'Splish Splash'

Day 17

 

Canada Water - Canary Wharf - Canning Town - Cannon Street

 

Another brief respite today from the rain-filled monotony that is the British Summer, so I head out into the no doubt transitory sunshine to see if I can tick off another quartet of 'C's. (Excuse the verbal diarrhoea - I've been doing crosswords all week...) In fact, despite the lack of rain, it's still going to be a rather water-logged journey today, as I'll be visiting two former docks (now regenerated in very different ways) and two different sections of Old Father Thames. I don't anticipate actually getting my feet wet, but you never know.

***

With Bond Street Station currently out of action on the Central Line, for refurbishment, it's a less straightforward journey than it might have been to my first stop - Canada Water - but not too bad. Three different tube lines, but I still manage to get there in under 50 minutes. Not that I'm on a schedule or anything, but most daily journeys on the tube tend to fall into two basic categories: 'average' - which is about 30 mins - or 'long' - an hour or more - so I'm interested to know where each of my trips fall on that scale.

I've changed trains at Canada Water several times on this journey already, as it's an interchange with the southern branches of the London Overground line - heading to places like Anerley and Brockley. However, I've never been 'topside' before, so I'm interested to see what's here.

Below ground the station is, like most on this stretch of the Jubilee Line, reminiscent of the Death Star - and many a Star Wars geek like myself has imagined Darth Vader descending the opposite escalator, perhaps on his way to the canteen (how does he eat?) or the gents.

However the futuristic grey steel architecture gives way to a huge glass drum (the modern equivalent of the 'push button' found at Arnos Grove) as you reach the surface, which does at least lighten things up a little.

Canada Water - and a big glass drum.

Outside, is the library - to which I will come later - and the expanse of water after which the station (and by extension, its environs) have been named.

***

Canada Water is one of the many dockland areas that were regenerated in the 80s and 90s, in a (largely successful) attempt to breathe life back into the boroughs surrounding the by then defunct and derelict docks.

The docks had been named to reflect the parts of the world to and from which sailed the majority of the ships they served. Canada Dock, therefore, welcomed ships from Canada, Canary Wharf from the Canary Islands, East India Dock from East India, and Lady Dock from, of course, erm...

The modern day Canada Water is what is left of the original and much bigger Canada Dock, in Rotherhithe, and has been converted into a freshwater (unusually for this part of the Thames) lake and wildlife refuge.

Wildlife, taking refuge...

It's roughly square in shape, with walkways on all four sides, and with an ornamental canal called the Albion Channel leading from its North Eastern corner to Surrey Water further north.

It's certainly a pleasant walk around the perimeter of the lake, although it takes barely 30 minutes to complete the circuit, including a short diversion part-way along the Albion Channel.

The Albion Channel

However, the dominating feature here (apart from the lake itself) is the funky modern Canada Water Library, which looks like the sort of thing a bunch of scavenging Jawas might travel around the deserts of Tatooine in, picking up nervous droids (and if you don't get that reference, then frankly, I don't think we're going to get along...)

A Tatooine Sandcrawler Transport, cunningly disguised as a library

Inside, is a huge wooden spiral staircase taking you from the café on the ground floor up to the bright and airy, and above all book-filled, upper floors.

Canada Water - lake and library

To the west of the library, though largely hidden among trees and bushes, is a sculpture, which a sign tells me is called the Deal Porters Sculpture.

Deal Porters Sculpture

Since much of it is overgrown with greenery, I have to rely on the sign for both information, and an idea of the full shape, size and scale of the sculpture - which I can't help feeling misses the point somewhat. If you're going to go to the trouble and expense of building a sculpture to commemorate something, surely you want it to be visible?

And here's what it actually looks like...

I decide to get a coffee from the mobile coffee van parked on the square at the lakeside, but the owner seems to take exception to me for some reason, as he takes one look at me and wanders off towards the Jawa Transport, presumably to make sure the translator droid speaks Bocce...
 

***

Canary Wharf - conveniently the next station along on the Jubilee Line - is, as I have explained before, the name of the financial district created on the old docklands site, rather than the name of the tall building with the pyramid-shaped roof that dominates the area.

 

That building is 'One Canada Square' and was (until The Shard superseded it in 2010) the tallest building in the UK at 770ft. I'll come back to this building in a little while.

 

Canary Wharf - 'Banka's Paradise'

The area around the station is a mass of sky-scraping steel and glass edifices which house some of the world's major banks and financial institutions. Through the doors of the various offices around me pours a constant stream of pin-striped financial wizards, on their way to lunch.

 

Money makes the world
go up...

Sculpture outside Canary
Wharf Station

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It must, for them, be a very pleasant place to work, as the people who planned the development here have gone to a lot of trouble to create green spaces (complete with trickling water features), waterfront plazas, and sculpture-ornamented street corners, where the hard-working bankers can relax and eat their sushi.

 

'Middle Dock' with One Canada Square to the left

And overlooking them as they do so, is One Canada Square.

 

770ft tall, with 50 floors above ground and a further three below ground, 32 passenger lifts serving 9000 workers, a pyramid shaped roof permanently lit with thousands of fluorescent tubes and topped with a blinking aircraft warning light - it's certainly distinctive.

 

Some say that the pyramid and aircraft warning light represent the 'Obelisk and Eye Of Horus' favoured by Masons and other secret societies bent on infiltrating the world's power-bases. The pyramid also happens to be 130ft tall, which is 'obviously' representative of the 13 steps of the Masonic Pyramid.

 

Setting such arrant nonsense aside, however, the one actual fact about the place that really catches my attention is that it is designed - designed, mind you - to sway over a foot in high winds. Though by no means the biggest building-sway in the world, that's still quite a lot in my opinion...

 

It contains a 'tuned mass damper' - which is effectively a huge pendulum, secured at the bottom as well as the top, and which swings in opposition to the movement of the building, thus counter-acting the effect of the high winds. Nevertheless, I can't help feeling that I'd prefer to work on one of the lower floors if I had the choice.

 

I wander around the waterside for a while, but it's lunchtime, and every available spot is occupied by office-workers, so rather than hang around watching them playing FTSE with each other, I decide to move on.

 

***

Canning Town, by contrast to the gleaming opulence of Canary Wharf, looks rather in need of a face-lift. In fact it looks as if it's getting one, as in every direction I see half-built concrete blocks surrounded by a forest of tower-cranes, which add a succession of further concrete blocks on top of them.

Canning Town - designed to blend in with the grey clouds?

The entrance to the station spews you out onto the almost fairy-tale sounding 'Silvertown Way'. In fact this is a huge dual- (and in places triple-) carriageway heading north-south and crossed just north of the station by the even bigger A13.

There are no welcoming shops or cafés to soften the industrial landscape, and the only building in sight (imaginatively called 'The Place') turns out to be a recruitment advice centre.

However, somewhat surprisingly, and very much tucked away around the corner, is a bit of a hidden gem. A small tributary of the Thames, called Bow Creek has created a tiny spit of land called the Limmo Peninsula. On this, surrounded by the various railway lines and building sites, is an award winning ecological centre - the Bow Creek Ecology Park.

The website, and information points along the pathway through the park, assure me that it is the home for a wide selection of rare flora and interesting fauna including newts, water scorpions, wading birds and even kingfishers.

Sadly I see none of these, although the wild-flowers along the way do provide a pleasant backdrop to the stroll. I come to a small pond, at which I do spot a dragonfly, but I suspect the presence of the DLR line directly above has dissuaded the more exotic creatures from spending much time there.

Bow Creek Ecology Park - home of the not-so-lesser-spotted DLR train.

I take a few snaps of bulrushes and flowers, and walk the length of the pathway that winds through the park, but eventually come to a dead-end at some railings, so retrace my steps and head back to the station. 

 

Bulrushes - interesting looking
if a little ugly

 

 

Poppy - pretty but dull

***
I travel to Bank on the DLR, and from there walk down to my final destination today - Cannon Street.

Cannon Street - mentioned in Pepys' Diary (not the Underground Station, obviously)

Cannon Street Station stands, not surprisingly, on Cannon Street - a road which runs to the north of and parallel with the Thames from St Paul's Cathedral to The Monument. It's in the City Of London, so is much like Bank to the north in being a financial centre, although historically it was apparently the location of London's candle-makers.

It is also the site of one of the worst examples of good old British indifference I think I've ever seen - but in order to explain what I mean I need to give you a short lecture on something called 'The London Stone'...

The London Stone is a largish lump of limestone - about 50cm square - which used to be part of a much bigger piece, securely fixed into the ground that now lies in front of the station. Nobody really knows what significance it had, although there have been many theories, but it is certainly very old - dating from at least the 1100s and possibly even back to Roman Britain.

It has been suggested that the Romans used it as a central marker from which they measured distances to various parts of the country, or possibly part of a Roman building; in later years it became a major landmark - a place to hold meetings, pass laws, and (as readers of Shakespeare's Henry VI Part 2 will recall) incite rebellion, if your name happened to be Jack Cade.

Whatever it was, the fragment that remains was removed from it in 1742 and kept for posterity by being built into the wall of St Swithun's Church on the north side of Cannon Street.

When that church was ultimately demolished in the 1960s, the stone was kept, and once again built into the wall of the building that now stands at number 111 Cannon Street. It was encased in a display box, with glass windows both inside the building and out, and on the street side the glass was protected by an ornate iron grill. On the wall above the iron grill is a plaque explaining the little that is known about its origins.

London Stone plaque

It seems therefore, that the London Stone has been deemed of historic value and worthy of a bit of protection.

All the more surprising then, that when I try to get a look at it through the iron grill, I can see nothing whatsoever, thanks to the accumulated grime that nobody can be bothered to clean off.

The building's ground floor is nowadays a branch of W.H. Smith, and I assume that they are the ones responsible for the upkeep and cleanliness of the outside of this building. Why they have allowed the stone's display case to become so covered in dirt as to be practically opaque, I have no idea, but it seems to show a degree of ignorance and indifference that is topped only by what I encounter when I attempt to get a look at the stone from the other side of its glass case - inside the shop.

The glass on this side of the wall is pretty much spotless. And the brass surround is unsullied by dirt and grime.

Unfortunately however, none of this is of much use as the whole thing is hidden behind a bank of magazine display racks that cover the entire wall, apart from a foot-wide gap at one end.

Amazed at the blatant disregard shown for this historical artefact, and determined not to let them stop me getting a look at the bloody thing, I squeeze round the magazine racks and into the narrow gap behind them (which seems to be used to store odd bits of stock). Here I manage, with a bit of effort, to actually see the stone, and take a photo of it.

The London Stone - of valuable historic interest to everyone
except W.H. Smith apparently

I still can't quite believe the way this piece of our history has been treated. If I'm being extremely generous (which I don't feel any particular need to be) it could be said that not many people might be bothered to come here to look at it. In which case, since it's been moved around a bit already, why not take it to a museum?

It could also be said that, since no-one really knows anything about it, what's so important about a lump of old rock anyway? Hmm - try saying that to the millions that visit the Wailing Wall, or the Pyramids, or - heaven help us - the Blarney Stone.

It seems that all might not be lost however, as there are apparently plans to redevelop this building. In which case I hope they'll take better care of the London Stone, and perhaps move it somewhere where it can be seen in all it's mysterious, lumpy, glory...

***

Rather than heading east or west - which would take me towards other Tube stations I'll be visiting later on my travels - I decide to head south a few hundred yards to the river before heading home.

Along the way, on Dowgate Hill, I pass a doorway that seems to have taken inspiration for its address from the Harry Potter novels.

Between numbers 8 and 9 Skinners' Hall, lies number 8½.

I don't know what lies through this doorway, but I don't think it's all that magical.

I can't, somehow, imagine Dumbledore or Hagrid waiting on the other side of some magical portal, but the address amused me.

Further south, across Upper Thames Street, and to the right of a pub (The Banker) is a set of steps that lead you down onto the actual banks of the River Thames. For most people, a walk along the Thames means, in reality, a walk about twenty or thirty feet above the river - on built up walkways. It's unusual therefore to be able to, as it were, get somewhere were one can dip one's toes in. I don't, in fact, get my feet wet on this occasion, but it is pleasant to be by the water's edge, with the waves lapping the old wooden posts sticking out of the water, and with a magnificent view of the Shard across the river.

Down by the Riverside...

Satisfied with my day's work ('work' - hah!) I head back to Ealing once more.