Streets of London : A busy thoroughfare, the Thames

Already, my favourite part of our little apartment is the dining alcove window that looks down on to our narrow street lined with similar homes. Life from the window is constantly interesting. Two Polish builders arrive every morning to renovate one of the lower apartments opposite. They work, like most builders, from stored materials and equipment in their vehicle. Their vehicle, though, is not a practical battered old ute, it is a smart shiny relatively new sedan, so they must be doing well. Along the street on a school morning children, some with their mums, some not, head off to school, all in a row. These days many ride on scooters, and sometimes their mums do, too.

Yesterday, Saturday, footie fans and families returning from a game yahooed all the way down our street in high spirits. Fulham stadium is just a couple of streets over. Chelsea home ground is around here, too. Their team must have won. If we can find tickets we might try to see a game soon. Their enthusiasm is so contagious.

There were not always houses here. This land, long ago, was manorial land once owned by the Bishops of London. As they were called 'princes' of the church their home was once called a palace. This Bishop's Palace is in the park just a block from where we live. Though, these days, it is more a wedding venue, conference centre and public space. The first days we were here we walked many streets around the neighbourhood, and particularly loved the route through the park that was once the Bishop's London garden. Crocuses are popping out of the ground everywhere, and daffodils stand tall in their bright yellow petals, bending their heads.

Folk who lived on these manor lands long ago were peasants who hunted and fished and endowed the Bishop with the fruits of their labour. There are still organic allotments in the grounds, these days often used in garden education programs for garden newbies. Many who lived here were not free, and were like slaves beholden to the Bishop. He, in turn, was responsible for looking after the bridges and ditches throughout the estate, to ensure that the drains would work and that foot and horse traffic could proceed, unimpeded.

In front of the palace the Thames is tidal. Sometimes there is as much as 7 metres between high and low tide which must have seriously affected traffic in the days when the river was actually one of London's main thoroughfares. The Bishop and his clergy would move to and from the palace by boat, as they headed off to Parliament for the day, or to the Bank. They must have had a jetty close by at the bottom of the garden.

The king, too, used the river to head out of the notoriously dirty London for the summer. What a spectacle it must have been to come upon Henry VIII and his thousand strong team of courtiers heading upstream by barge, or many festooned barges, as they all moved court from Greenwich to Hampton. Those were elaborate days. Every trip would have seemed like a festival to the peasants ogling from the riverbank, as they waited there for fodder for the manor horses or coal for the palace to be delivered by boat, for them to upload on to drays.

This stretch of river is famous, too, as the start of the Oxford Cambridge boat race which has been a big event almost every year since 1845. It is also used to ship tons of London rubbish by water to refuse disposal points downriver in order to avoid further cramming the busy roads with rubbish trucks.