It’s all gone a bit Mad Max along the Thames Path at the moment. The section between Cutty Sark and North Greenwich is undergoing a major regeneration, but for now it’s rocking a post apocalyptic wasteland kind of look.
With the industry that once thrived here long gone and work only half begun on the new development, it’s become a sort of purgatory for buildings – some are going up, while others are falling down. Barretts flats will soon rise from the ashes of industry, the piles of rubble and the rusting ships, so catch this surreal landscape before it gone.
Wire and rubble from torn down buildings are piled up on a building site in front of the last of the East Greenwich gas holders.
Rusting sheets of metal metal, ship chains and timber are disguised as a post-industrial sculpture on the beach opposite Canary Wharf.
An excellent bit of 70s looking signage is complemented by brown and orange bricks on the side of the old Morden Wharf
My walk
I head North East along the Thames starting at the Cutty Sark moving towards the O2. Tangles of rusting ship chains line the banks and abandoned cargo ships sink into the muddy river. It smells like the sea round here. At low tide, you can see rusting trolleys entombed in the wet sand (why ALWAYS trolleys? – surely it’s more effort to throw a trolley into the Thames than to take it back to Tesco’s?) and boats creak as they strain against their ropes.
The classic trolley in the Thames shot – surely as iconic as a red bus in front of Big Ben?
Barbed wire, corrugated iron and plastic bags – the general industrial detritus dominating the Thames Path as the moment
Rotting timber wharfs crawling with moss are pretty much all that’s left of Enderby’s Wharf, what was once “one of the most important sites in the history of submarine communication” (thanks wikipedia). The area is now primed for a rather ugly Barrets overhaul while nearby Mordern Wharf, a former sugar refinery is about to be transformed into a “premier entertainment zone” by the Cathedral Group.
Enderby’s Wharf
My favourite sight on this walk is the last remaining gas holder of the East Greenwich Gas Works. The largest in Europe when built in 1886, its grand silhouette dominates the horizon up near the Blackwall Tunnel Approach. It might be long defunct, but its intersecting steel lines, like Islamic patterns in their symmetry, are no less striking for it.
Long may it reign.
The pleasing symmetry of the last of the East Greenwich Gas Works Gas Holders dominates the horizon of Greenwich Peninsular.
How to get there: Jubilee line to North Greenwich and follow the Thames Path West or DLR to Cutty Sark and follow the Thames Path East.
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