Thames Tributary Neckinger - Southwark
The following entry is using only those elements from the square which lie south of the Thames
Thames Tributary Neckinger
A western branch of the Neckinger emerged from its source in today’s Mary Harmsworth Gardens and flowed northwards through St.George’s Fields where it divided again. The eastern section then flowed north and divided again to form the boundaries of Paris Garden and then to flow into the Thames.
Post to the west South Bank
Post to the south Waterloo
Post to the east Bankside
Alaska Street
Telephone exchange for SE1
London Underground tube shaft building in red brick.
Gay sauna in the railway arches
Bankside – Jubilee Walkway
Bankside known as ‘the Banke side’; in 1554, that is 'street or district alongside the bank of the Thames’.
Canute’s trench. In 1016 Canute the Dane sailed up the Thames, The story goes that, in 1016, Canute's ships got above the bridge by cutting a canal through the south bank. The skeleton of a barge 350 feet from the present river bank was found during the widening of the power station.
Paris Garden Preserves the name of the old riverside manor of Paris Garden, recorded as probably named from a family called de Paris who once owned it. An earlier names is ‘Wideflete’ 111 3 - that is 'willow inlet or creek'. It covered this western end of Bankside as well as the area of Blackfriars Bridge.
Neckinger - The manor was inside an enclosing dyke and water. The stream ran in a wide loop round the manor from the Old Barge House Stairs, south Surrey Row, and north again to the river near Falcon Dock. It was flanked by a man made earth wall. The whole area was several feet below high-water level and the bank and sewers were very necessary.
The Pudding Mill stream, with bridges- Guy's Arch and Paris Garden Bridge—filled a pond sited where Hopton Street bends back on itself. This flowed into the river between Rennie's and Falcon Wharfs. The millpond remained, with safety railings form the 16th, until the early 19th. The Pudding Mill itself dated from the 12th. In the 12th there were several other mills in the area. As time went on houses were built and some of the area was used as a bleach works.
Paris Garden Manor. The 14th manor house was surrounded by its moat. It was very rural. Gerard, superintendent of Lord Burghley's garden, found specimens for his herbal there. There were rabbits, streams with fishing reserves, meadows and woodland. It belonged to Bermondsey Abbey from 1113 and then the Templars, and then the Hospitallers from 1324. At the dissolution of the monasteries, the Estate, became Crown Property and it was leased to entrepreneurs who made it into a public gaming place with bowling alleys, cards etc. It thereafter had a number of lessees including Susan Holland who had escaped from prison. In 1631 she opened a brothel here –the Holland’s Leaguer. Despite attempts to close it Holland’s Leaguer remained ascent on the west side made via by 'mutilated ancient stone steps'. In 1769 the manor was pulled down to make way for the first Blackfriars Bridge, and the site would be somewhere in the middle of the southern approach.
Paris Garden Stairs later covered by Rennie's Wharf. One of the busiest of the landing places, and the main entrance from the river to the manor. The lane between them was the site of 'Orange Tree Tea Gardens'. 'Five Pint Square' and 'Hot Water Court’ and so on.
Swan Theatre. built in 1595 on a previously structure some 120 yards east of the Manor House, and about 133 yards south of the Bankside. And opposite the Falcon. It was the fourth in the series of public playhouses of London. It was built of flint concrete, and its wooden columns were painted like marble. There were a number of scandals around the content of some plays it was mainly used for prize fighting, etc. After 1615 it was unused for five years, but used again in 1621 and by 1632 it was derelict.
Copt Hall. This was a moated house with a gatehouse south of the Manor House. In 1615 belonged to Sir Thomas Parry, Chancellor of Lancaster. It was ruined by the early 16th and had been converted into a gaming house, it was later rebuilt as a brothel.
Albion Mill. Immediately to the east of Blackfriars Bridge. Burnt down 3rd March 1791. Built by John Rennie they were never re-erected. The mill was the first that used steam power to drive millstones and the engines for fanning, sifting and dressing the wheat, as well as for hoisting and lowering sacks and loading and unloading barges. It used Boulton & Watt, machinery and twenty pairs of millstones ground ten bushels of wheat per hour, by day and night. He built a workshop on part of the cleared site. Near the steps the footings of the mill can sometimes be seen at low tide.
Rennie's Wharf. Approximately covered the site of Albion Mill. Here John Rennie and his family carried on the business of engineer and shipbuilders here from 1809. Albion Ironworks 7 acres, iron foundry cast vast amounts of stuff. George and John, 1821-1833
Founders’ Arms. A low, free-standing pub, polygonal, with a heavy roof-line It has wide terraces along the river. It is on the site of the stone cross which marked the boundary between the Liberties of the Clink and Paris Garden and it is also the site of the Widflete drain-mill.
Royal George Wharf was once normally stacked with newsprint
Flats of six to eight storeys for Southwark Council, with balconies, plaza with trees to the south.
Molestrand. Bankside in front of where Tate Modern now stands was called Molestrand. Here Bankside ended and to the east was Willow Street with houses on either side.
Honduras Wharf. Got its name from the first consignment of mahogany from Honduras was landed here. It covered the waterside between the Moldstrand and Falcon Stairs and is 18th. Bailey Legg and Co., ironworks from the 19th. It was also the site of Clarks Alley in the 16th
64 Phoenix Wharf Gas Works. Site of a gas works for over a hundred years. In 1817 ‘Morrow and Co. are listed as ‘Gas and Coke Merchants’. There are no records of this works but in 1821 Monro and Evans became, or were taken over by, the South London Gas Co. In 1824 the South London was taken over by the Phoenix Gas Light and Coke Co. Monro continued to manage the works. In 1888 it became part of the South Metropolitan Gas Co.'s empire and remained as one of their main works until 1919 when work was scaled down and the site was sold in 1938.
City of London Electric Works had been the first power station on the site in 1891 taking over the works of the Brush Electrical Engineering Company, established on Phoenix wharf. It expanded to cover Pitt's Place, Noah's Head Alley and Ladd's Court, and by 1900 covered the ground between Love Lane and White Hind Alley. By 1927 it covered the area known as Pyke Gardens was now one of the largest in the country. The coal came to the wharf from barges with the names of colours and animals. On the riverside was a pump house to treat river water is treated before use in the turbine condensers. 'The Waterman's Arms' was converted for use as the Power Station's office and stood at the comer of Pike Gardens.
Pike Gardens. Site of pike ponds. The 'stews' of Lambeth were keeping-ponds for fish, owned and consumed by royalty or ecclesiastics, and lasted into the 17th. Pike were a specialty. The 'Pyke Gardens' originally belonged to the Bishops of Winchester. After the reformation the Crown the fish from the ponds was for the royal table. A house stood here until the late 18th and was used as the ‘gatehouse. Into the greate Pyke gardeyne’. Its walls had reliefs of dolphins, pikes and tritons, and the gateway had Neptune with naiads, in a shell chariot drawn by sea-horses.
Mason Stairs. —one of the earliest mentioned landing places
Tate Modern. The Power Station became Tate Modern Art Gallery. The power station was built late and small although great care was taken with the design. It was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, and completed, after much controversy, in 1963 by Mott, Hay & Anderson engineers. Power from 1100mw English engine. There had been an old smaller station with many chimneys which had been a skyline feature since 1893. This station had one single-four-flue central square chimney of almost to 300 feet. Its output was 240,000 kW, and it also featured the stretch of riverside garden. It was the last of the huge brick power stations but burnt oil, not coke and at the jetty barges discharged the fuel oil. It is symmetrical, with large windows and the impression is of the stunning scale of the bare walls of immaculate brickwork. The Board’s Archives were in the Sumner Street offices. Closed 1981.
Tate Modern Garden. Designed by Dieter Kienast with multi-stemmed silver birch trees Planted in geometric blocks and with a large lawn
Pump Yard. Now gone. Site of an 18th Cockpit Yard and Alley. Near the site of what would have been 74 Bankside. In the early 1900s Wakeley Bros site. There was a pump here with a trough for horses and a garden. Stables built from old ship timber. The house, used by a firm of brick makers, had a cellar running its length and was built on piles.
79 Bankside was the Falcon Draw Dock. Marked the boundary between the Liberties of the Clink and Paris Garden.
Falcon Inn was at the Stairs. In the 18th it was the terminus for coaches from the south. A ferry took them across the river.
Falcon Wharf Pumping Station of the London Hydraulic Power Co works. Closed June 1977 but many valve covers in the street. Works set up by E.B.Ellington in 1883, and supplied water -power at a pressure of 700 lb. per sq. in.
Foundry. This is where Wren had the rails for St.Paul’s Cathedral delivered having been made in Kent by Mr. Jones.
Riverside Court. Seifert 1977
Sea Containers House. Seifert 1977.
Barge House Street
Commemorates the old Barge House and stairs where the King's State barge was housed from Henry VII to Charles I. Home of royal barge masters, and the site of the sheds for the royal barges.
Hawes Soap Works. This was the biggest soap works in England, had been started in the late 18th by George Russell. On his death it was taken over by members of the Hawes family. In 1823 an oil gas plant at Hawes soap works at Old Bargehouse also supplied houses in the area. Members of the family were rich and successful – one, Benjamin, becoming a Government minister and also married the sister of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Old Barge House StairsAlley leading to stairs down to Thames, for ferry and lighter access with a hard spit of brick/stone stretching to low tide level. Note cannon used as bollard
Stamford Wharf, former Union Cold Storage Company. Listed. This includes the Oxo Tower. In 1927 the Liebig Extract of Meat Company, which made Oxo, formed a subsidiary company, Thames Side Properties Ltd, to deal with the purchase and use of a site for a new wharf and a reinforced concrete structure was built on the site of the GPO power station. This all became part of the Vestey Group and at one time the wharf was the largest site for the import of meat in Britain,
Oxo Tower. An art-deco landmark. This was a clever advertisement designed after the L.C.C. objected to signs on the tower. Showy and modernistic by A. W. Moore, which advertises OXO to the whole area. When the building was erected it was the second tallest building in London. Nine floor reinforced concrete building, 1928/9 with Exterior cranes and jiggers removed. There were planning regulations to overcome so that the Oxo sign was not classified as an advertisement which would not have been allowed at that height. It was decided to illuminate the windows shaped in the form of the letters OXO. Instructions to pull down the tower could not be enforced. In 1983 there was a campaign it when it was threatened with demolition as part of a new building development scheme and it has since been converted into a restaurant.
Helicopter pad for courier services
Bear Lane
A narrow thoroughfare that may reference the ‘sport’ of bull when Paris Garden was a great centre for this.
London Ordnance Works. With probably Armstrong and Whitworth and later Josiah Vavasseur and Blakeley ‘manufacturer of Ordnance’ in 1864-72 in the ‘Blakeley Ordnance Works’.
C. Isler & Co.Artesian Well works
Christchurch Church of England parochial schools in place of Henley Square. Gone
Stevenson & Howell's Standard Works. Used for distilling and blending of essences and flavouring.
Blackfriars Bridges
Blackfriars Bridge. Preceded by a ferry. The City Corporation decided to build a bridge in 1753. Bridge House Estates built it and paid for a good design by Alexander Mylne which introduced the new elliptical arch. It was the second bridge built by the City and the foundation stone was laid in 1760 by the Lord Mayor. At first it was to be called Pitt Bridge but it took nine years to build and they changed the name because by then Pitt was out of favour. Until 1785 there was a toll of 2d. on foot passengers (1d. on Sundays). Then when old London Bridge was removed the scour ground away the foundations of this first bridge and it was demolished and another new one built in 1865. Its style is described as 'Venetian Gothic' and the pulpit-like structures are supposed to refer to the Dominicans' at Black Friars ‘the Order of Preachers’. It was built in conjunction with the Cubitt’s adjacent railway bridge and Queen Victoria opened them together. It is the widest bridge on the river and was widened in 1909 for tramlines. It was paved by Mowlem 1939. In 1982 Banker Robert Calvi was found hanging underneath in a mafia based murder
Pumping Station for emergency water supplies.
Blackfriars Bridge Station. 1st June 1864. Built by the London Chatham and Dover Railway. This was an impressive structure at the south end of Blackfriars Bridge north of the junction with Southwark Street. It was closed 1st October 1885 and became a goods depot. In 1964 it ceased to be used for goods and was demolished. There are still some remains – balcony area and large motif over the river.
Lloyds Computer Centre. by Fitzroy Robinson & Partners, with cyclopic channelled concrete lift shafts, and stepped- back upper floors. The building is on the site of the Blackfriars Road Railway Goods Depot (1863 by Taylor) of which some of the substructure remains.
Alexandra Railway Bridge. The London, Chatham & Dover Railway reached the south bank of the Thames in 1864. Although an Act for a railway bridge was obtained in 1860 it was delayed because the City Corporation could not decide on a design. Eventually Joseph Cubitt and F. T. Turner completed the work on 21 December of that year at a cost of £220 000. The bridge had four rail tracks carried on four river spans, and two shore spans of 160 ft. with lattice formed wrought iron girders. The river piers were made up of three cast-iron cylinders clad in masonry and filled with concrete, capped with granite Stones from old Westminster Bridge, demolished in 1861, were used in the abutments.. The girders were demolished in the 1980s, but the cast-iron columns remain in the river. The Arms of the London, Chatham & Dover Railway, in cast iron, have been restored and are on the south pier.
Blackfriars Railway Bridge - St. Paul's Bridge. The second railway bridge, immediately downstream of the Cubitt bridge, was known as St. Paul's Bridge and opened in May 1886. The engineers were Sir J. Wolfe Barry and H. M. Brunel in conjunction with William Mills, the London, Chatham & Dover Railway engineer. It originally carried seven rail tracks on five spans of wrought-iron arches and, for navigational reasons, the river spans match those of the Cubitt bridge alongside. The ironwork was from Thames Ironworks of Blackwall.
Blackfriars Bridge, Surrey Approach
Rennie’s Green. In 1862, part of the site was preserved by Act of Parliament as an open space for the public. It is now Rennie Gardens
British Plate Glass Co. Works, office and London warehouse. The process had been developed in Ravenhead, Lancs in the mid 18th. Works here early 19th. Site is now that of the pub and known as Albion Place.
Doggett's Coat and Badge pub. Since the early 18th century, an annual single-skulls race has taken place between watermen; this pub was named after the prize awarded to the winner. Large modern three bar building overlooking the Thames. Good river views from the upstairs bar.
Cement Works - Old Parker cement works taken over by Jeremiah Rosher. Parker cement was used for pointing, first use of Roman cement known
London Wharf for Lee Cement Works from Halling and Burham. Fleet of 80 sailing barges with black ebony sails decorated with the white horse of Kent
Blackfriars Road
Watercourse parallel to it went into the Thames.The road was laid out 1770-1880, and until 1829 it was called Great Surrey Street. Before this at the end of the bridge were houses laid out in 1670 by William Angell. There had been complaints about these in that they would 'take away Ayre' and restrict the water supply. In the early 19th the area did indeed become very bad with mud- banks left bare by the tide. 'The Stunner', Rossetti's wife and model, died after living in a house here and posing for him on a balcony over the river.
7 this was the entrance to James Robinson's Natural History Museum, 1788 7 Coade Stone vase above the entrance window was rebuilt into a garage wall behind. Now gone,
8 Sidney Brown, 1876. Offices.
24 Paper Moon. Large single bar pub. The name derives from a Capital Radio competition, although no one can work out how because a rowing boat is hung up over the rear area of the bar where the citation exists'! It was previously the Rising Sun. John Rennie lived in a house on this site.
36-40 Wedge House 1963/7 by Hugh V. Sprince. Strong horizontal bands, recessed ground floor. 124 Tress, hat manufacturers’ until the 1940s the area was known for its hatters. Dickens said he associated the smell of hat-making with Blackfriars
196 J.W. Cunningham & Co, the coalhole plate manufacturers. Trade sign for the company was a dog with its head in a pot. Noted by Dickens. Gone but still there in the early 20th.
197 Palestra. Offices for the London Development Agency. Until 2000 this was the Oriental and India Office Library Collection of the British Library.
217 Prince William Henry Comfortable, modern pub opened in 1974.
245 Fire Engine Works, W.Tilley taken over by Shad Mason, taken over by Merryweathers, 1923. Gone.
Blackfriars Station. 11th January 1864. This was built on the Charing Cross Railway. It had one island platform and the sign ‘Charing Cross Railway. Blackfriars Station’ was on the façade although it was subsumed into the South Eastern Railway before it was opened. It is never known as ‘Great Surrey Street Station’. In 1869 it was closed and replaced by Waterloo East which is further west. On the viaduct above the site is shown by a widening on the north side. In the street the doorway and lettering are still there on the corner of Scoresby Street. In 2007 the lettering etc was restored and there is a blue plaque explaining it all on the wall.
Christ Church. In the early 17th John Marshall, who thought regretted St Saviour's was too far away, gave money for a church and the mile-square parish was taken out of the Liberty of Paris Garden in 1627. The church was built in 1671 and was consecrated by Bishop Morley on land purchased from William Angel. Because of problems with the foundations it was rebuilt in 1737. It was a plain brick quadrangle with a tower, an octagonal lantern, cupola and clock and its eight 18th bells were its greatest treasure. It was bombed in 1941 and demolished except for the chancel and a modern red brick church in a cottage style was built in 1952 by R. Paxton Watson & B. Costin. It is used by the Industrial Mission Centre for South London. It contains windows about local industries - office cleaning, a Thames boatman, a printer, an engineer.
Churchyard. A green space surrounding the church. It was enlarged in the early 19th by the removal of a row of houses along the path leading to it. A stone cross marks the place where the burning cross from the old church fell during the blitz.
City of Westminster College – building with greeny-white tiling. Now in other use.
Cobbled access ramp to the Goods Depot of 1863 'Dover Shed No.l' on viaduct
John Marshall Hall. Meeting hall. The John Marshall Charity remains.
King’s Reach. By R. Seifert & Partners; project architect Ivan Starkin. Begun in 1970, with luxury flats and hotel, offices.
NATSOPA HQ 1933
Rowland Hills’ chapel. The Chapel, on the north corner of Union Street, was circular with ‘no comers in which the devils could lurk! It was the Rev. Hill's own design and he preached here for fifty years. After 1910 it was used for professional boxing and known as 'the Ring'. In 1936-7 Robert Atkins used its shape as a substitute for that of the Elizabethan theatre and presenting Shakespeare's plays on Sunday afternoons. It was destroyed during the Second World War.
Watch House. Up to the 1940s there was also a watch house built in 1819 to watch the graves for robbers. There was also a small jail, for arrested smugglers.
Brad Street
Brick garden walls of the Roupell Street houses.
Railway viaduct. It has an imposing and monumental scale
11-15 Soho Gym. In the railway arches. Offices, gym and restaurant in lit cavernous spaces.
Broad Wall.
Only survival of the earth bank around Paris Garden, This now forms the western boundary of Christ Church parish.
Burrell Street
Edward's Almshouses. Founded 1755. pleasant almshouse group. Founded by Edward Edwards the original buildings were replaced in the 1890's. The almshouses provided homes for 39 ladies and a warden. Replaced again in the 1970s as part of a development in Nicholson Street.
Castle Yard
The Castle pub here in the 18th
Castle Yard Sunday School, 1889 school founded 1809. Disused.
Sennett Bros disused factory. They were skinners. Classical style pilasters on the ground floor.
Chancel Street
Previously Robert Street
Thomas Hare House. Hare first proposed proportional representation and the offices of the Electoral Reform Society are here. Built as the Albert Institute and Christ Church parish established a free public library here in 1889.
Coin Street
Coin Street Community Builders is a social enterprise which has worked in the surround area to create a mixed use neighbourhood
13a RSJ restaurant
Colombo Street
Previously Collingwood Street. In the late 18th it was a continuation of Green Walk and ran parallel to the main road into Great Charlotte Street or The Cut,
Cottages - a row of 17th weather-boarded cottages still stood in the 1940s but were bomb damaged.
Paris Garden Estate Office.
47 Rose and Crown. Built on the site of a church rectory. The pub name symbolises the union of York and Lancaster in the marriage of Henry VI and Elizabeth of York.
76 Prince Albert
Peabody estateSt.Andrew. bombed and demolished. It was a Teulon design.
34-36 Colombo Street Centre run by the Jubilee Trust. Managed by the Coin Street trust.
Cons Street
Was Little Windmill Street. The history of the Old Vie Theatre is summarised in this street name – Emma Cons was the lady who provided a place of respectable entertainment in this area
Cornwall Road
22-23 historic shop fronts.
24 - ex-industrial with metal-framed windows and stock brickwork.
25 - a smart early 19th with historic detail – an arch over the shuttered ground floor window and a fanlight. Shutters and boot scraper
26 Greyfriars Community House – donated to the order when the church opened infill building in red brick. Set back behind plain, spike headed railings.
29 White Hart. Back street local handy for the South Bank complex and Waterloo Station. The front has decorative blue/green glazed tiling up to cill level and white glazed tiles up to the fascia; all from the Doulton Works.
St.Patricks Church. Franciscan Conventual Order – Greyfriars. Built 1897 with statues of St.Patrick and St. Peter in niches on the front. Originally built as part of the school – and thus needing to go up steps to the house. Church opened in 1915.
St.Patrick’s Catholic Schools. 1897 – Montessori Nursery in what was originally the school built as part of the friary.
Bus Depot. Waterloo Red Arrow Base
Klondyke Bakery – used to be garage for classic Citroen cars
Exton Street
Formerly Church Street
8 cottage which was first National Children’s Home. A plaque marks the site of the cottage in which the Rev. T.B. Stephenson began his work among children in 1869. It was unveiled a century later by the Bishop of Taunton, a grandson of one of his two supporters. The door of this first 'National Children's Home' is preserved at the Harpenden branch. Plaque to the 140th anniversary unveiled by Shirley Anne Field
The Old School. Offices in what was the Lilian Baylis School
Farnham Place
Measure's yard for steel building joists.
Gambia Street
Previously William Street
14 Mai I Terra. Tapas bar in the old Hop Pole pub. HAD Victorian upright glass columns behind the bar framing etched mirrors.
Great Suffolk Street
Previously Gravel Lane
22 White Hart. Snug local with horseshoe bar. Original Friary Meux windows.
55, a gaunt late c 19 five-storey warehouse,
Hatfields
Previously Broad Wall. Built down the line of a branch of the Neckinger.
51 Mitre Pleasant open plan pub demolished.
Holland Street
In the early 18th a road was cut through the northern edge of the manor of Paris Garden grounds and called ‘Hollands Leaguer and later Holland Street. Part of Holland Street is now
Hopton Street.
Hopton Street
This piece of road had had a variety of names - in the early 18th a road cut through the northern boundary of Paris Garden grounds was called Holland Street. It was later called Green Walk. It was later changed to Hopton Street, after Charles Hopton, founder of the Hopton Almshouses.
Pedestrian subway. To access Blackfriars Bridge from Bankside, there is a pedestrian subway which goes under the railway bridge. This passage was made about 1863 by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway as an obligation, for permission to bridge the river.
44-47 Warehouse. A group of seven buildings used as a paper warehouse after 1960. One building may have been a carpenters shops. Demolished,
48 Bankside Gallery. Exhibitions of watercolours and etchings. Built in 1980. Home of the Royal Societies of Painters in Watercolours and Painter-Etchers and Engravers.
64 Sampson House. Roughly on the site of Swan Theatre
Falcon Glass Works of Messrs Pellat and Green covered the area of the Manor moat and mill stream. It was an extensive works noted for the 'elegance of their productions' and they were an important innovator in cut glass. It was thought to have been founded in 1693 as the Falcon bottle house, and had several name changes until c.1802. They moved to Stourbridge in 1895.
Epp's Steam cocoa factory succeeded the Falcon works with huge, premises. Partially demolished during the 1941 blitz. Taken over by Rowntree. Building now used as flats.
Terrace of houses next to the power station was associated with the gas company c.1925
Hopton's Almshouses at Knights Court. Date from 1752, and restored after war damage. A group of two-storeyed brick cottages. The main block has a committee room in the centre and blocks and their wings are surrounded by a lawn, trees and flower beds. Founded by Charles Hopton in 1752 and are used to house married couples. Hopton died on in 1730 aged seventy-six and is buried in Broadway Chapel, Westminster. He left a large sum of money to his sister Elizabeth. After her death in 1739, the money was used to fund twenty-six almshouses to be by the rector and churchwardens.
61 the oldest house in Southwark. Built in the reign of Charles II.
Falcon Point development. – Old GLC riverside housing since privatized.
Powerstation café and gallery
Horse trough dedicated to Charles Kingsley
Nicholson Street
Was this Charles Street?
Edward Edwards Almshouses, rebuilt 1973, part of a redevelopment including a new pub and an office block in Blackfriars Road. Now Christchurch United Charities.
Low-rise housing by Richard Sheppard, Robson & Partners, 1975 and an early example of the reaction against high rise.
Paris Garden
This turning recalls the name of the riverside manor
Rennie Street
Named for the engineer who had his works, and who lived locally and where John Rennie's two sons, George and John, had their engineering works from 1821 to 1833
Roupell Street
Terraced houses 1835 for workers in local warehouses, Mr. Roupell was a local gold refiner.
19-21 Date stone indicates rebuilding in 1891
24 shop front with original curved window.
25 King's Arms. Hidden away in the back streets with a front bar and a large rear room with a huge fire. Ventilator grills over arched windows and panel below, pilasters with floral capitals define the bays.
61 reproduction shop front painted sign directing to St. Andrew’s church
62 replacement shop front in timber
International School of English in St. Andrew's Church of England School. Schoolhouse 1868 plain brick Gothic. By S.S.Teulon.
St Andrew’s House, 1868 by S.S.Teulon.
Peabody estate, between here and Duchy Street. Built to a standard design used 1860- 1900. Several brick five floor blocks with courtyards and communal laundry rooms in a top floor extension. These had several small 'coppers', iron bowls set in brick beneath which a fire could be lit to boil up water, plus sinks.
Southwark Street
Opened 1862-1864 and cost £500,000 paid for out of the coal and wine dues. Built by the Metropolitan Board of Works to Link Blackfriars Road to Borough High Street. It was undertaken by Bazalgette, but went to older plans by Pennethorne. It was the first street in London where a special duct for water, gas, and telegraph services was provided in the centre of the roadway.
Ornamental Grilles on the south side of the street, as part of the underground subway services. Common trench subways. One tunnel served to conduct all services and faults could be detected, repairs made and replacements installed without the need to dig up the road.
85 Allies and Morrison. Purpose built studio on five floors.
89 19th buildings framing Great Suffolk Street. Rounded corners with elaborate detail. Stevens Shanks type foundry, Wall crane
91-93 Gothic, 1877
124-126 six storeys1866, Venetian Gothic with thin colonnettes, with an extension of the 1970s in the same proportions.
St.Christopher’s House. 1959 by Morris de Metz., when built said to be 'the largest office block under one roof in Europe'. Gone.
Imperial House of the Ministry of Public Building and Works. Demolished
Beck and Pollitzer, green-panelled offices. The firm owned a whole string of wharves along this stretch of the waterfront
99 Kirkaldy's Testing and Experimenting Works. Started in The Grove by David Kirkaldy from Clydeside. 1873. Family business until 1964. Now a Museum. The building is four storeys1877 by T. R. Smith. The ground floor accommodates David Kirkaldy's 350-ton-force materials-testing machine made in 1864 by Greenwood & Batley of Leeds - preserved in situ. The upper floor had a museum. His motto 'Facts, not opinions' over the doorway.
Art work on the railway bridge wall - Poured Lines by Ian Davenport.
Holiday Inn Express
Stamford Street
Laid out c. 1790, built up by c. 1815.
18 Rennie’s home. Rennie moved here on leaving Great Surrey Street. It was on the north side where today Rennie Street runs into it. The house was pulled down in 1923.
25 Brunswick Arms. Comfortable pub with bars on two levels. The upstairs bar has an intimate atmosphere in the evenings. Excellent collection of prints of old London. Note the large Bass mirror.
49-62 Offices and store for Boots Pure Drug Co. H. Tanner, 1936, an accepted pattern of the thirties with the staircase tower in one corner and all the rest long bands of windows.
52-54 Slug and Lettuce
62 Stamford Arms Large, busy one-bar pub. Handy for London Weekend Television and the South Bank
63-89 and 95-121 some formal late-Georgian terraces. Two long four-storey terraces, 1829, with pediments over first-floor windows, and ten-bay Corinthian centrepieces added c. 1912 by Coleridge when the houses were converted to flats.
77/79 coal hole plate made by J.W. Cunningham & Co, the Blackfriars Road manufacturers. The plate has the dog and pot motif as well as the date 1882 and the correct address.
108 Coin Street Neighbourhood Office. One side of the Iroko Housing Co-operative. Day nursery, conference facilities and things for old and young. Solar chimneys in a multi coloured façade. Haworth Tomkins
127 formerly W. H. Smith's printing works, neo-Greco-Egyptian detail 1915 C. Stanley Peach primarily their own printing firms of Arden and St. Catherine Press.
Bernie Spain Gardens. Steel walls incorporating seating and wooden decks lead into lawns and planted beds a circular rose garden with benches and borders full of ornamental grasses, oriental poppies, buddleia and lavender. These gardens, were the result of years of campaigning by Coin Street Community Builders
Burn Bros, ironmongers – was on the corner with Blackfriars Road. In the 1840s a wine and concert room on the site had on show a panoramic view of the battle of Navarino. This was a building which had been the Leverian Museum, housing the collection of Sir Ashton Lever which was later removed to Leicester Square, and in 1818 the Rotunda Penny Waxwork Show flourished there. The Rotunda remained as part of their premises
Coin Street Gardens. Between the Oxo Tower and Gabriel's Wharf, a grassed area with plane trees and cobbled paths leads to a circle of lawn surrounded by a low brick wall, benches and lots of - roses, bamboos, acanthus and day lilies.
Cornwall House 1912 R. Allison, a surprisingly straightforward commercial structure, modern in its conception. . Built for HMSO as store, plus offices for Ministry of Works.
Dorset House Built 1931-3. Built for Iliffe & Sons Ltd., who printed a periodical magazines. Taken over by I.P.C
Eldorado Ice Cream Company 1925-6 Large reinforced concrete cold store, linked by a reinforced concrete bridge to the riverside Union Cold Scores, across Upper Ground
Lesco House was built in 1930 by the London Electricity Supply Co., on land leased from the Duchy of Cornwall. This 3-storey building was used for Headquarters departments and extended to five floors in 1965. Engineer's offices
London Nautical School c. 1820 by Montague as a school for Irish children. Nine-bay brick house, the three central bays projecting. Entrance with Doric columns in antis. Upper storeys of the side part by C. H. Townsend, 1908-9.
London School of Printing, occupied a building erected in 1820 as a school for Irish children.
Mad Hatter. There was a big hatter's here called Tress and Co. Their speciality was making hats for expeditions and explorations and felt hats. Once the company moved out, Sainsbury's bought the building but now that they have gone it has been made into a hotel named the Mad Hatter.
Stamford House. Sainsbury's warehouse, 1935 1912 by Sykes, also of reinforced concrete; but, as was then the practice, the structure is completely concealed by brick with stone dressings. Corinthian pilasters to the upper floors. Extension 1928. Remodelled as offices by Denis Lennon & Partners, 1971-3, with two new top storeys replacing additions of 1939
Stamford Street Unitarian Chapel. Only the severe gateway of the chapel 1823. The rest was demolished in 1964
Upper Ground
National Theatre. 1976. This is actually three separate theatres — the Olivier, the Lyttelton and the Cottesloe. It was designed by Denys Lasdun & Partners, 1961-76. In 1913, a site in Bloomsbury had been bought and then, in 1937, a different site opposite the Victoria and Albert Museum. Six architects, chosen by a Stratford Memorial committee, suggested designs and Lutyens showed his at the Royal Academy in 1943. Then the L.C.C. identified this site on the South Bank. Lutyens died in 1944 and in 1946 a committee was appointed to choose the architect - Abercrombie, Holden, Holford, Reilly, and Pevsner – they held only one meeting, had a lunch at the Savoy, and chose O'Rorke, an architect, modern but not too radical, and he made designs for this site, which was then declared unsuitable. In 1949 the National Theatre Act was passed, and in 1951 the Queen laid the foundation stone but in 1961 a decision was taken not to continue. In June 1967 Denys Lasdun's design was accepted and the building completed in 1976. It is built in concrete, grey and with shuttering marks on a roughly square plan. The building contains foyers, a restaurant, buffets, and of course offices etc.
Frank Dobson sculpture surrounded by topiary outside the National Theatre
The Olivier has 1,160 seats. The name needs no explanation
The Lyttelton has 890 seats. Lyttelton refers to Lord Chandos, chairman of the South Bank Theatre Board
The Cottesloe has 200 to 400 seats. It is named after Lord Cottesloe, chairman of the National Theatre Board. .
London Weekend Television.
Gabriel’s Wharf. Site of the Eldorado Ice Cream Company.
Mulberry Bush
Barge House 'Oil Works. Two storey building which was a works for removing oil from seeds.
Waterloo Road
Roundabout with as large sunken pedestrian centre, 200 ft in diameter. 1966 engineers Rendel, Palmer & Tritton, with the G.L.C.
IMAX Cinema. Multi storey glass cylinder, coloured lighting at night. Wires stretched around to the ground to support for - Jasmine, ivy, honeysuckle and Virginia creeper.
St.John’s. inside bombed but refurbished in 1951and changed to only one gallery. One of the four Commissioners churches the rest known from the site of this one as the ‘Waterloo churches’. Designed by Bedford and built 1822-4 The Greek Doric portico has a tall thin spire ending in an obelisk. Italian font 18th. Reredos made of the Remains of the original marble altarpiece. Central panel with paintings by Haw Feibusch.
St. Johns Gardens. Maintained by vestry of Lambeth
81 Wellington Tavern. Formerly British Rail owned. It has three bars and is a basic boozer. Large sprawling Victorian pub. Handy for late trains from Waterloo.
Royal Waterloo Hospital. Begun as a dispensary for children in the City of London, moved to this site in 1822. Rebuilt in 1903-5 by M. S. Nicholson. Three tiers of terracotta and a Doulton-ware porch
Wootton Street
Waterloo East Station. 1864. Built by South Eastern Railway Waterloo East opened as ‘Waterloo Junction’ station when the line was extended from London Bridge to Charing Cross. In 1935 it was renamed ‘Waterloo’ and in 1977 renamed ‘Waterloo East’. The bridge to the main station follows the line of an old rail link between the LSWR 'Windsor' lines and the SER Junction station. The link was taken up when Waterloo station was rebuilt at the beginning of the present century. The original platform canopy, which still covered the footway until the 1990s.
Sources
Osborne. Defending London
Thames Tributary Neckinger
A western branch of the Neckinger emerged from its source in today’s Mary Harmsworth Gardens and flowed northwards through St.George’s Fields where it divided again. The eastern section then flowed north and divided again to form the boundaries of Paris Garden and then to flow into the Thames.
Post to the west South Bank
Post to the south Waterloo
Post to the east Bankside
Alaska Street
Telephone exchange for SE1
London Underground tube shaft building in red brick.
Gay sauna in the railway arches
Bankside – Jubilee Walkway
Bankside known as ‘the Banke side’; in 1554, that is 'street or district alongside the bank of the Thames’.
Canute’s trench. In 1016 Canute the Dane sailed up the Thames, The story goes that, in 1016, Canute's ships got above the bridge by cutting a canal through the south bank. The skeleton of a barge 350 feet from the present river bank was found during the widening of the power station.
Paris Garden Preserves the name of the old riverside manor of Paris Garden, recorded as probably named from a family called de Paris who once owned it. An earlier names is ‘Wideflete’ 111 3 - that is 'willow inlet or creek'. It covered this western end of Bankside as well as the area of Blackfriars Bridge.
Neckinger - The manor was inside an enclosing dyke and water. The stream ran in a wide loop round the manor from the Old Barge House Stairs, south Surrey Row, and north again to the river near Falcon Dock. It was flanked by a man made earth wall. The whole area was several feet below high-water level and the bank and sewers were very necessary.
The Pudding Mill stream, with bridges- Guy's Arch and Paris Garden Bridge—filled a pond sited where Hopton Street bends back on itself. This flowed into the river between Rennie's and Falcon Wharfs. The millpond remained, with safety railings form the 16th, until the early 19th. The Pudding Mill itself dated from the 12th. In the 12th there were several other mills in the area. As time went on houses were built and some of the area was used as a bleach works.
Paris Garden Manor. The 14th manor house was surrounded by its moat. It was very rural. Gerard, superintendent of Lord Burghley's garden, found specimens for his herbal there. There were rabbits, streams with fishing reserves, meadows and woodland. It belonged to Bermondsey Abbey from 1113 and then the Templars, and then the Hospitallers from 1324. At the dissolution of the monasteries, the Estate, became Crown Property and it was leased to entrepreneurs who made it into a public gaming place with bowling alleys, cards etc. It thereafter had a number of lessees including Susan Holland who had escaped from prison. In 1631 she opened a brothel here –the Holland’s Leaguer. Despite attempts to close it Holland’s Leaguer remained ascent on the west side made via by 'mutilated ancient stone steps'. In 1769 the manor was pulled down to make way for the first Blackfriars Bridge, and the site would be somewhere in the middle of the southern approach.
Paris Garden Stairs later covered by Rennie's Wharf. One of the busiest of the landing places, and the main entrance from the river to the manor. The lane between them was the site of 'Orange Tree Tea Gardens'. 'Five Pint Square' and 'Hot Water Court’ and so on.
Swan Theatre. built in 1595 on a previously structure some 120 yards east of the Manor House, and about 133 yards south of the Bankside. And opposite the Falcon. It was the fourth in the series of public playhouses of London. It was built of flint concrete, and its wooden columns were painted like marble. There were a number of scandals around the content of some plays it was mainly used for prize fighting, etc. After 1615 it was unused for five years, but used again in 1621 and by 1632 it was derelict.
Copt Hall. This was a moated house with a gatehouse south of the Manor House. In 1615 belonged to Sir Thomas Parry, Chancellor of Lancaster. It was ruined by the early 16th and had been converted into a gaming house, it was later rebuilt as a brothel.
Albion Mill. Immediately to the east of Blackfriars Bridge. Burnt down 3rd March 1791. Built by John Rennie they were never re-erected. The mill was the first that used steam power to drive millstones and the engines for fanning, sifting and dressing the wheat, as well as for hoisting and lowering sacks and loading and unloading barges. It used Boulton & Watt, machinery and twenty pairs of millstones ground ten bushels of wheat per hour, by day and night. He built a workshop on part of the cleared site. Near the steps the footings of the mill can sometimes be seen at low tide.
Rennie's Wharf. Approximately covered the site of Albion Mill. Here John Rennie and his family carried on the business of engineer and shipbuilders here from 1809. Albion Ironworks 7 acres, iron foundry cast vast amounts of stuff. George and John, 1821-1833
Founders’ Arms. A low, free-standing pub, polygonal, with a heavy roof-line It has wide terraces along the river. It is on the site of the stone cross which marked the boundary between the Liberties of the Clink and Paris Garden and it is also the site of the Widflete drain-mill.
Royal George Wharf was once normally stacked with newsprint
Flats of six to eight storeys for Southwark Council, with balconies, plaza with trees to the south.
Molestrand. Bankside in front of where Tate Modern now stands was called Molestrand. Here Bankside ended and to the east was Willow Street with houses on either side.
Honduras Wharf. Got its name from the first consignment of mahogany from Honduras was landed here. It covered the waterside between the Moldstrand and Falcon Stairs and is 18th. Bailey Legg and Co., ironworks from the 19th. It was also the site of Clarks Alley in the 16th
64 Phoenix Wharf Gas Works. Site of a gas works for over a hundred years. In 1817 ‘Morrow and Co. are listed as ‘Gas and Coke Merchants’. There are no records of this works but in 1821 Monro and Evans became, or were taken over by, the South London Gas Co. In 1824 the South London was taken over by the Phoenix Gas Light and Coke Co. Monro continued to manage the works. In 1888 it became part of the South Metropolitan Gas Co.'s empire and remained as one of their main works until 1919 when work was scaled down and the site was sold in 1938.
City of London Electric Works had been the first power station on the site in 1891 taking over the works of the Brush Electrical Engineering Company, established on Phoenix wharf. It expanded to cover Pitt's Place, Noah's Head Alley and Ladd's Court, and by 1900 covered the ground between Love Lane and White Hind Alley. By 1927 it covered the area known as Pyke Gardens was now one of the largest in the country. The coal came to the wharf from barges with the names of colours and animals. On the riverside was a pump house to treat river water is treated before use in the turbine condensers. 'The Waterman's Arms' was converted for use as the Power Station's office and stood at the comer of Pike Gardens.
Pike Gardens. Site of pike ponds. The 'stews' of Lambeth were keeping-ponds for fish, owned and consumed by royalty or ecclesiastics, and lasted into the 17th. Pike were a specialty. The 'Pyke Gardens' originally belonged to the Bishops of Winchester. After the reformation the Crown the fish from the ponds was for the royal table. A house stood here until the late 18th and was used as the ‘gatehouse. Into the greate Pyke gardeyne’. Its walls had reliefs of dolphins, pikes and tritons, and the gateway had Neptune with naiads, in a shell chariot drawn by sea-horses.
Mason Stairs. —one of the earliest mentioned landing places
Tate Modern. The Power Station became Tate Modern Art Gallery. The power station was built late and small although great care was taken with the design. It was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, and completed, after much controversy, in 1963 by Mott, Hay & Anderson engineers. Power from 1100mw English engine. There had been an old smaller station with many chimneys which had been a skyline feature since 1893. This station had one single-four-flue central square chimney of almost to 300 feet. Its output was 240,000 kW, and it also featured the stretch of riverside garden. It was the last of the huge brick power stations but burnt oil, not coke and at the jetty barges discharged the fuel oil. It is symmetrical, with large windows and the impression is of the stunning scale of the bare walls of immaculate brickwork. The Board’s Archives were in the Sumner Street offices. Closed 1981.
Tate Modern Garden. Designed by Dieter Kienast with multi-stemmed silver birch trees Planted in geometric blocks and with a large lawn
Pump Yard. Now gone. Site of an 18th Cockpit Yard and Alley. Near the site of what would have been 74 Bankside. In the early 1900s Wakeley Bros site. There was a pump here with a trough for horses and a garden. Stables built from old ship timber. The house, used by a firm of brick makers, had a cellar running its length and was built on piles.
79 Bankside was the Falcon Draw Dock. Marked the boundary between the Liberties of the Clink and Paris Garden.
Falcon Inn was at the Stairs. In the 18th it was the terminus for coaches from the south. A ferry took them across the river.
Falcon Wharf Pumping Station of the London Hydraulic Power Co works. Closed June 1977 but many valve covers in the street. Works set up by E.B.Ellington in 1883, and supplied water -power at a pressure of 700 lb. per sq. in.
Foundry. This is where Wren had the rails for St.Paul’s Cathedral delivered having been made in Kent by Mr. Jones.
Riverside Court. Seifert 1977
Sea Containers House. Seifert 1977.
Barge House Street
Commemorates the old Barge House and stairs where the King's State barge was housed from Henry VII to Charles I. Home of royal barge masters, and the site of the sheds for the royal barges.
Hawes Soap Works. This was the biggest soap works in England, had been started in the late 18th by George Russell. On his death it was taken over by members of the Hawes family. In 1823 an oil gas plant at Hawes soap works at Old Bargehouse also supplied houses in the area. Members of the family were rich and successful – one, Benjamin, becoming a Government minister and also married the sister of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Old Barge House StairsAlley leading to stairs down to Thames, for ferry and lighter access with a hard spit of brick/stone stretching to low tide level. Note cannon used as bollard
Stamford Wharf, former Union Cold Storage Company. Listed. This includes the Oxo Tower. In 1927 the Liebig Extract of Meat Company, which made Oxo, formed a subsidiary company, Thames Side Properties Ltd, to deal with the purchase and use of a site for a new wharf and a reinforced concrete structure was built on the site of the GPO power station. This all became part of the Vestey Group and at one time the wharf was the largest site for the import of meat in Britain,
Oxo Tower. An art-deco landmark. This was a clever advertisement designed after the L.C.C. objected to signs on the tower. Showy and modernistic by A. W. Moore, which advertises OXO to the whole area. When the building was erected it was the second tallest building in London. Nine floor reinforced concrete building, 1928/9 with Exterior cranes and jiggers removed. There were planning regulations to overcome so that the Oxo sign was not classified as an advertisement which would not have been allowed at that height. It was decided to illuminate the windows shaped in the form of the letters OXO. Instructions to pull down the tower could not be enforced. In 1983 there was a campaign it when it was threatened with demolition as part of a new building development scheme and it has since been converted into a restaurant.
Helicopter pad for courier services
Bear Lane
A narrow thoroughfare that may reference the ‘sport’ of bull when Paris Garden was a great centre for this.
London Ordnance Works. With probably Armstrong and Whitworth and later Josiah Vavasseur and Blakeley ‘manufacturer of Ordnance’ in 1864-72 in the ‘Blakeley Ordnance Works’.
C. Isler & Co.Artesian Well works
Christchurch Church of England parochial schools in place of Henley Square. Gone
Stevenson & Howell's Standard Works. Used for distilling and blending of essences and flavouring.
Blackfriars Bridges
Blackfriars Bridge. Preceded by a ferry. The City Corporation decided to build a bridge in 1753. Bridge House Estates built it and paid for a good design by Alexander Mylne which introduced the new elliptical arch. It was the second bridge built by the City and the foundation stone was laid in 1760 by the Lord Mayor. At first it was to be called Pitt Bridge but it took nine years to build and they changed the name because by then Pitt was out of favour. Until 1785 there was a toll of 2d. on foot passengers (1d. on Sundays). Then when old London Bridge was removed the scour ground away the foundations of this first bridge and it was demolished and another new one built in 1865. Its style is described as 'Venetian Gothic' and the pulpit-like structures are supposed to refer to the Dominicans' at Black Friars ‘the Order of Preachers’. It was built in conjunction with the Cubitt’s adjacent railway bridge and Queen Victoria opened them together. It is the widest bridge on the river and was widened in 1909 for tramlines. It was paved by Mowlem 1939. In 1982 Banker Robert Calvi was found hanging underneath in a mafia based murder
Pumping Station for emergency water supplies.
Blackfriars Bridge Station. 1st June 1864. Built by the London Chatham and Dover Railway. This was an impressive structure at the south end of Blackfriars Bridge north of the junction with Southwark Street. It was closed 1st October 1885 and became a goods depot. In 1964 it ceased to be used for goods and was demolished. There are still some remains – balcony area and large motif over the river.
Lloyds Computer Centre. by Fitzroy Robinson & Partners, with cyclopic channelled concrete lift shafts, and stepped- back upper floors. The building is on the site of the Blackfriars Road Railway Goods Depot (1863 by Taylor) of which some of the substructure remains.
Alexandra Railway Bridge. The London, Chatham & Dover Railway reached the south bank of the Thames in 1864. Although an Act for a railway bridge was obtained in 1860 it was delayed because the City Corporation could not decide on a design. Eventually Joseph Cubitt and F. T. Turner completed the work on 21 December of that year at a cost of £220 000. The bridge had four rail tracks carried on four river spans, and two shore spans of 160 ft. with lattice formed wrought iron girders. The river piers were made up of three cast-iron cylinders clad in masonry and filled with concrete, capped with granite Stones from old Westminster Bridge, demolished in 1861, were used in the abutments.. The girders were demolished in the 1980s, but the cast-iron columns remain in the river. The Arms of the London, Chatham & Dover Railway, in cast iron, have been restored and are on the south pier.
Blackfriars Railway Bridge - St. Paul's Bridge. The second railway bridge, immediately downstream of the Cubitt bridge, was known as St. Paul's Bridge and opened in May 1886. The engineers were Sir J. Wolfe Barry and H. M. Brunel in conjunction with William Mills, the London, Chatham & Dover Railway engineer. It originally carried seven rail tracks on five spans of wrought-iron arches and, for navigational reasons, the river spans match those of the Cubitt bridge alongside. The ironwork was from Thames Ironworks of Blackwall.
Blackfriars Bridge, Surrey Approach
Rennie’s Green. In 1862, part of the site was preserved by Act of Parliament as an open space for the public. It is now Rennie Gardens
British Plate Glass Co. Works, office and London warehouse. The process had been developed in Ravenhead, Lancs in the mid 18th. Works here early 19th. Site is now that of the pub and known as Albion Place.
Doggett's Coat and Badge pub. Since the early 18th century, an annual single-skulls race has taken place between watermen; this pub was named after the prize awarded to the winner. Large modern three bar building overlooking the Thames. Good river views from the upstairs bar.
Cement Works - Old Parker cement works taken over by Jeremiah Rosher. Parker cement was used for pointing, first use of Roman cement known
London Wharf for Lee Cement Works from Halling and Burham. Fleet of 80 sailing barges with black ebony sails decorated with the white horse of Kent
Blackfriars Road
Watercourse parallel to it went into the Thames.The road was laid out 1770-1880, and until 1829 it was called Great Surrey Street. Before this at the end of the bridge were houses laid out in 1670 by William Angell. There had been complaints about these in that they would 'take away Ayre' and restrict the water supply. In the early 19th the area did indeed become very bad with mud- banks left bare by the tide. 'The Stunner', Rossetti's wife and model, died after living in a house here and posing for him on a balcony over the river.
7 this was the entrance to James Robinson's Natural History Museum, 1788 7 Coade Stone vase above the entrance window was rebuilt into a garage wall behind. Now gone,
8 Sidney Brown, 1876. Offices.
24 Paper Moon. Large single bar pub. The name derives from a Capital Radio competition, although no one can work out how because a rowing boat is hung up over the rear area of the bar where the citation exists'! It was previously the Rising Sun. John Rennie lived in a house on this site.
36-40 Wedge House 1963/7 by Hugh V. Sprince. Strong horizontal bands, recessed ground floor. 124 Tress, hat manufacturers’ until the 1940s the area was known for its hatters. Dickens said he associated the smell of hat-making with Blackfriars
196 J.W. Cunningham & Co, the coalhole plate manufacturers. Trade sign for the company was a dog with its head in a pot. Noted by Dickens. Gone but still there in the early 20th.
197 Palestra. Offices for the London Development Agency. Until 2000 this was the Oriental and India Office Library Collection of the British Library.
217 Prince William Henry Comfortable, modern pub opened in 1974.
245 Fire Engine Works, W.Tilley taken over by Shad Mason, taken over by Merryweathers, 1923. Gone.
Blackfriars Station. 11th January 1864. This was built on the Charing Cross Railway. It had one island platform and the sign ‘Charing Cross Railway. Blackfriars Station’ was on the façade although it was subsumed into the South Eastern Railway before it was opened. It is never known as ‘Great Surrey Street Station’. In 1869 it was closed and replaced by Waterloo East which is further west. On the viaduct above the site is shown by a widening on the north side. In the street the doorway and lettering are still there on the corner of Scoresby Street. In 2007 the lettering etc was restored and there is a blue plaque explaining it all on the wall.
Christ Church. In the early 17th John Marshall, who thought regretted St Saviour's was too far away, gave money for a church and the mile-square parish was taken out of the Liberty of Paris Garden in 1627. The church was built in 1671 and was consecrated by Bishop Morley on land purchased from William Angel. Because of problems with the foundations it was rebuilt in 1737. It was a plain brick quadrangle with a tower, an octagonal lantern, cupola and clock and its eight 18th bells were its greatest treasure. It was bombed in 1941 and demolished except for the chancel and a modern red brick church in a cottage style was built in 1952 by R. Paxton Watson & B. Costin. It is used by the Industrial Mission Centre for South London. It contains windows about local industries - office cleaning, a Thames boatman, a printer, an engineer.
Churchyard. A green space surrounding the church. It was enlarged in the early 19th by the removal of a row of houses along the path leading to it. A stone cross marks the place where the burning cross from the old church fell during the blitz.
City of Westminster College – building with greeny-white tiling. Now in other use.
Cobbled access ramp to the Goods Depot of 1863 'Dover Shed No.l' on viaduct
John Marshall Hall. Meeting hall. The John Marshall Charity remains.
King’s Reach. By R. Seifert & Partners; project architect Ivan Starkin. Begun in 1970, with luxury flats and hotel, offices.
NATSOPA HQ 1933
Rowland Hills’ chapel. The Chapel, on the north corner of Union Street, was circular with ‘no comers in which the devils could lurk! It was the Rev. Hill's own design and he preached here for fifty years. After 1910 it was used for professional boxing and known as 'the Ring'. In 1936-7 Robert Atkins used its shape as a substitute for that of the Elizabethan theatre and presenting Shakespeare's plays on Sunday afternoons. It was destroyed during the Second World War.
Watch House. Up to the 1940s there was also a watch house built in 1819 to watch the graves for robbers. There was also a small jail, for arrested smugglers.
Brad Street
Brick garden walls of the Roupell Street houses.
Railway viaduct. It has an imposing and monumental scale
11-15 Soho Gym. In the railway arches. Offices, gym and restaurant in lit cavernous spaces.
Broad Wall.
Only survival of the earth bank around Paris Garden, This now forms the western boundary of Christ Church parish.
Burrell Street
Edward's Almshouses. Founded 1755. pleasant almshouse group. Founded by Edward Edwards the original buildings were replaced in the 1890's. The almshouses provided homes for 39 ladies and a warden. Replaced again in the 1970s as part of a development in Nicholson Street.
Castle Yard
The Castle pub here in the 18th
Castle Yard Sunday School, 1889 school founded 1809. Disused.
Sennett Bros disused factory. They were skinners. Classical style pilasters on the ground floor.
Chancel Street
Previously Robert Street
Thomas Hare House. Hare first proposed proportional representation and the offices of the Electoral Reform Society are here. Built as the Albert Institute and Christ Church parish established a free public library here in 1889.
Coin Street
Coin Street Community Builders is a social enterprise which has worked in the surround area to create a mixed use neighbourhood
13a RSJ restaurant
Colombo Street
Previously Collingwood Street. In the late 18th it was a continuation of Green Walk and ran parallel to the main road into Great Charlotte Street or The Cut,
Cottages - a row of 17th weather-boarded cottages still stood in the 1940s but were bomb damaged.
Paris Garden Estate Office.
47 Rose and Crown. Built on the site of a church rectory. The pub name symbolises the union of York and Lancaster in the marriage of Henry VI and Elizabeth of York.
76 Prince Albert
Peabody estateSt.Andrew. bombed and demolished. It was a Teulon design.
34-36 Colombo Street Centre run by the Jubilee Trust. Managed by the Coin Street trust.
Cons Street
Was Little Windmill Street. The history of the Old Vie Theatre is summarised in this street name – Emma Cons was the lady who provided a place of respectable entertainment in this area
Cornwall Road
22-23 historic shop fronts.
24 - ex-industrial with metal-framed windows and stock brickwork.
25 - a smart early 19th with historic detail – an arch over the shuttered ground floor window and a fanlight. Shutters and boot scraper
26 Greyfriars Community House – donated to the order when the church opened infill building in red brick. Set back behind plain, spike headed railings.
29 White Hart. Back street local handy for the South Bank complex and Waterloo Station. The front has decorative blue/green glazed tiling up to cill level and white glazed tiles up to the fascia; all from the Doulton Works.
St.Patricks Church. Franciscan Conventual Order – Greyfriars. Built 1897 with statues of St.Patrick and St. Peter in niches on the front. Originally built as part of the school – and thus needing to go up steps to the house. Church opened in 1915.
St.Patrick’s Catholic Schools. 1897 – Montessori Nursery in what was originally the school built as part of the friary.
Bus Depot. Waterloo Red Arrow Base
Klondyke Bakery – used to be garage for classic Citroen cars
Exton Street
Formerly Church Street
8 cottage which was first National Children’s Home. A plaque marks the site of the cottage in which the Rev. T.B. Stephenson began his work among children in 1869. It was unveiled a century later by the Bishop of Taunton, a grandson of one of his two supporters. The door of this first 'National Children's Home' is preserved at the Harpenden branch. Plaque to the 140th anniversary unveiled by Shirley Anne Field
The Old School. Offices in what was the Lilian Baylis School
Farnham Place
Measure's yard for steel building joists.
Gambia Street
Previously William Street
14 Mai I Terra. Tapas bar in the old Hop Pole pub. HAD Victorian upright glass columns behind the bar framing etched mirrors.
Great Suffolk Street
Previously Gravel Lane
22 White Hart. Snug local with horseshoe bar. Original Friary Meux windows.
55, a gaunt late c 19 five-storey warehouse,
Hatfields
Previously Broad Wall. Built down the line of a branch of the Neckinger.
51 Mitre Pleasant open plan pub demolished.
Holland Street
In the early 18th a road was cut through the northern edge of the manor of Paris Garden grounds and called ‘Hollands Leaguer and later Holland Street. Part of Holland Street is now
Hopton Street.
Hopton Street
This piece of road had had a variety of names - in the early 18th a road cut through the northern boundary of Paris Garden grounds was called Holland Street. It was later called Green Walk. It was later changed to Hopton Street, after Charles Hopton, founder of the Hopton Almshouses.
Pedestrian subway. To access Blackfriars Bridge from Bankside, there is a pedestrian subway which goes under the railway bridge. This passage was made about 1863 by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway as an obligation, for permission to bridge the river.
44-47 Warehouse. A group of seven buildings used as a paper warehouse after 1960. One building may have been a carpenters shops. Demolished,
48 Bankside Gallery. Exhibitions of watercolours and etchings. Built in 1980. Home of the Royal Societies of Painters in Watercolours and Painter-Etchers and Engravers.
64 Sampson House. Roughly on the site of Swan Theatre
Falcon Glass Works of Messrs Pellat and Green covered the area of the Manor moat and mill stream. It was an extensive works noted for the 'elegance of their productions' and they were an important innovator in cut glass. It was thought to have been founded in 1693 as the Falcon bottle house, and had several name changes until c.1802. They moved to Stourbridge in 1895.
Epp's Steam cocoa factory succeeded the Falcon works with huge, premises. Partially demolished during the 1941 blitz. Taken over by Rowntree. Building now used as flats.
Terrace of houses next to the power station was associated with the gas company c.1925
Hopton's Almshouses at Knights Court. Date from 1752, and restored after war damage. A group of two-storeyed brick cottages. The main block has a committee room in the centre and blocks and their wings are surrounded by a lawn, trees and flower beds. Founded by Charles Hopton in 1752 and are used to house married couples. Hopton died on in 1730 aged seventy-six and is buried in Broadway Chapel, Westminster. He left a large sum of money to his sister Elizabeth. After her death in 1739, the money was used to fund twenty-six almshouses to be by the rector and churchwardens.
61 the oldest house in Southwark. Built in the reign of Charles II.
Falcon Point development. – Old GLC riverside housing since privatized.
Powerstation café and gallery
Horse trough dedicated to Charles Kingsley
Nicholson Street
Was this Charles Street?
Edward Edwards Almshouses, rebuilt 1973, part of a redevelopment including a new pub and an office block in Blackfriars Road. Now Christchurch United Charities.
Low-rise housing by Richard Sheppard, Robson & Partners, 1975 and an early example of the reaction against high rise.
Paris Garden
This turning recalls the name of the riverside manor
Rennie Street
Named for the engineer who had his works, and who lived locally and where John Rennie's two sons, George and John, had their engineering works from 1821 to 1833
Roupell Street
Terraced houses 1835 for workers in local warehouses, Mr. Roupell was a local gold refiner.
19-21 Date stone indicates rebuilding in 1891
24 shop front with original curved window.
25 King's Arms. Hidden away in the back streets with a front bar and a large rear room with a huge fire. Ventilator grills over arched windows and panel below, pilasters with floral capitals define the bays.
61 reproduction shop front painted sign directing to St. Andrew’s church
62 replacement shop front in timber
International School of English in St. Andrew's Church of England School. Schoolhouse 1868 plain brick Gothic. By S.S.Teulon.
St Andrew’s House, 1868 by S.S.Teulon.
Peabody estate, between here and Duchy Street. Built to a standard design used 1860- 1900. Several brick five floor blocks with courtyards and communal laundry rooms in a top floor extension. These had several small 'coppers', iron bowls set in brick beneath which a fire could be lit to boil up water, plus sinks.
Southwark Street
Opened 1862-1864 and cost £500,000 paid for out of the coal and wine dues. Built by the Metropolitan Board of Works to Link Blackfriars Road to Borough High Street. It was undertaken by Bazalgette, but went to older plans by Pennethorne. It was the first street in London where a special duct for water, gas, and telegraph services was provided in the centre of the roadway.
Ornamental Grilles on the south side of the street, as part of the underground subway services. Common trench subways. One tunnel served to conduct all services and faults could be detected, repairs made and replacements installed without the need to dig up the road.
85 Allies and Morrison. Purpose built studio on five floors.
89 19th buildings framing Great Suffolk Street. Rounded corners with elaborate detail. Stevens Shanks type foundry, Wall crane
91-93 Gothic, 1877
124-126 six storeys1866, Venetian Gothic with thin colonnettes, with an extension of the 1970s in the same proportions.
St.Christopher’s House. 1959 by Morris de Metz., when built said to be 'the largest office block under one roof in Europe'. Gone.
Imperial House of the Ministry of Public Building and Works. Demolished
Beck and Pollitzer, green-panelled offices. The firm owned a whole string of wharves along this stretch of the waterfront
99 Kirkaldy's Testing and Experimenting Works. Started in The Grove by David Kirkaldy from Clydeside. 1873. Family business until 1964. Now a Museum. The building is four storeys1877 by T. R. Smith. The ground floor accommodates David Kirkaldy's 350-ton-force materials-testing machine made in 1864 by Greenwood & Batley of Leeds - preserved in situ. The upper floor had a museum. His motto 'Facts, not opinions' over the doorway.
Art work on the railway bridge wall - Poured Lines by Ian Davenport.
Holiday Inn Express
Stamford Street
Laid out c. 1790, built up by c. 1815.
18 Rennie’s home. Rennie moved here on leaving Great Surrey Street. It was on the north side where today Rennie Street runs into it. The house was pulled down in 1923.
25 Brunswick Arms. Comfortable pub with bars on two levels. The upstairs bar has an intimate atmosphere in the evenings. Excellent collection of prints of old London. Note the large Bass mirror.
49-62 Offices and store for Boots Pure Drug Co. H. Tanner, 1936, an accepted pattern of the thirties with the staircase tower in one corner and all the rest long bands of windows.
52-54 Slug and Lettuce
62 Stamford Arms Large, busy one-bar pub. Handy for London Weekend Television and the South Bank
63-89 and 95-121 some formal late-Georgian terraces. Two long four-storey terraces, 1829, with pediments over first-floor windows, and ten-bay Corinthian centrepieces added c. 1912 by Coleridge when the houses were converted to flats.
77/79 coal hole plate made by J.W. Cunningham & Co, the Blackfriars Road manufacturers. The plate has the dog and pot motif as well as the date 1882 and the correct address.
108 Coin Street Neighbourhood Office. One side of the Iroko Housing Co-operative. Day nursery, conference facilities and things for old and young. Solar chimneys in a multi coloured façade. Haworth Tomkins
127 formerly W. H. Smith's printing works, neo-Greco-Egyptian detail 1915 C. Stanley Peach primarily their own printing firms of Arden and St. Catherine Press.
Bernie Spain Gardens. Steel walls incorporating seating and wooden decks lead into lawns and planted beds a circular rose garden with benches and borders full of ornamental grasses, oriental poppies, buddleia and lavender. These gardens, were the result of years of campaigning by Coin Street Community Builders
Burn Bros, ironmongers – was on the corner with Blackfriars Road. In the 1840s a wine and concert room on the site had on show a panoramic view of the battle of Navarino. This was a building which had been the Leverian Museum, housing the collection of Sir Ashton Lever which was later removed to Leicester Square, and in 1818 the Rotunda Penny Waxwork Show flourished there. The Rotunda remained as part of their premises
Coin Street Gardens. Between the Oxo Tower and Gabriel's Wharf, a grassed area with plane trees and cobbled paths leads to a circle of lawn surrounded by a low brick wall, benches and lots of - roses, bamboos, acanthus and day lilies.
Cornwall House 1912 R. Allison, a surprisingly straightforward commercial structure, modern in its conception. . Built for HMSO as store, plus offices for Ministry of Works.
Dorset House Built 1931-3. Built for Iliffe & Sons Ltd., who printed a periodical magazines. Taken over by I.P.C
Eldorado Ice Cream Company 1925-6 Large reinforced concrete cold store, linked by a reinforced concrete bridge to the riverside Union Cold Scores, across Upper Ground
Lesco House was built in 1930 by the London Electricity Supply Co., on land leased from the Duchy of Cornwall. This 3-storey building was used for Headquarters departments and extended to five floors in 1965. Engineer's offices
London Nautical School c. 1820 by Montague as a school for Irish children. Nine-bay brick house, the three central bays projecting. Entrance with Doric columns in antis. Upper storeys of the side part by C. H. Townsend, 1908-9.
London School of Printing, occupied a building erected in 1820 as a school for Irish children.
Mad Hatter. There was a big hatter's here called Tress and Co. Their speciality was making hats for expeditions and explorations and felt hats. Once the company moved out, Sainsbury's bought the building but now that they have gone it has been made into a hotel named the Mad Hatter.
Stamford House. Sainsbury's warehouse, 1935 1912 by Sykes, also of reinforced concrete; but, as was then the practice, the structure is completely concealed by brick with stone dressings. Corinthian pilasters to the upper floors. Extension 1928. Remodelled as offices by Denis Lennon & Partners, 1971-3, with two new top storeys replacing additions of 1939
Stamford Street Unitarian Chapel. Only the severe gateway of the chapel 1823. The rest was demolished in 1964
Upper Ground
National Theatre. 1976. This is actually three separate theatres — the Olivier, the Lyttelton and the Cottesloe. It was designed by Denys Lasdun & Partners, 1961-76. In 1913, a site in Bloomsbury had been bought and then, in 1937, a different site opposite the Victoria and Albert Museum. Six architects, chosen by a Stratford Memorial committee, suggested designs and Lutyens showed his at the Royal Academy in 1943. Then the L.C.C. identified this site on the South Bank. Lutyens died in 1944 and in 1946 a committee was appointed to choose the architect - Abercrombie, Holden, Holford, Reilly, and Pevsner – they held only one meeting, had a lunch at the Savoy, and chose O'Rorke, an architect, modern but not too radical, and he made designs for this site, which was then declared unsuitable. In 1949 the National Theatre Act was passed, and in 1951 the Queen laid the foundation stone but in 1961 a decision was taken not to continue. In June 1967 Denys Lasdun's design was accepted and the building completed in 1976. It is built in concrete, grey and with shuttering marks on a roughly square plan. The building contains foyers, a restaurant, buffets, and of course offices etc.
Frank Dobson sculpture surrounded by topiary outside the National Theatre
The Olivier has 1,160 seats. The name needs no explanation
The Lyttelton has 890 seats. Lyttelton refers to Lord Chandos, chairman of the South Bank Theatre Board
The Cottesloe has 200 to 400 seats. It is named after Lord Cottesloe, chairman of the National Theatre Board. .
London Weekend Television.
Gabriel’s Wharf. Site of the Eldorado Ice Cream Company.
Mulberry Bush
Barge House 'Oil Works. Two storey building which was a works for removing oil from seeds.
Waterloo Road
Roundabout with as large sunken pedestrian centre, 200 ft in diameter. 1966 engineers Rendel, Palmer & Tritton, with the G.L.C.
IMAX Cinema. Multi storey glass cylinder, coloured lighting at night. Wires stretched around to the ground to support for - Jasmine, ivy, honeysuckle and Virginia creeper.
St.John’s. inside bombed but refurbished in 1951and changed to only one gallery. One of the four Commissioners churches the rest known from the site of this one as the ‘Waterloo churches’. Designed by Bedford and built 1822-4 The Greek Doric portico has a tall thin spire ending in an obelisk. Italian font 18th. Reredos made of the Remains of the original marble altarpiece. Central panel with paintings by Haw Feibusch.
St. Johns Gardens. Maintained by vestry of Lambeth
81 Wellington Tavern. Formerly British Rail owned. It has three bars and is a basic boozer. Large sprawling Victorian pub. Handy for late trains from Waterloo.
Royal Waterloo Hospital. Begun as a dispensary for children in the City of London, moved to this site in 1822. Rebuilt in 1903-5 by M. S. Nicholson. Three tiers of terracotta and a Doulton-ware porch
Wootton Street
Waterloo East Station. 1864. Built by South Eastern Railway Waterloo East opened as ‘Waterloo Junction’ station when the line was extended from London Bridge to Charing Cross. In 1935 it was renamed ‘Waterloo’ and in 1977 renamed ‘Waterloo East’. The bridge to the main station follows the line of an old rail link between the LSWR 'Windsor' lines and the SER Junction station. The link was taken up when Waterloo station was rebuilt at the beginning of the present century. The original platform canopy, which still covered the footway until the 1990s.
Sources
Osborne. Defending London
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