…/The which on Themmes brode aged backe doe ryde.. Thamesmead. Wonder what Spenser would have made of it, and what his Sweet Themmes makes of it still. Full of promise it was, back in the 60s when it was first conceived. A glittering new metropolis full of affordable housing. The blueprint for brownfield development run on green principles.
Didn’t quite work out that way, unfortunately. The waterside town is perhaps most famous for its role in Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange. The town’s numbers didn’t swell in the way it had been hoped. And today comes news of depopulation of a kind. One of the luxury developments at Thamesmead (not actually two words we’d ever thought we’d use in juxtaposition) sits largely empty, an early victim of the credit crunch. Many of the flats have been repossessed, and to add insult to injury the tenants that remain complain of cockroaches. Talk about ‘fruitlesse stay’ and ‘expectation vayne’.
Still if you want to get on the property ladder and you fancy a well-appointed, art of the state, waterside pad, now may be your best chance - 2 bedrooms will set you back £105,000.
Idyllic Thamesmead scene from doilum’s Londonist flickr stream.
