itself was fairly unremarkable. I remember reading that about 30 pubs a week close down nationally, so we just assumed this was one more casualty of the smoking ban and the extortionate price of beer and that the site would soon become another block of flats.

To be honest, it was an odd place. It had a huge garden that never seemed to get any sun and the few times we went, the place was empty. Then there was the large bare room at the side which when we first moved here 8 years ago or so, was home to an Indian restaurant, now long since gone. All in all not really a place you would rush back to.

So imagine my surprise when it re-opened a few weeks ago, and it would appear from this planning document that they have high hopes for it…

Anyway I thought no more about it until, looking for something else online, I came across a number of references to The Waterman Arms, and it seems that 50 years ago, it was the in place to be…

In the early 1960′s, a certain Daniel Farson decided to set up a “singing pub” on the Isle of Dogs. I have to admit I didn’t recognise his name, but Wikipedia tells me that Dan Farson was a very popular TV personality during the late 1950′s and early 60′s, hosting his own chat show and producing a number of other well received programmes on the fledgling commercial TV network. Latterly he was also a respected writer, publishing in excess of 20 books.

Infamous throughout the gay Soho scene of the time, he decided he needed a change and moved out to the East End, living in Limehouse for some time before buying The Waterman Arms in 1962, because he thought it might be “fun to run a pub”. Having fallen in love with the local area and all its characters (so much so that he made a one hour TV special about East End pubs called “Time Gentlemen Please”) he decided he was going to indulge his love of Music Hall and create his own Variety venue on the banks of the River Thames.

For a number of reasons (boredom, no one really wanting a Music Hall revival and the “scene” moving on to the next place, being just 3 of them) the venture only lasted a few years, but in that time anyone who was anyone took a car over to the Isle of Dogs and had a drink or two with Dan: Francis Bacon, Kenneth Williams, Jacques Tati, Shirley Bassey, William Burroughs, Clint Eastwood, Judy Garland, Groucho Marx, Frankie Howerd and Brian Epstein are all said to have been regular visitors to this unassuming Victorian building whenever they were in town. It must have been quite an evening if Messers Howerd and Williams were on form… (it definitely feels like there’s a film in this story somewhere…)

Anyway, as is so often with this blog, another random fact added to the “weight of connectivity” that persuaded me to write this post, as I read recently in a local paper that Jools Holland used to walk through the Greenwich foot tunnel (or the Pipe as he called it) to play piano at the Waterman Arms in the mid 1970′s, which by that time had developed a reputation as a place for great Jazz.

One final connection is that having looked into all this on the net, it seems that The Watermans Arms also had a starring role in one of the best British gangster films of all time, The Long Good Friday, as it was in this very building that Bob Hoskins utters the immortal line “Walk to the car Billy, or I’ll blow your spine off”

So it would appear that my local is something of a landmark. The new proposals for this Grade II listed building include changing its name to “The Great Eastern” which (as far as I can tell) will be its third incarnation, being The Newcastle Arms for the first 100 or so years of its life, before Dan Farson changed its name and made it famous for a while.

Who knows, maybe this new refurbishment will kick start its fame all over again, and the celebs will come flocking once again to the Isle of Dogs (Christ, I hope not) ….

The Mystery of the Isle of Dogs Lighthouse

On my way to the DLR I walk past a piece of land that has been vacant for many years and has consequently always been very overgrown. Recently however (and for reasons unknown) the site was cleared and when it was, an intriguing object appeared from out of the undergrowth….

It looks to me like a small lighthouse or a beacon of some sort but located more than 100m from the river’s edge. It’s a roughly conical structure about 3m high which appears to be made of rendered brickwork, much of which is now falling away with age. On the top of the brickwork are a series of timber and glass windows that go all the way around the tower and then the whole thing is covered by a rather interesting, almost onion shaped, shingle covered roof.

Being me, I thought it might be interesting to try and find out more about this structure, so I set about scouring the internet for some clues. Sadly on this occasion, and despite putting some effort into the task, I’ve had to admit defeat. The internet has been unusually and uncharacteristically unhelpful.

From online historical maps, all I have really been able to deduce with any certainty, is that in 1862 there didn’t appear to be anything that would suggest the need for such a lighthouse, the land being shown as a large vacant site owned by W. Cubitt & Co. As an aside, William Cubitt was an interesting man who became Lord Mayor of London in 1860 and who between about 1840 and 1860 was responsible for much of the development of this area, ultimately taking his name, Cubitt Town.

In Booth’s Poverty map of 1899, a shipbuilding yard is now clearly marked, stretching from the shoreline, right through to the approximate position of the lighthouse. It seems not unrealistic to think, that the lighthouse might have been constructed sometime during this 40 year period, as part of the navigation system for getting ships into the dock.

The 1951 map extract then describes this structure as a dry dock (known as Poplar Dry Dock), and I would imagine that the lighthouse might still have been in use up until at least this time. By the mid 1970′s however, the dock feature has completely disappeared, and the site has been renamed Empire Wharf, the name that the road still has today.

So an interesting if not wholly succesful exercise based mostly on guesswork, and if anyone coming across this post can shed anymore light on the Isle of Dogs Lighthouse, I would be very grateful to hear from them.