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 Iraq Supergun
A bit of the Iraq Supergun, Project Babylon, is displayed in Woolwich Arsenal.
A Section of The Iraq Supergun
I have my doubts that it would have ever worked properly.
Also, having read the stories about the Germans and V2 rockets from Den Haag, you do wonder whether a fixed installation would have been a complete liability, as it could have been silenced by one big bomb.
The Royal Arsenal, Woolwich
As I said in the previous post, I went to Woolwich Arsenal station on the DLR. The title of this post is the main thing to see at Woolwich. Once it produced armaments and now it is being turned over to museums, housing and leisure.
I think when it is finished it will be an interesting place to live with good transport links to both East and Central London.
But not for me though as it’s south of the river. It’s like asking an Edinburgh Scot to live in Glasgow or vice-versa!
Sir David is Still At It!
Sir David Attenborough has just reached the North Pole for the first time.
Good for him at 83!
Sad to see though that he is leaving the BBC to work for Sky.
Britain’s Rainbow Nation
In the Times yesterday, there was this report.
One woman’s dogged research has produced a unique and uplifting portrait of modern Britain seen through the eyes of children from every corner of the planet.
Caroline Irby, a freelance photographer and writer, spent 15 months trying to find, photograph and interview a child born in each of the world’s 192 countries and now living in Britain.
The photographs that Irby took will be shown at the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green from May 7th. I shall go if I get the chance.
