Down at the river. The industrial deserted parts. I prefer this section. Even though well used it feels abandoned, accidental. Thames Water, who own the section around the temple of sewage, tidied, surfaced, repaired and opened the path in 2000, complete with visitor attraction style infographic boards. Their efforts twenty years ago are still present, valued, used, faded, weathered. There are rusting, rotting remains of structures once used for loading or unloading heavy stuff onto or off of ships. Who knows what. Stone, gravel, coal, sewage. You have to be near it, in it, to comprehend the scale of the river and its industry. Vast metal conveyors overhead, now seized up, static. The other bank is half a mile away, in sight, unreachable without a long detour overland. In Pepys’ time there were “lightermen” who took paying passengers across the Thames, as there were no bridges at the time. I doubt there would have been trade for them down here though. There was nothing here then, apart from dark miasmic marshes. Much later on the foot tunnels were built for people to get to major employment sites in Woolwich from the north, and on the Isle of Dogs from the south.
There are rows of pylons congregating around Barking Creek, dozens of cranes at construction sites drawing cubist shapes against organic dark grey clouds. The construction activity is for Barking Riverside, a new mini city for the future, designed to ensure everything needed for modern living is there, except for happiness. This has been tried so many times, and never quite succeeds, Milton Keynes, Harlow, Thamesmead. I still have an odd sense of optimism about the building of Barking Riverside, though. It may mature into a success of sorts, and it’s better than doing nothing. There is an advanced waste refuse collection system, based on large vacuum pipes under the streets. Do people over there look south and wonder what we do with our time? Are there people there yet? It has an uncharted feel.
On this side there is one remaining patch of undeveloped land. Contaminated by munitions testing, and bearing the scars of explosions, it is safeguarded in planning echelons, for a once-planned bridge over the river, which may not happen one day. Some want it to be a road, some say railway, some think tunnels are better. I doubt it will ever happen, and using the land for housing can’t happen without the transport links.
In seven hours the tide will be out again. The shore is temporary.
Andrew Stevenson 