Just past Westminster station at the corner where the route turns sharp right to the finish line!

We should not be here

Words by SJ Butler, images by Mark Cocksedge

A December morning in the park at St James’s

We should not be here. This is not a place where people stop. At most, they pause, take a picture, pass on.

We pause: I stop a stranger, ask why they are here, Mark takes a picture, we pass on. We hope that we too look like these strangers, because we do not have permission to do this, here.

“We knew from television about St James’s Park”, the Italian girl tells me. “It’s famous for the scoiattolo, the animals? I don’t remember the name.”

Mark takes their picture as though we are friends met by chance in a London park, and we part.

The Dutch mother and daughter carried a bag of peanuts all the way from Holland to feed the eekhoorn.

I am trilingual now: scoiattolo, eekhoorn, squirrel.

This is a strange place, mid-city, bare mud, damaged grass, water, birds and cardboard coffee cups. It’s pretending to be wild, in its curves and clumps of undergrowth. But every loop of path is contained behind a fence. And the whole held tight in a crook of roads. Birdcage Walk twists into The Mall with its roar of cabs, cars and trucks and an icy wind that blows away the words of the Portuguese guy we stop as he’s about to cross the road.

“I’ve been here a long time. This is my neck of the woods – it’s nice. London’s like Russian roulette. Anything can happen!”

His sunglasses are so dusty I’m amazed he can see in the low winter light. But it’s true, anything can happen.

We take his picture leaning against a tree and say goodbye. The Household Cavalry trot past, all blond plumes and glittering breasts.

It’s freezing out here on The Mall, this naked avenue created for ceremony. The park, at least, has slopes and shrubs that soften the wind a little. We look in at it longingly, at the tourists taking photos where we have been forbidden to.

Do they know their shadows hold hands with the lepers of St James’s? Henry built his palace over their hospital, his deer park over the marsh where they wandered. No one will say where they went.

We look in through the gates again. Two men in suits stand under a tree, briefcases at their feet, sheaves of paper in their hands, a secret meeting out in the open. We cannot ask who they are. We’ll stay out here. We’ll watch.

A cabbie pulls in by the gates beside us, dashes out, grabs a coffee. From the front wing he flies a tattered union flag. “I’ve got another two in there. If there’s anything on and that, I whip them out and stick them on. It’s patriotism.” And he’s off, hunting a fare.

Then, nobody. A few runners. We don’t want to stop them, put them off their stride.

We edge into the park. Who’ll know we’re here? A gentleman (definitely a gentleman) strides towards us. His coat is thick woolen authority down to his ankles.

“I’m walking from my home to my club in St James’s for luncheon.” He leans towards me, raises an eyebrow. “It’s a whig club for radical liberals.” Is he teasing me? I think he may be serious.

We’re surrounded by power. Stand in the centre of the park, stretch out your arms. You’ll touch the stiff collars and polished shoes of government, royalty and army. Whitehall, Westminster, the Palaces, the Barracks surround us, inscrutable behind walls and railings.

There are no houses.

There are no shops.

There are no offices, warehouses, workshops or market stalls.

No one pops out of their front door to buy a paper or a pint of milk. No one works here. No one makes anything, except coffee in the park cafes. Park keepers sweep leaves – that’s the sum of the industry here.

This is a place where you need permission to ask people why they’re here.

But.

On this freezing December morning tourists line up to take each other’s photos. They laugh at the squirrels, geese and pelicans. They crowd the railings – there’s a queen in there, maybe.

“We’ve been down to Horseguards’ Parade and we’re just walking down The Mall, we’ve been to Australia and we’ve been to France and Spain – we’re staying in London for a few days and then we’re going to Scotland,” say the Australians, three generations of one family.

The New Yorker is taking his time.

“What brings me here? Well I’m sorry, I don’t have any sort of driving reason behind this, I’m simply taking a very long route to my graduation today, a leisurely walk.” The park is serene, he says, and despite the bleakness of the buildings around it, the bitter wind, and the roaring traffic, he’s right. It’s a place to slow down, stretch your legs at lunchtime, meet a friend, take time out.

Perhaps to walk, unknowing, in the footsteps of a king. Now you know, can you feel his boots? Just don’t look back, they said – walk towards the axe and the baying crowds, hide your fear in your feet. In time, no one will remember you walked here too, though it’s in every blade of grass. Poor Charles.

We wave our New Yorker on his way, and look at our watches. It’s almost time to go. A couple and their grown-up daughter stroll past, unmistakably local.

“This is our back garden. Sometimes we go over the river, walk the South Bank, sometimes the City, whatever.” They’ve been coming here fifty years or more, the daughter played in the sandpit while her father watched the soldiers marching in the barracks. He’d hold his daughter’s hand and think “Poor sods”. “We’re off to the National Trust shop now for tea,” they say, and they walk off arm in arm.

We head on down Birdcage Walk.

We’ve become part of the flow. We’re two more people weaving through the park, crossing from Walk to Mall and back. We’re tracing invisible lines through this self-contained landscape, threading them in amongst the hundreds and thousands woven by tourists, soldiers, locals, kings and lepers.

If we came back on a day of snow when the roads are silenced, what might we hear?

This is a place of small surprises, after all – where people pass each other without ever speaking but take away a memory, a ridiculous hat, a black swan, a strangely beautiful young couple, the faint outline of a king’s jaw.

We do not have permission, but we are here.

© SJ Butler 2013

Temple station to Just past Westminster station at the corner where the route turns sharp right

Life is hard, but so very beautiful.

Words and images by Katie Treggiden

A poetic montage of words first spoken or written by the men and women whose statues line mile 25-26 of the London Marathon, by Katie Treggiden.

Brightly shone the dawning day.
This morn brought forth a noble chance,
And chance brought forth noble knights.

Behind you there plodded comparatively slowly the dull brute mass,
Five hundred men, ordinary men; you stood together,
Put your feet in the right place, then stood firm.

You must learn to be equally good at what is short and sharp
And what is long and tough.

Your zeal for the cause must be raised to the highest intensity.
You shall not fail or falter; you shall not weaken or tire.

Your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
A man is not defeated by his opponents but by himself.

Be a slow walker, but never walk back.
Never flinch, never weary, never despair.
Even if it is a hard struggle you will not be the one who fails.
Be not concerned that you fall – be concerned that you arise.

You are not bound to win, but you are bound to be true.
You are not bound to succeed, but you are bound to live by the light that you have.
Let no feeling of discouragement prey upon you,
And in the end you are sure to succeed.

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never…
In nothing, great or small, large or petty.
When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
Don’t be afraid to take a big step – you can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.

Do the very best you know how, the very best you can,
And keep on doing so until the end.

Come, sportive muse,
Behold! Your rivals soar in air.

Go, ye heroes, go to glory
Ye shall live in song and story.
Be proud of the courage to brightly shine,
and take the line of a hero fine.

From your intention, well expressed, we cannot turn you
Does anyone want to give in? No! Are you down-hearted? No!

There is no flinching and no thought of giving in;
You yourselves never doubted it, and now find yourselves in a position where you have only to persevere to conquer.

Redouble your exertions, and strike with united strength while life and power remain.

And homeward come,
With beat of drum
And a rum-tum-tum,
And the brass will crash,
And the trumpets bray.

Then let the throng,
Our joy advance,
With laughing song,
And merry dance.

With joyous shout, with joyous shout and ringing cheer,
Inaugurate, inaugurate their brief career!

Everyone, man or woman, has done their best.
Far or near, everyone has tried.

God bless you all. This is your victory!
My dear friends, this is your hour, your solemn moment of triumph.

Thine the liberty, thine the glory, thine the deeds to be celebrated.
Here’s to the pilot that weathered the storm!

That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well. Life is hard, but so very beautiful.

You will be ready, you will not flinch, you can take it again.

With thanks to WS Gilbert, Boadicea, Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, Jan Christan Smuts, Viscount Palmerston, Abraham Lincoln and George Canning for lending me their words.

On Upper Thames Street where the route meets London Bridge to Temple Station

The Chatterbox

Words by Ellie Stewart, film by James Burt

How does each of us face the encroaching darkness?
Some believe in God, and mumbled prayers create a background buzz, an artificial glow. Or relationships act like nightlights. For some, gym memberships and morning runs hum.
I was a chatterbox.

Always talking non-stop. About things I’d be seeing and had seen; about timeframes and finickety facts and history; about the colour of the sky. I chattered to you.
‘Remember last Christmas when we walked down the Embankment?’
‘Yes, the dark water sloshing by the road, under the bridge, slapping at the boats…’
‘You said those dark sounds, those shadows…’
‘There could be a monster lurking down there. And imagine, I said, if it lived in the Thames, a great thick beast, slippery as darkness, wallowing in the mud and, at night, rising to the surface and sliding through the river, the water slipping over its black back, and its two eyes reflecting the lights of the city, imagine that…’
‘The beast of Blackfriars!’

Well.
The rain had eased off, and our mission was underway: a walk along the riverbank on a Sunday. Without an argument, if possible.

As we walked through Blackfriars I was already off.
‘That building – how strange! It’s called The Black Friars Pub, of course, built in 1905 on the site of a Dominican friary… Oh, let’s go closer, let’s see it up close!’

It was December, and cold, and in the city the sun rolled away at 2pm. On and on I talked in the changing light.

‘It was designed by H Fuller-Clark and Henry Poole. See the statue of the friar on the front? Isn’t it a strange-shaped building!’

We crossed the road and the sky flared. Shots of crimson and pink in plump lip lines over the buildings.

‘See the contrast,’ I went on, ‘between the old and the new. Here the Royal Courts of Justice, here a modern building – what is it? Look at the sign…’

You just looked up at the sky.

The beast of Blackfriars.

Was that on your mind? Did you summon it out of the darkness to muffle my incessant speech? If only I’d known my talking would be the end of you.

Along the bank we went, street lamps like space ships glowing on long stems.

Then, there: that great magnificent building. Only those of the inner temple may enter.
You looked at the sign. A thought crossed your mind.

‘The inner temple!’ I said, ‘Sounds like some dark cult.’
‘Perhaps.’

‘But it’s not – it’s the Inns of Court and look, here are the symbols: Pegasus, the lion, the griffin. That’s why Temple Station is called that! From names given to the buildings by the Knights Templar in medieval times…’
On and on I went.

You said, ‘Let’s go in.’

I looked at you. You peered through the bars into the damp courtyard. The tall trees shivered in the misty rain. The ornate buildings seemed far away. Their smoggy windows lay on their faces like lidded eyes. No one was watching.

‘We can’t,’ I said.
‘We can – we can jump over this fence and it’ll be fine. Look how beautiful it is.’

Was there a rumble, from far away?

‘Come on,’ you said.
You hoisted yourself up and swung over the fence.
I stood still. A few cars passed on the damp roads, but no one else.
You held out your hand.

As my feet landed I heard the rumble again, and heavy steps approaching.
‘Let’s go to that pond,’ you said.
We walked out of the trees and over the pathway. The bulrushes framed the water in exquisite greys and blues. The saddest time of the day: the gloaming, when it’s cold.
‘The saddest time of the day…’ I started to say.
‘Shhhh,’ you said.
We stood by the pond and you held my hand. Goldfish glided under the water, slow as ghosts. You looked at me and I felt I was breathing in that blue light as the sun went down, and I didn’t need to chatter. Your eyes were sharp and clear as Ockham’s Razor – the simplest explanation.

‘This is beautiful,’ you said.
‘Yes,’ I sighed.
The ground shook again. A whiff of fish and petrol drifted through the air.
I pulled you suddenly towards the undergrowth around the twisted trees. I heard the beast moving outside the iron fence. Its nails scraped hard as ice picks on the concrete.
Now we were crouched down in the damp plants.
You hissed, ‘What are we doing?’
But then you saw the beast, and I saw the beast, and neither of us spoke, or moved.

It came in through the open gate. Much bigger than a crocodile, its legs long with sabre-like claws. Its skin glistened; its breath hot clouds hitting the frosty air. It stank of fish guts and old blood.

We both held our breath as it walked towards the pond. It pushed past the bulrushes and thrust its snout into the water. We saw it lift its head back and swallow down the goldfish.
‘Why doesn’t it eat the fish in the river?’ I said.
Out loud.

Its head whipped round.
We gasped. I gripped your hand.
The monster started slowly towards us; black eyes searching, nostrils sniffing. Clouds billowed from its nose. Then it stopped. Its eyes widened.
It knew where we were.

‘I just want to say I love you,’ I said, as the beast came towards us.
‘Let’s go!’ you said.
But I couldn’t move. I curled over and chattered away.
‘You have to know that I’ve always loved you and always will, no matter what happens, and you have to understand that the reason I’m like this is because of the past…’
‘For God’s sake come on!’ you screamed, yanking me up as the beast broke into a heavy run, and now we were in full sight.
‘…and when I met you, 723 days ago on that pier by the sea I thought this is the man for me! Thank you God, you’ve really done it, just right this time, something is right, despite it all, and now…’
The beast reached us. It reared up and opened its jaws and clamped them round your body. You screamed, terribly. It dashed you against the tree and I think it broke your back.
‘You’ll always be here, beside me, listening to my chattering…’
It hauled you away to the bushes and the reeds, and I saw its body twist as its jaws ripped into you. The icy air carried the smell of blood and bone. I inhaled, and choked.
I called your name. Nothing.
‘Speak to me,’ I said, and sobbed.
Nothing.

The beast turned and looked at me. Dark liquid dripped from its claws. I thought: I’m next. And I didn’t care, because I’d lost you. I closed my eyes; I felt the ground shake as it walked towards me. I heard the growl in its throat. I began to mumble a half-remembered prayer.
‘Hail Lord Jesus, the redeemer, by whose work, death is defeated, for salvation has now flowed over the world…’
I opened my eyes and saw the monster moving away in the darkness.
‘Hail Mary, mother of God, merciful Mary, full of grace…’

At the fence, it paused.
And I decided to leave as well.
I made my way to the gate, chattering away, as tears prickled in my eyes. I felt the heat of its body as I passed beside it. I walked out into the street.
‘The Thames is 215 miles long,’ I began, ‘The name comes from the Celtic, and probably means dark, which is no surprise…
I smelled the stench of the beast’s breath, and heard a low growl as it followed me. I talked even louder.
‘Many birds can be found on the Thames. The cormorant, the mute swan and the kingfisher. The great crested grebe. And the seagulls – of course, there are always those…’

Out on the street, with the monster shuddering the concrete behind me, I became aware of another chattering. People on phones, music in headphones, chattering iPads and iPods. Everyone chattering; lives full of scattered thoughts. Eyes widened as the monster walked by, but everyone chattered on and on. They saw the beast, and pretended they hadn’t.

After a while, the beast of Blackfriars sat down by the road and curled up like a cat. Cars passed, headlights reflected in its obsidian eyeballs. People went by – late night joggers, whiskey-soaked city boys and lonely travellers; all averted their eyes. And went on chattering:
‘One, two, one, two, keep going, keep moving…’
‘That bastard – he was never going to do that deal! Who gives a fuck…’
‘Embankment, London, yes – new hope! Here I am, I’ll find a bar, I’ll find another place to be…’

The monster licked its teeth and smiled a crocodile smile. What did he mind?
He had plenty, plenty of time.

With this film I wanted to take the themes of Chatterbox and form my own personal response to it. I chose to tell the story of what happens after the events of Chatterbox, guided by my own philosophies about emotional regeneration.

Where the Highway intersects Wellclose Square to On Upper Thames Street where the route meets London Bridge

The Ship, the Beach and the Bells

Words and images by Luke Nava

When Father Joseph Williamson arrived at St Paul’s Dock Street in 1952, he found a church in need of repair. A Poplar lad without much formal education, he’d spent the last 25 years in rural parishes, building up the confidence to return to the East End as a priest. Before he began crusading against the slum landlords and pimps who plagued his parish, Father Joe, as he was universally known, set about restoring the church, beginning with its defining feature. This being St Paul’s Church for Seamen, it wasn’t a cross that topped the steeple, but a weather vane in the shape of a ship.

Dressed in his trademark cassock and biretta – the kind of chocolate box headgear favoured by Italian clergy – Father Joe paraded the weather vane around Wapping in a hand cart, puzzling his new parishioners and raising funds for it to be regilt.

Today, the ship is golden once more. But with the church sold off, it’s pinned like an oversized brooch to the wall of the parish primary school – once a school for sailors’ infants, said to be “the first in the kingdom” to serve “poor children’s dinners”. Missing its pointer, its north, south, east and west, the ship can be glimpsed from the Highway – the incessant carriageway that links the Isle of Dogs and the City of London, and gives everywhere in between a similar sense of placelessness.

The ship is one of the few traces of this area’s nautical history, bar the massive walls that once circled the docks, but now circle the yuppie office blocks that sprung up in their place. In the 1800s, a cluster of buildings dedicated to the welfare of seamen stretched from Wellclose Square to Dock Street. Alongside the church and its school was an asylum, then a home, for down-on-their-luck sailors – shipwrecked, ill or between boats. Józef Korzeniowski stayed here before he gave up the life of a sailor for that of Joseph Conrad, and before the home became the Red Ensign Club – a mariners’ hostel and cookery school that endured until the 1970s. Its name lives on in a local youth club, while retired seamen still discuss it on internet message boards, likening its “berths” to Alcatraz cells and swapping tales of advances misspent in the Brown Bear nearby.

Heading west, the Highway meets John Fisher Street and Thomas More Square, named after two men who share a Saints day in the Catholic calendar. Refusing to accept Henry VIII’s claim to supremacy over the Pope, they were beheaded within a fortnight of each other on Tower Hill up the road. Before their heads were stuck on a pike on London Bridge (Fisher’s was still “ruddy and lifelike” after two weeks, causing such a stir that it was tossed into the Thames and replaced with More’s), both their bodies were temporarily buried at All Hallows-by-the-Tower.

This small church, the oldest in the City of London, could feel lost among the chain restaurants that orbit the Tower, if it weren’t competing for the same tourist custom. A white neon cross hangs above the chancel – a bright beacon that shines through the ancient stained glass, holding its own against flashier signs assuring passers-by that a basement KFC is open.

Like St Paul’s, All Hallows has a long maritime affiliation – its interior is full of model boats and relics from the Cutty Sark and Spanish Armada, and it sits opposite Trinity Square.

Here, the Tower Hill Memorial names, individually, all 36,000 merchant sailors and fishermen who died in the two Worlds Wars and “have no grave but the sea”. With a grim smile, a sign urges visitors to “keep it clean and shipshape”. Around the square, Poseidon looks triumphantly down from the old home of the Port of London Authority, which has moved downstream with the docks it controls. Next door is Trinity House, England’s lighthouse authority, and across the road are neighbouring plaques commemorating Reverend Philip “Tubby” Clayton and Lord Wakefield of Hythe, who favoured the appellation “Cheers” – his mother’s maiden name and his middle one.

Tubby was the vicar at All Hallows from 1922 to 1962 and founder of Toc H – the “Every Man’s Club” established in Belgium in 1915 to give soldiers, of any rank, respite from the trenches. Cheers was a Liverpool engineer and entrepreneur, who found that adding a little castor oil to lubricants made them work better. He called his invention Castrol, amassed a fortune in the motor car boom and moved to London, where he became a prolific philanthropist.

Together, the pair set up the Tower Hill Improvement Trust in 1934, buying and demolishing buildings like the Mazawattee Tea Warehouse, which had outlived the area’s days as a working dock and blocked the view from the hill down to the river.

Soon, they proposed: “on this very spot, where in the Middle Ages the penalty for trespass was death for man, woman or child, a safe playground for little ones is to be constructed.” The result was a beach in the Thames below the Tower, built with 1,500 barge loads of sand arranged on the foreshore. Half a million visitors flocked there in its first five years, mostly East Enders who couldn’t afford the trip to Southend. Cheers paid for a patrol boat and watchman to look out for families on the beach, generosity that Tubby noted at his snowy funeral seven years later, the vicar proclaiming that “each flake [was] a ‘thank you’ from a London child.” 

For a good part of Tubby’s time at All Hallows, his church was being rebuilt. It had escaped the Great Fire of London thanks to the quick wittedness of William Penn, the future founder of Pennsylvania baptised at the church, who blew up a row of houses around it to create a firebreak. Penn’s colleague at the Admiralty, Samuel Pepys, recorded the scene. Having safely deposited his wife and gold in Woolwich, he returned to the city at dawn to watch, from All Hallows tower, London be consumed by flames. It was “the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw,” his diary notes.

The church didn’t escape the Second World War however, with bombing leaving only the walls and tower intact. A similar fate befell St Dunstan-in-the-East nearby, but while All Hallows opened again in 1957, St Dunstan remains open only to the elements.

Being a few streets closer to Pudding Lane than All Hallows, St Dunstan fared worse in the Great Fire. Pepys reports that after a “mighty merry” evening in 1668 fuelled by lobster and ale, he was accosted by “two rogues with clubs” near its charred remains. But 30 years later, Sir Christopher Wren rebuilt the steeple, choosing, uncharacteristically, a gothic style sympathetic to the original church. So confident was he in this Hergé rocket of a design, that when a critic gleefully told him all of his steeples had been damaged in a storm, “Not St Dunstan” was Wren’s knowing reply. In fact, it survived a few hundred years and the full force of the Blitz – when the nave took a direct hit, the tower remained standing, albeit with three of its bells clanging to the ground.

St Dunstan’s restoration began in the 1950s, when eight new bells were installed in the steeple. But that’s when it ended too. The walls and roof of the church were never replaced and without them around it, the tower swayed wildly whenever the bells were pealed. The few ringers fortunate enough to try them hailed the bells as the finest in London, if not England. One even spent a 1960s summer squatting in the tower, conducting his ablutions in Billingsgate Fish Market, just to hear “the sound of the clock ticking, the tenor striking the hour.”

Today, the bells are no longer in the steeple and unlike St Paul’s ship, they haven’t found a new home nearby. Instead, they’re installed in the pueblo tower of a Californian winery. Sold off in the 1970s, they’ve achieved mythic status in campanology circles, especially as two were destroyed during the removal – one cut to pieces to fit through a hole in the tower, the other knocked off the back of a lorry outside.

St Dunstan itself is now a park, with lush planting filling the remains of its walls. As the same traffic that sped along the Highway – and has since slalomed round the Tower and on to Upper Thames Street – presses onwards, under London Bridge, it feels like an oasis of calm. Despite the bad luck of years gone by and the growing spectre of 20 Fenchurch Street – the “Walkie Talkie” skyscraper that now bulges over it – Wren’s steeple still peeps, optimistically, through the trees, into the sky.

At the corner of Butcher Row and the Rotherhithe tunnel road to where The Highway intersects Wellclose Sq

Bloody Blimey! It’s Mile 22

Words by John Simmons, images by Jessie Simmons

The Highway stretches ahead for a mile. An urban carriageway of a road, with two lanes of cars on either side, speeding east and west. God, you think to yourself, this is awful. On foot, walking or running, it’s a road that depresses the spirits.

I walk along it, hoping to find places and people of interest. There’s a riverside park to the left, further along a Hawksmoor church; otherwise it’s local authority flats, industrial units and brick walls. As for people, there aren’t many to be seen. It’s a road deserted by pedestrians, land ceded to the all-conquering motor car.

A song comes into my head and I recall that once this was Ratcliffe Highway. Fairport Convention once sang The Deserter, a Victorian folk song that began “As I was walking along Ratcliffe Highway…” It’s a tale of a young man press-ganged into the army, a serial deserter who was finally rescued from hanging by none other than Prince Albert. It’s a rousing song; I hum it to myself as I walk along. If you’re running along here in the Marathon, it’s a good one to listen to or sing. It might lift your spirits at a difficult time.

At the end of the mile, I turn into St Katharine’s Docks and I sit in the Dickens Inn wondering what I could write about. There’s a marina outside with luxury boats for rich City people. The pub has the merest veneer of being historically linked to Dickens – it reminds me of his characters, the Veneerings, in Our Mutual Friend. What would Dickens make of this place? Or, more to my personal point, what would Jim Knott make of it? My recently mourned father-in-law Jim worked in the docks at St Katharine’s and the London Docks in Wapping, back in the 1950s, 60s, 70s. Since then prettification has swept in on the tide.

I head back into the old docks area between The Highway and the river, just to your left as you run Mile 22. Here in Wapping there were working docks during my own lifetime. Now all that remains of the dockland life are street and building names, wharves converted into upmarket apartments.

Ersatz is a word with enough ironic resonance in its origins to describe what is happening here. The tide of property profiteering has washed away any realistic sense of the past. History hangs on nostalgically in enamelled and painted place names on the streets: Cinnamon Street, Tobacco Dock, Gun House, Vinegar Street, King Henry’s Stairs, Oliver’s Wharf, Pierhead Gardens. It seems close to a betrayal, a desertion of the lives and memories of those who once struggled to make a living here.

But, hey, what can you do? I’ve no wish to be a progress denier, a romantic standing on the refuse-sodden shoreline. After all, here you’re just a bobby’s beat from the scenes of the Ripper murders and, fifty yards north and parallel to The Highway, is Cable Street where ordinary working people pushed back against the advance of Mosley’s blackshirted fascists in the 1930s.

That’s why the anodyne nature of today’s Highway offends me. It’s a desertion of the life that once existed here in a rougher, tougher form. The Highway’s now a road designed to get you through and past the area as quickly and thoughtlessly as possible. But let’s take some time to think, let’s wander off this fast track past our history. Because you have to respect history; otherwise you abandon to oblivion the lives that people have led. People like Jim Knott.

Wander left into Wapping again, try to connect with the past. This is Jim Knott talking to his granddaughter Jessie on film:

A thing we used to do as kids. When there were stalls in Bethnal Green Road, at that time we didn’t have shops like we have now, it was all stalls, open stalls and when they packed in at night the kids used to go rummaging along and find ha’pennies and pennies in the gutter which when they were serving might have dropped down and also any bad fruit was thrown out and it would be there in a pile to be thrown out as rubbish. But we as kids used to go and get pieces of wood, crate wood, what they call a specked apple, cut out all the bad and eat the rest of the good. That was a way of life.

Wandering into Wapping, there are gravestones in a small park, lining the brick wall. Stop and read them, the life spans of people who once lived here. Look at the former school, founded by subscription in the seventeenth century. Take in the wharves and think how they would have looked, sounded and smelt a century earlier.

I’m with my daughter Jessie who’s taking photos on a freezing but sunny day in Wapping. Strangely, even in bright sunshine, there’s a misty feel to the light. By the side of the Town of Ramsgate pub you can walk down the Old Stairs to the river shore. It’s a shock to do this in London where the river flows without seeming to touch the sides of people’s lives. But here you can touch the river (though, health & safety warning, I wouldn’t advise it). And at low tide you can stand on the muddy, stony strand with the washed-up jetsam of the Thames at your feet.

It’s not a place to linger. But what it does is put you closer, in real touching distance, to the reason for this city’s existence. The river is not decorative, though the views can be spectacular, to Canary Wharf and the Thames Barrier one way and to Tower Bridge and the historic city the other. Here, this jetty, this muddy pierhead, these stairs, are where the world’s riches arrived to sustain the lives of a living, trading, eating, drinking, loving, smoking, squabbling population over many centuries. And now we run past it, not really noticing, unless we have a reason to visit this islanded enclave, left behind when the waves of industry rolled on, a shore deserted by those whose money is no longer invested in the warehouses that once stored and grew their wealth. That river has flowed past.

On another day here, a day without sunshine, a day with the mist rising and falling like a stage curtain, it seems to me that the layers of family history are strangely clearer. I walk as an intermediary between my daughter and her grandfather. There’s fog up and down the river, swirling through the narrow lanes of Wapping and today the river views are limited. There’s fog on the Essex marshes and fog on the Kentish heights, a memory of a Dickens’ novel, there’s the echo of a long-gone tug boat’s siren, a fleeting glimpse of a ghost from your family’s past. The mist seeps out, winding round corners of the buildings as if from a dormant dragon’s smoky breath, wafting wreaths of fog in and out and through the crevices of the brickwork and hardware of the reimagined wharves.

A handful of years earlier Jessie filmed her granddad as he told stories of his life. This was a way of life. We noticed this repeated phrase afterwards, when he had died and only the film remained. Jessie called the film Bloody Blimey! because that was another phrase he had, particularly when faced with a new example of technology or progress. He told stories of working in the docks, these docks, and having to fight to earn the right to a day’s work. We hope you’ll take a look at an extract from Jessie’s film and hear Jim Knott talking about the docks as they were then. And think about how this film still makes a connection with you, between then and now. Underneath it’s not that different, if you scratch just below the surface.

Words: John Simmons
Photos and film: Jessie Simmons

 Mile 22 is dedicated to the memory of Jim Knott, docker, 1922-2010.

At the point where Ming Street meets West India Dock Road to the corner of Butcher Row and the Rotherhithe tunnel road

Limehouse moments

Words by Steph Smith, images by Kev Smith

He came to Limehouse on an Eastern wind, carrying tea and opium. The Basin swelled as cargo ships jostled for space – their curious treasures seized from far away colonies.

He moored his vessel and heaved his crates onto dry land. Soon the barges would carry them up the Regent’s Canal, or along the Limehouse Cut, to all the corners of the country – where tradesmen would haggle over their contents – eventually to find their way into the drawing rooms of the aristocracy.

High above the rest of London, St Anne’s church clock clanged. It did this four times each hour to guide the ships coming in from the sea. It was quarter past seven. The sun was in the west and daylight was sliding into dusk.

A young woman stood on the bank of the canal beneath the Steven’s Railway Viaduct. She couldn’t help but watch him. Suspicion surfaced from the depths of her pupils.

Even at this time the Basin was full of noise. The sail makers and barge builders had all packed up, but the transient community of seafarers still gathered at the water’s edge, getting their legs used to solid ground. Occasionally, the odd scuffle would break out – a fist might be clenched, a dagger drawn. But mostly they just hung around, acclimatising to their new surroundings, or getting ready to move on.

Despite these distractions, her eyes were fixed on the peculiar man.

Of course, she’d heard the gossip. Society whispered loudly about the foreigners squatting in the slums of Limehouse, gambling under shaded lamps. She’d heard all about the pub brawls and the lingering stench of unfamiliar food. She knew about the sordid transgressions. The dirt. The grit. The poverty. The stories of cockney waifs seduced by brutal drug barons. A prostitute with a wild tension in her jaw. She knew about the smoky alleys where heathens and murderers mingled. Violent. Tempting. Forbidden. The collapse of civilised society. And the dens where one could ‘buy oblivion’.

The otherness of it lured her in. But she could feel her crinoline skirts weighing her down and her bodice forcing her frame upright.

The church clock clanged again. Was there any truth in the rumours, she wondered?

But then he was standing in front of her, holding out his palm. A tiny primrose resting in it. Somehow, two of the petals had got crushed and were starting to tear.

He handed it to her and walked away.

She stood there for a second. Motionless. Then, not worrying about whether anyone would catch a glimpse of her bare ankle, she gathered up her petticoats, turned towards the Commercial Road, and followed him into the Limehouse night.

***

History rolled on and weaved through and built up and ran over and tunneled under and Victoria was succeeded by Edward and the steam train chugged along and oil lamps were lit and bombs were dropped and the fallen were commemorated and Chinatown faded and reemerged elsewhere while the poor in Limehouse sank deeper and deeper and a man saw this suffering and changed his mind and became prime minister and the NHS was born and then the Basin filled with luxury yachts but the canals kept flowing and the years dropped away and the seconds ticked by until time caught up to the Friday evening before the race.

***

He came to Limehouse on the Docklands Light Railway, carrying his BlackBerry and a copy of the Metro. The train carriage swelled as commuters jostled for room – their personal space seized by the elbows of others.

He got off at Westferry and walked along West India Dock Road in the direction of the police station. Sirens and black cabs whizzed back and forth, while the lights of Canary Wharf winked at him from the distance.

On the opposite side of the road, a couple of smokers slouched against the wall outside the Westferry Arms. He checked his watch. It was quarter past seven. The sun was in the west and daylight was sliding into dusk.

A middle-aged woman stood at the main desk inside the police station, watching the clock. It had been a long week and she just wanted to get home and prepare herself mentally for the marathon on Sunday. She finished her shift, put on her civilian clothes and got ready to leave.

He reached the tin dragons opposite the station. The fire in their throats the last reminder of a Chinatown that had flickered with life long ago. Nerves jangled in the pit of his stomach. It was seven years since he’d last seen her. She didn’t know he was here, and he didn’t know how she was going to react.

He glanced at the Metro to take his mind off it: hospital cuts, horse meat, an athlete on trial for murder.

When she walked through the station doors, the Metro slipped from his hand and George Osborne was face down in a murky puddle. He knew he had to talk to her. You don’t just destroy something that’s taken years to build up.

Then she spotted him. And the memories flooded back and washed over her.

By now she was at the bus stop. He crossed the road and walked towards her. He wanted to kiss her right there in front of the McDonald’s ad. But these things take time. Instead they talked about the race, and he asked her to meet him for a coffee next weekend in Primrose Hill.

They said goodnight and she turned to leave.

‘Good luck,’ he called after her.

‘See you at the finish line.’

At the roundabout on Trafalgar Way where the route turns sharp right to the point where Ming Street meets West India Dock Road

Voynich finds his voice

Words and images by by Rishi Dastidar

I am looking.

I am looking for.

I am looking for someone.

Where am I?

I was on a boat.

I was on a boat, and then there was a tower.

The Tower, is it?

I got off the boat.

I got off the boat and someone, someone told me to go east.

Is this east?

I am Wilfrid Michael Voynich.

Wilfrid. Michael. Voynich.

Voy-nich.

Is this the busiest street in London?

Is this going east?

I must go east.

This is ironic. I have come from the east.

I have come from Siberia, where I was exiled. I have come from a cell. I have come from a cell where I looked out on the gallows. Where I watched my friends die.

I have escaped. I have escaped to Mongolia. Then I found a caravan. Going to Peking.

And then there was a boat. West. Round the seas. And round. And round. And round.

And Hamburg.

But not Hamburg here. Not now. London. It had to be London.

I have no coat. I have no glasses. I had to buy bread and herring. In Hamburg. And ticket to London. I sold my coat. I sold my glasses.

Now I am here. And I have to go east. Again.

I am looking.

I am looking for.

I am looking for a man.

I cannot tell you the name of the man I am looking for.

But I have it. I have it on piece of paper.

Степняк

Step. Knee. Ak.

We share a tongue, the same tongue, the man and me.

He comes from the east too.

He is man of the Steppes.

We used to breathe the same air.

We still do breathe the same air.

We breathe the same air of ideas.

Fragmented, dangerous, exciting ideas. Ideas. Ideologies. An ideology. Breaks structures. Breaks rules. Disobeys. Wants to charge into the future, destroying all that comes before it. All that has held us back until now. All rulers. All monopolies of violence. All apparatus of the state. Everything that impedes progress. That stops the modern world emerging, the world that we deserve to live in.

The world where we will be equal.

He believes this. I believe this.

I must find him. To help him.

Help give birth to this world that we believe in.

This modern world we will live in.

I must find him.

A man at the docks said, I must. I must walk up the busiest street in London. And you will find him, he said. Or someone who knows him. Or someone who knows of him. They will take you to him.

With your piece of paper. Show them piece of paper.

Is this the busiest street? The commercial street?

It must be. I have never seen a busier street. This commercial road.

The world is on this street. The modern world that we want to build.

There is everything on this street.

My eyes bulge at the everything on this street.

This street is living up to name.

There is commerce everywhere. Look.

There are shops, selling every victual. Not one shop per victual. One shop with all the victuals you could imagine.

There is a shop with ‘river habitats’. Selling the river! Everything is always for sale.

There are some things about this world that I am not sure about.

There is place with glass walls – glass walls! How do they stand it? Everyone looking at them. The place says it has classes and workshops and platforms. And it is called ‘Departure’.

This is confusing to me.

The right sort of confusing. The confusing that me and the man from the Steppes want to bring to the world. To bring to you.

I think there are jokes here. I have heard of your famous John Nash. The architect. And he has a building here named in his honour. But it does not look like any building he ever built.

This is anarchy, no? Look, his name is even wrong. ‘J hn Nash Building’ on a building the famous John Nash didn’t build.

Our words, our ideology will fall on fertile ground now, I am sure of it.

And how fertile the ground is. The water too. This water on the canal named after your regent, is green. A bright green, I only ever saw in the spring in my homeland, for a week. When the rain came and made the world shine in the sun. Before we saw things starting to grow.

There are farms on this street. There must be. Or why are there the fountains and the cattle troughs for cows called ‘Harriet’?

There is Norway on this street. There is bay of islands on this street. There are stars of the east on this street. Presided over by this Empress Victoria.

There is a cylindrical Catholic chapel on this street. So we can go round and round and round about how guilty we are.

In my world, in my new world, I will be destroying this authority too. This appeals to the sad-faced man. We must appeal to the rational, not to the myths.

But I think these myths will be hard to challenge. Hard to change.

On one side of this street is a church. A church for Saint Anne. A church built by a necromancer. This Hawksmoor. I think we claim him as one of us. A church for favour and grace. Whatever they are. We will have to make them mean something in this modern world that we shall be building.

But then on the other side. A pyramid. A pyramid of fat rings of some texture that feels like skin softened and hardened in sea spray. A pyramid of constructed to pay homage to a god from the subterranean world, it says, a god called ‘Louis Smith’.

He must be a powerful god, this Louis Smith god.

That must be why there are many battlements on the buildings on this street. Little castles. Little castles with little walls. Fortifications. And the buildings announcing themselves.

The Mission.

I have a mission.

And outside it. I see Debord. I see de Jong, Jorn, Katya Lindell, Kotangyi, Jorgen Nash, Prem, Sturm, Maurice Wyckaert and HP Zimmer. They are in a situation.

Let me call them great great grandchildren. My descendents, in zig-zag lineage. They are saying anarchy as situation. Rebellion as play.

I approve of this field of encounter.

I am harvesting a never-ending fields of encounters.

And men pass me. Men trailing anchors around with them. Dragging them.  Black hooks. Steel spars.

What a weight it is for a man to carry a metaphor with him. To live with it for all his life. And they do.

There are policemen here. I must hide. I rub against brown brick buildings with the texture of towelling.

But no. They are asleep. They must always be asleep in our new world.

There are dragons. Chinese dragons here. How much further east must I go? Paper dragons, swooping up and down on a roundabout in the sky. A totem that doesn’t move. That defies the sky to quench its prongs of fire.

I am on the heritage trail. It is taking me back to China. On a ship, with a Buddha’s head on the prow.

This, this my friends, is the anarchy I want.

I hear a deep gurgling. A whooshing of water. A black ditch below rushing in the opposite direction.

I am blind. I am blinded by the sun setting behind me. It bounces off towers and citadels. Canyon walls. Square-eyed giants squatting over the waters.

Maybe there will be anarchy in those too.

There is another totem. Another plinth. A white horse astride it. Above the ground. A knight’s horse. Riderless.

You. You are standing there. Beside it. Maybe you are a knight. Maybe in this new world, this world of me and the man from the Steppes, there will still be room for knights. Some honour remains in the rubble and the freedom. Some who follow rules. Even though they have permission not to. To follow, because it is natural. Sometimes.

I press the piece of paper into your hand. Your fingers unfold it. You look. At it. At me. You smile. You nod.

You say, ‘Follow’. You walk.

I do.

I walk.

The corner in Canary Wharf where the route turns left onto Canada Square to the roundabout on Trafalgar Way where the route turns sharp right

In the City

Words by Maia Swift, images by Joe Weir

1^st August

This evening at bath time Amy asked what I do all day.

“That’s a good question,” I said. She’s only four and has just realised people do things when she’s not there. “That’s a very good question indeed.” I didn’t answer.

“Daddy’s a very important man in The City,” my wife said, pulling the plug.

“That’s right,” I replied. It was all I could say.

3^rd September

Two months on and I still haven’t read the pack they gave me. The one with smiling people on the front and page after page on next steps and new opportunities. I worked there for twenty-five years and that folder was all I was allowed to take away with me.

They even made me leave my BlackBerry. It didn’t feel right, not having it in my jacket pocket. And my wife would have noticed straight away if it wasn’t by the bed.

So I bought my own one on the way home that evening.

4^th October

The money finally came through. It’s going to be alright.

12^th November

I’ve started working my way round the benches in Cabot Square. There are 45 in total, so I won’t get back to the start for well over a month. You can’t see them from the street either, so there’s no chance of being spotted.

Most days I’m there at 9, earlier if it’s ‘a busy week, darling’. Last week I left the house at 5.30 one morning to ‘close a deal’. The rush I got just saying that! And the thrill of the tube before London wakes up was worth the early start – empty carriages and Metro’s ink barely dry.

Turns out Cabot Square doesn’t open that early. But I was the first one in when the caretaker arrived.

11^th December

I spent my lunchtime queuing in Tiffany. I know, I know. Another necklace is the last thing my wife needs. But I wouldn’t have a clue where to start if I didn’t go there. And the sales assistant remembered me from Valentine’s day, so the necklace will match the bracelet that matches the earrings. It’s the least I could do, considering.

13^th December

Every tree in the square is decorated with tiny twinkling lights. When it gets dark, you can see them reflected in the glass buildings.

I don’t remember noticing them from the inside. Or maybe they weren’t here last year?

14^th December

Tonight is my Christmas party. I came in extra early ‘to make sure I could get away on time’. And now I’m in All Bar One with a bottle of Merlot.

It must look odd, a man sitting alone among crowds of forced conversations, unbuttoned collars and freshly applied make-up. But soon everyone will be too drunk to notice, and I probably only have to stay until about 10.

You can do that, when you’re a parent. You can make excuses. Leave before the end.

No one will argue, because family comes first and ‘a healthy work/life balance is encouraged’. But the truth is, no one cares if you’re there or not. The party goes on.

27^th December

As usual, we had the same argument about taking more time off around Christmas. As usual, I explained it doesn’t work like that in The City. The deals don’t stop, so I can’t either.

It’s nice to be back in the square after the suffocating heat of my wife’s parents’ house.

4^th January

Cold day today. I managed to stay in the square till lunchtime, then had to walk around the shopping centre for an hour or two. I went for a suit fitting and bought a new pen.

18^th January

I’ve come full circle, back to the first bench. Maybe I’ll try going a different way this time.

21^st January

Today I saw Sheila from HR. She was smoking in the alcove round the side of the office; all high heels, thin blouse and blue eyeliner. I don’t think she saw me, but I don’t care if she did. I’m allowed to be here, whatever her budget cuts say.

The folder she gave me is still in my briefcase. Is there any point reading it now?

26^th January

Amy’s doing her five-metre swimming badge today. I would have loved to have been there, but working weekends is just part of the job. My wife understands, and Amy will too one day.

Cabot Square is most beautiful at the weekend anyway. No one hurrying to meetings. No frantic phone calls to overhear. Just the rushing of the water down, down, down over the steps of the fountain. And the seagulls from Billingsgate, squalling above.

28^th January

Today an odd thing happened. I was sat on my bench, checking my emails, when I felt the square’s caretaker watching me.

He’s always here somewhere, picking up crisp packets with his pincer or trimming the hedges. But we’ve never said a word to each other. Why would we?

Today he was scraping leaves into shiny blue sacks.

“Hold this bag for me, will you?”

I looked up. He had a bunch of brown leaves, all squashed together between giant claws. At his feet, a fresh blue sack had crumpled, making it impossible to see where it opened.

I glanced around the 45 benches. Up at the towers. Across the road to the coffee shop, packed with navy suits and slicked-back hair.

No one knew me. No one was looking.

I picked up the bag and held it open. It was the first useful thing I’ve done in months.

No, years.

16^th February

Today I went to work without a suit on. I told my wife it was a team-bonding day, but I don’t think she believed me.

No one goes to work in The City without a suit on, no one. My time is nearly up.

1^st March

A late snowfall has been forecast, so we spent the morning sprinkling orange salt over the steps. Smart shoes, polished granite and glassy ice don’t mix well.

I’d never realised someone does this.

12^th March

What did I do before this happened?

April 3^rd

Spring in The City. Striped shirts, still with creases from the pack. Lighter evenings, later meetings. Red and yellow nasturtiums bravely shivering in the square.

Planted, potted and watered, by me.

July 3^rd

Amy asked me again last night. What do I do when she’s at school?

I thought of the flowers. The grit. The BlackBerry I haven’t switched on for months.

“I’m a very important man in The City,” I answered.

The corner where the route turns left onto Marsh Wall to The corner in Canary Wharf where the route turns left onto Canada Square

Michaelangelo’s Darren

Words by Clair Whitefield, images by Charles Allfrey

You are now on the edges of London’s financial district. Once you reach the end of Marsh Wall and turn right, you’ll see it rising up before you: Canary Wharf, its unmistakable collection of offices staggered across the skyline like podiums.

But if you need distracting before then, look out for the statue on your right-hand side. You’ll see it once you’ve run underneath the DLR. It’s above the entrance to a bar named Fridays, which is attached to The Britannia International Hotel.

Let me tell you a story about this statue. He’s the eternal spectator and he’ll be there waiting for you to pass by and watching as you do, whether you’re a front-runner or the last to file through.

……………

“He’s no Michelangelo’s David, is he?” said one of the men who winched him into place. It had taken three of them and a crane to get him onto the ledge. They looked up at him from the pavement and the statue peered out over them, his gaze fixed straight ahead.

He is no masterpiece, it’s true. He is crude and roughly chiselled, yet not so ugly that he deserves his fate; staring at his own reflection in the tinted windows opposite, his view of the river entirely obscured.

He is grey and cast out of cement. His hair is shoulder length and slicked back. His body is bare, taut and toned and his arms are outstretched, holding an invisible offering.

He does not belong here. He is utterly incongruous; a faux neoclassical statue, occupying the same stretch of road as a Londis and a Subway sandwich bar, all of them hemmed in by office blocks and high rises. This is not what he was meant for and the workmen knew it.

“Give the man some dignity,” they said, and there was something maternal about the precision with which they lowered him into place and positioned him behind the balustrade. But nevertheless, get the angle right, look up through the lattice of bars, and you’ll see his meat and two veg perfectly.

Ask behind reception and the concierge will tell you the statue is the hotel’s figurehead. A tribute to the area’s maritime heritage, when ships from the Canary Islands brought citrus fruit to the docks.

For a statue, he was cheap, part of a job lot at an auction following a house clearance.
If you walk into the lobby you’ll see the marble menagerie he was part of. There are statues everywhere. They cling to the walls, flee into corners, lounge on plinths and bookend the reception desk. And that’s just the collection in reception. But they are all over the place; like a defiant fungus that has crept its way from the entrance and spread onto the landings and corridors.

Over the years, the hotel staff had tried him out at various points within the building, but nothing suited him. He’d stood by the conference suite, next to the menu stand on the mezzanine floor, and finally opposite the lift on the sixth floor. Ping! And the doors would open and there he’d be, his grey eyes staring back at you – resolute, unflinching, vacant, his arms open.

If the restaurant ever had a theme night, he’d always be dressed for the occasion. Italian fiesta: He’d wear a Gondolier’s garb – stripey t-shirt and red trousers; Curry Night: He’d be kitted out with a turban; Burn’s Supper and he’d be restyled with a kilt, a sporran, a jaunty Tam O’ Shanter and a pair of bagpipes swung across his chest. But whatever they did, he’d always look like a drunken stag in a fancy dress forfeit. That’s why, in the end, he got shunted outside.

So there he stands fixed to the prow of the hotel, facing the river. He stands on his viewing deck waiting for the Thames Barrier to split. From his crow’s nest, he waits for the water to come surging up the street, lifting parked cars as it thunders through, bashing against the sides of buildings.

He waits for the dirty river to explode the cracks in the hotel’s foundations and set it on its way. As if this building could cast off and break away. As if when the Thames rises the hotel will sail. And when it does, he’ll be at the front of the good ship Britannia, as it cuts its way through the water and on to the sea. Then he’ll be free.

Every April he thinks it will happen. He feels a slight tremor shake the ground as the first pack of runners turns the corner and onto Marsh Wall. At first he thinks it is the river gushing towards him. His arms are outstretched welcoming it and he will not know for sure if it is the Thames that has burst its banks until he sees the runners – or the water – pass beneath him.

What starts as a few lightning-footed athletes is followed by hundreds and then tens of thousands of feet slapping the concrete and filing passed his look out. The reverberations of their footfalls, travelling down from street level and gently nudging the building’s foundations.
He can feel this rush of people surrounding him and he wills every runner up the street and past him. But the cavalcade dies back to a trickle after four hours, the crowds vanish and he remains rooted to the spot.

He closes his eyes that evening and imagines that it has worked: that behind this year’s marathon runners, the river follows, uprooting his building and setting it on its way. But when he opens his eyes again, he meets his own gaze in the windows opposite.

But he knows it’s only a matter of a time.

At the corner where the route turns left onto East Ferry Road to the corner where the route turns left onto Marsh Wall

The ropey walk

Words by Sarah Farley, images by Anj Cairns

The year is 2213. Brian, having had an uneventful 40-year career as a historian, has brought some excitement into his life by leading walking tours along the road that bisects the Isle of Dogs. (The road formerly known as East Ferry.) We join him outside the Lord Nelson pub just as a new tour is about to start.

“Hello, hello and welcome to the start of our walk. Now, I know what you’re thinking: why has our tour guide brought us to what appears to be London’s dullest mile? But, please bear with me, as I think you’ll see that the Isle of Dogs holds many intrigues.

“The first thing to note is the name: the Isle of Dogs. No one knows how the name came about, because, as you may have noticed, this is not an actual island. But, many people think the name arose because a king kept his hunting dogs here in the 14^th century. What rubbish! That’s just a myth, which we historians eschew completely. No, the truth is much simpler. This was once marshland inhabited only by ducks and the true name of this place is, in fact, the Isle of Ducks. So, the residents weren’t the king’s hunting dogs; they were the king’s hunting ducks. Wild beasts they were, with their webbed feet, vicious beaks, plum sauce and pancakes.”

The tourists are enthralled by this historical fact and one person whispers to his friend ‘This guy clearly knows his stuff.’ Smiling, Brian continues his tour:

“Here we are at Millwall Park. As you can see, archaeologists have been digging here and have found some curious artefacts. Aha! This one’s particularly interesting. It’s a piece of old leather. This piece of leather was the world’s first ever football. Now, do we have any West Ham fans in the crowd today?”

An eager boy, wearing a football shirt, raises his hand. Brian winks at him then rambles on:

“At one time this was London’s one and only football ground. And, even before the glorious game was created, people from all over the world came here to watch the games. Which is how it came to be that the game of football was invented right here on this spot in Millwall.”

A few of the tourists are nodding in agreement and a woman says ‘I always wondered about that.’ By this point, our hero Brian is in full swing:

“Now just up here on the right is something very exciting. We’re a bit tight on time, but I must show you this. You’ll regret not hearing about it.”

‘I’m going to use this for my history homework,’ comments a teenage girl at the back. Brian, ignoring a sign marked “Private – archaeological dig in progress” jumps over a low fence into a deep hole. He emerges a few minutes later somewhat dirty and holding something in his hand.

“Now this is our very latest discovery. It’s a piece of rope dating back to the early 1900s. We’ve unearthed miles of rope along this stretch and I’ve made it my personal mission to understand how there came to be so much of it. The clue, of course, is in the name on this plaque here: The Rope Walk.

“There have been many theories about the origins of this name. And, in fact, there are some amongst my esteemed colleagues who claim that this was once the site of Hawkins and Tipson’s Globe Rope Works. A rope-making factory that was supposedly in business until 1971. But, I’ve seen no such reference in my personal searches of the historical archives. I looked under ‘R’ for rope and ‘W’ for walk, but I found nothing. No. I think the clue to this enigma is in understanding the lay of the land. As I’ve mentioned already, this was once marshland. Traversing such boggy ground couldn’t have been easy, so, to get around the problem, they built walkways. And the material for these walkways, I hear you ask? None other than rope.”

‘Oh, that’s why this tour is called The Ropey Walk’ says a tall lady. Brian seems pleased by this eureka moment and waves his group along:

“And now we’re at the site of the old Mudchute station. This area is ripe with history. Just as the stench from the mud deposited here was said to be ripe, in years gone by. We don’t know what kind of a station Mudchute would have been, as the only thing our archaeologists have found here is mud. Tons of it. And, if you look closely, you can see that the mud is formed into large, sloping banks. The purpose of these banks has long been a mystery, but I have a theory. Does anyone here enjoy tobogganing?”

‘I always wanted a toboggan when I was a child, but my mum said we couldn’t afford it,’ remarks a man, sadly. Brian looks sympathetic. He continues:

“Everyone loves tobogganing. And our ancient ancestors loved it too. But, in the 1880s snow was often in short supply and was reserved for the enjoyment of the rich. So the poorer people, who couldn’t afford toboggans, used to slide down these muddy embankments on burlap sacks for fun. The sport of mudchuting became quite the event, especially on Sundays when people were given two hours off work. It’s said that there were even mudchuting competitions, with the winner being given an extra slice of stale bread at suppertime as their reward.”

We hear the sound of a train overhead as it pulls into the still operational Mudchute DLR station. No one notices this and Brian leads the group on:

“And here we are at Crossharbour station, where we have our last historical artefact. You see these two footprints in the tarmac? Using the latest technology, our scientists have been able to date these prints with pinpoint accuracy. They were left here on 21 April 2013–

A woman at the back interrupts.

“What’s that madam?”

‘Do you know what day it was?’ she asks.

“Actually I do. It was a Sunday, and the time of imprinting is estimated at around 11.30 in the morning. Give or take twenty minutes.”

The woman interrupts again. She seems quite excited and is scribbling notes.

“You are indeed right, madam. These prints were made by some type of fitness footwear. Here’s what we know about them:

Judging by the size of the footprints, the depth of the impression in the tarmac and the spacing between the left and right feet, we can deduce that this was a man, approximately 1.78 metres tall and weighing 66.9kg. We’ve determined that he was moving at a fast pace. In short: he was running.

Unfortunately, we may never know what he was running from or, indeed, what he may have been running towards. We can merely hope that he got there in one piece.”

The boy in the football shirt places his feet in the footprints and adopts a sprinting position. Brian feels the time is right to conclude his tour:

“And here we are at the end of our walk: Marsh Wall. This is where our journey together must end, dear friends. But, I can see my esteemed colleague approaching and I will leave you in her capable hands. She has a pretty interesting tale to share. But, I’d take it all with a pinch of salt if I were you. Stories cannot always be trusted.”

“The shoe print is made up of a collage of photos taken when walking the mile. The images represent the layers of social and physical history that has shaped the mile as it is today. This is the rich history upon which the marathon runner makes their shoe print as they run through the streets of London. To explore the footprint you need to zoom in close to see the detail that makes up this mile.” – Anj Cairns