The New Deptford Station
To me Deptford is summed up by a picture of Peter the Great working in the Royal Dockyard at Deptford, that was in one of the school history texts I read.
I’d never knowingly been until today, when I went to look at the new Deptford station, which is just a few months away from being finished.
To my untrained eye, they have done a good job in creating a station with full step-free access, using ideas and components that could also be used in other places, where new or rebuilt stations are desperately needed.
I particularly liked the treatment of the brickwork in the tunnel under the tracks.
The Anonymous Widower 
Shame on me, but I didn’t know that Tsar Peter had visited England at all (his incognito visit to Netherlands is much better known in Russia), so when I stumbled upon the monument in Deptford I was very surprised.
The statue might seem weird, but it’s just a very recognisable style of Mikhail Shemyakin. One of his most impressive works, by the way, is http://j.mp/IjGLd4 (that’s a text-only article, and there is also a photo: http://j.mp/IgKnuN).
Comment by Yuriy | April 28, 2012 |
Thanks Yurij. Somewhere, I’ve got a picture from Moscow of a statue of Peter the Great standing in a boat. I’ll look it out.
Comment by AnonW | April 28, 2012 |
You probably mean that one by Zurab Tsereteli: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_the_Great_Statue
Don’t know your opinion on it, but I personally consider it rather ugly. Very little artistic effort there, it tells no story apart from the standard imperial propaganda and it’s just the size which gives the impression.
Funny thing about that statue – initially it was planned to be installed in US to commemorate Christopher Columbus, but then something went wrong and at the last moment the offer was rejected. Then they decided to replace statue’s head and leave it in Russia as Peter the Great.
Comment by Yuriy | April 28, 2012
I thought it unusual. But then about the only-pre-revolutionary Russian history I know is about Peter the Great and a bit about the Crimean War. Most Russian history I know after the revolution is from films like Dr. Zhivago. I know a bit more about the Second World War, after visiting Moscow and Belarus and reading books like Moscow 1941.
Comment by AnonW | April 29, 2012 |
[…] April 2012, I went to see the new Deptford station and I reported on it here. Today after seeing HMS Bulwark I walked along the Thames to the station to get a train to London […]
Pingback by Deptford Station Is Almost Finished « The Anonymous Widower | May 30, 2014 |
[…] the Great came to Deptford and as I said in this post, I can remember a school history book, which said he worked in the shipyards […]
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