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More woodblock street surfaces – this time in Southwark

Marching southwards down Waterloo Road on Sunday, running a little behind schedule to get to the start point of my own guided tour(!) I glanced to my left along Alaska Street and spotted a circular cover plate in the road. Hmm. Should I come back to this later, or check on it now? I opted for the latter and I'm glad I did.

Well I wasn't disappointed – in fact, I was elated – I have never seen a man hole cover plate of this design, let alone one so elaborately filled with chunks of wood:

The name of the company here is Post Office Telephones – I have never seen/noticed any circular plates bearing this name anywhere else. The wood is partially missing in one section and this allows us to see the thickness of the remaining pieces. 

Here's the view looking back to Waterloo station:

After leading my Southwark Ghostsigns walk which finishes near Borough Market, I wandered eastwards to Bermondsey to investigate the streets that abut and run beneath London's first railway line (via Greenwich). In Spa Road, not far from where the station used to be, I spotted another man hole cover between the Queen's Head pub and Bermondsey Council's old town hall building. I wiped away the bits of fallen tree seeds with my foot... 

There are only tiny bits of wood still visible within this one. It's a London County Council access point showing us that trams used to travel up and down this street when it was Bermondsey's municipal hub. It's hard to imagine that now. 

In Jamaica Road I hopped on a modern bus and headed back to Waterloo so that I could scour the streets for more woody man hole covers near Alaska Street, but I found no more – it just proves that you rarely find things when you are looking for them.

I had more luck looking for cars, as there are often some lovely old vintage motors along these streets. Three old Citroens were parked in Roupell Street (though not including the 'Anthill Mob' one with running boards shown in that link) and two Morris Minors sat beautifully alone in Whittlesey Street looking like a photo shoot:

I'm glad to report that the Windmill Walk ghostsigns are still hanging on in there, barely changed in decades. I never did manage to decipher the big one which I think contains the word 'BAKER' through the middle, but the slim one is easy to read – a cuffed manicule points the way to St Andrews Church. 

My collection of wood blocks can be found here – let me know if you see any others

Bricking it near the folly on the foreshore at Cubitt Town, Isle of Dogs

After my visit to The London Museum yesterday for the Mudlarking exhibition, I felt the need to be in the quiet open space of a foreshore at the water's edge, simply watching the boats and birds go by. I headed West towards the Blackwall side. 

To get there, I had to navigate the high rise hell of the Canary Wharf zone. I had to remove my baseball cap for fear of it being blown away by the wind whipping through the tall metal structures. I noticed there was not a hat to be seen anywhere except hard ones worn by workmen constructing the next lump. When I reached the Blue Bridge (which is actually grey) I stopped to take in the views West across at the watery expanse of South Dock, and East to The Millennium Dome (for that is/was its name when it was born!)

Just north of this bridge, on the river side at Coldharbour, there is a little enclave of houses evoking a time before the glass towers were built, although The Gun pub, a Grade II listed building, is not quite the working men's boozer that it would have been until the 1970s, but it's still a nice place to stop for a waterside drink. The map shown below is on the wall inside there and I'm showing it alongside a terrace of Victorian buildings that remains just south of the bridge, making a visual contrast between then and now:

The tall buildings replace a group of little streets on the north side of the dock that was previously Fenner Wharf and Pier Head Cottages, interesting because a tall modern neo-Deco building on the river side, at the junction with Stewart Street, is today called Pier Head:

Near here, at Folly Wall is John Outram's superb 1980's Deco Revivalist construction – hard to believe that this delighful concoction is actually the Isle of Dogs Sewage Pumping Station. I love it! An Egyptian temple jumbo jet hangar hybrid! The road name references Thomas Daver's folly, a little faux fort that was built here in the 1760s. 

And so to the foreshore... with easy access via a slipway or steps along the Thames path at Amsterdam Road. 

I really like this beach. I wandered down to the water's edge and spotted a fragment of brick tile that seemed to say BELGIUM. I took a photo. Two metres away I saw a yellow brick stamped with FARNLEY, a Leeds company:  

It reminded me of the many brick makers I spotted on the foreshore at Battersea 11 years ago 

and so I wandered about looking for more...

Oh, almost forgot... this area is called Cubitt Town, named after the man who made it possible, William Cubitt, brother of architects Thomas (Belgravia) and Lewis (KX station).

Mudlarking exhibition at the London Museum, Docklands

Yesterday I went to the press preview of The London Museum's latest exhibition. I had my fingers crossed that it might be as excellent as their show about Fashion in the East End yet I was trepidacious that it could be sending out the wrong message as regards the rules and regs of mudlarking, something that I know about all too well having been the holder of a Port of London foreshore permit for over 17 years when I started making items from clay pipes from fragments that I found on the Thames' beaches (for walking in mud is not my thing!).

Entering the first room of the exhibition, there's some info about who the early mudlarkers were... these were poor people as good as risking their lives in the thick squelchy mud in amongst moored boats, looking for scraps to eat, lumps of coal, or items that had fallen overboard, some of which might very occasionally be worth the time and effort involved.

All well and good so far. But then the focus changes to the 'treasures' that can be found:

The next room, the largest space, is scattered with cabinets arranged around some heaps of stones and trash designed to look like areas of foreshore. 

The display cases are interspersed with artworks made by modern artists, the explanation labels for these being hard to locate. I have since discovered that at least one of these artists does not hold a permit to be able to make and sell artwork from foreshore finds, as I do.   

The collections of finds in this room seem like they were ideas thrown up in one of those Blue Sky meetings, like a box-ticking exercise. I'd expected to see a chronological display of glazed pottery sherds and glass as per these, perhaps some Elizabethan dress pins, rivets, nails, bottles and glass. Instead, they show us phallic items and some of the Doves Press typeface:

There is, however, a cabinet containing some parts of old leather shoes, which reminded me of the haul that I stupidly left behind on Bankside here.

What is seriously lacking is a better explanation, indeed repeat explanations, that mudlarking along the Thames is restricted to those with permits, that you can't just go 'hunting for treasure' without the right accreditation. Instead, against each showcased item, they print the names of the many mudlarkers who found them, highlighting how popular the hobby has already become. 

I chatted to a few people and two individuals told me that they were now inspired to visit the foreshore. This is exactly what I feared the exhibition would promote – made all the more irresponsible because the Port of London Authority has been having a terrible time this past year trying to manage their oversubscription of permits and the many thousands of people already on the waiting list. This exhibition will surely exacerbate the problem further. The museum could have easily put repeat signs around the walls of the exhibition space explaining the restrictions involved in an effort not to make it even worse. Instead, it's 'let's go find some treasure!' 

The next room is all about the mudlarkers of today and how they save and file their collected items in their studios, like mini-museums. I can't help but wonder what on earth are these people do with this stuff – do they have open days, do we get to visit?!  

Within that room, there are items in drawers and cupboards with sticky hinges and flaps that I don't think will last more that a week.

The final room is all about the moon, because the Thames is tidal and, apparently, mudlarks go out treasure hunting at night time, which is something I really don't thing is a safe practice to highlight. The space is mostly filled by yet another one of Luke Jerram's suspended globes. These things are everywhere, like Anthony Gormley statues. I'd hoped that this, being about nature, might include an explanation that another reason for not damaging the foreshore's surfaces is the disruption to wildlife, the tiny flora and fauna that exists in the thin top layer. Nope. 

A few of us agreed that this room and its glowing moon was some kind of afterthought as a space-filler, that they'd run out of ideas – it's a ridiculous end to the exhibition. Concerned that surely I must have missed something important, I went for another lap of all the exhibits to check and was disappointed that I had indeed seen it all. 

It's clear to some of us who visited that The London Museum is here jumping on a 'let's go mudlarking' bandwagon* and focusing on the treasure hunting with what seems like a complete disregard about the ecosystems on our foreshores and the water quality of the Thames – see more at Thames21. There is also scant information about the role of the PLA, the need for permits, and the correct codes of practice, set out within the documentation that accompanies the permits. 

Disappointing on many levels. 

Mudlarking – Secrets of the Thames, until 1st March 2026

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UPDATE, 10am Tuesday 15th April – low tide at Bankside. I counted approx 24 people on the foreshore twixt Blackfriars Bridge and Tate Modern, bending and stooping and putting things into carrier bags. These including families with colourful buckets and spades, the children gleefully digging and holding their finds aloft, in comparison with a couple of individuals who, by their apparel and demeanour, were clearly permit holders wearing thick waterproof boots and carrying trowels in the rubber-gloved hands. 

*as is Southwark Cathedral , The Guildhall and The Waterman's Hall who also host occasional mudlarking events.