Photothon 2 - Limehouse

Today I was in London and my furthest point was Limehouse. It was remarkably peaceful, like a Sunday, with a few people jogging by the river and others just looking at the water. But presumably a few minutes away in the glass towers of Canary Wharf there was the cut and thrust of all sorts of financial activity.


This is a rather fine herring gull by Jane Ackroyd.

It is in Narrow Street almost opposite an old pub: The Grapes. In 'Our Mutual Friend' the pub is called the The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters and is the location of a number of important events, including a coroners inquest. It is strange to think of holding an inquest in a pub but apparently it used to happen. (By the way fellowship porters were regulated porters who carried measurable goods like grain or coal).

The novel contains some of Dickens' bleakest descriptions of London and of this stretch of the river he said:

...where accumulated scum of humanity seemed to be washed from higher grounds, like so much moral sewage, and to be pausing until its own weight forced it over the bank and sunk it into the river. In and out among the vessels that seemed to have got ashore and the houses that seemed to have got afloat...

Things are not quite the same now.