Sumara of Weymouth

19th July 2026

Reading Time: 20 minutes

I recently organized a short walk alongside the Thames for members of the Arctic Club. It was a wet day with an amber weather warning for thunderstorms. We stopped at various places where I endeavored to find as many Arctic links as possible, some of which were rather tenuous. I couldn’t resist throwing in the odd non-Arctic “facts” too. The following blog is based roughly on my notes but with the advantage of being able to add pictures. I hope you enjoy the walk without needing to get so wet!

Stop Number One – Dragon on a Plinth, South Downstream Side of London Bridge

This was where we met up at exactly 10:00. A very punctual crew!

We would be walking from the City of London’s Dragon, through old Surrey into old Kent and finally into the Eastern hemisphere. A true expedition, all in only 5 1/2 miles!

Fishmongers Hall is on the upstream side of the bridge. It was Lorraine who reminded me about the horrific narwhal incident. Darryn Frost tore a narwhal tusk off the wall of the Fishmongers Hall to fend off Usman Khan who had just fatally stabbed two Cambridge University students on 29 November 2019. Khan was finally shot dead by armed police officers. Mr Frost was among five members of the public to be given civilian gallantry awards for their response to the attack, despite the high risk because Khan appeared to be wearing a suicide belt.

Traffic congestion on London Bridge in 18th century led to a law being passed to make all traffic on the bridge keep to the left hand side in order to reduce collisions. This rule was incorporated into the Highway Act of 1835 and was adopted throughout the British Empire. That is why we drive on the left!

If you arrive by train, you may notice the railway arches at London Bridge Station. It is the longest run of arches in Britain. It is also one of the oldest railway viaducts in the world, and the earliest example of an entirely elevated railway line. The first mile of these arches is now called the Bermondsey Beer Mile due to the number of small breweries. If the Thames Clipper boats are full, travelling back on this line may be an option.

Sticking with the Greenwich to London railway, it has a very interesting Arctic connection. John Ross had a steam engine fitted to the Victory in 1829. It was a shallow draft paddle ship that he was going to use on his second attempt to find the North West Passage. The engine was incredibly unreliable and by the time they reached Scotland it had all but seized up. He tossed the boilers overboard. 16 years later Franklin also wanted steam power for his expedition to find the North West Passage, but to ensure he had a reliable engine he bought a train from the Greenwich Railway Company in 1845 and fitted it transversely across the Erebus!

The 15 ton engine drove a 32 ft shaft to a whopping 7 foot diameter propeller. The engine was just 25 horsepower. The original Mini Minor car had a 34 hp engine!

We walked down the steps to the riverside.

Stop Number Two – Down by the Riverside under Number 1 London Bridge

Opposite on the north bank lies Billingsgate Fish Market. In the 19^th century it was the world’s largest fish market. There has been a fish market there since Roman times. George Orwell and the Kray Twins worked there. I used to buy fish there on my way to work. It is now an events centre. If you want an Arctic connection, then Billingsgate Market is probably the only place in London where you can buy Arctic char. The fish you is now farmed in the UK in a much-admired setup in Dorset.

Also directly across the river is the Monument which was designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke who both also designed the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Hooke invented the microscope, introduced Hookes Law of Elasticity in 1660 and developed the concept of Polar Wandering on an Oblate Spheroid Earth.

We continued along the Thames Path

Stop Number Three – HMS Belfast

The Belfast spent 18 months supporting the Arctic Convoys supplying food to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. Although the threat of German warships was ever present, the biggest battle was the Arctic weather. The ship is currently painted in disruptive camouflage.

We continued along the Thames Path past Tower Bridge – which happened to open as we passed

Stop Number Four – Corner of Shad Thames and Horselydown Lane

A narrow flight of stairs leads down to the river with fine view of Tower Bridge. The stairs can be seen to the right of this picture.

South of the river used to be occupied by all the dirty industries serving the City. Tanning, vinegar making (Sarsons), biscuit making (Peek Freans), printing and brewing. Bermondsey was once called Biscuit Town. Peek Freans at one point employed 3,500 people.

The locals were also such good printers that at one point it was rumoured that at least half the currency in Bermondsey was locally produced.

We are standing on the site of the old Courage Brewery.

Courage Brewery was founded in 1787 when John Courage bought the Anchor Brewery for £615 13s.11d. He died at the age of 36. The brewery here stopped brewing in 1981 and was converted into flats (same old story). Their famous slogan “Take Courage” had a spat with the Advertising Standards Authority who decided drinking beer didn’t provide courage, a very debatable point. Courage changed its slogan to “It’s what your right arm is for”. Google told me that Courage brewed a special “Arctic” ale but further investigation to find an image shows that the famous Arctic Ale was in fact brewed by Samuel Allsopp & Sons. It was described as a dark amber beer with a complex aroma of chocolate, cocoa, and rich fruit. Allsopp’s Arctic Ale was specifically brewed for and supplied to several Arctic expeditions, including those led by Sir Edward Belcher (1852-54), Sir Leopold McClintock (1857), and Sir George Nares (1875). It was considered a “life-sustaining ale” and a valuable antiscorbutic (scurvy-preventer). It was 11% ABV to prevent it from freezing and bottled in quarts – no wonder they never found Franklin!

Just a mile or so south of here the tin can was invented by Byan Donkin. In 1813, the Admiralty purchased 156 lb of Donkin’s tinned food for feeding to sick sailors. The following year, Donkin’s business took off and an order was placed for 2,939 lb of canned food. By 1821 they were supplying the Admiralty with 9,000 lb of tinned food. As the can opener wasn’t invented until 1855, the cans were opened with axes!  

The tainted tinned food that was suspected of poisoning members of the Franklin expedition was not supplied by Donkin. To save money the Admiralty found a cheaper source.

Donkin also worked with Marc Isambard Brunel, but more of that later

We continued along the Thames Path

Stop Number Five – By the Barges Opposite St Katharine Docks

We have just walked over St Saviour’s Dock which marks the start of Jacobs Island being Charles Dickens notorious slum area. Now it is rather posh!

St Katharine Docks which can be seen opposite here opened in 1828. The ship Quest was provisioned there prior to the British Arctic Air Route Expedition in 1930. My old shop Arthur Beale supplied that expedition with ropes.

During the period when I owned Arthur Beale, we also supplied boats waiting in St Kats before heading to the Arctic including several Arctic Club Members.

Continue along the Thames Path

Stop Number Six – The East End of Chambers Street

Chambers Wharf stopped being used as a cold store in the 1980s and was briefly used to store gold bullion & documents. The walls were lined in massively thick cork. I once saw bullion being loaded into the warehouse on fork lift trucks very early one morning. Next to Chambers Wharf were several smaller warehouses. One had an infinity cove which was used for car photography. The other was my first scenic studio for making mainly theatre and opera scenery. I spent many years working here but I mustn’t waffle on about that – moving on along the Thames Path

Stop Number Seven – By the squiffy house just past the Angel Pub

A unique riverside property called “The Leaning Tower of Rotherhithe” is often mentioned in connection with Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon. It’s rumoured they may have hosted parties there and that Lord Snowdon may have even lent the space to others, like Noel Coward and John Betjeman. However, the rumours really concerned another nearby property (thought to be number 49) because I believe Braithwaite and Dean were headquartered in the leaning house until 1980. Here lies a tenuous Arctic connection. Braithwaite and Dean were a lighter and tug company and one of their jobs was to take grain up to a distilling company in Wandsworth called John Watneys (not to be confused with the awful brewer of Watneys Red Barrel). In 1923 Booths distillers acquired a majority interest in the distilling business of John Watney Ltd of Wandsworth. In those days the alcohol was made from real grain. My father worked at the distillers. It was of course, Felix Booth who in 1829 paid £10,000 for the slightly disgraced John Ross to have a second chance to explore the Arctic coastline in search of the North West Passage. John Ross named the Boothia Peninsular after his sponsor.

We continue along the Thames Path

Stop Number Eight – Near the Mayflower Pub

The Brunels. Just to cause confusion there were two Brunels with similar names. Father Marc Isambard Brunel and son Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It was the father who was responsible for the Rotherhithe tunnel – now part of the “Overground” train system.

French born Marc Brunel moved to London from New York in 1799. He married Sophia Kingdom, mother to Isambard Kingdom Brunel. During this period the Royal Navy unbelievably needed 100,000 pulley blocks each year and Marc Brunel invented a machine to make them. The navy never paid him and so he spent 88 days in a debtor’s prison with his wife. After their release, he began work on the Thames tunnel in 1825 helped by his 18 year old son and a local engineer called Bryan Donkin, the tin can man! More of his son later.

St Mary’s Church. The communion table and two bishops chairs were made from timber from HMS Temeraire which was towed to Deptford for breaking up as depicted by Turner’s famous painting. The Captain of the Mayflower ship is buried here as is Prince Lee Boo “The Black Prince” who apparently charmed society with his intelligence and poise.

We continue along the Thames Path

Stop Number Nine – The Red Bridge by the Salt Quay Pub

The official Thames Path continues around the peninsular but it is largely alongside new and rather boring housing so we decided to take a short cut through the old docklands. They have now been largely filled in to make a rather fine woodland walk.

You could decide to stick by the Thames Path along the river but if you want to follow our route you will need to head around Surrey Basin and walk directly to Stave Hill.

From the red bridge the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station can be seen over the river. Originally steam powered, it provided clean hydraulic power to much of London’s heavy machinery including the revolving stage at the Palladium and the Coliseum, plus several theatre iron safety curtains. It also supplied many locks and lifting bridges (including a back-up to Tower Bridge).

Grimsby’s Hydraulic Tower, built in 1852, is 309 feet high but even during the build Armstrong, the engineer, had developed a superior system using weighted accumulators which reduced the need for such a high tower. The 309 foot tall Grimsby Dock Tower was obsolete on completion. The new accumulator system explains why the Wapping Tower is comparatively low at just 66 feet. We will pass some of the gear that would have been powered from this weor similar stations including an ingenious Jigger Ram.

Stop Number Ten – Stave Hill

We are now in the borough of Rotherhithe standing on top of an artificial hill known as Stave Hill. It has a rather splendid bronze map showing the area when the docks still existed.

Over 100 ships were built in the Rotherhithe Shipyards for the three centuries before they closed down in the late 1800’s. Perhaps the most famous was HMS Carcass, built by Stanton and Wells as a bomb vessel. Because of its strength it was converted for Arctic use (like the Erebus and Terror). This ship took the 14 year old Horatio Nelson as a midshipman to the Arctic. Here he was confronted by a polar bear as he attempted to get a bear skin.

The scene was made famous by a painting by Richard Westall which is in the National Maritime Museum

Stop Number Eleven – By the Jigger Ram alongside Greenland Dock

Greenland Dock, as it is now called, is an extended version of London’s first ever dock called the Howland Wet Dock.

The ten-acre Howland Wet Dock at Rotherhithe opened in 1700 for the safe laying up and repairing of ships, particularly those of the East India Company. Due to the whaling industry, during the 1740s the dock gradually became known as the Greenland Dock, the name it still retains today. The South Sea Company constructed coppers for the boiling of blubber to produce oil in a building on the south side of the dock. The building also had tanks for the storage of oil and cellars for baleen. For about a hundred years, from the early 18th century, London was a leading whaling port. Perhaps ten thousand whales and very large numbers of seals were killed and brought back to London during that time. Just a bit further downstream, Enderby had at least 12 whaling ships. Enderby Land in Antarctica was named after Enderby Brothers of London.

We are now standing next to a Jigger Ram which would have operated from mains hydraulic power from one of the hydraulic towers. The Jigger Ram is a very clever device to convert a push/pull ram into a rotating motion to operate winches etc. They are sometimes used to power theatre scenery and in particular opera scenery because they are completely silent.

Just to the east of us there is an indentation now used as a slipway for the water sports centre. Originally it was the start of the Surrey Canal which led lighters loaded with timber (deal) as far as Peckham. There are numerous remnants of the canal still existing but the actual canal fell into disrepair around 1940’s and was filled in in the 1960’s.

After the demise of the whaling industry the Surrey Docks became used primarily for the timber trade. 80% of London’s timber came through these docks. You may notice many road names in the area have Russian and Scandinavian connections. Although the Swedish Church is no longer nearby, there is still a thriving Finnish and Norwegian Church in Rotherhithe and on Norway Day (16th May) hundreds of Norwegians celebrate in Southwark Park.

Nowadays part of the dock has moorings for houseboats and the rest is used for open water swimming and dinghy sailing.

There was once a renowned floating pub here called The Wibbly Wobbly. It was owned by the comedian Malcolm Hardee who unfortunately drowned whilst rowing back to his houseboat.

Stop Number Twelve – Rope Street

As I live halfway along the route it was a good place for coffee and..er..icecream. The early weather forecasts were warning of very hot conditions so I stocked up with ice cream. As it happened is was cold and wet but we ate the ice creams nevertheless. If you are doing the walk and want a half-way break, the nearby Surrey Docks Farm has a cafe, or the Plough Way Deli is very good.

We continued over the lock gates to follow the Thames Path. The lock gates allow yachts to enter South Dock Marina although very sadly this marina has now been designated 100% residential. Some visiting yachts can still sometimes find a berth. I once sailed from here non-stop over 1,000 nautical miles to the Lofoten Islands in my 26 foot wooden boat. Not sure I would try that trick again!

Stop Number Thirteen – The Boundary Stone

From here we are about to enter a very important old ship building area – The Deptford Royal Docks.

Deptford Royal Docks was founded by Henry V111 in 1513 although they had been building ships here since at least 1420. The King’s Yard became one of the most important shipbuilding yards in the world before finally closing in 1869.

The victualing yards held, amongst other provisions, up to 32,000 gallons of rum. The yards were the largest food-processing operation in Britain, if not in Europe. By 1830 they covered 20 acres. Old maps show about 6 railway lines coming right down to the river. It was a massive operation.

We continue along the Thames Path which is diverted inshore to avoid the now disused Convoys Wharf. Convoys Wharf used to import paper for the large newspaper printing works at Canada Water – now also closed.

Stop Number Fourteen – The Mulberry Tree in Sayes Court Park

Because of the world wide reputation of the Royal Dockyard, Peter the Great came to Deptford in 1698 to learn how to build war ships. Although he came incognito his entourage included 3 Interpreters, 2 Clocksmiths, a Cook, 4 dwarfs, 70 Soldiers, and a monkey. The sheer fact that he was 6 foot 8 inches tall would have been enough to blow his cover! He rented John Evelyn’s house with its famous gardens and trashed the place. He reportedly used oil paintings for target practice and had wheel barrow races through the flower beds. Hence my suspicion that he actually planted the mulberry bush. When he returned to Russia he personally built Russia’s first naval fleet.

Grinling Gibbons, the renowned wood carver, rented a cottage in these gardens.

Stop Number Fifteen – The Master Shipwright’s House

The Master Shipwright’s House and Office (on the left of this painting) is one of the few remaining parts of Deptford’s former royal dockyard. The original house was built in 1513 but a new house was built in 1708 and has been remodelled over time. It is frequently opened to the public during London’s Open House days.

The Lenox Project is a plan to build a replica ship alongside the Shipwrights House where the original Lenox was built.

We continue following the Thames Path

Stop Number Sixteen – The Ahoy Centre

The Ahoy Centre was set up to provide exciting sailing opportunities for the Deptford youth.

Opposite here, on the north bank, is the site of the launch of the Great Eastern by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1858. It was by far the largest ship ever built, able to carry 4,000 passengers. Brunel knew the ship as The Great Babe which doesn’t sound very woke. It was to be the largest object ever moved by humans but the launch didn’t go well. The attempt to launch sideways failed and two men were killed. It was successfully launched three months later.

We continued past the weird statue to Peter the Great over Deptford Creek, past the Cutty Sark to…

Final Stop Number Seventeen – Bellot Memorial

Joseph Rene Bellot. In 1851 he joined the search for Franklin on board the ketch Prince Albert under the command of Captain William Kennedy. To harden himself to the hard winter conditions, he slept with only a thin mattress. He once made an artificial leg for an Inuit man which endeared him to the locals. Bellot made a 1,500 km trek through the Arctic and was promoted to Lieutenant in 1852 when he joined Captain Inglefield. His intelligence and devotion to duty won him wide admiration. Sadly he disappeared between an opening in the ice in Wellington Channel at the age of 27. The Bellot Straight separates the Boothia peninsular (named after Felix Booth) from Somerset Island. It is rare for the British to erect a statue in memory of a Frenchman but Bellot is a deserved exception!

There is also a road in Greenwich and a crater on the moon named after him.

We ended our walk here and went to Heaps Sausages for some lunch. Afterwards we headed to the Polar Gallery in the National Maritime Museum before returning to London Bridge by the high speed Thames Clipper.

I forgot to take any photos during the rainy walk so I have added these afterwards. My real camera is on my boat so I will gradually improve them whenever I get a chance

I hope you enjoy the walk.