Ebb & Flow

New, ultra-modern Fire Rescue boat ERRINGTON was welcomed into the London Fire Brigade’s Thames fleet on September 1st, 2022. She joins fire rescue boat TANNER, bringing Lambeth River Station up to full strength.
Crewed by an officer and four firefighters, they cover the Thames from Hampton Court to the Dartford Crossing, dealing with fire emergencies, rescuing and towing vessels in difficulty, as well taking people or animals to safety. They have a top speed of 45 knots or 51 mph, twice the speed of the older boats FIRE DART and FIRE FLASH. They are flat-bottomed allowing greater manoeuvrability in shallow waters, and have the latest available equipment, including two water monitors that can be operated remotely and capable of pumping 2,500 litres of water a minute.

ERRINGTON is named after Harry Errington, who was awarded the George Cross in World War II for his exceptional bravery during the Blitz.

Harry Errington was awarded his George Cross by King George VI on October 21, 1941. He was the only London firefighter to win this highest of civilian awards for ‘exceptional courage’. At the end of his citation in The London Gazette comes the commendation for his award: “He showed great bravery and endurance in effecting the rescue at the risk of his own life.”

As the threat of war came ever closer, the Auxiliary Fire Service was formed in 1938 to provide extra support for the London Fire Brigade. Its members, all volunteers, had daytime civilian jobs. Harry Errington worked in his uncle’s tailoring business becoming a ‘master cutter’.

The Supplement to the London Gazette of August 5, 1941 gives, details of the bomb blast where Errington’s selfless courage earned him the George Cross. “High explosive and incendiary bombs demolished the building” where he was sheltering, killing a number of civilians on the upper floors, including seven firemen. However Errington and two other Auxiliary Firemen were in the basement still alive, though two, Terry and Hollingshead, were in a bad way, pinned to the ground by fallen rubble. “A fierce fire broke out and the trapped men were in imminent danger of being burnt to death. The heat of the fire was so intense that Errington had to protect himself with a blanket. After working with his bare hands for some minutes he managed to release the injured men and dragged them from under the wreckage and away from the fire. […] At the same time burning debris was was falling into the basement and there was considerable danger of a further collapse of the building. He carried one of the men up a narrow stone staircase partially choked with debris, into the courtyard, made his way through an adjoining building and thence into the street. Despite the appalling conditions and although burned and injured, Errington returned and brought out the second man.”

The Jewish Museum** in London fills in the later details of Harry Errington’s life: He remained with the family firm until his retirement in 1992, which by this time had grown from a small business to a Saville Row firm.***
A great basketball enthusiast he coached amateur teams and promoted the game, eventually becoming Vice-President of the UK Amateur Basketball Association. As a young man he “had been involved in the management of the basketball competition at the 1948 Olympic Games”, when London stepped in at short notice to save the event, postponed twice during the Second World War. Over the years, Harry remained in contact with the men he had saved and their families, and he often visited his local Soho fire station where he was given a party for his 90th birthday. It was a proud moment for him when the Fire Services College at Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, named a road after him.

Harry Errington died in December, 2004 and Michael, a volunteer at the Jewish Museum describes in a tribute film dated November 12, 2020, how he went to Harry’s funeral service and was surprised to see four fire engines in the car park. He was clearly moved by rows of serving firemen lining the route from the Prayer House to the graveside after the service. He adds: “The Fire Service never forgot Harry Errington”. And the naming of a new Thames Fire Rescue boat after him is further proof of that.

The fireboats alert to all that happens along the river, work and share information with the Police and the RNLI so that when needed they can co-ordinate their response to a particular incident.

Harry Errington was without a doubt, “strong and of good courage” as enduring injuries and risking his own life, he rescued his colleagues from certain death. His name will live on in a fireboat that will undoubtably save more lives in the future.

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Sources and further information
*This photograph of Harry Errington is widely available on the internet but I have not been able to ascertain copyright.
**Article on Harry Errington, GC, The Jewish Museum, London.
See Jewish Museum volunteer Michael’s film tribute to Harry Errington here.
Article on Harry Errington in The Jewish Virtual Library.
***Taken from Andrew Knighton’s quotes from Gordon Brown: Wartime Courage, Bloomsbury, 2008.

Fire Brigade Stories ‘The London Blitz’ – a vivid description of the night Harry Errington saved his two colleagues.
New LFB Fireboats.
LFB’s new Fireboats welcomed.
LFB Excellent Online Exhibition: ‘The History of Lambeth River Station, from barge to boat.’

Supplement to The London Gazette of Tuesday 5th August, 1941, Friday 8th August, 1941.

Thanks to @MYPersonalTrai5 for photograph of Harry Errington’s plaque on the fireboat named after him.

All other images ©Patricia Stoughton

Dr. Dorian Gerhold, distinguished London historian, knows all there is to know about Victoria Tower Gardens. In his meticulous study in 2020 he wrote: “The area, now the gardens, was reclaimed from the Thames in the medieval and later periods, forming at first a part of the Palace of Westminster and the estate of Westminster Abbey.”* He adds that “For more than 250 years afterwards it was occupied by a variety of wharves and houses”, none of which exist today. But look over the embankment wall at low tide and you will see a mass of mingled traces of the past: multicoloured fragments of history.

Both William Strudwick’s photograph above and the drawing below by Douglas MacPherson in the Illustrated London News, 1911, of the then existing Victoria Tower Gardens with work in progress, show the extent of construction there has been on the site. But further research has taken us back in history.

Work to the area now covered by Victoria Tower Gardens was along the river from the already established garden directly below Victoria Tower to Lambeth Bridge. It was part of a scheme known as the “Thames Embankment Extension and Westminster Improvements at Millbank.” In the image above there is a dotted line illustrating the proposed building of an embankment wall in line with the Palace of Westminster, taking in part of the foreshore. This was eventually built by 1914 when the enlarged Gardens were opened to the public.

In 2017 a survey undertaken by Sumo Services reported, though none had yet been recorded, that there was the “potential for finds from the prehistoric period to the Roman and early medieval periods […] as there was evidence of Roman and Saxon activity within 250 metres of the site.” They concluded that “there are extensive examples of development on the site throughout the post-medieval period and remains relating to a wide range of riverside and industrial activities are likely to have survived over much of the area.”

However, in 2013 members of the Thames Discovery Programme were first invited by the Parliamentary Estate to record “the scatter of medieval and post-medieval moulded stone revealed by World War II bomb damage.”

Among the finds were: “a silver Elizabethan half groat and a sixpence; a royal farthing of James I; a late 17th to mid 18th-century tin alloy and glass cufflink; a complete lead alloy porringer handle; a late 17th-century tin ‘American plantations token’; and an 18th-century cloth seal.”

Looking over at the stones and rubble of the past from the embankment above is an escape, an appeal to the imagination, without the danger of falling over or being cut off by the tide. Experts will know far better than I what these photographs might represent. Some objects stay firmly in place, resisting the strong tidal currents, others are constantly moving, being exposed or worn down.

There are strict rules in place for mudlarkers from Teddington Lock to the Thames Estuary as to where they are allowed to search the Thames foreshores. For anyone who is not familiar with them see here. Its proximity to the Palace of Westminster means that the Victoria Tower Gardens’ foreshore is a sensitive security area, most of which is out of bounds, only accessible by special permission, usually as part of an organised group.

On March 16, 1941 during the Blitz, a Nazi bomb exploded on the embankment wall breaching it so far down that had not the tide been out, the whole area would have been inundated. London owes its escape from such a disaster to Sir Thomas Peirson Frank, who had had the foresight to plan for such an eventuality, and repairs were swiftly carried out, first with sandbags and then with reinforced concrete still plainly visible today. Many remnants of the orignal wall are still scattered below.

In his book Victoria Tower Gardens […] Dorian Gerhold writes of the many industrial constructions that existed over the years which were eventually cleared in stages to make way for the gardens. They included: wharves handling stone, coal, timber, lime and sand. There were cement, flour and oil refining works, corn merchants, a sailmaker, an ice storing business, and many others.
A report prepared for Westminster City Council by London Parks & Gardens Trust in January 2019, states that the location of the wharves marked on contemporary maps “gives some indication of the unstable ground conditions found on site today as the majority of the Gardens is ‘made-up’ ground.” And it’s clear that elements of these can also be found on the foreshore.

The force of every ebb and flow of the tide changes patterns on the foreshore, though many of the larger pieces remain more or less in place despite their gradual erosion.

Staring at these stones, shells and bones it’s possible to imagine one of those computer reconstructions where fragments are lifted, whirling upwards to reassemble into conceptual shapes of their past…

The foreshore is littered with ever smaller vestiges of the past, ground down little by little by attrition until reduced to sand.

“We are but dust our days are few and brief, like grass, like flowers, blown by the wind and gone forever.”***
Yet while we can, it is satisfying looking down at the foreshore and trying to feel something of the lives of those who passed this way before us.

Sources and further information
*Gerhold, Dorian: Victoria Tower Gardens: The prehistory, creation and planned destruction of a London park, 2020.
Sumo Services Ltd, Survey of Victoria Tower Gardens.
The Thames Discovery Programme with report on Victoria Tower Gardens here. Also article by Nathalie Cohen, March 21, 2018.
Victoria Tower Gardens update, September 5, 2021.
In order to mudlark or metal detect on the Thames foreshore you must hold a valid permit from The Port of London Authority. No new permits are being issued at the moment due to over-subscription, though current permit holders can renew.
However there are tours organised by the Thames Explorer Trust.
***Psalm 103, v. 14-16

Images
‘Improved Westminster, 1911′ and Lambeth Palace, 1860’ from Millbank, 1860, courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library
**William Strudwick: photograph, *scanned by Leonard Bentley.
All other images © Patricia Stoughton