Ebb & Flow

Further etchings I have photographed from: The Thames from its Rise to the Nore, by Walter Armstrong, published in 1886-7. As with the first article they present a somewhat idealised picture of the River Thames but again, their detail is interesting and as before, I have added a little history below a few of them.

Armstrong, while admiring “the unity, rhythm, grace and skill of the detailed execution”, found two faults in the design of the Palace of Westminster. “Firstly the contradiction between its general symmetry and the contempt for that particular beauty shown in the positions and forms of the towers; and, secondly, the absence of any direct communication with the river.” He glances swiftly over the present Westminster Bridge, opened on May 24, 1862, the first arch of which is just visible in the picture above, saying rather enigmatically that it “has more grace than dignity”. Sadly there is no illustration.

Cleopatra’s Needle was shipped from Egypt to London in 1877. It was a gift to the British Government from the Sultan of Egypt in 1819 to commemorate “Lord Nelson’s victory at the Battle of the Nile in 1798 and Sir Ralph Abercromby’s victory at the Battle of Alexandria in 1801.” See the Royal Museums Greenwich for the story of its eventful journey from Egypt to the Thames Embankment where it was eventually placed in 1877.
Also clearly seen in this image is the much-acclaimed Waterloo Bridge, completed by architect and engineer John Rennie, following the initial design of what was first called the Strand Bridge, by George Dodd. It was funded by a public company. Work began in 1811 and finished, with its opening to the public in 1817, on the second anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. George Birch wrote in The Descriptive Album of London, c.1896, ” Waterloo Bridge is considered the finest stone bridge in the world.” It was, as you may know, replaced during in 1942 during the Second Word War, by the present bridge known as ‘The Ladies’ Bridge’, whose story is told by the Institute of Civil Engineers.

As with many of the pictures I have included, there is no date attached to the above image but you can see the bronze lion’s head mooring rings designed by Timothy Butler and cast by Singer in 1868-70. They were installed during the building of Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s sewage system for London. And in the background, St. Paul’s Cathedral is looking out across the river much as, despite all the modern building, it still manages to do today.

Though the shot towers are the captioned subject of this etching in Armstrong’s book, Waterloo Bridge is very much in evidence too, as is St. Paul’s Cathedral, once again clearly visible on the horizon.

In 1825 the foundation stone was laid for the new London Bridge designed by John Rennie. “The stones for the bridge were cut and the arches laid out on the Isle of Dogs. They were each given a number or letter code marking their positions so that they could be taken to the site and assembled correctly. This attention to detail paid off again over a century later in 1967, when it facilitated the sale and shipping to America of these same stones.”, from: Where Smooth waters Glide. Meticulously reassembled over Lake Havasu, what was once the ‘new London Bridge’ has become a much appreciated tourist attraction.

Armstrong writes that the most crowded part of the Pool is between Rotherhithe and Wapping,” explaining that “the Pool is divided into Upper and Lower, the point of division being at the Thames Police Station at Wapping.” Regulations demanded that “a minimum passage between the ships moored on either side of the central stream of 200 feet in the Upper and 300 feet in the Lower Pool has to be kept.”

St. Mary’s Church, Rotherhithe was the first church in Britain to be destroyed during the Second World War. It was hit by incendiary bombs during an air raid on September 7, 1940. Rebuilding of the main body of the church took place between 1954 and 1956.

The famous ship, SS GREAT EASTERN was built at Blackwell Point and “the berth on which she was built was laid east and west upon it.” Designed by Brunel she was the largest ship of the day. Though her fortunes were mixed, she was used to lay the first transatlantic cable in 1865.

This was one of the prison hulks created by the Hulks Act of 1776, which “Authorised for a limited time, the punishment by hard labour of offenders…raising Sand, Soil and Gravel from…the River Thames”. The Act was regarded as a “temporary expedient” to relieve the pressures on “English prisons which were quite literally overflowing with prisoners awaiting transportation, but with nowhere to go.” Jeff James writes: “This ‘temporary expedient’ was to last for almost a century.”
You can discover more about the prison hulks from the text of Jeff James’s excellent lecture at the National Archives. Though illustrated in Armstrong’s book, there is no mention of the truly harsh conditions endured by the prisoners, perhaps because the Hulks Act expired in 1857. However, there is a faint, uneasy echo of those times in the use of the Bibi Stockholm, now moored in Portland, to house asylum seekers.

Armstrong mentions that Erith is “known as the headquarter of two minor yacht clubs and for its ancient church tower.” He also mentions an artist, Mark Anthony, who had recently died and whose painting of Erith Church he greatly admired, feeling that his “fame would revive one day.” Sadly, though his work occasionally comes on the market, his fame did not “revive”.

Researcher Julie Gilbert writes that the Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834, meant “increasing numbers of the destitute were forced to enter workhouses, since other forms of relief were essentially eliminated.” One solution to the now dreadfully overcrowded workhouses, was to send pauper boys to training ships, which could be found on the River Thames and elsewhere. One of these was The Goliath, lent by the Royal Navy and operated by the Forest Gate School District from 1870-1875 and, as she was moored off Grays town, she could well have been the ship in the above etching from Armstrong’s book.
Gilbert writes: “The Goliath was an 80 gun two-deck wooden ship, with room for 500 boys. On board, each boy was given his own hammock and was expected to maintain a cleanly and professional environment.” They were taught how to make and repair sails, to make ropes and, along with rudimentary schoolwork, they learnt how to row, sail and swim. These attributes were useful training for a future in the Royal Navy or the Merchant Navy. However, though the young men mostly went on to have a career at sea, the Goliath came to a sorry end in 1876, described in an article in the Illustrated London News.
“She was moored in the estuary of the Thames, off the village of Grays, having on board more than 400 boys…a fire broke out in the lamp-room…though the firebell was rung immediately, and the boys rushed to their stations and pumps on the lower deck without confusion or delay, yet the fire had spread all over the main deck even before the bell had ceased ringing…the boys stuck to their work on the lower deck till the fire began to reach them… They had to save themselves by jumping into the water. Happily, nearly all had been taught to swim, and many managed to reach the land unaided. However, fifteen are missing, though only five are known to be dead”.

“The mouth of the Thames, with the red light-ship, may fairly be called the centre of English naval life.”, writes Walter Armstrong at the end of his account, emphasising the light-ship’s importance, guiding with its “famous light” all kinds of shipping past the Nore sandbank. He was of course talking about the famous Nore light vessel.

The first light vessel, the Nore, was anchored at the mouth of the River Thames by Mr. Thomas Hamblin in 1732. In 1836 Trinity House was given powers to acquire and maintain all private lighthouses. The most recent light vessel to protect shipping from the sandbank, 86 Nore, was replaced by a light navigation buoy. Glen Humble tells me, “However, there is still an unmanned light vessel at Sunk, and Sunk pilot station is the one used calling in on Felixstowe as well as the largest (deepest drafted) vessels calling on the Thames and the Medway.”

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Armstrong’s book is full of detail both in the etchings and the text. The two volumes of The Thames from its Rise to the Nore combine to make a substantial piece of work but curiously I have been unable to find it mentioned along with the many well-received books that he published on art and artists, both before and after his appointment in 1892 as Director of the National Gallery of Ireland. However, it is advertised on several internet bookselling sites and it appears that it was also first published in parts to subscribers at a price of 6 shillings.

Sources and further Information
Armstrong, Walter: The Thames from its Rise to the Nore, Virtue & Co., 1886-87.
Gilbert, Julie: ‘The English Poor Law and Training Ships in the Nineteenth
Century’; April 25, 2016. Article in Port Towns & Urban Cultures
Royal Museums Greenwich. See: Nore Light Vessel
Trinity House timeline.
With thanks to Glen Humble @wavecrestglen

In the late nineteenth century, distinguished art critic Sir Walter Armstrong gathered about four hundred etchings from various artists of the time and wove them into the narrative of his book The Thames from its Rise to the Nore, 1887.
Below are a few of my favourite images from the second volume covering the tidal Thames, etched at different times by different artists, not always named, which I have photographed and in some cases enlarged. They present an attractive and rather idealised picture of the River Thames but their detail is interesting and I have added a few remarks below some of them.

This much painted and photographed view from Richmond Hill was etched by A. Barraud. In 1902, after publication of Armstrong’s book, this view to the Thames across the pastures below, was protected by an Act of Parliament, and though other views in the country have been preserved by local planning legislation, the view from Richmond Hill is to this day, the only vista to have been so protected.

Richmond’s public park, Terrace Gardens, was created in 1887 from three eighteenth-century estates, one of which was the estate of Buccleuch, with its large house on the riverside and part of the gardens on the Terrace. Richmond Borough Council bought the riverside area in 1936 and Buccleuch House was demolished that same year.

Though this boatbuilder is not identified in the text, he represents the longstanding tradition of boatbuilding by Richmond Bridge still carried on these days by Master Boatbuilder, Mark Edwards, who established the Richmond Bridge Boathouses in 1992.

Armstrong describes Richmond Bridge as “a very modern institution. It is little more than a century since it was first thought of. The act for its erection was passed in 1773 before which the river had to be crossed in a boat.” Completed in 1777, it is the oldest bridge across the tidal Thames still in use.

With a history dating back to the seventeenth century, The Dove, is still “a much-loved London pub catering for locals and visitors alike.” Among its famous regulars, including artists, composers and politicians, was King Charles II, who came here with Nell Gwynne.
The pub was one of the many buildings along the tidal Thames affected by the flood of 1928 which wreaked much havoc in Westminster and Pimlico, causing the drowning of fourteen victims trapped in their basements. The level of the flood is marked on a brass plaque in a “small space to the right of the bar, listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the smallest bar room in the world.”

The old Hammersmith Bridge, the first suspension bridge to span the River Thames, was built in 1827, and Armstrong writes “so far as artistic design went, it was one of the best bridges on the Thames.” The present bridge that replaced it must have been under construction at about the time Armstrong’s book was being produced. It too is a suspension bridge, and was designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette. It opened to the public in 1887.
As many of you will know, Hammersmith Bridge, was fully closed for safety reasons from August 2020 and eventually reopened to pedestrians, cyclists and river traffic in July 2021. For the latest information and background see: Hammersmith and Fulham Council

The old Putney bridge, opened in 1729, described by Armstrong as a “picturesque timber gangway, which called itself a bridge, was at last replaced by a fine new bridge”, designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, and opened in 1886.

Regarded as dangerous, old Battersea Bridge was the last surviving wooden Bridge over the Thames in London, and the patterns of its structure and reflections in the river, attracted the attention of several artists including Turner and Sell Cotman as well as Whistler.

The sharp-eyed among you might just be able to see the sign for Greaves’ Boatyard. It was the family boatbuilding business and home of artist Walter Greaves, who with his brother Henry became friends with James McNeill Whistler. Liss Llewellyn writes “Their father had been J.M.W. Turner’s boatman.” Greaves and Henry met Whistler in 1863, “introducing him to the sights of the River Thames, and becoming his studio assistants, pupils and close friends for over 20 years.” Greaves said that Whistler taught them to paint “and we taught him the waterman’s jerk”, which was possibly a “single oar scull or row.” However, the friendship did not end well. Whistler began to move in more fashionable artistic circles cutting out the Greaves brothers, and when Walter Greaves had an exhibition in 1911, Whistler’s biographers damaged his reputation by claiming that he had plagiarised Whistler’s work. By 1922 he was destitute and admitted into the London Charterhouse, and died in 1930. His work is not represented in this collection but you can see here, his best known picture: Hammersmith Bridge on Boat-Race Day c.1862.

From beneath the old Lambeth Bridge you can see the busy commercial shoreline at low tide with warehouses and the Palace of Westminster rebuilt by 1870, with a dominant Victoria Tower, which had been completed in 1860. However, the area was soon to be embanked as part Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s massive new sewer system for London. Dorian Gerhold writes that “By August 1872 the land, which now forms Victoria Tower Gardens, had been bought and cleared, and by 1877 the river wall had been built in line with the Terrace wall of the Palace of Westminster.”
The view from Richmond Hill to the River Thames, as mentioned above, was protected by an Act of Parliament in 1902, which still stands but Victoria Tower Gardens, created by an Act of Parliament (Section 8 of the London County Council Improvements Act) is not so lucky. Though the Act passed in 1900 required the gardens to be “laid out and maintained […] for use as a garden open to the public”, therefore prohibiting any construction, this much-loved, peaceful central London riverside park is under threat as the Government is now in the process of repealing the Act.

Sources and further information
Sir Walter Armstrong
Born of wealthy parents in 1850, Walter Armstrong was educated at Harrow and at Exeter College, Oxford, where reading only what interested him, he left with a pass degree. He spent his time studying pictures, art and literature. By 1880 he had become a distinguished art critic writing for a number of leading English journals and newspapers. It was during this period of his life that he gathered material, and wrote The Thames from its Rise to the Nore, published by J.S. Virtue & Co. Limited, London, in 1886-87.
In 1892 he was appointed Director of the National Gallery of Ireland and moved to Dublin. While he was there for over twenty years, he wrote a number of well-received books on leading artists including Reynolds and Gainsborough.

Images, quotes and text from:
Armstrong, Walter, The Thames from its Rise to the Nore, Vol II, J.S. Virtue & Co, Ltd., London, 1886
Architecture of the Palace of Westminster: Key Dates
Gerhold, Dorian: Victoria Tower Gardens – The prehistory, creation and planned destruction of a London Park, Dorian Gerhold, 2020
Pocock, Tom: Chelsea, The Brutal Friendship of WHISTLER and WALTER GREAVES, Hodder and Stoughton, 1970
The Dove, Hammersmith, history.
And thanks to Waterman and Lightermen Ben of The Liquid highway