Boo

Didja miss me?
OK I know that  have broken the chain of bloggs by not posting for almost the last week.
I had problems with the internet connection while The Man and I were away so not posting   
during that week is excusable, but ..well...um...there's no excuse for not posting after we got back.
we had a fabulous time and I will tell you about it but not tonight.
I have lots of pictures to sort through and edit so be patient.
We met some great people on the trip, so if you are reading this Houston Girls Him and me say hello.
This morning on my way to Starbucks for my regular morning coffee and skype with the kids I saw a well dressed chap in a suit, large camera slung around his neck, was walking hand in hand with a santa dressed toddler. He was heading in the direction of the santa grotto. I couldn't resist stopping him and saying, 'your santa has a way to grow yet'. we both had a laugh.
 

A bit of this and that...

Canary Wharf is looking pretty Christmassy. The decorated trees are sparkling  and the stores have shaken out all their boxes of deckies  and decked their windows with tinsel and trees. All it needs now is the Santa grotto and some snow.

Talking about the white stuff it certainly feels cold enough for it fingers crossed. The first year we were here it snowed on December first.

The man and I have a ‘train friend’ a chap we met more than a year ago now who has become our travelling buddy between Crystal palace and Canada Water. He’s quite excited a the moment and we are too for him. He’s been looking for a new job for quite a long time. Yesterday he had a very promising interview for a post in China. Well why not he’s single, fancy free and loves China. We’ve got our fingers crossed for him.

Change is on the cards for one of our family too, he’s in his final few day in New Zealand. Son he will be winging it to say a goodbye to his best mate who lives in Oz and then boarding a longer flight bound for our side of the world. We’ll be looking forward to seeing him again, but not as much as a certain lady who live further north.

The long way home...

Phew that was a long week.

The man and I have a bit of a r routine for Fridays after he meets me at work.

And that is going for a Starbucks coffee and cake before heading to the station.

So this evening right on cue there we were at Buckys. After spending bit of time people watching we noticed that thee seemed to be more people than usual heading back up the escalator towards the DLR.  We found out when we tried to go to eh train station that there were sever delay  on the Jubilee line, in fact when we got near the station they were closing the gates. 

The route to the other DLR station took us past the entrance to the canary Wharf station and there was a huge crowd at the very top of the escalators so no one was even getting down onto the ticket lobby. So plan B. Off we went to the other DLR and managed to get on a packed train heading towards Bank Station. Then we remembered that we can catch the overground from Shadwell so we got off there and within a few minutes were on our way towards Annerly. From there it was a short wait for a 329 bus which takes us to a stop on our street within 50 metres of our building.

OK so it took us nearly double the amount of time to get back, but the company was good.

Spooky Story

The Laughing Ghost of Limehouse by isleofdogslife

Limehouse - St Anne's Church

As a treat for Halloween I have trawled the local history files for tales of the unexpected, Firstly we have a report from a local newspaper of 1827, where a couple in Limehouse are being visited by a ghost with a unusual  sense of humour.

The neighbourhood of Limehouse, like the Highlands, in the good old days of the bogles, has, it seems, been haunted for, some months back, by a most refractory and incorrigible phantom. The facts of this afflicting visitation are simply these:---A Mr. and Mrs. Dickenson took a small house, in October last, at the upper end of Church-street ; but scarcely had they passed the first half of the first night in it, when a sort of a loud chuckling laugh (the very sound which,if you could fancy a grasshopper intoxicated, he would no doubt make,) was heard, proceeding as it seemed from the bedroom  closet. Now, it so happened, that the bedroom of this worthy couple had no closet, whereupon being puzzled to account for the phenomenon they very naturally explored the whole house from top to bottom. Still no explanation was afforded.

The next night, at the same hour, the same fat chuckling laugh was heard, and as it appeared close to Mr.Dickenson's ear, that much injured individual jumped up, and throwing his inexpressibles indignantly, but with a due regard to decorum, around him, he rushed again into the adjoining, room, where, however, nothing was found that could at all throw light upon the mystery. Meantime, the confounded cachinnations continued, first threeshort, broken winded laughs, then a halt, then a long asthmatic ululation, the whole wound up by a solemn midnight stillness.

The affair now became truly distressing. To think that an attached couple, when absorbed in those chaste connubial endearments on which all married folks set so high a value— to think, we repeat, that an amiable pair thus engaged should be interrupted by the villainous laughter of a ghost; 'the   bare idea is revolting, and fully justified Mr. Dickenson- in his application to the parochial authorities. 'This he did 'on the third night, but alas! what can a beadle, or even a parish clerk avail against the evil one? Every night, albeit a brace of undaunted constables kept watch in Mr. Dickenson 's   apartment, the cacophonious interruption continued till the whole set were fairly laughed to scorn. This was some weeks back, but the noises, we should observe, are heard up to the present time, though, as they have appeared more asthmatic of late, it is to be hoped that their fiendship owner may one night break his wind and die. Meanwhile, the house, like Ossian's dwelling of Moina (only infinitely more touching), is desolate, for Mr: and Mrs. Dickenson have evaporated, and no one has since, been, found at all desirous of being laughed into fits every night, by an ungentlemanly  good-for-nothing goblin. Here the affair rests at present.

Not sure I know what they mean by  "throwing his inexpressibles indignantly," and "absorbed in those chaste connubial endearments" but altogether a sad sorry tale of  ghostly manic laughing.

Coldharbour...

I’d like to share this story about the Isle of Dogs

Charles Napier Hemy, R.A., R.W.S. (1841-1917) Cold Harbour, Blackwall 1896

Coldharbour in Blackwall is one of the most unusual streets in Docklands, it was once part of the old Blackwall that followed the river until it reached Trinity Buoy Wharf.

However the construction of the West India Docks and the City Canal in the early years of the 19th Century effectively cut off Coldharbour from the rest of Blackwall.

There has been buildings on the site since the 17th Century, but two of the better known is the Gun public house which still exists and another tavern called the Fishing Smack which has been demolished but had a curious history.

There had been a tavern on the site since the 1760s, firstly called the Fisherman’s Arms before changing its name in the early 19th Century to the Fishing Smack. We know it was called the Fishing Smack in 1808 due to the following report in The Gentleman’s Magazine

As a young woman, a servant in the Fishing-Smack public-house, Cold Harbour, Blackw’all, was standing on the steps leading to the River, she was so much alarmed by a flash of lightning , that she fell in the river and was unfortunately drowned.

The change of name probably reflected the arrival of Fishing Smacks from Great Yarmouth who frequented this spot when selling their catches in London. This trade and the area was known to Charles Dickens who had written about the other Taverns in Blackwall such as the Artichoke and Plough that were known for their Whitebait dinners. Although Dickens did not write directly about the Fishing Smack, he did use characters in his books that could have had their origins in this  area.

George Haw recalls walking around this area in 1907 with well known local MP Will Crooks and having the following conversation with some old characters that used to work this stretch of the river.

“Ah!” exclaimed the other, fetching a sigh; “but don’t you remember that old Yarmouth fisherman who used to bring his smack round here from the Roads and sell herrings out of it on this very Causeway?”

“Remember! What do you think? That was the old man who would never keep farthings. In the evening, when he’d got a handful in the course of the day’s trade, he would pitch them in the river for the boys to find.”

“Likely enough,” interposed Crooks. “I mudlarked about here myself as a lad.”

The eldest of the ancient watermen would have it that this old boy from Yarmouth was the original of Mr. Peggotty, and that it was at Blackwall Dickens first made his acquaintance. He said he had often seen Dickens himself about those parts.

We ventured a doubt.

“Why, bless my life!” he cried; “ain’t I talked to him at the Causeway here many a time?”

This, of course, was unanswerable, so we asked what Dickens did when there.

The ancient waterman thought a moment.

“What did Dickens do?” he ruminated. “Now, let me see. What did Dickens do? I know: Dickens used to go afloat!”

The other declared that Dickens did more than that: he would often go into the fishing-smack.

We immediately assumed that it was the fishing-smack of the old Yarmouth salt that was meant. We were wrong. It was another “Fishing Smack,” one of the quaint old taverns by the river still standing in Coldharbour.

Mr Peggotty of course was a character from David Copperfield  and it was not impossible  that Dickens could have met some of the old Yarmouth fisherman at this very spot.

Although the old tavern was rebuilt with a frontage onto Coldharbour in the  early 20th Century, it did not regain its glory days and was eventually demolished after the Second World War.

And that leaves us with a mystery for although Coldharbour  has escaped much of the recent developments of the Docklands, there has been modern developments.

However standing at Number 9 Coldharbour  is a line  of brown shiny bricks that seem strangely out of place with the well attended houses nearby.

This line of bricks is the last remains of the Fishing Smack tavern , but why is it still there ? A local writer recalls being told that the last owner of the pub sold the land but demanded that a small part of the old pub must remain.

Whether this is true or not, nearly 70 years later we still have a strange small reminder of the historic tavern.

Historic Coldharbour

 

All that remains of it today