And I know you can't drive through the area the same way now (I tried last Christmas, and the short cuts and secret by-ways have been blocked up or sliced off) and that the regeneration of the whole of docklands to an up-upmarket residential area has been happening for a couple of decades now, but I hadn't actually stayed in the place. Until now. And what a strange feeling brew of nostalgia and promise and lost childhood and a lost identity for London I experienced.
Silvertown Way - where are you?
The Royal Victoria Dock was the first of London's "Royal" Docks, and was opened in 1855 on the Plaistow Marshes. It was the first "modern" dock, built to accomodate large steam ships and with hydraulic power operating its machinery. Once built, it was the largest dock operating in London, taking the steam vessels but also the clippers. It was a huge, and immediate, commercial success, and was particulary known for its meat trade with South America, also for the tobacco trade with America in the 1920s and for fruit in the 1930s. The Royal Docks began to decline in the '60s, with the onset of containerisation and the growing importance of Tilbury, but they were still working docks when I was a child and within my memory.
Somewhat rosy and Soviet Realist sculpture commemorating what once was.
And now? Now Royal Victoria Dock is a huge block of expensive flats with a few huge expensive hotels and the ExCel Centre (a conference/event venue type affair run by the Abu Dhabi Conference Organisation. I think.) And there are no people. I stayed there for three days and I still never found the people. I did locate what I suspected was the "affordable" housing, but they'd stuck it on the other side of the dock, over the new Royal Victoria Dock Bridge and guess what? The lifts weren't working.
View from footbridge (long way up, lots of steps) looking towards the City
View from footbridge looking towards Holy Essex.
Old Warehouses. Nice.
Old converted warehouses. Nice.
ExCel Centre. I know it brings business and jobs, but who gave it planning permission to look like this? Not nice.
But they left the midnight dinosaurs.
Now the history of the London Docks, and the appalling working and living conditions of the casual dock workers before unionisation must never be forgotten. It was this dock, and its meat trade, that gave birth to Canning Town.
And here are two contemporary accounts of the area;
"Canning Town is the child of the Victoria Docks. The condition of this place and of its neighbour prevents the steadier class of mechanics from residing in it. They go from their work to Stratford or to Plaistow. Many select such a dwelling place because they are already debased below the point of enmity to filth; poorer labourers live there, because they cannot afford to go farther, and there become debased. The Dock Company is surely, to a very great extent, answerable for the condition of the town they are creating. Not a few of the houses in it are built by poor and ignorant men who have saved a few hundred pounds, and are deluded by the prospect of a fatally cheap building investment."
Charles Dickens
"As we are on the Thames, let us look at a swamp which is called a town - Canning-town,-unknown to the great mass of Londoners. We all know the consequences of planting large populations on ill-adapted lands, without making provision for that most important necessary of accumulated life, drainage; and it might have been hoped that the sad effects in known instances would have led to the prevention of other similar mistakes. It is, however, not so; for in the Plaistow Marshes, Canning-town has been commenced, without the provision of either proper roads or drainage. .... The artificial bank of Bow Creek and the embankment of the Thames are all that prevent the houses here from being flooded every high tide. To provide for the effectual drainage of this district, by the ordinary means, is impossible. The houses here have been erected without the means of either carrying off the refuse or properly avoiding damp. In course of time the debris of these and other houses will raise the level ; but in the mean time what will be the sacrifice of human life which must take place without prompt measures. With some difficulty we managed to reach the place on foot from the turnpike road, and found the condition of the streets miserable : many of them, although the day was tolerably fine, were almost impassable, and vehicles sank nearly up to the axletrees in the mud. In many parts were great pools of stagnant water. At the beginning of 1856 the writer said, "If something is not done, in two or three years' time the ground will be poisoned by cesspools, water will stand on the surface, and evils of a serious nature will follow. In a score of years or less, Canning-town will be an important place, with its churches, omnibus and cab stations, and its masses of rich and poor. Let us hope for the introduction of measures proportionate to the extent of the future requirements. Flesh and blood are precious materials."
George Godwin, Town Swamps and Social Bridges, 1859
And Canning Town, though now part of Newham, was in the Essex constituency of West Ham South, where in 1892 the legend Keir Hardie was elected as the first member of the Independent Labour Party to enter The House of Commons. (Guide to pronunciation - though West Ham is Wes' tAM and East Ham is Eas' tAM, Newham is New'um).
So this area did not have an easy birth or an easy history - it was truly poor, and truly working class. But the area I remember had a vibrancy and life that has not been replaced by the new development. I know it's cheap nostalgia I feel, for an area I never had to live in, but for me, something has been lost. Flesh and blood are precious materials. Enough, ennui.
No comments:
Post a Comment