Thamesmead - The Concrete Jungle

[dirtydog]

Seeing Mathos's thread on Lancashire and how nice it is I thought it was time to dispel the myth that all of England is nice, welcome to Thamesmead, the concrete jungle where I spent my formative years, basically from the age of 5 till I left school I lived surrounded by concrete and building sites.

If I remember correctly the first lot of housing went up in 1970, Tavy Bridge, Binsey Walk and a couple of tower blocks, we lived on the 6th floor of one of the tower blocks in a 2 bedroomed flat, when I turned 17 I moved into one of them again, these were supposedly designed for families, not sure who the council were trying to kid with that

Thamesmead was built on marsh land and if I remember correctly it is sinking 1 inch every 4 years, so we got a long time to wait till it finally disappears for good, but it is good to know that it will hopefully be gone one day




Southmere Lake, man made lined lake with a small island in the middle, had some ducks and fish, this picture is the ramp leading from Tavy Bridge down to Seacourt Road, on the right hand side was a concrete water park and playground, at night once the park keepers had locked up and left we used to climb over the gates with a push bikes and use the place as a BMX track, 45 degree ramps all over the place, nice slide to ride your bike down, all in all damn good fun.



Weren't allowed to fish this part of the lake, but this was where the canoeing and sailing club was, spent many summer evenings here.



The Pyramid club, Sunday mornings were cartoon mornings for the kids, yep we had to stand up for the national anthem, then it was pub time for the adults so we all got kicked out.



Well it seems the Pyramid Club is no more.




The Barge Pole was probably the only pub that looked slightly like a pub on the inside.

Heres a recent write up on it from here.

More working men's club than pub, the Barge Pole is nowhere near as scary as the surroundings. There's nothing special about the booze, but the service is friendly enough and the clientele just gets on with the business of being down the pub. There's a big projector screen for sporting occasions and that's just about it. If Ronseal did pubs, this would be the one in the TV ads.



This is above Tavy Bridge, supposedly during the war before this was built a fighter plane crashed here and the pilot died, this whole row of maisonettes they never rented to families as nobody would stay, so the council rented them out cheap for businesses.



Of course Thamesmead being the dump it is in a recession its gonna be first hit, this next picture is Luxury Hill house, its on the banks of the river Thames, looks quite nice doesn't it, here's the headlines for a news story from 2008.

Two years ago all 84 of these flats were sold...now 82 have been repossessed


BUYERS clamoured to buy a brand new dream home at luxury Hill House on the banks of the Thames.

The 76 bright and modern two-bed, two-bathroom flats overlooking Canary Wharf were snapped up despite hefty price tags of £250,000.
So were the eight penthouses which went for £400,000.
Incredibly, just two years on, the prestige development lies virtually ABANDONED.

Neglected, overgrown and swarming with vermin, Hill House today stands monument to the savage effect of the credit crunch.
A staggering EIGHTY-TWO of its EIGHTY-FOUR homes have been repossessed.
Soaring mortgage rates and huge hikes in the cost of living have seen almost all the buyers pushed past their limits and hit by heart-breaking repossession orders.

Today the two-bed flats are valued as low as £115,000 and the penthouses barely more at just £135,000.

Taxi driver David Adaiat is one of the two original buyers hanging in there despite his home having lost more than HALF its value.



More here.




Nice security door, shame the old owner doesn't have a key for it.



Abbey woods was basically our nearest beauty spot, here they have the old Lesnes Abbey, also gardens and the woods.



Lesnes Abbey

Abbey Road, Belvedere Kent


Lesnes Abbey is a hidden treasure in the heart of suburban London.
The site contains the consolidated remains of Lesnes Abbey ruin founded by Richard de Luci in 1178.
This has been a very important site throughout history and was even visited by Edward I. Lesnes Abbey Wood is full of a diversity of wildlife habitats, plants and flowers.
There are self-guided trails which take you through valleys containing hornbeam trees, wild flowers such as figwort and dogs mercury, open heath land and ornamental gardens.

Park Location and Travel Information

Lesnes Abbey is situated off the B213, Abbey Road, Belvedere and can be reached by bus, for information please see Buses | Transport for London.
The nearest railway station is Abbey Wood Station. For further information contact the Parks and Open Spaces Department by telephone on 020 8303 7777 or by e-mail parks&openspaces[at]bexley.gov.uk.

Park Features and Facilities

• Abbey Ruin
• Self-Guided Walks
• Green Chain Walk
• Interpretation Centre
• Bluebell Woods (*)
• Formal Gardens
• orienteering facilities
• toilets

(*) Please note that the picking of bluebells and wild flowers at this historic site is strictly prohibited.

Features of particular interest

Lesnes Abbey Ruin

History

Lesnes Abbey was founded in 1178 by Richard de Luci, Chief Justiciar of England and was dedicated to St Mary and St Thomas the Martyr. De Luci, who had supported Henry II in his dispute with Thomas Becket, which ended with Becket's murder in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, probably founded it as an act of penance. In 1179, de Luci resigned his office as Chief Justiciar and spent the last three months of his life in retirement at the Abbey. He was buried in the chapter house.

Lesnes Abbey belonged to the order of Augustinian canons whose duty it was to 'baptise, preach, give penance and bury the dead.' The original canons at Lesnes were drawn from the priory of Holy Trinity, Aldgate.

Lesnes was not a large or wealthy foundation. Throughout much of its existence, the Abbey was in financial difficulties. This was partly caused by the expense of maintaining the river walls and draining the marshes along the banks of the Thames. This reclamation helped transform the land from unusable marsh to valuable pasture. Nevertheless, the Abbey gradually built up debts and through the fourteenth century its buildings fell into neglect.
Rebuilding in the early sixteenth century came too late. In 1524, Henry VIII's chief minister, Cardinal Wolsey, obtained permission from Pope Clement VII to close all monasteries in England and Wales with less than eight inmates. The revenue raised was intended to finance Cardinal Wolsey's College at Oxford. Lesnes, with only an abbot and five canons, became one of the first monasteries to be suppressed in England.

After Wolsey's fall, Lesnes met the fate of monasteries throughout the country after the dissolution its monastic buildings and land passed into the King's hands, later to be sold to wealthy laymen. Occasionally a monastic church would be preserved as a parish church (Waltham Abbey, for example); more usually the new owners partly or wholly demolished the monastic buildings for materials. Some were converted into fine country houses or large farmhouses. The Abbot's Lodging was often particularly suitable for conversion.

At Lesnes, although most of the monastic buildings were pulled down soon after the dissolution, Henry Cooke, who acquired the site in 1541, retained the Abbot's Lodging as a mansion house of the manor of Lesnes. The Abbey site later came in to the possession of Sir John Hippersley, who had it dug over for building materials. He then sold it in 1632 to Thomas Hawes of London who bequeathed it to Christ's Hospital in 1633, in whose possession it remained until 1930, when the London County Council purchased it. In 1931 Lesnes Abbey was opened to the public as a park and since 1986 the site has belonged to London Borough of Bexley.

The Abbey Buildings

The layout of the remains of Lesnes Abbey closely resembles the common Cistercian pattern of the late twelfth century. In this arrangement the church usually occupied the highest part of the site, with conventual buildings arranged around a cloister, situated to the south of the church. The church at Lesnes was unusually placed to the south instead of the north of the conventual buildings. This may have been because the Abbey was built on a sloping site between the river marshes and wooded hills.

The most important parts of the Abbey were the church, the buildings around the cloister, the infirmary and the curia or great court. In these areas the canons lived and worked, looked after the sick, showed hospitality to guests, made contact with the outside world and carried out the day-to-day administration of the monastery and its estates.


Taken from here.




Going in the opposite direction from Abbey Wood we had the sewer bank, this bank fed the sewage farm, during a hot summers evening the air would smell of flowers, this is what they used to cover up the smell of shite from enroaching and covering Thamesmead.

As kids a lot of us had motorbikes, most were stolen ones or made up of bits and pieces, the sewer bank was the place to take them, of course no kid is going to push a motor bike miles so they drove them there, I had to drive round Southmere Lake to get, poxy park keepers would try to catch you on their tractor if they could, doubt they ever caught anyone though.

In the summers there used to about 50 of us, occasionally the police would turn up and ask if anybody was using a stolen bike, obviously nobody was dumb enough to fall for that one, suppose the police were happy enough that we were out of the way rather than causing havoc on the estate.

On Tavy Bridge, going that way led to the health center, Doctors and Dentists.



Tavy Bridge again, this is or was all elevated with garages and car parking below, bit dark and dreary down there.



Some nice family maisonettes.



This is new (the roundabout), well when I say new I mean sometime in the last 18 years, there's a primary school on the right so it must have become quite a danger spot as more people got cars etc.



Tavy bridge after a lot of the concrete walkway has been knocked down.



Thamesmeads main claim to fame apart from the Queen visiting once was that some of clockwork orange was filmed there, I missed the queens visit as I was at school and I haven't seen the film of clockwork orange either, but, I did wipe out the chalk marks they had left for where people had to stand the next day for filming



Seems to be quite a violent film, not sure why they are wearing underpants like that.

A Clockwork Orange: Alex puts his Droogs in place

Some views of Thamesmead.

[EmperorTud]

You must viddy that sinny o my brother.

[Gerbil]

I see you parked your sports car outside the pub.

[Doggsy]

the bad thing about this thread is that i didnt realise DD was a southern poof. I thought he was normal and was to be respected, oh well

[sabang]

To be followed shortly by the Milton Keynes thread.

Poms don't do cities well, neither do Yanks on average. Dispense with the town planners- all they bequeathed Birmingham was a set of tunnels under roads that became popular as public urinals and raping grounds. Cost the council untolds to demolish it all, but the place is much better for it. Oh, not to mention those hideous housing blocks, and they were really paid quite well for this.

[Mathos]

One of the problems with inner city developments and such mass control of everything from food, water, entertainment and shit management is the eternal construction of high rise developments and enclosure of the population.

There is perhaps an inborn desire to feel the security of numerical values.

It's basically a tribal existence and it's apparent all across the globe.


The hermits and such-like are few and far between in actual comparisons.

The problems which arise in the inner cities are of course all part and parcel of the system automatically created.


Stanley Kubrick's 'Clockwork Orange' portrayed the basics of a crazy system.

He also exposed the Police at the time as being little more than thugs. After all didn't Alex's Droogs become Police.

The underpants over the boiler suit were actually a boxers protection belt used in sparring or contests to protect the tender parts in battle.

Alex De Large and his fantastic quotes considered protection of the 'balls' made him and his Droogs invincible.

Well well well. if it isn't fat stinking billygoat billyboy himself, in poison. how art thou, thou globby bottle of chip stinking chip oil? come get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou!

Alex De Large

and

: There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim. And we sat in the Korova Milkbar, trying to make up our razudoks what to do with the evening. The Korova Milkbar sold milk-plus; milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and get you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.

and

Alex: And the first thing that flashed into my gulliver was that I'd like to have her right down there on the floor with the old in-out, real savage.

Good and interesting thread DD.

Green 4U.

[thompsonrob]

Lets not forget that a 1995, Film Four movie called Beautiful Thing was also filmed on the estate.

Everybody talks about A Clockwork Orange which filmed some parts of the movie on the estate, were as Beautiful Thing was all filmed on the estate.

Check it out if you have a passion for the estate. It surprisingly makes it look like a really nice place to live.

R (,")

[dirtydog]

[daveboy]

The overhead powerlines came down in Yarnton Way this morning.

[dirtydog]

How did that happen? It's the middle of summer.

[jizzybloke]

probably the pikies

[nigelandjan]

Bloody hell ,,,,,,, been working there today ,but not in the old bit ,,, gonna have a nightmare tonight I think . Just glad I got out in one bit . Thamesmead is one sink estate that was aptly named

[daveboy]

How did that happen? It's the middle of summer.

Dunno.