Sold down the river
The Thames Gateway is a place of rich history and eerie beauty. But
120,000 homes are being plonked down on it as if it were a cultureless
wasteland, says Tristram Hunt
Monday June 18, 2007
The Guardian
A journey east along the A13 is not an uplifting experience. Passing
outer London's lorry depots, storage units, and defunct factories, all
the detritus of late-20th-century, post-industrial urban life is laid
before you. The vast carcass of Dagenham's mothballed Ford motor plant
is a particularly sorry sight.
But once you skirt the retail jungle of Lakeside Thurrock, a sharp turn
south brings you to a hidden gem of English history. Marooned between a
power station and cruise terminal, Tilbury Fort is an icon of our island
story. First laid out by Henry VIII and then redesigned by Charles II
(in whose honour the sumptuous Water Gate entry was designed), this is
the spot where Elizabeth I rallied her troops to resist the Spanish
Armada in 1588...
And what a past it is. The bones of monkeys, bears, elephants and
hippopotamuses have been found on Mersea Island. There are Roman
earthenware pots, Romano-British burial chambers, and evidence of the
Viking raids along the Essex coast.
....
Last year, in a lecture at the Museum of Docklands, the historian
Patrick Wright noted how the Thames's "upstream admirers", so inspired
by Eton, Cliveden, Westminster and Greenwich, are filled with unease at
the thought of what lies downstream. "Glancing east, in the direction of
the estuary, the upstream chroniclers see profuse indications of
working-class labour and habitation. Beyond the sprawl, they sense an
unvisited world of malarial marshes and industrial debris: a place of
ruined explosive factories, isolation hospitals, prisons, oil refineries
and rubbish dumps; and a notable absence of good manners, prosperity and
aesthetics too ...
"Since it fails to conform to upstream ideas of natural beauty and
architectural significance," Wright continued, "the entire area can
easily be mistaken for wasteland - a vast 'brownfield' site, in which
any form of development can only be counted an improvement."
What both the helicopter and the upstream tendencies ignore, of course,
is the voracious heritage that lingers east of the Royal Observatory. If
the Gateway development is going to be a success, the planners need to
get out of their helicopters and embrace, rather than obliterate, it.
cont'd....
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/heritage/story/0,,2105571,00.html