A Limehouse Ramble

Back in the days of Dickens, the area of east London—the fabled "East End"—was quite a place. Home to wave upon wave of immigrant communities and goods from all over the world that would make their landfall on the docks of the Thames, the East End acquired a rough and tumble reputation. It was the place of gangsters, hoodlums, cheap goods, and the beloved Cockney slang.

Well, so much at least Old Ken has picked up from reading the kind of ghoulish pot-boilers churned out by retro-Gothic novelists like Peter Ackroyd. But what of this low-lying sailor's haunt now? Is it still the place to go if you want a bit of the old swabbin' of the poop deck? Or, has London's recent receipt of the 2012 Olympics brought a face-lift or, to stick with our analogy, a proverbial anal bleaching to this blighted area?



Determined to find some answers for myself, I set out with my "peepers" peeled. While the completely unretouched photograph of a street sign as seen above may suggest something of my findings, traces of the old were absolutely still perceptible. Although the dismal series of housing projects and council estates that now clog the area are grim in a post-industrial sort of way, places like Bow Cemetery was truly creepy. Swamped as they now are with weeds and brambles, the tightly-packed Victorian graves appear to sink away into the boggy ground itself.



The massive St. Anne in Limehouse (seen in the two previous images above) stands as an eerie relic to these earlier times. No doubt once home to a substantial congregation who would have entered through the neo-Baroque facade and impressive leaded half dome as seen above, the church now feels extremely lonely in the huge urban yard it occupies. Although none of the much-touted "rats the size of cats" were on view this particular January evening, an impoverished and unsettling feeling certainly does remain palpable in the greater Limehouse-Bow area.



Yet, of course, Limehouse is just a hop-skip-and-a-jump from "little America"—the Thatcherite capitalist orgy that is Canary Wharf. Built up upon decayed docklands over the course of the past two decades, Canary Wharf is now home to London's tallest buildings, lots of international financial interests, and the gamut of American-style consumer opportunities. Chili's, sports bars, and food courts are all in the offing here—less than a geographical mile, but a world away, from the slums of the East End.



Thus, you can imagine my shock at the irony of seeing a bust of Lenin on display in a sandwich shop in one of the many Canary Wharf malls. No doubt his stewards in Moscow will have to do some re-adjustment of the great man's dusty corpse, as it must be turning and wriggling in horror at his head's display above the sandwich counters wherein bankers and capitalist financiers choose between tuna and sweet corn or mayonaise and crayfish sandwiches.



To make matters even more interesting, I had noted as a small sign on the door as I walked into the mall itself. Although it is a bit difficult to read on account of the camera's flash, the sign contains an slashed out iconism of a man in a hard hat and a printed legend reading "No site clothing." Translation: no (visibly) working-class people allowed. I should add that as Old Ken was taking these pictures, I was accosted by a security guard who informed me, in no uncertain terms, that it was not permitted to take pictures in the mall. While I will spare you the full substance of our subsequent discussion—our conversation on the basis and legitimacy of this rule, its relation to rights to free speech, etc.—I should let you know that this guard (Mike by name) did inform me of the reasoning behind the "no site clothing" policy. That is, in his words, "we have a lot of office people in here, and if we had them mixing with the workers ... well, it just wouldn't be nice." Changed priorities? Well, maybe not so much.