A Sad Day for Europeans

Today is a sad day, weather-wise, politically, socially and culturally. Weather-wise, because it hasn’t stopped raining, hailing and sleeting for the past week.

Politically, because the UK is going to be in practice as well as in theory (it was supposed to be the latter last January) out of the European Union.  Socially, because, freedom of movements for Brits will have been removed in the EU. No freedom to work where you want to. No freedom to live where you want to. No freedom to love where you want to. In effect, a whole citizenship has been removed from us holders of those British passports which up to now had also comprised European citizenship. Culturally, because teacher and student exchanges throughout the union in the Comenius and Erasmus programmes, from which I too have benefitted, and the cooperation of artistic bodies from orchestras to theatres will be made so much more difficult.

But was the UK ever part of the EU? Was it ever part of their continent? Geologically yes. Until 6500 BC there was no physical separating between the UK and the rest of the European continent. Global warming largely caused the separation, especially when the great glaciers of the most recent Ice Age started to melt. A giant tsunami caused by landslides in Scandinavia cut the British Isles off from the rest of Europe. It was yet another effect of climate change and another vindication that politics are closely related to, indeed influenced by climate.

(The British Isles getting cut off from the rest of Europe in 6500 BC)

However, the appearance of the English Channel (known as ‘la Manica’ – the sleeve in Italian – no mention that it is ‘English’ here) did not stop those in the Italian peninsula from invading the UK. The period of Roman occupation was, in the opinion of many, a time of great opportunity for Brits. They learnt new skills; they became part of the largest western empire the world has known. They became civilized – a difficult word to define as even Lord Kenneth Clark had to admit.  Brits learnt to live in cities.  

(At the British-Roman city of Uriconium a few years ago)

They learnt the benefits of under-floor central heating (indeed UK houses have never been so warm since). They learnt the benefits of having regular baths and keep-fit centres – something which has only recently returned to full capacity in that Roman Spa aptly known as Bath. Brits even became literate – a skill which has sadly become lost to too many of its inhabitants today.

(Sandra at Bath a few years ago)

For over four hundred years the UK prospered under Roman governance which was in many aspects a precursor of the EU in terms of its tolerance, equal workers’ rights (give or take a few slaves) and multicultural immigration policy with Roman citizens settling in Britain from many parts of the Empire.^[ Indeed, there arose a distinctive Roman-British culture which had a great influence in improving such areas as agriculture, urban planning, industrial production and architecture.

All this changed with the barbarian invasions. Not quite as quickly as many archaeologists used to think but enough, rather like the Tory party’s ERG to irreparably damage Romano-British culture.

By the Middle Ages, however, the UK had been restored to a position of prime importance in the continent of Europe. Indeed, some of the best works of art there came from Britain. ‘Opus Anglicanorum’ (English Needlework) was particularly sought after, especially for ecclesiastical vestments and furnishings.

(Opus anglicanorum at Pisa’s cathedral museum)

Regrettably, the best of this work only survives on the continent since most of it in the UK was destroyed in one of the worst disasters to occur to any civilization: a catastrophe equal to the demolition of Montezuma’s Aztec civilization by the Spanish conquistadores or the obliteration of historical mosques and ancient Hellenistic monuments by Daesh.

(Tintern abbey when I photographed it as a schoolboy)

This disaster was, of course, the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536 by the bestial King Henry VIII. Under the con that the riches of the monasteries were to be redistributed to the feudal peasants the only real beneficiaries were the lords and barons of the king’s court. It was very much in parallel to the swindling of the common man by Brexit where the recipients will be the rich, owners of hedge funds, off-shore accounts and tax-evaders who will become even richer while the rest of the populace will be deprived of even their basic workers’ rights and removed from the EU’s generous welfare policies to deprived areas. To illustrate one example of how big this con has been just look at the county of Cornwall where the majority of Cornish, already dispossessed of their native Celtic language, which was banned from being taught or even uttered in schools, voted for Brexit but are now complaining that their EU subsidies have been withdrawn and replaced by a pittance from Westminster instead.

I need not continue any further. It will be for future generations to repair the damage done by the present thugs of Westminster and hopefully restore the UK as an integral, indeed a leading partner, of the EU. Sadly, I fear I may not live long enough to witness this but on my heart shall always be inscribed the word ‘Europe’.

Elia

The following was written as a funeral address for Elia, my wife’s mother when she died last year. I would like to remember this remarkable woman on the first anniversary of her death by publishing that address in this post.

(Elia in Saint James’ Park London)

When Elia, celebrated her ninety-eighth birthday on June 10^th this year, with her daughter Alexandra and me, her son-in-law at home we imagined that there would be an even more beautiful party in two years’ time when Elia would have been one hundred years old.

Sadly this was not to be. However, we should instead be grateful that Elia has led a life full of so many accomplishments and events and lived in good health until near the end. Elia’s eyesight, for example, was near perfect – she could see the number of the bus coming before I ever could – and never needed to wear glasses.

On Tuesday afternoon, 25^th June, the lady who gave birth to Alexandra, my wife for over forty-two years now, finally flew to heaven with her guardian angel, to become one with the eternal love of her Creator.

Born in Italy’s Venice region in 1921, less than three years after World War one ended, Elia grew up in a farming community during difficult times. Among her activities were looking after silk worms, feeding them with mulberry leaves, and growing tobacco.

In 1936 Elia became an employee of Colussi, the biscuit manufacturers. It was in that same year that a devastating earthquake hit her area of north Italy, an experience which she described to me in its terrifying details.

Regrettably, another disaster, this time man-made, hit shortly afterwards when World War two broke out. Elia confessed to me that she hoped we would never know the hunger and poverty that her community experienced during those dreadful times.

Elia also worked in Sardinia for her uncle at a hotel in Iglesias –a place Sandra and I visited during our own trip to that beautiful island.

Elia inherited her father’s spirit of adventure: he had travelled to America and helped build New York’s Brooklyn Bridge. Elia’s own adventurous spirit took her to a post-war UK with her cousins and where she worked as a Nanny. They lived in a cottage near the Duke of Norfolk’s castle at Arundel. It was in these idyllic country surroundings that Elia met Dino. It was love at first sight – a love so strong that again, this Easter, Elia visited Dino’s last resting place near his birthplace of Florence.

Alexandra was born from that love in 1948 and, with wondrous coincidence, when we married, on the 7^th day of the 7^th month of 1977 at Caxton Hall, it was the same registrar who had married Sandra’s parents who married us!

In London the Italian Institute had been set up to restore amicable relations between formerly war-torn countries and to spread love of Italy, its language and its culture in the UK.

Both very industrious persons, Elia and Dino worked as an indefatigable team at the Italian Institute. Dino became Secretary-General and Elia not only was telephonist and receptionist but also set up a canteen  where she showed great initiative in cooking delicious pasta dishes and cakes for English people at a time when the delights of Italian cuisine were still very little known in the UK.

Elia was always pleased to show her Italian friends and relatives around London and its surroundings and her hospitality was legendary. She loved to travel and even in May this year, aged 97, flew to Italy. Elia passionately loved her garden which she kept as elegant as a living room. She did wonderful flower arrangements at the Italian Institute and her garden display there won a prize from Westminster City Council.

Through her work Elia met many distinguished persons and with all of them felt perfectly at ease and made them feel at ease too. She could always hold her own in conversation with people from all walks of life.

Elia loved animals and for many years her and Dino’s constant companion was the whippet Lord Rupert and Cheeky the tortoiseshell cat.

Elia was an avid reader; she knew all the novels of Jane Austen in Italian and English and had a shelf-full of her favourite author, Catherine Cookson, whose novels where heroines meet difficult situations must have had considerable resonance with Elia’s own experiences.

Elia also loved music. She enjoyed singing to herself and her favourite piece was the chorus from Verdi’s ‘Nabucco’ which you heard at the beginning of this celebration.

Elia was a perfectionist in everything she did. Brilliant in sewing, making curtains, quilts she was a veritable make-do-and-mend person whose example is once more followed in this consumer society. Elia’s life is an example, to all those lucky people who have known her, of a pioneering woman of her time: a modern lady in another age. She is a memory that will always remain fresh, like her complexion that always seemed filled with youthful sunshine. We feel proud to have helped Elia enjoy her life till the end and we celebrate her sudden departure into a new world safe from harm and surrounded by her loved ones with joy and sadness in equal measure. Like her daughter, my wife Alexandra, I shall miss you Elia. It’s not only going to be a goodbye but also an au revoir till we meet again. May you rest in Heavenly Bliss and Peace and enjoy a well-deserved repose. With Alexandra I love you Elia and always will.

(Near Westminster Bridge London)

Adapting to On-Line Life?

Of the various adaptions that have had to be made as a result of the on-going pandemic one having the greatest currency is that of home-working, especially in the field of education. In Italy, as in many other countries, friends who are in teaching have had their work cut out in preparing on-line lessons, marking distanced homework and ensuring that the technology can be accessed by all of their pupils. Most teaching staff have admitted that it is rather more exhausting to teach this way than in a traditional classroom!

(Lucca’s ‘Fosso’ near Porta San Jacopo where one of my teacher friends lives)

Home-working has also diffused itself in many occupations normally conducted in office blocks. Indeed, the UK government’s new encouragement for employees to return to their offices and give up home working has been met with a largely unenthusiastic response, almost as if it were a retrograde step. After all if one looks at the industrial revolution the original trend used to be home-working. It was only when, for example, Hargreaves invented his ‘spinning Jenny’ that factories began to be built and concentrated workers into one space and set up strict timetables.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it was found that it makes better economic sense for many jobs to be more productive at home than in some skyscraper? Commuting on crowded and unhealthy public transport systems and traffic pollution could be greatly reduced and the time saved on often considerable journeys would be able to be spent on the work itself. Young families could spend more time with their children and pets. Work could also be rearranged to suit meteorological conditions. For example, if it’s a fine morning why not take a walk and make up for work-time when it’s raining cats and dogs?  For me, however, one of the greatest benefits of home-working would be that those ghastly office skyscrapers disfiguring the City of London, like the ‘gherkin’ and the ‘cheese grater’, could be demolished and the urban sky-line restored to its former proportions where historic buildings could finally find their proper places again.

The same arguments would go for shopping. In London during the pandemic we’ve availed ourselves of on-line home deliveries of groceries from the likes of Tesco’s and Iceland and non-food items from such concerns as Amazon. This clearly saved journey time, queuing time and greatly reduced health risks when shopping in stores, especially when we found Covid-19 regulations were applied in some stores with disturbing flexibility.

The use of social media has also considerably expanded during this pandemia. If one is unable to visit friends because of Covid-19 strictures or organise a social gathering then technologies like Zoom can provide an alternative. In particular, Facebook has delivered a life-line for many people.

Which leads me to the question: how much does FB reflect our real-time social environment? How many of our real friends are FB friends and how many of our FB friends are our real friends? In my case I can say that the greater part of my FB friends are not my real friends meaning people I would take the trouble to arrange to visit and enjoy some activity (mainly eating!) together. Obversely, a significant part of my real friends do not use FB or, if they are on FB, do not use it from one year to the next.

FB is, however, useful in helping to select those on-line ‘friends’ one would actually want to meet in real-life. Of the many FB ‘friends’ I have in my list who spend part, if not all of their time, in Bagni di Lucca, it is the majority I have never actually met and am unlikely to meet except by accident. This is because I feel that I could take exception to many comments they make especially those on politics (particularly those two chestnuts, Brexit and Covid-19) or religion. (I will not say here what my views on these subjects are, except that if anyone wishes to know what they are they can refer to my own FB page…)

(An On-Line Lucca Fountain)

Are we then heading towards a world where our contact with work will be mainly via broad-band and our social relationships mainly via media like FB or WhatsApp? Who knows? If it has been difficult for us to adapt to an environment of face masks and (anti)social distancing it could be even more difficult for us to return to a world where we do not have to automatically cover our noses and mouths and where we will actually be able to shake hands, hug and maybe kiss that handful of real friends. After all, my dad would tell me it was much more difficult for him to return to civvy street life after six years in the army than to adapt to a world at war in the first place.

A Jurassic Park in London

I alighted from perhaps the grandest suburban station in London: Crystal Palace. Those stylish colonnades, that refined brickwork, that spacious ticket office, those seductive arches!

The station remains the last gateway to a monument which, more than any other, reminds me of those lines in Edgar Alan Poe’s poem to Sappho:

The glory that was Greece,

And the grandeur that was Rome. 

To which might be added the splendour that was British Empire – or at least it might have seemed such in the politically incorrect age of the Victorians.

This vast palace was made of glass and iron. It stood on one of the highest points in the capital with views towards the City to the north and Kent and Surrey to the south. It housed collections of objects from all parts of the empire: the world: the farthest pacific islands, the jewel in the crown that was India, the iciest parts of Canada. Handelian music resounded from huge choirs, visiting dignitaries, like Garibaldi, orated to crowds.

Below the transcendental palace stretched wide Italian style terraces opening onto pleasure gardens where fountains played, guests lost themselves in a complex maze and couples romanced under leafy arbours.

Alas, the palace is gone, destroyed in 1936 in a massive fire seen over much of London.

But the park is still there although fountains no longer play and the statuary has departed. Miraculously the dinosaurs on their geological islands in the south of the park survive to this day, unlike their Jurassic era forbears. They were, indeed, in danger of disappearing as a Facebook friend remarks: ‘I remember playing amongst the dinosaurs before they were renovated – it was all a great big jungle with broken dinos in there‘.

A series of sculptures designed and sculpted by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins under the direction of geologist Sir Richard Owen and inaugurated in 1854 the dinosaurs became a highlight when the palace moved from South Kensington, where it had housed the 1861 Great Exhibition, to Sydenham. They remain a highlight. Indeed, an old school friend notes ‘The first time I went to Crystal Palace Park I did not know about the dinosaurs. I nearly passed out with surprise!’ 

I, too, remember my astonishment at seeing these monsters from a primaeval epoch for the first time. Crystal Palace park remains for me a haunt of memory and desire: the memory of bygone times with friends and desire for those intangible dreams of our childhood.

Its dinosaurs represent fifteen different genera of extinct animals not all of which are dinosaurs. (For example the giant Irish elk, one of which has unfortunately broken antlers).

They were realised with the early palaeontological knowledge of the Victorians and consequently many of them are scientifically inaccurate. For example, the Ichthyosaurus is shown as being crocodile-like. However, today it is considered to be more like a shark with dorsal fin and fish-tail.

It doesn’t matter, however, if the monsters are examples more of nineteenth-century misinterpretation than of accurate representations of the extraordinary species that once ruled the earth: they are fascinating in their own right.

I left the monsters with their fearless company of waterfowl and headed towards the expansive Italian terraces made up of a lower and upper level.

Pairs of sphinxes punctuate both ends of these elegant structures which formed the southern approach to the great palace and illustrate just how huge it was.

I gazed upon the ruins of what had been and Shelley’s lines from ‘Ozymandias’ came to mind

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

From here it was a short walk to the bus terminal on the parade. Just in time to avoid being drenched from yet another torrential outburst of the skies!

PS I recollect reading an evocative description of a child visiting the Crystal Palace in Michael Sadleir’s novel ‘Fanny by Gaslight.’ Here is a passage from it:

“We wandered under the vast arcading of the Palace, staring at statues and costumes in glass cases and models of engines and triumphs of ornament in porcelain, gilt and ormolu. We went on the tiny railway and fed the ducks on the pond, and stared at the crowds.”

If I could time travel I might not wish to select Athens at the time of Pericles or Rome when Marcus Aurelius was emperor but rather the Crystal palace when Victoria was Queen.

 

Where Princess Pocahontas Rests

There’s a parody sketch by that vintage English comic, Peter Sellers, which refers to Balham as ‘the Gateway to the South.’ In grand terms the announcer presents the ancient crafts of this not especially distinguished London suburb, one of which is ‘to carve the little holes in the top of toothbrushes’.

If there is doubt cast on Balham’s claim to fame as a ‘gateway’ then there is no such uncertainty regarding Gravesend, the river-side town to the south-east of London. For much of its history it has been the gateway to London itself and, after a period of decline when the port moved down stream, Gravesend has now become a key location for the Thames Gateway project which aims at developing the economy of the Thames estuary region.

A part of this regeneration has been to restore Gravesend’s historic centre which, as I remember, had become woefully rundown.

The old town’s high street has a number of characteristic clapper-board buildings with specialist shops and restaurants.

The street ends with the restored pier from which one embarks on a passenger ferry to Tilbury across the Thames.

When I took the ferry last month it was a dour and very windy day and the Thames became a little choppy.

We have disembarked before at Tilbury, on the ‘Waverley’, the last ocean-going paddle steamer in the world.

This memorable journey produced the following poem:

 

WAVERLEY

The pistons pursue their unceasing act

of love and the steamer’s bold prow furrows

through grey-green waters while an east wind blows;

stork-like forts loom ahead: the deck is packed.

Side-paddles ruffle estuary water

in flecks and glints; flat Essex horizon

combines with sea in leaden unison.

You are the River’s beautiful daughter

and come from a truer age and sea-lochs

bordered by lush hills and craggy ridges.

The City is now your servant: bridges

open to you above the shuttered docks.

All hail with blasts and cheers in one consent

for through you we re-live childhood content.

This time I looked up at a gigantic cruise liner moored there. No sign of any passengers, however. I wonder where they had all gone.

Along the riverside, but hidden by an embankment wall, was Tilbury fort the location for Queen Elizabeth I’s stirring speech against the Spanish Armada:

“I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm”.

I returned to Gravesend and walked to the railway station passing the elegant eighteenth century church of Saint George.

It contains the burial place of iconic native American princess Pocahontas of the Powhatan people who saved the life of John Smith the founder of the colony of Virginia.

Pocahontas later married John Rolfe and sailed to the UK where she was presented to the Royal Court with much pomp and interest.

On her return to her native land Pocahontas became ill at Gravesend and sadly died there at the age of just twenty one

The statue of the princess is a cast copy of the original in Jamestown, Virginia by William Partridge and was presented to Gravesend as a token of anglo-american friendship in 1957.

Thinking about all those statues which have recently raised disputes about whether they should still be standing I thought that Pocahontas will be there in front of Saint George’s church for as long as freedom and equality are prized. She was a person who valued all humans whether they be red, white or black. However, I wonder what Pocahontas would have thought of her nation today.

Yielding to the Yeading

I love spending time poring over London’s classic ‘A-Z’ street atlas. There’s so much to discover in its pages, so much to imagine and so much to plan for future exploration.

Last month I was intrigued by a sliver of a park shown near Rayner’s Lane underground station. I decided to investigate Roxbourne park.

Situated in the south west part of the London Borough of Harrow, the park is traversed by a rivulet, the Yeading brook. I forsook the park’s broad manicured lawns to follow the rivulet’s course.

The Yeading brook is a tributary of the river Crane which, in turn, is a tributary of the Thames reaching it at Isleworth. Originating in Pinner, the Yeading follows a meandering course through North Harrow, Rayners Lane, Ruislip and Hayes where it joins up with the river Crane.

It’s possible to follow these rivers through a continuous path as shown in this sign I came across in the park. A journey through the Crane valley is on my agenda for future walks.

I found Yeading brook remarkably unspoilt. With its lovely willows and mossy banks it seemed worlds away from the busy roads which surround the park.

A nature reserve protects its varied wild life.

There’s even a special place for bees:

Roxbourne park has a variety of facilities including a miniature (one foot gauge?) railway located at the Field End Road side of the park. One can usually enjoy train rides on it during the summer on Sunday afternoons; I look forwards to this opportunity once the present health crisis is over.

There’s so much to discover in London that, as is said about Rome, one life is not enough. The metropolis’s walks are great for those like me who are beginning to feel that walking those considerable differences in height as found in Italy, for example, is becoming increasingly tedious. At least at the end of my walk there was an elegant example of one of the fine thirties art deco stations designed for the London underground and, in particular, its Piccadilly line, by that great architect Charles Holden.

My Final Home

During my recent walk along part of London’s Green Chain walk, linking open spaces and parks in South East London, on one of the hottest days this year I entered the cooling shades of Bostal Woods whose name derives from the same root as the Italian for woodland: ‘bosco’.

Exiting from the verdurous gloom I found myself before the impressive gateway leading into Plumstead cemetery.

Opened in 1890 the cemetery contains memorials to those who lost their lives while working at the Woolwich Arsenal and a section devoted to the War Dead.

There is also a memorial to Gunner Alfred Smith who received the Victoria cross for saving a fellow soldier.

(Headstone donated by the Cooperative society in 1986)

This took place when the Camel Corps was on its way to relieve General Gordon who was besieged in Khartoum.

(Memorial to the Camel Corps in London’s Victoria Embankment Gardens)

The British forces encountered the Mad Mahdi’s rebel dervishes in January 1885 and, despite being outnumbered by 1,600 to 15,000 men, defeated them. Unfortunately, when the Camel corps reached Khartoum to rescue General Gordon they were two days too late: Khartoum had fallen and Gordon and his garrison had all been slaughtered.

The cemetery is beautifully laid out in former parkland with a gently hilly contour bordered by dense woodland.

In its centre is a chapel built in flamboyant Gothic style.

A scattering of sycamore, beech and oak trees punctuate Plumstead cemetery’s extensive area.

It is in this cemetery that, some time ago, my wife Alexandra purchased a grave plot for the two of us.

I cannot think of any place more lovely in this part of London where we have lived and worked for many years. On the day of my visit I was completely alone, the searing heat was made more bearably by soft breezes from the woods, the views over London were superb and the wild grass growing between the mossy tombstones waved and glistened in the setting sun.

SOWERS OF THE SYSTEM

I can face you here and kiss your red lips

pouting with death’s sensual desire. I touch

your golden waterfall of hair, the tips

of your nipples – I now love you so much!

I’ve had enough of our modern image

with its isms and lack of indulgence.

Only your weald of symbols will assuage

my thirst for the meaning of when? and whence?

The vast words: despair, destiny and hope,

time and judgement, the sea of lost mankind –

witnesses to your omnipresent scope –

are dyed with the last sun’s hues in my mind.

They mantle me in the casts of the night

and point to the celestial city’s light.

FLP

A Farm at Pinner

There are very few working farms left in London. There used to be one owned by the Coop at Woodlands near Shooter’s hill in South East London but this ceased production some years ago. Luckily it has been resuscitated as a farm entirely staffed by volunteers and we were present and assisted at its re-foundation.

Another urban farm is that at Pinner which is apparently going through some problems – and it’s not due to the pandemic. The property of Harrow borough its 230 acres are leased to dairy farmers who own over two hundred Frisian cows. However, there is a scheme for the council to take back the farm and turn it into a nature conservancy. Unsurprisingly this has caused a lot of upset from who wish to see the farm continuing in its present form.

I decided to investigate Pinner farm during the amazingly Mediterranean spell of weather the UK has been having with temperatures touching thirty degrees centigrade. Alighting from Headstone Lane Overground station

 

I took a road which led past Harrow’s garden centre, happily, despite everything, still thriving.

The road changed to a bridleway with signs indicating the direction to Pinner village. On the way I passed the farm. I found it half-way between a tidy and a dilapidated state with one house completely abandoned. I cannot vouchsafe for the cows as they were grazing distance away from the field boundary.

The bridle path was almost without any tree cover and, under the baking sun, it was a very useful preparation for any escape to southern Europe.

King George V avenue’s dual carriageway interrupted my walk but the bridleway continued on the other side. It led up an incline until reaching a bench marking the entrance to the houses on Wakeham’s Hill. A little further on I turned into Church Lane and was pleasantly surprised by a number of several fine residences including a particularly elegant mansion dating back to Charles II and his Nell Gwyn.

The Gothic tower of Pinner church welcomed me at the end of the lane. Amazingly the fourteenth century church, which is dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, was open to the public. I entered into its cool interior, which was partly cordoned off because of the pandemic, and enjoyed the very special atmosphere of a traditional English parish church realizing that for almost four months I’d been denied these sensations.

Among the graves in the church yard there’s a very odd tomb in the form of a stone pyramid which was erected by the eighteenth century botanist John Claudius Loudon in memory of his parents.

Thence my way entered a very deserted Pinner High Street (described in my blog at) from which a passage led into Sainsbury. Here I obtained some essentials including a good bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, a cheese and chive spread and some cream crackers. The store’s exit of the store led to Pinner station, the Metropolitan line and thence home ward bound after a really satisfying leg-stretcher of a walk.

Where Arsenal F. C. Began

When we pass the sign displaying ‘Arsenale’ on the road from Fornaci di Barga to Castelvecchio Pascoli in the Garfagnana I am always wistfully reminded of a part of London I know rather well. It’s Woolwich with its former Royal Arsenal, the armaments powerhouse of the British Empire, now being redeveloped as a prime residential area.

‘Arsenale’ is one of the four contrade or quarters of Barga, the others being Ponte di Catagnana, Catagnana and San Quirico. I don’t know whether its name alludes to a former armaments factory. The Woolwich ‘Arsenal’, however, has a long history connected with the testing and manufacture of the lethal weapons of war. Its origin dates from the 17^th century and by the time of the First World War its area had expanded to over a thousand acres and it employed over eighty thousand people. Ceasing production in 1967 the Arsenal finally closed in 1994 when the Ministry of Defence moved out.

(Women workers at the Royal Arsenal during World War One)

The area used to be top-secret and was not marked on any Ordnance Survey maps. I remember we had to sign the Official Secrets act when we visited the Arsenal in a specially hired bus since the area was so extensive. Later I would explore the abandoned site with its decaying armaments factories ammunition proofing sheds and explosives research laboratories. Regrettably I have few photographs in a pre-digital age of the complexities of the area except for these. They have become ever more valuable to me. Spot the large hangars, the rifle testing tunnel, the anti-Hitler casements (an attack up the Thames was imagined) and the remains of the Royal Arsenal rail network.

I also penned this poem in recognition of the strange wonders the domain held me when it was still in its derelict state.

 

THE OUTER ARSENAL 1985

 

These steep arched banks, like iron-age forts, protect

the engines of war. Through white-tiled tunnels

(for in making bombs one cannot neglect

pureness) we reach a field of wrecked funnels.

 

Past the birches gulls land on the tump, spread

gently like a park’s ornamental pond.

At its centre, the island of the dead:

a walled garden stilled by alchemy’s wand.

 

Wasteland runs riot: spinneys and briars

grow from Victorian ruin and sprout fruits;

while above a lark sings in heaven’s choirs

on the tarn’s a confutation of coots.

 

This land was ours and we could walk it free:

reclaim love from war before new blight’s scree.

 

Since those days most of the old Royal Arsenal site has been redeveloped for housing as part of Thamesmead’s expansion. Gone is the abandoned area with its characteristic tumps, moated mounds once storing explosives. There is little evidence of the former railway network which serviced the various armaments production centres.

Much of the wall surrounding the complex has gone because of road widening. In their place new housing and commercial centres are springing up – certainly a more positive aspect when compared to the area’s previous dedication to destructive weapons.

However, the original part of the Royal Arsenal has been preserved for its historical value. It contains several buildings of some worth.

The main gateway is now separated from the rest of the arsenal by a widened road and stands alone as part of Woolwich Market.

Here is my photo taken of when it was being isolated from the arsenal it prologued. Note the former wall which joined it to the site.

Crossing the road and entering the depot’s grand avenue the following features attracted my attention:

The elegant Royal Brass Foundry of 1717:

Dial Square is where what was to become Arsenal Football club played its first game.

I was particularly taken by the mock cannon balls adorning the portico of the building here.

The Main Guard House dates from 1787 and provided accommodation for an Artillery detachment.

The original Royal Military Academy designed by Vanbrugh in 1718 once served as the Royal Arsenal Officers’ Mess. I tried to take photographs of this building’s interior but was requested to leave by a security guard. Presumably it still houses top-secret activities!

The riverside guard rooms of 1815 mark the arsenal’s main entry point from the river. It was here that the body of ‘Lulu’, the Prince Imperial, son of Napoleon III, was brought after his death in the Zulu wars. Queen Victoria on her visit to Woolwich insisted on being brought to this very spot. You can read more about this in my Facebook entry at https://www.facebook.com/fpettitt/posts/10214823717241037.

By the guard houses is a group of Gormley-like statues by sculptor Peter Burke called ‘assembly’. I think they just about respected social distancing!

There are several other historic buildings many of which have been converted into luxury riverside flats or community centres. It’s good to know that redundant historic structures are now being recycled to other uses instead of being demolished as they formerly would have been.

I walked part of the London stretch of the 184 mile long Thames path which passes various various piers, one of which had been re-utilized as a Thames river-bus stop.

The path took me to the new housing development of Thamesmead. As Battersea is now renamed ‘South Chelsea’ by resident snobs so West Thamesmead is now called ‘Broadwater Green’ perhaps to dispel its former notorious past as the scenario for Stanley Kubrick’s controversial ‘A Clockwork Orange’.

Many of the 1960’s brutalist pseudo-Corbusier blocks of flats have now been demolished and replaced by more friendly housing. Some of the high rise buildings, which made our yachting sorties on the lake fronting them somewhat dodgy because of their wind deflection propensity, still remain, however.

I was pleased to note that a new Thamesmead was rising with ample green, a multitude of trees and the preservation of many of the tumps and canals which characterised the old Arsenal site. It was quite lovely to enjoy the warmest of suns in this landscape of willows, lakes, coots and swans.

Lesnes Abbey Woods

London’s Green Chain walk connects over three hundred parks and open spaces in the south-eastern part of the metropolis. It extends from Erith in the east to Crystal Palace in the west with branches to Thamesmead, Nunhead, Beckenham and Charlton  and offers a great chance to stroll in surprisingly rural parts of one of the world’s great cities linking up with other paths such as the Capital Ring.

(see also my post in Italian at https://longoio3.wordpress.com/2019/07/10/londra-selvaggia/)

Originally set up in 1977 to protect open spaces from being built on the Green chain is a walk I know rather well since a branch of it starts near my home in the Royal Borough of Greenwich.

Though never done completely in one go I’ve covered all the route taking different sections at different times. During the recent UK heat wave I decided I’d head for one of its most idyllic stretches. There is a marvellous compendium of woods stretching from Frank’s Park near Erith to Bostall Woods including Oxleas, well-known for its bluebells and Lesnes Abbey with its spectacular wild daffodils.(For pictures of these see my post at https://longoio3.wordpress.com/2020/04/06/daffodils/)

London’s Coronation church, Westminster Abbey, is known throughout the world. However, in pre-reformation times the city had many other abbeys which are now sadly either in ruins or have completely vanished.

Ruined Lesnes Abbey is on the Green Chain walk and is surrounded by an extensive forest appropriately called Abbey Woods.

1178 saw the foundation of the Abbey of Saint Mary and Saint Thomas the Martyr in Lesnes by Richard de Luci, chief executioner of England. It was built as a penance for the murder of Thomas Becket, in which he was involved.

(Murder of St Thomas a Becket)

In 1179, de Luci resigned from his office and retired to the abbey, where he died three months later and was buried in the chapter house.

It is interesting to note that the first part of the pilgrim route known in Italy as the Via Francigena passes from London to Canterbury where pilgrims visited Saint Thomas Becket’s tomb, a journey that gave rise to Chaucer’s wonderful book of tales and Pasolini’s film. Lesnes abbey never became a large community and Cardinal Wolsey closed it down in 1525 by a law for the closure of monasteries with fewer than seven monks. It was one of the first to be suppressed after the dissolution of the monasteries in 1534. The abbey is surrounded by parkland and an ornamental garden known as the monks’ nursery.

(Pilgrim statue carved from a tree trunk in Lesnes Abbey)

I especially like the way the Abbot’s symbol, the shepherd’s crook, is weaved into various elements of the monks’ garden:

Even though Lesnes Abbey is in a state of extreme ruin, its various sections can easily be distinguished.

The church:

the principal cloister:

the chapter house:

the refectory:

the dormitory and the library in which the Lesnes Missal, now in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, was located.

Every time I visit Lesnes Abbey I think of those lines from Shakespeare’s seventy third sonnet:

‘Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang’.

However, I’m glad to say that once a year the parishes and clergy of the Roman Catholic deaneries of Bexley and Greenwich organise a procession of the Blessed Sacrament in the Abbey ruins, bringing them to new life. The procession would have been in June this year but has unfortunately had to be cancelled because of the pandemic.

I continued my woodland walk passing various interesting features: the chalk pit which once supplied building material but is now securely fenced off because of the danger of its very steep slopes:

The fossil beds where one can spend a happy time uncovering sand sharks’ teeth dating from the cretaceous era:

A large pond, with an unfortunate tree collapsed upon it.

The path is well sign-posted and maintained.

Eventually I emerged from the cool woodland and found myself entering a broad heath and the heat again.

Why certain idiots travel miles to find a crammed place on a beach flouting every health and safety measure imposed during this pandemic crisis when near to their home they can find the most beautiful and unpopulated open spaces I shall never know!

PS If you read Italian there’s more on Lesnes Abbey with extra pictures in my post at:

Le Abbazie di Londra e i loro Scandali