Ye who have a spark in your veins of cockney spirit, smile or mourn acccording as you take things well or ill;— Bold Britons, we are now on Shooter's Hill!
Ian Bull, who led the Midnight Megawalk on the Green Chain last July, sent me details of another walk that he’s leading this Saturday, 26th January starting at 12 O’Clock. His e-mail said:
Thanks to renewed funding from TfL Walk London is able to resume its programme of free guided walks around the Capital’s footpath network.
On Saturday 26th I’ll be leading a walk on the Green Chain from Charlton to Plumstead via Maryon Park, Charlton House, Woolwich Common, Severndroog Castle, and Shooters Hill etc. All are welcome, no need to book. Meet 12.00 at Charlton railway station. Finish 17.00 at Plumstead railway station, seven miles long. Packed lunch essential.
The walk is one of a series being organised by WalkLondon this weekend – their Winter Wanders Weekend. The title of Ian’s walk is “The best landscape and views in London“, and the Walk 4 Life web site describes it as follows:
Many mistakenly believe that London’s best landscapes and views are found on Hampstead Heath, Richmond Park and, Epping Forest. This walk proves otherwise as it introduces you to the Capital’s remarkable South Eastern corner. It’s no surprise to participants that this is one of Walk London’s most popular walks. You won’t know you are in a City for much of this splendid course as we gently climb from Sea Level to almost the highest point in London. Through parkland, ancient woodland, and the principle location of the cult 60s film ‘Blow Up’, we’ll ascend Shooters Hill through wonderful scenery and one of the British Isles most important geological sites. On our descent to the hidden gem of Plumstead Common we’ll look down the Thames Estuary right out to the North Sea. Bring your binoculars! A packed lunch is essential. There’s no need to book but feel free to ask the Walk Leader, Ian Bull, for more details.
Woodlands Farm seem to be very busy organising events for the public. I’ve received three communications from them recently, two about conservation related events and one about activities for children during the February half term break.
Hannah, the farm’s Education Officer, sent me details of the half term activities. Her e-mail included the flyer below and the activity details.
Tuesday 19th February ? Felt Making
10am-3pm 50p
Did you know that felt is made from sheep?s wool? Join us at Woodlands Farm as we make some amazing felt flowers, butterflies and other animals using just wool. This is a fun and messy activity which everyone can enjoy. No need to book just come along.
Wednesday 20th February ? Get Wild in the Woods
11am-3pm FREE
Come and join us in the woods as we learn how to survive in the wild. Have a go at shelter building, wild cooking over a fire and learn what animals need to survive. Age 6+. No need to book just come along.
Friday 22nd February ? Help the sparrows: Build a Bird Box Day
10am-2pm £5 per box
Help the birds in your garden by putting up a bird box for them ready for the nesting season. In London the number of house sparrows is dramatically decreasing so make a box to encourage them back into your garden. Booking is essential for this event, to book call 020 8319 8900.
Woodlands Farm is located on the borders of the London boroughs of Bexley and Greenwich. At 89 acres, it is the largest city farm in the UK. Our priorities are education and conservation, and we are part of the Natural England Higher Level Stewardship Scheme. Our education programme attracts visitors from pre-school to third-age groups. The Trust aims to involve local community groups, schools, volunteers and businesses in farming and conservation, helping to bridge the current town-country divide. We are open 9.30am-4.30pm, Tuesday-Sunday (except Christmas Day). There is no entry charge except for special events, though donations are always welcome.
Nearest tube: North GreenwichNearest BR: Welling
Buses: 486 and 89
We are a farm so sensible shoes and clothing are recommended! We do allow dogs, but please note that these must be kept on a lead and not taken into any farm buildings.
Hannah Forshaw
I also received information from Lorraine, the farm’s Wildlife Officer, about a Winter Wildlife Walk to find out about the farm’s hedges, thickets and fields which is scheduled for Sunday 3rd February 2013 at 10.30am, and future Conservation Workdays at the farm. The workdays will provide an opportunity to get involved with hedge laying.
The farm is covered in snow at the moment, and a lot of the animals are in the barns. Even Aerial the farm cat is snuggled into the hay for warmth. I’m glad to see that a shelter has been built for Bob the pony so he can get out of the cold, though his thick coat should help keep him warm.
The bridge going nowhere in the photo above is known as the ski jump. It’s a section of road over in Beckton that was built in preparation for the Thames Gateway Bridge, but currently leads to nowhere apart from a dangerous drop. Maybe it’s a metaphor …
I’ve been enjoying reading about the various attempts to create a river crossing between Thamesmead and Beckton over the last few days. It’s a fascinating tale: from the Ringway suggestion back in the 1930s which became Ringway 2 in the 1960s, then the East London River Crossing in the 1980s and 90s, the Thames Gateway Bridge early this century and now TfL’s Gallions Reach Ferry proposal and the Royal Borough of Greenwich’s campaign for a bridge.
The historical background and story of People Against the River Crossing is well told in David Black’s “The Campaign to Save Oxleas Wood” which details the inquiries and court cases, both UK and European, that eventually led in 1995 to the dropping of plans to put a motorway through Oxleas Wood and Plumstead and build the East London River Crossing. A group of local residents known as the Oxleas Nine risked financial ruin from huge legal fees to appeal to the High Court against the compulsory purchase orders needed to allow the roads and crossings to be built.
Unfortunately the documents relating to the 2005 Thames Gateway Bridge Public Enquiry are no longer available online, but those I have seen show a similar level of opposition from local residents concerned about issues such as the health effects of air pollution and the risk to Oxleas Wood from the need for improved road links to the A2.
My reading about the bridge also led me to the Beckton ski jump. It can be seen circled in red on the Google Maps snippet below; it is also one of the possible routes for traffic to TfL’s proposed Gallions Reach Ferry. Its other claim to fame is that it appeared in a car chase in the TV series Bugs, which culminated in a car driving off the end of the ski jump to explode in the waste land beyond. It’s on YouTube here, starting at about 46minutes in.
Google Map snippet showing the Beckton ski jump
The map also shows another complication to building a bridge here – the proximity and orientation of the runway at London City Airport, which limits the possible height of the bridge. Campaigners in favour of east London river crossings make much of the disparity in the number of crossings to the west and east of Tower Bridge. Two obvious reasons for the difference are that the Thames is wider the nearer it gets to the sea, and large ships sail up the Thames to Central London (and potentially to a cruise liner terminal in Greenwich). Consequently bridges need to be wider and higher and are more expensive to build, which seems to lead to them having to carry more traffic. The artists impressions of the proposed Thames Gateway Bridge, below, from TfL’s brochure show the likely size of a bridge at this location.
Artists impressions of bridge from TfL’s The Thames Gateway Bridge A new bridge for East London
The required height of the bridge means that it has to have longer run-up roads so the overall length is much longer than just the distance across the river, making it very pedestrian unfriendly. Not to mention the high winds in the middle.
When I started writing this post I intended to focus on traffic modelling. I’m not an expert, but it seems to me that changes to the road infrastructure need to consider the whole network because increasing capacity in one place will simply move the bottlenecks to somewhere else in the network, so improvements should be across multiple sites to try to even out the flows. Also traffic management measures need to be included to discourage cars and lorries from small, residential roads. I’m still searching for some comprehensible detail on modelling, but I notice that the recently released East London River Crossings Assessment of Options mentions this issue and confirms my feelings about the impact that a Gallions Reach bridge would have on roads through Plumstead and Bexley:
6.285. The modelling for TGB suggested that it would provide relief for the Blackwall tunnel as well as opening up new travel opportunities further to the east. However, a key issue is that the road network on the southern side is much less developed than on the northern side, where the road would meet the grade separated A406 and A13 as well as linking (via the A406) to the M11.
6.286. To the south, the road would meet the east-west South Thames Development Route, a useful distributor road along the southern side of the Thames, but this is lower capacity than the northern access routes, and is generally not grade separated, with congested junctions in Plumstead, Woolwich and Erith.
6.287. Other routes on the southern side are poorer still, with the roads south into Bexley being largely two lane single carriageway roads, fronted by suburban housing. There was some strong local opposition to the scheme arising from concerns over the impacts in these areas. This led ultimately to the opposition of the London Borough of Bexley to the scheme.
This suggests that a ferry at Gallions Reach would be a better option than a bridge because there is a natural capacity limiting effect from a ferry that will reduce the amount of traffic heading in that direction, though additional action to encourage traffic along suitable roads and away from smaller roads may be needed too. And by analogy with west London perhaps having many smaller scale crossings would be better than one or two massive congestion generating grand projects like multi-lane bridges and tunnels; an argument in favour of keeping the Woolwich Free Ferry as well as the new one. I’d be interested to see the results of traffic modelling with this scenario.
Are there any other possibilities for small east London river crossings, I wonder, and what is the current state of technology for swing bridges?
Friends of the Earth have arranged two public meetings about the crossings – one north of the Thames tonight and another at the Forum in Greenwich next Monday, 28th. They e-mailed with the details:
North side of the river:
Monday 21 January 2013, 7-9 p.m.
St Matthias Community Centre, 113 Poplar High Street, E14 OAE
http://www.stmatthiascommunitycentre.com/contactus.jsp
Nearest station: Poplar DLR
South side of the river:
Monday 28 January 2013, 6.30-8.30 p.m.
Forum@Greenwich, Trafalgar Road, Greenwich, London SE10 9EQ
City View Restaurant at Shooters Hill Post 16 Campus are holding a fund raising event on the evening of 7th February to help pay for a trip to Paris in April for their level 2 & 3 students. Most of the food will be donated by their suppliers, 3663, and other suppliers have either donated a raffle prize or given a discount. The Paris trip will also be funded by diners’ tips over the last year.
While in Paris the students will be having a go at croissant and baguette making, as well as seeing the sights of the city.
The evening costs £30, and starts with a tasting of some of the college’s French wines, with the opportunity to buy some to drink with your meal. The menu has a very French theme:
Wine tasting Reception
***
Escargots a l’ail Snails in Garlic Butter
Or
Cuisses de Grenouilles Provençale Frogs Legs Provençale
Second Course
Quenelles de Brochet avec Bisque Sc Quenelles of Pike with Bisque Sauce
Main course
Coq au vin
Plateau de Fromage Selection French Cheeses
Dessert
Tarte aux Citron Lemon Tart
Chocolat Tarte Chocolate Tart
Pot au Chocolat avec Madeleines Chocolate pot with Madeleines
***
Café & Petit Fours
Tables can can be booked through the City View web pages or by phone on 020 8319 9790. If the food is anything like my recent visit to City View then it will be an excellent evening, though best approached with an empty tummy.
Decorative Ironwork in the Octagon at the Crossness Pumping Station
I notice that the episode of Michael Portillo’s Great British Railway Journeys, London Victoria to Abbey Wood, on BBC 2 tonight (Wednesday) includes a sequence about the “Victorian cathedral of ironwork” that is Crossness Pumping Station. As I’ve mentioned before, seeing this amazing example of Victorian engineering fully steamed up and in action is an awe-inspiring sight and well worth a visit on one of their public steaming days.
However there will be fewer opportunities to see it in action this year because the volunteers of the Crossness Engines Trust are starting work on a number of improvements to the site funded by a Heritage Lottery Fund grant: there are pictures of the volunteers in action on their Facebook page. The Trust have announced just 5 public steaming days for 2013. As they say on their website:
… despite the ongoing building works, the Trust has decided that there will several public steaming days during 2013. The dates currently agreed are as follows:
Sunday April 21st – Local History Fair (in association with Bexley Civic Society)
Sunday June 23rd – Model Engineering
Sunday July 28th – Transport
Sunday September 1st – Local History
Sunday October 13th – Local History
Admission will be from 10.30am until 4.00pm and the admission charge will be £5.00.
No booking is required. People under 16: free.
It is recommended that visitors wear flat shoes. Please note that the Trust can only accept payment in cash or by cheque.
There will be no mini-bus service in operation from/to Abbey Wood BR station.
To whet your appetite here’s a brief video sequence of the massive steam engines in action from my visit on London Open House day a couple of years ago:
A series of monthly bird watching walks at Woodlands Farm starts tomorrow (Saturday) at 2.00pm. An e-mail from Lorraine Parish, the farm’s Wildlife Officer, gave the details:
Join us for a bird watching walk at Woodlands Farm on:
Sat 12 Jan – 2.00pm
Sat 9 Feb – 2.00pm
Sat 9 Mar – 2.00pm
Sun 14 Apr – 10.00am
Sun 21 Apr – 5.30am (Dawn Chorus)
Sun 28 Apr – 10.00am
(Plus monthly walks between May and Dec – keep
checking the farm website for future dates)
£2 per person, £1 for those under 18, free for Woodlands Farm Trust members and active Trust volunteers. You will need sturdy footwear and suitable outdoors clothing. The walks will include climbing a small style. (The events are not suitable for young children but keep checking the farm website for future family events.) In the event of unsuitable weather (such as heavy rain or strong winds) the walks will be cancelled. Meeting place: Meet in the farmyard outside the second building on the left, except for the dawn chorus walk when we will meet at the Education Building.
The farm is home to a wide variety of birds. Their bird watching reports have mentioned sightings at different times of the year of Swallows, House Martins, Whitethroats, Blackcap, Chaffinch, Jackdaws, male Redstart, a Redwing, Red Kite, Chiffchaffs, Whitethroat, Lesser Whitethroat, Spotted Flycatcher, Garden Warbler, Willow Warbler, Kestrel, Sparrowhawk, Hobby, Common Buzzard, a Peregrine Falcon, a Greater Black Backed Gull, 60 Black Headed Gulls, Wood Pigeons, Stock Dove, a female Whinchat and a Barn Owl. Plus there are the usual garden birds around the feeders near the hide such as different types of Tit and Robins plus quite a few Ring Necked Parakeets.
What has Woolwich done to deserve this? The Victorian post office has been demolished and its architectural adornments put into storage, the 124 year old Woolwich Free Ferry is threatened with closure, as is the 126 year old Woolwich Fire Station and now there is a proposal to close Woolwich Police Station. The police station in Market Street is a comparative youngster; it was built in 1909 – 10, just 103 years ago, though there has been a police station in Woolwich since 1840 according to English Heritage’s amazing book about Woolwich.
The Mayor’s Office of Policing and Crime (MOPAC) have proposed closure of 65 police stations across London in their draft Estate Strategy 2013-2016 which has just been issued for consultation. This includes three out of the five Greenwich police stations, as shown on the map snippet below taken from the Guardian’s datablog: Woolwich, Thamesmead and Greenwich police stations would close leaving just Plumstead and Eltham in the borough. Plumstead would be the only 24 hour station in Greenwich, so I assume that means it will be the borough’s “Grip and Pace” centre. The what centre? In the Metropolitan Police’s own words:
The new model will also see the introduction of war room-style ‘Grip and Pace’ centres where senior officers will have daily conferences with key staff, armed with the latest intelligence and data to coordinate police activities and ensure all the right resources are being used in the right places at the right times.
The changes, as you might have guessed, are being made to save money – the aim is to reduce the cost of police buildings by 30% from £205 million a year to £140 million by 2016, but at the same time they will try:
To achieve these cost and space reductions whilst enhancing the opportunities for members of the public to meet with the police through providing more access facilities in buildings across both the MPS and wider public estates as part of the overall accessibility strategy to the MPS
The justification for the cuts seems to be partly that the public interactions with the police via a police station front desk have reduced compared to other ways of contacting the police, and also that the police are more distributed through the safer neighbourhood teams.
There are a series of consultation events covering these and other changes to London policing. In Greenwich this will be at King William Court, University of Greenwich Tuesday, 29 January, 2013 from 8.00pm to 9.00pm. You will need to register if you want to attend.
Snippet from Guardian Data Blog Police stations in London under threat of closure
To Market Street, a wide and largely symmetrical frontage is of sixteen windows bays, organised into a five parts, with a steep gable with stone copings marking the end and central sections, between which are second floor dropped slated mansard roofs over a dentillated cornice. The ground floor has a deep ashlar band, the pedestrian entrance to the right hand side has an advanced ashlar entrance with ‘police’ inscribed in the frieze below the prominent cornice, and to the right an ashlar canted bay. Pair of front doors of panelled hard wood, and the stone architrave carries the 1910 date. There is a carriage entrance to the left side, this and the ground floor tripartite windows are under inset segmental arches. The carriage entrance is lined with glazed bricks, white above a brown dado. The first floor windows have exaggerated slender stone keyblocks. Rear elevation has irregular window arrangement, these under gauged brick arches, and a single storey flat-roofed extension. To the rear is a projecting cell block wing with gauged red brick arches over the sash windows; seven small cell windows, placed high, one replaced with taller window, these with small pane iron frames, chamfered stone heads and stone cills. Boundary wall to yard survives in part, but the former stable buildings to rear have been substantially rebuilt.
The listing also points out the particularly strong group value of the police station with the other Victorian and Edwardian municipal buildings of this part of Woolwich. The draft Woolwich Master Plan says of this “Bathway Quarter”:
This area has a rich character which should be preserved though sensitive residential-led refurbishment with active uses at ground floor to create a distinct urban quarter. This area has the potential to be a high quality, high-specification, loft-style place with bars, galleries and artists’ studios together with other uses such as a jazz club and creative industries such as architect’s studios.
Hopefully this means the building will be preserved even if it is no longer a police station.
Woolwich Police StationThe Blue Lamp at Woolwich Police Station
I heard from Maggie at Woodlands Farm that they had suffered from further criminal activity over the Christmas period. She e-mailed to say:
On December 30th on a routine check of the ewes in the fields, we found the metal palisade fence by the bridge at the end of Hillview/Old Coals fields had been broken. This could not be an accident or done by a casual walker, someone brought bolt cutters to do that. See attached photo of broken fence and path they made through Swingate Wood to get there.
Volunteers went up immediately and mended the fence. An hour later a different volunteer, he would not mind me saying he is an elderly person, heard noise and voices from the area, walked up and found men cutting the repaired bolts to break in again. They threatened him with violence. He rushed back to the farm mess room. We called the police who appeared immediately, but neither the police and cars who went to the Dryden/Keats Road end, nor the people who went through the farm, caught anyone.
From the tracks on the path and the noise heard by the volunteer we are pretty sure that the would-be intruders were intending to bring a motorcycle onto the fields.
Obviously fence mended yet again that day and we will need to keep alert. We have ewes expecting lambs in March/April up in the fields, on the driest parts of the farm.
The site of the break-in is close to the currently blocked stretch of the Green Chain Walk mentioned in previous posts; the path goes through Swingate Wood before reaching the gate to the farm. Doubtless this will harden the resolve of the farm volunteers to prevent open access to their fields from that end of the farm.
Councillor Denise Hyland at the launch of Bridge the Gap
The debate about new river Thames crossings for east London has tended to focus on the proposal to construct a new Silvertown tunnel next to the Blackwall Tunnel. Objectors are concerned that increasing tunnel capacity while leaving unchanged the roads that feed the tunnels, such as the A102 Blackwall Tunnel Approach, will lead to an increase in traffic jams and hence an increase in air pollution. A No to Silvertown Tunnel campaign has been started and has launched a petition against the tunnel.
However the proposal to replace the Woolwich Free Ferry with a new bridge at Gallions Reach could have an equally harmful effect on traffic and air quality in residential roads in the east of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, and in neighbouring Bexley. The Google Maps snippet below shows roughly where the proposed Gallions Reach crossing would be sited (there’s an official picture in a previous post). How will traffic get to this new crossing? The consultation documents express the view that “any new tunnel or bridge at Gallions Reach would be likely to be used mostly by local traffic” because most A2 traffic would head for the tunnels at Blackwall and Silvertown, but there is no backup for this view. Just looking at the map it seems equally possible that A2 traffic would leave the motorway at the Bexley or Danson exits and cut across to the new crossing – through residential streets, down narrow Knee Hill or through East Wickham and Plumstead. This seems especially likely if for some reason the tunnel route is closed.
Google Maps snippet showing where the Gallions Reach Bridge would be
The Royal Borough of Greenwich Council is supporting the proposed new crossings, and prefers the option of a bridge at Gallions Reach rather than a ferry. Their Bridge the Gap campaign with Newham Council was launched today, without any trace of irony, near the 124 year old Woolwich Free Ferry which would be closed if the proposals go through. The council believe that building new river crossings is essential to promote economic growth in the borough and create jobs, and they also believe it will reduce traffic congestion and air pollution. They are relying on Transport for London however for the detailed backup to the proposals such as a cost/benefit analysis and traffic modelling. At the launch Councillor Denise Hyland expected most traffic to approach a new Gallions Reach bridge via Western Way, and said she would oppose any future threat to Oxleas Wood from demand for additional traffic capacity between the A2 and the new bridge. I’m not so sure that future councillors would necessarily have the same opinion if faced with major congestion on small roads.
Having sat in traffic queues at both the Woolwich Free Ferry and the Blackwall Tunnel I can sympathise with drivers who have to cross the river regularly, but until some more detailed work has been done on the impact of the new crossing on traffic volumes, including the effect on minor roads, it’s not clear that the proposed new crossings will actually solve the problem and may even make it worse because new roads often lead to increased traffic volumes.
Opponents of the proposed crossings also came along to the Bridge the Gap launch, as you can see in the picture below and on the Kidbrooke Kite blog.
Objectors at the launch of the Bridge the Gap campaign
The Transport for London consultation on the proposals continues until 1st February and we can make any comments on the proposals until then using an online survey with just 14 questions, or by e-mail to rivercrossings@tfl.gov.uk.
Also the London Assembly Transport Committee has arranged a seminar about TfL’s proposals next Wednesday, 9th January. Their e-mail about the seminar gave the details:
Seminar on River Crossings
We want to get people and organisations with different viewpoints to discus the need for additional river crossings in East London. A consultation, currently running, by Transport for London (TfL) is seeking views on options including a road tunnel between Silvertown and the Greenwich peninsula. It has also posed the idea of tolling the new tunnel and Blackwall Tunnel.
This seminar will provide an opportunity to discuss whether there is a need for new river crossings in London, and to consider what options might be needed to address any need for additional capacity. Expert guests (see below) will be invited to raise some of the key issues that need to be taken into account and there will be an opportunity for members of the public to put forward their views and opinions.
The guests who have been invited to take part are:
• Michèle Dix, Managing Director, Planning, TfL
• German Dector-Vega, London Director, Sustrans
• John Dickie, Director of Strategy and Policy, London First
• Richard Bourn, Traffic and Planning Campaigner, Campaign for Better Transport
• David Quarmby, Chairman, RAC Foundation
The seminar will be held from 2-4pm on Wednesday 9 January in the Chamber at City Hall (nearest Tube at London Bridge or Tower Hill). All are welcome to attend. It would be useful if you are able to register your attendance: transportcommittee@london.gov.uk or 020 7983 4206.
My favourite Christmas cards are those featuring robins, so here’s a picture of one taken at Woodlands Farm to accompany my season’s greetings.
Season’s greetings too from Madeleine at the the Friends of Eaglesfield Park, with thanks to all the volunteers who helped to create the wildlife pond and meadow at the park.
