Ebb & Flow

Boats, birds, and buildings that caught my eye on a Saturday morning walk along Lambeth Reach in June.

Boats

Gabriel Franks was the first British police officer to die on duty when he was hit by a bullet during the Wapping Coal Riot in October 1798. His name lives on in GABRIEL FRANKS III. She is a TARGA 32 launch and part of the Metropolitan Marine Policing Unit fleet of Fast Patrol Vessels.

Fire Rescue boat ERRINGTON is named after Harry Errington, who was awarded the George Cross in World War II for his exceptional bravery during the Blitz when he rescued two badly injured firefighter colleagues from the basement of a burning building. See the history of Lambeth River station here and also my piece about a special trip with ERRINGTON’s firefighting crew.

There are four RNLI Lifeboats Stations on the tidal Thames: Gravesend; Tower; Chiswick; and Teddington, set up after the 1989 Marchioness disaster.
HEARN MEDICINE CHEST is based at Tower RNLI.

One of Cory’s fleet of tugs towing barges of waste downstream to their recycling centre. The company specialises in “safe, clean, and sustainable ways of managing recyclable and non-recyclable waste in London and the South East”. These black and white tugs towing their yellow waste containers are a familiar sight along this stretch of the Thames.

Uber Boat by Thames Clippers has a fleet of twenty-one vessels. STORM, SKY, and STAR have been there from the beginning when the company was founded by Sean Collins and Alan Wood, on May 24, 1999. My photos of the fleet in two 2021 articles, show the boats both pre-Covid, when their livery was the MBNA blue and white, and post-Covid when their livery changed to the Uber black and white.

Some of Thames Party Boats’ fleet at their mooring near Lambeth Bridge. M.V. HURLINGHAM was awaiting dry docking and M.V. CLIFTON CASTLE is taking her place in the fleet for the moment.

Owned by Colliers Launches the CONNAUGHT is one of the most elegant pleasure boats operating on the Thames. Built in 1911, she has been cruising between Westminster and Hampton Court for over 100 years.

PENTLAND VENTURE now owned by London Party Boats Ltd., came down to London in May 2025 from Caithness, having served as a ferry between John O’Groats and Orkney each summer from 1987 until 2023. She will have a new lease of life here as a Thames party boat.

The TAMESIS DOCK bar is a converted 1930s Dutch barge serving drinks, food and live music, all with wonderful views of the River Thames and famous London landmarks.

Birds
Our walk took us to Riverside Gardens right by Vauxhall Bridge where number of pigeons were lazing around on the grass steps. Occasionally something upsets them and they sweep up together in a dusty cloud before settling back but once they’re still, you can see the immense variety of the individuals among them. Their history and association with London is explored in an article by the London Museum, which has a pigeon and “a gold poo splat” as their new logo. Their reasoning: “Pigeons are all over London, a place where the grit and the glitter have existed side by side for millennia”.

Escape from the shore
The highlight of our walk was the adventure of these Egyptian goslings, difficult to see on the debris-laden foreshore but once spotted, it was clear that with a strong flood tide sweeping in they wouldn’t be able to stay where they were. And we remained fixed to the spot to see how they would manage.

One of the parents is watching the water carefully as the goslings, disturbed by a wave start to move around.

Buildings

The muddle of new buildings in Vauxhall, some of which look as if they are about to fly away, are fighting for a river view as they crowd the south bank of the Thames…

… and among them is the striking home of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, the Vauxhall Cross building, completed in 1994. Designed by Sir Terry Farrell, it was originally planned as a commercial set-up but approved of and bought by the Government in 1988, adapted from then for its new purpose. Among secret modifications and additions, “the building incorporates specially designed doors and 25 different types of glass. It was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in July 1994.” *

Much derided by some critics at the time it was built, its difference and eye-catching character stand out among the drab conformity of its neighbours along this stretch of the Albert Embankment. There’s no secret as to its purpose, and it has even featured as the headquarters of MI6 in no less than five Bond films.

The MI6 building, true to Sir Terry Farrell’s interpretation of Post Modern Architecture, reflects a variety of styles. Phil Baker writes in The Building Centre, 1931 – 2021: ” His typical building style was post-modernist, exuberant and playful”, and the building echoes elements of “industrial modernist architecture such as Bankside and Battersea Power Stations, and Mayan and Aztec religious temples.” The Art Deco style lamps and benches, and the circular colonnade along the path in front of the building at the end, add to its exuberance.

Of course there is much more to see and to discuss on this part of Lambeth Reach apart from these random sitings, and, if you’re interested, you could look at some of the sources cited for my Thames21 guided walk on May 26th.

Further Information
Tower RNLI, some history, 2021.
*History of the Secret Intelligence Service.
The: SIS/MI6 Building by Phil Baker.

Looking down from Blackfriars Bridge the artwork on this new Thames-side space seems somewhat distant. However, walking onto the embankment itself your attention will be caught immediately by Nathan Coley’s five dark sculptures, Stages.

Glasgow artist Nathan Coley was commissioned by Tideway to create sculptures for the newly formed three-acre public park on the banks of the River Thames at Blackfriars. His work, called Stages, is made up of five abstract sculptural forms designed to reflect Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s pioneering engineering of the past and Tideway’s masterful engineering achievement of the present. For beneath the 0rdered, open, tree-lined setting of this new embankment lies hidden the complexity of machinery and plant that operate London’s latest marvel: The Tideway Tunnel, known as the ‘Super Sewer’, here at 48 metres below the surface.

Made from techcrete limestone concrete*, with black basalt and quartz aggregate, they dominate the space and are described by the artist as a group of related objects in “conversation” with one another. But in a more tangible dimension, they are also in relation to the newly created views of the Thames, with the boats passing along it, and bridges and buildings along its banks.

The first of the sculptures is simply called Stage, commanding the view from the western end of the Bazalgette Embankment from where you can see Waterloo Bridge, the Hungerford Bridges, and the palatial looking buildings along the riverside front of Whitehall Place.

Zig Zag

Waterwall

Interesting contrasts… And though there are several places here where you can sit and turn your back on the heart of the City, you can still feel its overbearing presence, yet these new views of the river do offer an escape…

Twins
These two strangely satisfying dark forms, non identical twins, maintain a direct link with the Thames, as part of their structure is fixed over on the waterside wall of the Embankment.

Kicker

Kicker links two of the terraces.

Kicker’s lines and angles seem to echo, almost blend in with the shapes of City buildings beyond.

Nathan Coley explained that: “We saw Bazalgette Embankment as an opportunity to work at a scale that echoes the site’s surroundings. The sculptures create personal moments to pause and linger and introduce the idea of abstraction into the public realm.”

Whereas you are left to reflect on Coley’s forms and to enjoy their structures in your own way in this Thames-side setting, poet Dorothea Smartt’s work has a more obvious direct link to not only this Bazalgette site but to other Thames Tideway sites as well. Commissioned to write poems to be fixed in raised type on the sewer’s ventilation columns at eight of the sites, her lines are all linked to the “Lost Rivers” of London, swallowed up by Bazalgette’s original nineteenth-century sewer network, and relate to each specific site. Exploring London’s libraries, consulting historians, visiting the paths of the lost rivers themselves and meeting people on the way, she wrote her poems, keeping to the necessarily short brief of about 150 characters.

Here her words run from just above ground level, twisting up the three, five-metre high ventilation columns, at the upstream end of the Bazalgette Embankment. Not only are they decorative, they are also oddly tactile, the solid and chunky raised type, giving a real sense of a connection to the past.

The raised type chosen to use for Smartt’s poems on the vents is the famous Doves Press font recovered, adapted, and digitised by graphic designer Robert Green. Believed to be lost after its creator T.J. Cobden-Sanderson threw his precious pieces of Doves type into the Thames by Hammersmith Bridge, Green, with a careful study of Cobden-Sanderson’s diaries giving him a good idea of where the pieces might be, and with the help of Port of London divers, records that over 150 pieces were recovered.

Smartt is quoted in an article by Tideway saying that she hopes her poems on the ventilation shafts will add to human knowledge and understanding by the way she has “drawn threads across social history, through the lives of people, events, or significant buildings and reflected and honoured well-known facts and features”. Importantly, she has also highlighted in her work “the lesser-known, marginalised or hidden past.”

Panels on this long building above, disguising machinery operating on and beneath this major Tideway site, are covered in hundreds of carefully crafted designs capturing images of a tunnel, ranging from a single circle to several, altering your perception as you look into them.

Finally to be counted among the artwork, are three lion mooring rings along with Vulliamy’s ‘Dolphin’ lamp, removed during construction of the site, beautifully restored and placed at strategic points on the site.

Yet it’s Coley’s sculptures that dominate the new embankment. A press release by Tideway states: “Coley’s work reflects Bazalgette’s legacy, particularly his role in shaping London’s infrastructure for public benefit”, in the way that Bazalgette’s work on London’s sewer, completed in 1875, led to the fine, tree-lined Victoria Embankment. They add: “Coley’s sculptures, conceived as a series of objects in conversation with one another, echo the themes of engineering, innovation, and civic ambition.” Although this is clearly the underlying concept, for the project has been thoughtfully developed and carefully brought to fruition, visitors are free to enjoy the sculptures and make of them what they will.

Sources and further Information
Sir Joseph Bazalgette: Builder of London’s first ‘Super Sewer’.
Tideway: Stages by Nathan Coley
Dorothea Smartt: Hidden Rivers, Hidden Times
See: The Bazalgette Embankment I: Images of work in progress
Thanks to N. for company and patience…