Victoria embankment

One of my earliest memories of having, what you might call, a more adult conversation with my father was on a sunny late morning walking along the Victoria Embankment. It would have been the mid 60s and I don’t have a clue where we had been and I can’t even guess why we were walking along the north side of the river between Blackfriars and Westminster when we lived in Peckham but I clearly remember we were and that it was a warm, sunny, halcyon day.

There are some interesting, (well at least I think so), stories to tell based around this area not the least of which is that the place I was walking on that sunny morning so many years ago is a man made construction completed in 1870 to carry both the underground, and the sewers to
clean the river; however I don’t intend to go into that story as we could fill the magazine with it. Suffice to say that if you go into Embankment Gardens beside Villiers Street to can see where the riverside once was from the position of the river gate entrance of the Duke of Buckingham. In doing this 37 acres of new land was reclaimed from the River.

Oddly however there is a much older construction on the “new” riverside than Buckingham's Gate, in fact it is the oldest man-made construction in London. From further back in history, even than the woman for who it is named, Cleopatra’s Needle was originally built and stood in Egypt, around 1500BC. (If you remember Cleopatra was a consult to Julius Caesar who landed in Kent in a mere 55bc).

It was erected on the Victoria Embankment in 1878 following a long sea voyage and the loss of a crew which had been bringing it to London as a “gift” to the British people in recognition of Nelson’s victory over the French fleet, at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. It is made of granite and the obelisk is 68 feet high and 180 tons in weight.

A couple of odd facts about the pink-granite monolith that it stands on a pedestal, supposedly guarded by two sphinxes, I say supposedly ‘cos the Victorian designers got it wrong, in order to guard the Needle they should face out; instead they face in towards it. Under the Needle buried in the pedestal are two earthenware pots, containing various objects. This very early version of a time capsule holds a portrait of Queen Victoria, iron ropes and cables, a hydraulic jack, copies of an engineering magazine, and portraits of 12 of the most beautiful Englishwomen of the time!

Just as Cleopatra’s Needle forms a centrepiece between Waterloo and Hungerford Bridges, (where because of it’s presence the embankment has been given an Egyptian theme with the benches made with sphinxes and camels for arms), another monument also stands on the embankment forming the centrepiece between Hungerford and Westminster.

Completed in 1923 the Royal Air Force Memorial is a simple monument in Portland stone surmounted by a gilded eagle. The original intention was for the eagle to face inwards to the embankment but the design was altered at the last moment so the eagle faced across the river, symbolically to France. The position was not the first choice, discarding a proposal to join the Army and the Navy in building a memorial opposite Buckingham Palace, the Royal Air Force Memorial Fund had hoped to raise a Cross on the ground between Westminster Abbey and St Margaret’s Church; a hope that the Dean of Westminster was unable to approve because he preferred not to consider a memorial for the Royal Air Force alone. So offered a site at the head of the Whitehall Stairs, that’s where the memorial went.

Currently a new monument is being built, the Battle of Britain Monument which is being sited on an existing panelled granite structure 25 metres long. This structure was originally designed as a smoke outlet for underground trains when they were powered by steam engines. It has been filled up and blocked for many years.

A walkway will be cut obliquely through the middle of the structure, and bronze reliefs, depicting aspects of the Battle in the air and the back-up on the ground, will be placed along either side.

I feel this is quite appropriate as both the RAF Memorial and Cleopatra’s Needle were damaged by enemy bombs in the last war, which I remember my father showing me – along with the remains of a pavement artist’s work which had been abandoned there from the day before.

Whenever I walk down the embankment today, especially in the sun, I think of him – not much has changed there since that day. I only wish I knew why we were there – and where we’d been.

Laurie Smith

The LNC

This was written, as were the rest of these early posts, for Union Branch Magazine I edited. This was written by John Clark - my first guest contributor.

Not far from our Branch Office, at 121 Westminster Bridge Road stands an odd looking, narrow four story building, at ground level is a wide arch with a driveway, the exit was some streets away off Hercules Road. For many that passed through that portal it would be the start of their last journey. For this was the entrance to the station and terminus of the London Necropolis Company (LNC).

The early 19th century saw a massive increase in the population of London, and a corresponding increase number of deaths and burials. Normal internment took place in parish churchyards from which the church received an income, a monopoly position that the church wished to protect. This was at time before the construction of the great commercial and municipal cemeteries.

The churchyards had reached bursting point and had become unsanitary. With the cholera epidemic of 1848-9 resulting in 14,601 deaths something had to be done. A solution was to build a cemetery far beyond the reach of any possible expansion of London and convey the bodies there by train.

By an Act of Parliament of 1852 The London Necropolis and Mausoleum Company was incorporated, later to become LNC.

The cemetery is at Brookwood near Working and was intended to be of such a size as to meet London’s burial requirements for the foreseeable future. There were objections, not least the conveyance of bodies from different social classes on the same train.

The building and associated station of the LNC in Westminster Bridge Road opened on the 11th February 1902, it being the company’s second premises, the first being lost in the growth and redevelopment of Waterloo Station. Initially the LNC used outside firms of undertakers to assist in their business operations, but gradually the LNC took over these functions. The Westminster Bridge Road building contained its own mortuaries, workshops and waiting rooms; the coffins were taken to the platforms by lifts.

The LNC lines joined the main line of the London & South Western Railway (L&SWR) just out side the LNC station. In life both class and religion divided society, and so it was in death. There were two platforms, one for first class and the other for third class mourners and coffins; a glass screen separated the two tracks creating a further separation in deference to finer sensibilities of the first class travellers. The capacity of the hearse vans varied, up to twenty four coffins per van with internal segregation for class and denomination. Off the first class platform was highly decorated chapel for the more ostentatious funerals. The tickets were issued in first, second and third class for passengers and coffins (passenger tickets were return, coffins one way), until 1918 when the rail companies abolished 2nd class. Still today if you are travelling by rail if you don’t travel first class you’re travelling third. However post 1918 because of contractual arrangements coffins could still travel second class. Rates varied, not least if there was a contract from a local Parish workhouse or hospital for multiple funerals of paupers, eight being the minimum number for discount.

The L&SWR supplied the locomotives and so as not to offend the general rail travellers, the carriage stock was on permanent loan from them. The hearse vans were built to the specifications of the LNC and owned by them. Apart from specials there were normally two trains per day.

At Brookwood a branch line led into the cemetery for funeral trains. There were two stations, South Station was for Anglican funerals and North Station for nonconformists (the south side of a churchyard being considered more preferable for a number of historical reasons). There was a third station just outside the cemetery on the main line for day to day visitors. In the early days of the LNC there were inadequate marshalling facilities for locomotive entry to the cemetery branch line, therefore the funeral train was uncoupled from the locomotive and hauled into the cemetery by a team of black horses.

This railway funeral service continued until the night of 16th of April 1941, when during an air raid much of the LNC facilities were destroyed by enemy bombers. Reconstruction was not considered viable, not least because of declining demand for such services, in part due to the growing public acceptance of cremations.

John Clark

The Grand Surrey Canal

As a child I used to enjoy visiting my Grandmother, or Nan as we always called her, and one of the reasons was that if you were lucky you got to see the wood barges being hauled up the canal to the wood yard. She lived in St. Georges Way, North Peckham and to get there we had to cross Willowbrook Bridge over the canal. If you’re familiar with the area you will know the bridge at the bottom of Peckham Hill Street, It’s just one of the many in the area including Commercial Way, Trafalgar Avenue and Old Kent Road to name but a few on the main roads. Now no longer do they straddle the Canal instead they bridge the “Green Tongue”, an extension of Burgess Park.

I didn’t know it then but “the Canal”, as we called it was properly called the Grand Surrey Canal. Later when I came to know that the canal was called the “Surrey Canal” I was surprised as it only went as far as Wells Way and that even when my mother was a child it only went to the Camberwell Road.

So what went wrong, why did the “Surrey Canal” never get to Surrey?

The Grand Surrey Canal Act passed in 1801 authorised the canal from Rotherhithe to Epsom, but even before the canal was built the company started making plans for an enlarged ship dock at its entrance. This soon began to take priority over the canal.

The company, trying to deliver both canal and dock at the same time, ran into financial problems and for a while work stopped on them both. The dock, or basin, opened first, on 13th March 1807. There is a famous picture of the canal in which it all looks idyllic a nice sailing barge moored up with St Georges Waterloo Church in the background, very different from the area as I knew it.

The Croydon Canal, which was being built at the same time, depended on the Grand Surrey for its connection with the Thames. So the directors of the Croydon Canal Company were peeved and applied pressure for the “Surrey Canal” to be completed as least as far as their junction.

This did happen but the relationship between the two companies was never as good as it might have been, with the Grand Surrey company focusing most on its dock operation. The Grand Surrey was opened as far as Camberwell Road in 1809 but was never built any further. A 1,100 yard, (1000m) arm serving Peckham was also opened in 1826, this stopped just short of Peckham High Street to where it was connected by a short piece of road called Canal Head. This has in recent times been redeveloped as “Peckham Square”.

In the 1940s the section from Wells Way to Camberwell Road was closed and in 1970 when the dock was closed the Canal was drained. (In fact it survivedlonger than most of the Croydon Canal, which was filled in much earlier to form the track bed for the South London rail link from London Bridge to Croydon through Sydenham. Where there exists an unusual type of bridge to be crossing over a railway but which can be seen as a typical canal bridge from an earlier period once one knows the history.) Another use for the northern section of the canal is the new “Surrey Canal Road” and “Canal Approach” which uses part of the filled in canal from Ilderton Road to Evelyn Road.

I remember looking over Trafalgar Bridge and Willowbrook Bridges into the junk that had been tossed in over the years when it was drained – the end of an era. Of course the barges had gone, as was the need to cross the bridges when my Nan moved to a new flat when the North Peckham estate was being built. However when I occasionally drive over one of these bridges all those memories come back, a lost part of Peckham.

Laurie Smith

Hungerford Bridge

I first heard of Hungerford Bridge from a teacher at school who was teaching us about the order of bridges up the Thames from Tower Bridge to somewhere like Hammersmith. He told us about Hungerford Bridge and the idea of a railway bridge that you could walk over intrigued me. In later years it also intrigued me that the bridge had a name, Blackfriars, Cannon St and Victoria Rail Bridges do not so why would Charing Cross?

When I later learned that there had been previously been a footbridge on the site it became obvious that the footbridge stuck on the side of the railway was part of the price for putting the rail bridge across the river that the railway company had to pay.

Years passed and I started work for Post Office Telecoms and, working in the area, came to know the bridge quite well. Walking over it and on the embankment nearby I noticed something odd, the Bridge has two large brick piers and several steel supports, why not all the same? It was as though the bridge had been built at different times. In fact it had.

In 1845, the Hungerford Bridge was opened as a footbridge for pedestrians walking from Charing Cross on the north bank of the River Thames to Lambeth on the south bank. Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed the bridge, not unlike his Clifton Bridge in appearance, in 1841. It was commissioned to encourage trade at the new Hungerford Market. Two 80ft-high brick piers, built in the river to an Italianate campanile style, carried the bridge platform 1,352ft across the Thames, suspended from four iron suspension chains.

The Illustrated London News observed that pedestrians could ‘walk through the centre of the fruit stalls, over the fish market, and in a few minutes find themselves in Pedlar’s Acre, Lambeth’. Later when the Charing Cross Railway wanted to replace the pedestrian suspension bridge with a rail bridge, the company argued that few people used the Hungerford Bridge due to the smell from the river, especially during the summer.

The Hungerford Bridge was closed in 1861, and replaced in 1864 with the Charing Cross Railway Bridge, a nine-span wrought iron bridge that carried Railway passengers to the new West End terminus at Charing Cross. The two central piers that suspended the Hungerford Bridge were however incorporated into the new bridge and remain to this day. I had been right to suspect the different material used in construction. Obviously the railway required more support than the footbridge, but the canny Victorian railway magnets didn’t want to waste the cost of replacing the perfectly strong piers that Brunel had built only twenty years before.

Brunel, equally crafty however, used the chains of the original bridge which he obtained at a knockdown price to complete a new suspension bridge in Clifton. The chains from the Clifton Suspension Bridge had been sold to the Cornwall Railway Company in 1853 when the Clifton scheme ran into financial difficulties. The Hungerford Bridge chains were acquired as a replacement for the paltry price of £5,000.

Today you can now cross the river on two new bridges either side of the old rail bridge which allows you a better view of the Brunel piers than you could get when walking over them or riding a train into the station and interestingly, and ironically, they are now being cleaned and repaired!

Hungerford Market is long gone buried under Charing Cross Station. Though once upon a time that same schoolteacher had taken me around a collector's market under the arches there. On the Lambeth side, beyond the South Bank complex and Jubilee Gardens, containing the London Eye, is Belvedere Road, the area once known as Pedlar’s Acre.


You see tourists taking pictures of the new bridges and of London Eye from it. People say “Isn’t it great to have the upstream view of the Houses of Parliament now”. Whereas me, I feel it’s a shame we lost the beautiful Brunel bridge for the ugly railway crossing. Even though I often use Charing Cross station I think “Couldn’t they have put it somewhere else?”

Laurie Smith