This was written as one of the poems at the memorable Illuminate Rotherhithe festival in 2023
Poem -In praise of Rotherhithe . .
Rotherhithe, Rotherhithe let us now praise
The tidal history of your glory days
The way you have changed it will never fade
From making ships to breaking them as trade
Was forced to follow fierce global trends
On which prosperity so oft depends.
Yards and wharves which so proudly presided
In those halcyon days have now subsided.
Just see how those wharves have turned with the tide
Now the docks of old have been beautified
And bijou residencies do line the shore
While history slumbers and prices soar.
But the past still glows in this hall of fame
There’s a whiff of history in each street name.
Dwell on these words as you now take a walk
Think what they’d say if they could only talk:
Hardy Close, Baltic Court, Timber Pond
And all the routes of memory fond,
Brunel, Jamaica and Surrey Quays
Names flow from the tongue with tidal ease.
Neptune, Rope and Temeraire streets
Mere words that recall great maritime feats,
Norway Gate, Shipwright Road, Helsinki Square,
An emporium of nations thus laid bare
Whose migrants built churches still proudly there
Where folk of all faiths can come to pray
In the Finland church as well as Norway
While Russia Dock, Odessa, and Baltic Quay
Came with shanty tales from across the sea
And Iceland Wharf where the stench of blubber
Would fill the nose of any landlubber.
Go now from Isambard Place to Brunel Road
To the sub Thames tunnel that Brunel bestowed
On a grateful nation when first unfurled
The first of its kind in all the wide world
And trains from Rotherhithe are still stopping
Through that same tunnel at gentrified Wapping.
Rotherhithe creates a dream-like friction
So quick it can morph from fact to fiction.
Where else as imagination unravels
Could Gulliver have started his famous travels
Or Thames-ditched corpses meet a morbid end
As Dickens described in Our Mutual Friend.
This town adjusts with fiery passion
To the shifting whims of global fashion
But always knows if one is being frank
There is one above all it needs to thank.
It is Father Thames, that benign giver
Who turned the town with its passing river
Into a source of wealth soon to provide
Much needed jobs, houses and civic pride.
This bend in the river spawned England’s power
When Christopher Jones steered the Mayflower
Across the wild and turbulent Atlantic
To help found an empire from seeds Britannic.
But, did it also witness the Empire’s end
When two centuries later around Redriff’s bend
The Temeraire was pulled by tugs to be broken
The sunset of power though words were unspoken
It had brought riches and squalor in equal weight
Two sides of Empire that made Britain great
Yet during those years there were glory days
Stories of Rotherhithe never cease to amaze
Which is why we are singing this song in your praise.
