IN SNOW'S FIELDS, BERMONDSEY
The Temple from the Surrey Bank
HOLY TRINITY, ROTHERHITHE
Let us turn to another part of the map and inquire into Rotherhithe. It is curious that at one end we get Rotherhithe, the Place of Cattle; and at the other Lambeth or Lambhythe, if it be the 'Place of Lambs' and not the 'Place of Mud.' In 1834 the Commercial Docks are already there, but without prejudice to the ancient and venerable docks of the preceding century, Acorn Dock and Lavender Dock. A single street runs along the Embankment, which it hides and covers: at the back of this street there is a succession of small lanes and courts running back with tiny houses—two or four rooms to each—on either side, and ending generally in gardens of greenery—leaves and palings. You may still see, in 1898, if you are lucky, the bows and bowsprit of a ship in one of the old docks, sticking across the street, causing a momentary confusion in the mind between land and water; there are riverside taverns which look as if at a touch they would yield and slide into the mud below. In 1834 this street with these little lanes was the whole of Rotherhithe. Inland—or in-marsh—ponds and ditches and creeping streams lay about; one of the ponds survives to this day; you will find it in the middle of the pretty garden they call Southwark Park, of which it forms the ornamental water. And the rest of Rotherhithe, between the Park and Bermondsey, is one unbroken mass of streets with no green thing and no open space. All is filled up and built upon.
A little beyond Rotherhithe lies Deptford. On my map of 1834 I see a little town, lying partly on the bank of the Thames, partly on the bank of the Ravensbourne, which here widens out and forms Deptford Creek. The greater part of the area of Deptford is taken up by the Dockyard, not yet closed. As for the town, which now contains nearly 100,000 people, about five-and-twenty little streets sufficed for all its people; it boasted of two churches and two almshouses. One of these Havens of Rest was so picturesque and so beautiful that it could not be suffered to remain. Almshouses which are perfectly beautiful are only vouchsafed to man for a limited period, lest other buildings become intolerable. Their time expired, they are then carried off Heavenward.
Or turn your eyes further south. London in this direction now covers—for the most part completely, in some parts leaving spaces and fields here and there—Greenwich, Blackheath, Brockley, Peckham, Forest Hill, Dulwich, Brixton, Stockwell, Camberwell, Clapham, Balham, Wandsworth, Vauxhall, and Penge, and many others.