Ebb & Flow

The 46th annual Thames Historic Barge Driving Race has been cancelled this year due to safety concerns. For those unfamiliar with this Thames tradition – a seven mile barge race under oars from Greenwich to Westminster – these photos, taken from the finish at Westminster Bridge in 2019, will give a flavour of this festive trial of strength along the river.
It all began in 1975 with Watermen and Lightermen Jack Faram, John McSweeny, Ron Livett and others, as part of a wider initiative to “promote the river as a transport mode”, to cut polluting lorry journeys through the centre of town and to increase the profile and commercial potential of the river. Jack Faram tells me that the idea behind the race, “was to give apprentices experience in handling their barges on the fast-moving tidal currents of the Thames. Collecting pennants during the race was a natural extension of their work, which often involved jumping across barges.” He adds that “barges were much bigger and heavier at the time.”

Jack’s words are echoed by Waterman and Lighterman Eric Carpenter who says he was “in the crew of a heavy barge, rowing in 1980 and 1981”, and he has the medals to prove it. He confesses that “We had no chance of winning as there were much smaller and lighter barges but we went for collecting the pennants from different buoys, and to compete for the fancy dress prize. We were Beefeaters in 1980 and Wizards in 1981.”

The Contestants approaching the finish at Westminster Bridge
The barges have no other power than that of the oarsmen themselves, who must know how to harness the force of the river and to steer using the strong tidal currents to their advantage. The Thames Barge Driving Trust * runs a number of events during the year to “commemorate the skills of lightermen who moved freight this way along the Thames.” Jack Faram remembers that, “Apprenticed in 1951, by 1952 I was rowing barges in the middle of the night lit only by an oil lamp.That was our job.”

Tugs, families and supporters

Eric Carpenter says: “The implementation of the Barge race was hugely popular amongst us Watermen and the fight for a place in a crew was fierce!”

Let’s hope that the problems which cropped up this year will be resolved and the hugely popular race, so important to the culture and heritage of the Thames, will be back on next year’s calendar.

With thanks to:
Eric Carpenter
See articles where Eric talks of his work on the Thames:
https://thetidalthames.com/2020/05/24/meet-eric-carpenter-1/
https://thetidalthames.com/2020/05/31/eric-carpenter-2-the-cory-years/

Jack (Len) Faham
Who kindly talked to me about his involvement in setting up the Thames Historic Barge Driving Race, and his work on the river.

Ben of Liquid Highway
A Thames Waterman and Lighterman, always there to help with info. He runs the worlds largest Thames vessel photo gallery The Liquid Highway. You can follow him on Twitter @liquid_highway1

For further information
A great resource with interviews of their lives and work by Lightermen: Tales from the Thames, An oral History of the Lightermen They include interviews with Jack Faram and Alan Lee Williams,

* The Thames Barge Driving Trust was originally called The Transport on Water Association and came into being during the 1970’s energy crisis when not only were alternatives being sought to reduce dependency on oil but also to keep the lighterage industry alive after the opening of Tilbury docks, and the subsequent loss of trade further upstream.

For more pictures of the Thames Historic Barge Driving Race 2019, see Gallery

Compared to famous Thames landmarks nearby such as the Palace of Westminster, St.Thomas’ Hospital, or the London Eye, Lambeth Palace is the soul of discretion. Low key, modest in height, and hidden behind a veil of green for half the year, the official home of the Archbishops of Canterbury is one of London’s most historic sites.
Established for over 800 years, the gardens and palace are calm now yet their past history was anything but. An article in The Wonderful Story of London, edited by Harold Wheeler in the 1930s, laments the 1829 destruction of much of the old palace, by Architect Edward Blore, commissioned by William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury. “In place of the venerable buildings so ruthlessly dismissed, Edward Blore erected a mansion second only in size to Buckingham Palace and more suited to the taste of the time […] It was sham Gothic and cost some £60,000.” He goes on to list other parts of the palace which were spared and still exist today: The Norman crypt; the chapel above it, built in the reign of Henry III; the Lollards Tower; and Morton’s Tower, the familiar red brick Tudor gateway built shortly after the Wars of the Roses. And yet the Palace had, before Victorian times, already undergone many changes and episodes of destruction as it lived through historic events.
An article published by the Vauxhall History Society tells of how, during the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, Watt Tyler, one of the leaders, “led his men to Lambeth where they burnt the Chancery records stored in the Archbishop’s Manor.” Not only that, according to the article in The Wonderful Story of London, the peasants “plundered and wrecked the Palace, paying special attention to the well-stocked archiepiscopal wine cellars”.
One particularly destructive period took place during the English Civil War in the middle of the seventeenth century. Cromwell’s followers demolished the Great Hall, sold the bricks; desecrated the Chapel, disinterring the tomb of Archbishop Parker; and used parts of the palace as a prison for Royalists.
However, yet even more destruction was to be wreaked on the site during the Second World War. Dr.Rowan Williams writes: “The Chapel and Lollards Tower were gutted by the direct hit of an incendiary bomb on 10th May 1941.” The Great Hall was also hit during an air raid. Restoration after the war saw the replacement of roof and windows in the Chapel and the reinforcement of the ceilings in the Post Room and Lollards Tower.

From left to right, the buildings you can see from the river include the fifteenth-century Lollards’ Tower; the Gothic Great Hall, rebuilt in 1663 and again after bomb damage in WW2; and Morton’s T0wer, the Tudor Gatehouse. To the right is the church of St. Mary-at-Lambeth, now housing the Garden Museum, and is the oldest structure in the Borough of Lambeth, except for the crypt of Lambeth Palace itself.

The weather vane above the glass lantern bears the coat of arms and archiepiscopal mitre of Archbishop Juxon, who in the 1660s built the Great Hall. As mentioned above, the Hall was damaged by a bomb in WW2, which left the lantern slightly crooked.

The new Lambeth Palace Library is certainly a striking feature of the London skyline from the Thames. Depending on where you stand, it seems quite a stark addition but then, amid the existing architectural hotchpotch, there is logic to its being there: it houses the famous Lambeth Palace Library in one place. The architects Wright and Wright, bearing in mind the library’s close proximity to the Thames, built upwards rather than below ground.
Michael Prodger writes in Apollo Magazine that its red brick construction can be seen as “a modern-day nod to Morton’s Gatehouse, the Tudor entrance to the palace built in 1495.”

Michael Prodger also explains that the top of the tower, clearly visible from the river, is a lecture theatre with two viewing platforms, one facing the Palace of Westminster and the other Lambeth Palace. “At night, when illuminated, the top storey acts as a lantern or the flame of a candle”.

A river crossing has existed somewhere here, in front of the Palace, since medieval times. Access to a ferry was essential for the Archbishops of Canterbury when they were in residence as their attendance was frequently required at the Sovereign’s Palace across the river at Westminster.

St. Mary-at-Lambeth, though a separate entity deconsecrated in 1972 and now housing the Garden Museum, rounds off the historic site of Lambeth Palace to the south. And climbing up the medieval tower’s 131 steps, you will be rewarded by spectacular views across the Thames to the Palace of Westminster and beyond.

Sources and further information
British History Online: Lambeth Palace
The Garden Museum and history of St-Mary-at-Lambeth.
Lambeth Landmark
Living London History: ‘St-Mary-At-Lambeth’
Michael Prodger, article in Apollo Magazine, July 10, 2021.
Vauxhall History: The Peasants’ Revolt 1381
Wheeler, Harold, General Editor: The wonderful Story of London, c. 1930s.
Williams, Dr. Rowan: The History of Lambeth Palace
Wright & Wright Architects