My copy of ‘Nairn’s London’ is falling to bits. When I bought it in 1966 (price 8/6d) it was the brave new world but now its a historical document. One of the reasons it’s so tatty is Nairn’s description of the Riverside path “unknown and unnamed .. the best Thamesside walk in London” I guess it was originally just a walk along the river wall - and we have no idea how old that is .
In 1867 the Court of Queen’s Bench heard that it was there at the time of Norman Conquest and for all they knew it was Roman. The public have walked it ever since but now no longer on the river edge because of need for a cycle path and ‘health and safety’.
The oldest pictures which I know of which show people on the path are two of the 17th century gunpowder works (on the site of Enderbys). In them people are taking the dog for a walk, sketching, chatting .. or just, well, walking.
Last year the Enderby Group did a footfall survey on the path – and things haven’t really changed, except for the bicycles. Nairn describes the path starting at the Blackwall Tunnel’s ‘pretty art nouveau gatehouse’ down a passage alongside the Delta Metal Company “which zigs and it zags and it doesn’t give up and eventually comes out at the river”. I remember that passage well . When I worked at Delta Metal in 1970 the path there was modernised and paved, but totally isolated from the rest.
He talks about the path taking “exciting forms...between walls ... under cranes ...nipping round the back of a boatyard’. Much of that stretch was straightened out in the 1980s. “A continuous flirtation with the slow moving river choked with working boats”. (if only!)
The right of way on this whole stretch was taken to the Court of Queens Bench by Greenwich Vestry in 1867 in a case against the shipbuilders, Maudslay Son and Field who had blocked the path. They were on the site we now call Bay Wharf where they built CThey were on the site we now call Bay Wharf where they built Cutty Sark’s two sisters, Hallowe'en and Blackadder. The case had huge public support with the gallery crowded with local people shouting and clapping. Mr. Soames whose soap works was on the site of the later sugar refinery said that companies would go out of business if the public could walk along the riverside past them. The Court and Lord Chief Justice Cockburn didn’t agree and declared in favour of the right of way. It is the same stretch which Greenwich Council went to court in the 1990s when the then occupants blocked it and the right of way was declared again.
North of this in 1868 Lewis and Stockwell Shipbuilders built a large a dry dock (where the hotel is now) and this interrupted the river path. I don't know how this was resolved by the Vestry who thought it was ‘not a good idea to give up these old rights in a hurry’ but thought new employment opportunities were important. (Nothing changes, it really doesn’t).
When the Gas Works was built in the 1890s the riverside path was closed right round its site. Following an enquiry in the House of Lords Ordinance Draw Dock was built by the gas company as compensation.
I hope Greenwich residents visit the draw dock which is still a right of way despite scary notices from the people in the Dome and the hotel.
As for Nairn he got to the “final exciting stretch past Greenwich Power station and another good Riverside pub , The Yacht”. Then he says “God preserve it from the prettifiers” and, in a footnote “’They’ are trying to close. Walking it as you would a country path., till they are sick to the guts”
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