Lifeboats on the Thames
The Thames has several lifeboat stations operated by the RNLI.
Tower Lifeboat Station
This is the one at the Tower. Or should I say it used to be on Tower Pier, but it has now been moved to by Waterloo Bridge.
I’m sure this was where the River Police used to have their station. Wikipedia confirms that here.
Somerset House
The imposing building, that is Somerset House, has had many Government uses in recent years and I can remember going there to look up my birth certificate.
But to my wife it was her favourite court, as she appeared there many times in the Principal Registry of the Family Division. It’s now in High Holborn, but she always said that it didn’t have the class of the old courts in Somerset House.
Somerset House
The Inns of Court
There are some things that no matter how many times you are told them, you never remember them. For instance, I can never which Inn of Court my wife belonged to; Inner or Middle Temple.
She always moaned about the fact that provincial barristers got very little out of the Inns compared to those who lived and worked in London.
The Inns of Court
Behind the trees are some wonderful buildings and some of the most cramped offices you will find in London.
The Millennium Bridge
Commonly known as the Wobbly Bridge, the Millennium Bridge links St. Paul’s Cathedral to the Tate Modern.
The Millennium Bridge, London
I’ve used this bridge many times.
Note that as you get to St. Paul’s you’ll find the National Firefighters Memorial. This is fitting as it was originally a memorial to Second World War firemen and was later expanded for all firefighters.
I say fitting, as if ever there was a symbol of London in the Blitz, it is the amazing photograph of the cathedral surrounded in smoke, defiantly above the flames.
Cannon Street Station
When I was growing up, Cannon Street station was just a shell.
Cannon Street Station
Now it has an office block cradled in its arms.
I hadn’t realised until I read the Wikipedia entry for the station, that the development of the station was involved ion one of the worst corruption scandals of the 1960s; the Poulson affair.
The architect selected to design the new building was John Poulson who was good friends with Graham Tunbridge, a British Rail surveyor whom he had met during the war. Poulson took advantage of this friendship to win contracts for the redevelopment of various British Rail termini. He paid Tunbridge a weekly income of £25 and received in return building contracts, including the rebuilding of London Waterloo and East Croydon. At his trial in 1974 he admitted that shortly before receiving the Cannon Street building contract, he had given Tunbridge a cheque for £200 and a suit worth £80. Poulson was later found guilty of corruption charges and was given a seven-year concurrent sentence; Tunbridge received a 15-month suspended sentence and £4,000 fine for his role in the affair.
Those were the days!
The Tower of London
The Tower is partially under wraps at present.
The Tower of London
Strangely, I’ve only visited the Tower once. And that was when I showed a fellow student from Liverpool around London.
The New, the Venerable Rowing Club and the Curious
I took this picture of Poplar Rowing Club with Canary Wharf in the background.
Poplar Rowing Club
The rowing club is the third oldest in Britain and dates from 1845.
But what is the round building on the right?
It’s one of the entries to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel.
That incidentally is about sixty years younger than the rowing club.
The O2 Arena
The O2 Arena dominates the River Thames.
I’ve only been to the Dome once, whilst it still had the millennium exhibition. It was a great building full of total crap.
Barrier Point
We nearly bought a buy-to-let in this impressive block by the Thames Barrier.
Barrier Point, London
I just wonder what would have happened, if we’d bought the flat.
Would I now be using it as a pied-a-terre?
The Anonymous Widower 
