‘The reality was a bleak, windswept landscape with litter in the water’ of shopping facilities and banks, with only a small number of corner shop-sized outlets initially being built in nearby Tavy Bridge. In fact, the only sign of life that Umbrella currently finds is the Lakeside Tavern which, happily serves us liquid refreshment. Truth be told, the regulars probably have us down as sneering movie-buffs; our well polished brogues and conspicuous cameras betray us as inner-city tourists on a day out, despite our best attempts to fit in by scowling a bit. Recently, Thamesmead has been back in the news for the wrong reasons. Dubbed by the BBC as “the fraud capital of the UK”, the Fraud Prevention Service revealed that they had identified an entire street in the town where there was evidence of people being involved in illegal activity at every address. Incidences
of West African fraudsters were so high that the area has become known as ‘Little Lagos’. As Umbrella takes refuge from the weather in the Lakeside Tavern’s sheltered concrete garden we admire the high rise blocks across the water (a recent dredging of the lake revealed 21 dumped vehicles) wondering whether it rains as much as this in Nigeria – and what exactly it was that sent Thamesmead into such terminal decline. The consensus is that the failure of this ambitious urban plan can be traced back misplaced optimism of its original creators. The sad truth is that not everyone behaves like an architect. Where they foresaw a futuristic, interconnected complex, the reality was dark, threatening alleys where muggers lurked. Where they foresaw families playing happily by the waterside, the reality was a bleak and windswept landscape where flurries of litter collected in heaps on the water. Thamesmead’s fate was sealed following the abolition of the GLC (the Greater London Council) in 1986, when the estate’s ownership transferred to a trust company and the founders’ wishful vision of a revolutionary project was abandoned in favour of tradit ional British suburban house-building.
www.umbrellamagazine.co.uk
The designers’ plans were fatally compromised. Instead of the town of the future we ended up with a regular scruffy estate – with bonus grimy lake thrown in for good measure. Concrete, when moulded into bold modernist architecture can often look beautiful in the sun-drenched climates of southern Europe or California, but on the drizzly reclaimed marshland of outer London, it paints a dreary picture. The people here deserve better – and with the Residents’ Association and Youth Awareness Programme working hard to improve the place, that day will hopefully come. The man behind the bar confirms our suspicions that we look like day-tripping movie-buffs. “Clockwork Orange fans, are you?” he enquires. As we finish our final round of drinks we agree that Thamesmead has come to be defined by Kubrick’s film, the reality now inseparable from the director’s vision of a bleak urban future. It stands as testament to the failed dreams of post-war urban planners, and somehow it seems fitting that the setting for Kubrick’s story about the permanence of evil should end up unable to shake the smear of his dystopian vision. Life imitating art? We’ll, sadly, drink to that.
pictures: © matt reynolds
34 Field trip