IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Candle Street, LONDON, E1 4RT

Rare surviving canal-side warehouses in Copperfield Road, once used for one of Dr Barnado's ragged schools.

Ragged schools were free schools, initially established in the late 1860s by Thomas Barnardo to provide poor children in the East End of London with a free basic education. This building, which was originally a lime juice warehouse on the Regent's Canal, which runs at the rear, became the largest ragged school in London when it opened in 1877. It closed in 1908 as schools provided by the local government authorities were opened. After various industrial uses the buildings were saved from threatened demolition and the Ragged School Museum Charitable Trust was established to create a museum to show today's children what life was like in a Victorian school classroom. The Museum opened in 1990 and its website is here http://www.raggedschoolmuseum.org.uk/nextgen/ The distant towerblock is Waterview House, a 1969 built 16 storey structure on Carr Street, arranged into 66 flats. (From a technical point of view this is a fine illustration of how distorted tall buildings can apparently become and appear to lean into the photograph.)

Smartly tended walkways and landscaping now border the canal, seen here from Ben Jonson Road at Victory Bridge. On the left is Gray Court. Johnson's Lock is overlooked by flats on Candy Wharf.

A common sight but why DO water birds stand on one leg? It can't be restful! The answer is heat conservation: such birds possess an adaptation called a "rete mirabilis" a complex web of arteries and veins which in their case acts as a heat exchange mechanism: the arteries that transport warm blood into the legs lie in contact with the veins that return colder blood to the bird’s heart. The arteries warm the veins. By standing on one leg, a bird reduces by half the amount of heat lost through unfeathered limbs and webbed feet.

Just north of Victory Bridge, with Gray Court above, the silver sculpture of a fish on the wall above the canal, with a real coot beneath.

This is a view looking along the Regent's Canal to Johnson's Lock, with the Ragged School Museum on the left and some flats on the right, looking south.

After the construction of a large development of flats, Candle Street now leaves Ben Jonson Road between Mercer Court (left) and Gray Court (right). The names of the succeeding blocks on the right reflect the industrial history of the area: Coalstore Court and Tramway Court. These overlook the Regent's Canal at their eastern ends.

The site is now occupied by Solent House, a block of council flats set back from Ben Johnson Road near its junction with Aston Street.

The bridge carries Ben Jonson Road across the Regent's Canal.