A Rainy Day

When we began our Staycation, Bob searched lists of London museums and came up with the Island History Trust. Islands and History, two favourite themes, how could we miss. And we didn't.

To begin, the Island in question is not actually an island, but a peninsula that pokes a thumb of land into the Thames River from the north bank in the East End of London. The spit of land has been called the Isle of Dogs for 200 years for an obscure reason that has to do with a lost island where stray dogs were known to have been abandoned. Whatever the provenance of its name, the Isle of Dogs has been at the centre of our globalised world since the early years of the 19th century when a group of businessmen lamenting the insufficiency of London's dock facilities invested in the construction of the West India Docks. Other bigger docks were built over the succeeding decades, and London was then the largest port in the world. The Empire where the sun never set was the destination for the raw materials that made Britain an industrial powerhouse. When the docks lost their reason for being, marginalised by Margaret Thatcher's loathing for unionised labour and, probably more important, by container shipping technology, the Isle of Dogs morphed into a new centre of globalisation, known as Canary Wharf. In the photo above, taken on Sunday from Greenwich directly across the river,  the London headquarters of most of the world's banks "too big to fail" can be identified. (Don't look for Goldman Sachs as they are not there. They chose to set themselves apart by remaining in the City and not make the move to Canary Wharf.)

In between the end of the Docks and the rise of international capitalism, the East End of London lost a unique local culture that had evolved over 200 years in the Docklands. The Island History Trust has been trying to capture and preserve that culture for 30 years by collecting photographs and memories from the natives who have been displaced. The Trust has 5,000 photographs archived that are available for viewing on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons and continue to search for images, voices and memories of the place that once was. When we arrived, we chatted with the curator whilst we waited for Susan who was meeting us for the visit. The curator became very excited when Bob mentioned that he had been an early employee at the Citibank building which was one of the first to be completed in the post-Millennium years when most of the above office towers were built. She asked if he would agree to be interviewed to add a finance worker's point of view about the Isle to their archives. How exciting is that!

Two of my favourite London books are Silvertown and Hopping, both by Melanie McGrath. The first is an account of her grandparents life in the East End; the second is about the annual custom of East End families —generally the women and children— to travel to the countryside in Kent to pick hops in the late summer as a fresh air holiday while earning some extra money. Families travelled in special trains or coaches to the same farms and settled in the same hopping huts year after year, almost like a holiday camp, except for the hard labour six days a week. We found an archive box of photos devoted to  families hopping.

After we left, Susan suggested we walk under the river to Greenwich for the Fan Museum. She had checked it out, and they served tea and offered free admission to senior citizens (one can be a senior at 60 in Britain) on Tuesdays. Fans do seem like they should be a hard sell for enticing visitors, but Susan once talked us into visiting the fan collection at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge after she found them interesting. We didn't disagree after our visit, so we thought the Fan Museum was an excellent idea, not having been there.  The Museum is located in a lovely Georgian house quite close to the centre of Greenwich. Tea and cakes — no clotted cream today, so no scones on offer — were served in a fancifully painted garden room. Tea is a common term for supper here, and this tea did serve as dinner with huge pieces of carrot cake, brownies, and a slice of dried-fruit tea cake for each of us. The current exhibit is Oh! I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside and was absolutely delightful. Beautifully displayed, it included 19th and early 20th fans from European beach resorts that served as souvenirs or as advertising. We must remember to keep an eye open for their next exhibit in the autumn.

Not much in the way of photos today because it rained all day. Lovely steady gentle rain the lawns and flowers desperately need.