Please read and enjoy our article and watch your FREE LONDON MUSIC VIDEO at the end "Old river keep on flowing, our ever changing guard
Our constant companion through the city heart"
( "Until Our Race is Won" - J. Horden)
How often the moving, dark, oily beast that is the River Thames has drawn my gaze and filled my senses!
There's something hypnotic about the sight, smell and sound of the old river as it rolls timelessly to the sea!
To a Londoner, the River Thames is special. As children in the austere 1950's, we played on a sandy beach (it's true, it was imported from Margate, or somewhere!) reached by steps in front of the Tower of London ; we paddled happily in the Thames' murky, mucky, cool water. | | Then, the River Thames was a hive of industry. Ships brought goods and spices from all corners of the world, eased beneath the raised Tower Bridge , and entered the Pool of London , where high, nodding cranes at the River Thames wharves unloaded their precious cargoes for eager consumption by the deprived, post-war British.
Around the Victorian Thames-side wharves, it was the scent of spices you remembered most, mingling with the smell of rope and hot machinery and the wonderful salt tang of the river. The Thames water lapping softly against the clinking, shingle shore. The shouts of the London dockers as they used huge hooks to move the heavy sacks, unloading the sustenance that would revive the spirit of our parents as they tried to put the dark, recent past behind them.
Picture a small boy tightly holding the strong, gnarled hand of his grandad, a Butlers Wharf docker all his working life, looking hopefully at the piled sacks of brazil and almond nuts at his grandad's workplace on the Thames just below Tower Bridge. | | Pleasure boats around Tower Pier |
|  | | The Pool of London | And where the sacks had been split by the dockers' hooks, his smiling grandad reaching in and stuffing the boy's trouser pockets with brazil and almond nuts.
No more will the Pool of London and that part of the River Thames see the ships, the cranes, and dockers like the boy's grandad.
They are long gone now, the bloody-mindedness and ever-growing power of the unions forcing the commerce downstream and taking the employment of thousands away from this part of London forever.
The Pool of London now plays host only to the occasional cruise ship, the permanently-moored floating museum, HMS Belfast , and hundreds of pleasure craft and ferries plying the River Thames and giving their occupants the best view of London from the middle of this ancient, evocative river. | | Butlers Wharf today | The Victorian wharves and wharehouses either side of the River Thames have also gone, or have changed forever their purpose. Where once they provided employment for thousands of local people, they now provide homes and apartments for those who can afford to pay a million pounds and more for a Thames-side home. An irony that may have escaped the old union leaders calling for yet another 'walk out' in those distant post-war days, leaving the goods unloaded and the commerce paralyzed.
Playing on the Thames' one sandy beach (it really is true!) , exploring the Thames' shingly, lapping banks looking for treasure; and fishing from the Thames' old oak jetties created lasting childhood memories for one small boy.
Even now, catching the River Thames' fresh, salty tang on the breeze rekindles those memories of the old river which have not faded with time!
|
|
