Across the Abbey in Bermondsey 1988

The earlier put up on my stroll on Sunday thirtieth October 1988 was Bermondsey St, the Inexperienced Dragon & Crucifix Lane.

Across the Abbey in Bermondsey 1988
Railway arches have performed an vital function within the economic system of London and different cities, however significantly in London south of the river, the place from the beginning round 1840 prolonged viaducts had been constructed, starting with this lengthy one east from London Bridge which minimize a niche by Bermondsey. The arches supplied comparatively low price premises for small companies, giving one thing again to the world in compensation for the harm the railways brought on.

This explicit enterprise had closed and regardless of the fence had turn into a hand space for fly-tipping, with many homes within the space being cleared as gentrification was setting in. Furnishings and different gadgets that after would have gone to secondhand retailers was merely being disposed of as cheaply as doable.

Sadly railway arches are actually being refurbished as Community Rail sees them as an actual alternative to revenue from its massive estates, with typically long-term tenants being compelled out and the refurbished arches being let at three or extra occasions the earlier rents. A protracted battle was fought in opposition to this lately in central Brixton, the place a lot of the earlier companies had been compelled to shut.

Former warehouses are boarded up and awaiting demolition on Abbey Avenue near the junction with Maltby Avenue.

All these buildings in Maltby Avenue have been demolished and it’s arduous to find the precise location which I believe was on the a part of the street main from Abbey St to Grange Stroll. The signal on one in all this vary of business buildings was for ‘DIAMOND GLASS-FIBRE’.

The BERMONDSEY UNITED CHARITY SCHOOL FOR GIRLS was, in accordance the the textual content on its facet, ERECTED A.D.1830 and was extra lately used as St Mary’s youth centre. It and the terrace alongside Grange Stroll to the east stay and the varsity has been transformed into flats.

This row of late seventeenth century homes on the fitting hand facet of the road are all Grade II listed and Nos 5-7 at proper of image apparently embody of their construction a part of one facet of a late medieval stone gatehouse to Bermondsey Abbey. Nevertheless I don’t suppose any of that is seen, and regardless of varied accounts elsewhere they aren’t the abbey gatehouse, although they present its place.

The extra fashionable construction on the excessive proper was lately demolished. On Tower Bridge Highway it used to promote itself as ‘The Bermondsey Indoor Vintage Market’ on the Tower Bridge Highway frontage withe the message ‘Open Each Friday’ on a board above its Grange Stroll facet.

Though these final two photos are filed in my contact sheets underneath November, my be aware on the sheet says they had been taken sooner than the primary November sheet and I believe they had been taken on this stroll.

Walter Coles & Co Ltd bought polythene baggage from this warehouse at 47-9 Tanner St, just some yards east of Tower Bridge Highway. Since 2012 it has been an arts venue, Ugly Duck.

The buildings to the fitting of the warehouse had been all on Tanner Avenue, which turns spherical in direction of the north, and have all been demolished and changed.

Two notices had as soon as been right here however each had gone. One was changed in 2019 letting us know this was St Saviours Property and Purbrook Property. That is Attilburgh Home on the nook of Abbey St and Riley Highway, a seven storey council block constructed on the positioning of 5 massive homes on the road as part of the St. Saviours Property and I believe dates from the Sixties. Its title most likely comes from the previous title for Attleborough, a market city in Norfolk not removed from Thetford which gave its title to a neighbouring block.

Like most council housing, lots of the flats right here have been purchased by tenants underneath Thatcher’s fashionable however disastrous ‘proper to purchase’. Many who did purchase had been unable to maintain up with mortgage repayments and restore prices, and so many had been pretty shortly bought, typically to ‘purchase to let’ buyers who allow them to out at a number of occasions the council rents, sufficient to greater than pay the prices of the mortage or financial institution mortgage, the brand new tenants shopping for the flats for these buyers. A number of years in the past this property featured in a court docket case after Southwark Council discovered that fireplace doorways required substitute and tenants too them to court docket over the costs they imposed.

I believe this was most likely the tip of my stroll on thirtieth October 1988. Two weeks later I used to be again in Bermondsey taking extra photos, the topic of my subsequent collection of posts.

Tags: Abbey St, arts venue, Attilburgh Home, Bermondsey, Bermondsey Abbey, Bermondsey United Charity College for Women, gatehouse, Grange Stroll, London, London Pictures, Maltby St, peter Marshall, polythene baggage, Railway arches, Southwark, St Saviours Property, Tanner St, Walter Coles, warehouse, works

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