In modern London, it's easy to think mainly about modern means of transport, especially with the new Crossrail project that provides a new, faster link between the east and the west edges of London, but here and there bits of the old hang on.
For those who are interested in just where much of the old intersects with the new or is buried under it, I recommend Gillian Tindall's excellent book, The Tunnel Through Time, which tracks the route of Crossrail and what was there before, and especially how things moved through or around London during those centuries.
One of the 'newer' ways for people and goods to pass around what was then a much smaller city is the Regents Canal. At one end, near Paddington in the west, it connects with a network of canals built, like it was, in the early 1800s. It's picturesque there, and features canal boat rides and Little Venice.
At the other end, at Limehouse, on the edge of what was London's docklands, the Regents Canal connects to the Thames through a lock and a basin just south of Commercial Road, itself built in the 1840s to carry freight from the docks to the city.
At the Limehouse end, the basin is filled mostly with pleasure craft, a few working boats of various kinds, and occasionally a working narrowboat that despite its gaudy paint is no quaint houseboat or excursion ship. True, it has a little chug-chug-pop-pop of a steam engine to move it; but otherwise, it is very much a survivor of a past era.
I was passing by one afternoon on my way back to my Airbnb apartment when I had the opportunity to watch the process of passing out through the lock and into the basin and then, presumably the river. If you follow the pictures from top to bottom, you'll note that it's very much a one-man operation as the boat operator moves about, leaning on the bar to close the gate behind him, to wait for the water level to drop, and then to lean open the gate at the other end.
That is one big change; a hundred or a hundred fifty years ago, there would have been a busy line of boats waiting to go through, and a crew to work the lock, unlike today's 'self-service' mode.
With the lower gate open, it's back onto the boat and ready to move out. The red train on the viaduct is the Docklands Light Railway, a transit line that connects the Canary Wharf/Docklands area with central London.
And out... and I still don't know who's responsible for closing the lower gate and allowing the lock to refill... perhaps that's a chore for the next boatman, unless the next boat is headed up, rather than down.
Just a short distance away, the Commercial Road looks down on another canal, the Limehouse Cut. Once a busy freight trafficway with its own basin and outflow into the river, a series of changes a couple of decades ago bent its end slightly so that it, too, enters the river through the Regents Canal's Limehouse Basin.
Its industrial buildings have largely been replaced by relatively new housing or conversions, its waters are mainly home to houseboats, and its towpaths, once trod by horses pulling boats are now given over to joggers and family strollers.
The Limehouse Cut bears a distinction it would be hard to guess: It is the oldest of London's canals, opened in 1770 to allow passage from the River Lee to the Thames. For most of its life it was home to significant industrial firms, as well as to poor working-class neighborhoods around it.
Comments (1)