IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Mayflower Street, LONDON, SE16 4JL

A campaign poster on a lamp-post on Cottle Way, Rotherhithe. Campaigners wanted to stop Thames Water using Kings Stairs Gardens as a construction site for the Thames Sewer Tunnel.

I could not see a name for this particular housing block, but the small estate it forms part of is named after the nearby church.

This stood at the junction of St Marychurch Street from 1757 to 1783 and on the opposite corner was 'The Swan' 1757 to 1783. I do not know what corner each occupied - no doubt they were only beer houses. In the 1930s Mayflower Street contained many three-storeyed tenement houses. Building shown is the rear of St Mary's Estate. Incidentally, St Marychurch Street stretched for about three hundred yards to the left of the image up until the late 1970s.

A curiously named residential street near the Thames.

This is the rear of the parallel block to Image The tilted silver fabrication at roof level is a fire escape.

As seen from the corner of Rupack Street. Consists of two blocks built about the mid 1940's on land that contained old dilapidated small houses. In 1982 a tenant told me that in 1910 she was living in one of the small houses when she found some 'old yellow coins' nearby. Her dad made her throw them away. 100 yards away is St Marys Church and when rebuilt in 1715 Roman bricks were discovered and in 1867, a mile away in Plough Road (now Way), a vessel was found that contained 1300 Roman gold coins of the Emperor Hadrian.

Just in front of the left hand edge of this reasonably new building, marks the site of the "Europa" pub that was at 9 St Marychurch Street at the junction with Clarkes Orchard. The pub was demolished in the late 1970s or early 1980s, having been built in the 19th century. Its predecessor was opened in 1769, was of timber construction and built very close to if not on the same spot as the new one, in what was then Old Market Place. The original was burnt down by a police officer, PC Palmer, in 1834 along with many other buildings in Clarkes Orchard. He later committed more arson by burning down the Spread Eagle pub (now the Mayflower) and adjoining buildings. He was arrested after gutting a collier on the Surrey Canal - all acts committed on beats patrolled by him. The original pub had a sign of a bull and the second had a sign of a woman sitting upon a bull. In mythology, Europa was the daughter of Agenor, King of Phoenicia; wooed by Zeus (King of the Gods) who took the form of a bull.

A Young's pub (Young's was a London based brewery until taken over by Wells in 2006 - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young's ). Many people were sitting at benches on the pavement outside the pub on an unusually hot Saturday in May.

A trim little brick and faience box with mild Deco touches. Now a Young's pub.

Satellite dishes apart this social housing block must look pretty much as it was when it was new, probably in the 1950s. Compare it with Image a short distance away.