Sunday 29 March 2015

Deptford to Woolwich - our changing riverside

Photographer Peter Marshall, who has a lifelong fascination for London's industrial heritage, has just published the fifth in his series of London Docklands books, this one focussing on the riverside between Deptford and Woolwich in the early eighties.



Peter has been taking photos of industrial heritage in London for years, and has recently scanned many of his pictures of the city's former docklands and compiled them into a series of books focussing on different parts of the riverscape.

You can see a preview of the book online, including photos of Convoys Wharf in use, the Master Shipwrights House pre-restoration, and the heavy industry of Deptford power station and the scrap dealers of Stowage and Creek Road.

On his own blog, Peter gives some insight into the technical challenges of scanning old film and the havoc that bugs can wreak on gelatin. There's also another blog entry showing some of the images that didn't get chosen for the book.

This latest book and the others in the series are a great record of the largely-disappeared industrial heritage of east London - and a stark reminder of how rapidly our riverside and docklands have changed in just a few decades. Very little remains and it's only through Peter's picture captions that it's possible to place the vast majority of the locations.

3 comments:

Richard said...

Very interesting about Deptford Creek! I knew it was industrial but it's so much better with photos!
A Power Plant in the middle of Millenium Quay! If I am right the photos have been taken from the Creek Bridge towards Millenium quay straight and New Capital Quay to the right.

Thanks for sharing!

deptfordpower said...

Marvelous Thanks for posting Dame !! It is astonishing how quickly the Power Station (the biggest in the world when first built and at its height with an output larger than Batterseas) has disappeared from local knowledge once it was dynamited. There is a small group forming to try and get video footage of the station and its final dynamiting and interviews with ex-workers transfered to digital and used for future program and screenings etc..Interest can be expressed to deptfordpower@gmail.com A large amount of research into its workings and history has been undertaken already but there is more needed..

Peter M said...

A friend of mine, Mike Seaborne, took a very good picture of the power station chimney coming down, which you can see on his web site and elsewhere.

Thanks for posting about my book. The PDF is the best way to see all of it. Unfortunately Blurb books in print are expensive.