Out on the Thames by Woolwich

I have never lost my love of the River Thames.

Even now I never feel fully at home till the train pulls out over the bridge from Charing Cross heading towards Waterloo.

As a child I played on that sandy bit of beach in front of the Tower of London, walked the foot tunnels under the river and travelled the Woolwich Ferry.

Later still I waited at the bus stop on Woolwich High Street and caught the raw winter wind coming off the Thames in the early mornings.

And only now have I owned up to lying to my mother about the incident over 54 years ago where I blamed my two friends Jimmy O’Donnel and John Cox for the disaster which led to us sinking ankle deep in river mud after an adventure that went wrong by the barges at Greenwich.

So I can never get enough of pictures of that waterway whether it be on a sunny September morning in 2013 or when the river was still a place work a century or so before.

Today it can appear a pretty empty place but back still in the 50s and early 60s it was a hive of activity, cranes and warehouses opposite the Tower, the smell of Billingsgate and at home in Woolwich the giant power station.


Location; the Thames at Woolwich, London

Pictures; the Thames today from the collection of Colin Fitzpatrick and the Woolwich Free Ferry, Tuck & Sons, 1905, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/