Olympic Park wetlands
April 23, 2016The Olympic Park reed beds in spectacular winter colour along the ‘wetlands’ stretch of the River Lea.
The Olympic Park reed beds in spectacular winter colour along the ‘wetlands’ stretch of the River Lea.
I am working on a set of new photographs about the progress of the Leaway, a landscape project to open up a continuous walking route along the River Lea valley from the Olympic Park to the Thames.
This derelict bridge crosses Bow Creek and once linked to a section of the Limmo Peninsular, now the Bow Creek Ecology Park. Ordnance Survey maps from the nineteenth century suggest that the bridge may have been a crossing point for the Great Eastern railway to a stabling yard that was near the current location of East India DLR station.
I recently completed a set of photographs of ‘Lock Keepers’, three residential blocks on the former Sun Flour Mills site in Bromley by Bow and now a Peabody development.
Looking back through photographs made last summer I was reminded again of the mixed fortunes of council housing schemes. Golden Lane is a Corporation of London post-war estate near Barbican with well-designed homes and thoughtful external spaces. It now typifies the best council housing of that era and the blocks have been sympathetically maintained over the years. What a shame that the same can’t be said of Robin Hood Gardens in Poplar which, though built a decade later, is now due for demolition as part of the Blackwall Reach regeneration scheme.