Butler's Wharf
Butler's Wharf is a former warehouse complex in London , which is located directly on the Thames . After the complex, which was built in the 19th century, stood empty for some time in the 1970s and deteriorated, it has been extensively renovated since 1984 under the direction of Terence Conran . Today the building contains luxury apartments with a view of the Thames and restaurants. The term Butler's Wharf is now used to refer to the surrounding streets and buildings.
Location and name
Butler's Wharf is located in the London borough of Bermondsey in the Borough of Southwark on the south bank of the Thames. The Tower Bridge is in the immediate vicinity. Across the river is the St Katharine Docks .
The English term wharf stands for a quay . The name Butler goes back to a grain dealer who had a warehouse here in the 18th century. From 1873 onwards, the combination of both terms was initially used to denote the quay and the warehouse located on it. The streets and buildings adjacent to the building complex were commonly called Shad Thames in the past . According to today's understanding, the name Butler's Wharf also covers this area; to that extent there is conceptual overlap.
architecture
Butler's Wharf was built from 1871 to 1873. The building facade facing the river is, in keeping with the time of its construction, in Victorian style . It dominated the image of the south bank of the Thames. The storage rooms extended over several floors. The main building had storage space of 56,000 m². Butler's Wharf was connected to the storage buildings behind it by numerous bridges that spanned the Shad Thames street. Through these connections, arriving goods could be carried far away from the river to storage areas by the crowd . This increased the storage area to over 100,000 m². The long distances involved made Butler's Wharf an unattractive place to work for the shower people.
history
Warehouse
In the 19th century there were numerous quays and warehouses in the east of the Thames. On the north bank of the river these were the Docklands , on the south bank among other things St Savior's Dock and the Surrey Commercial Docks . Here, merchant ships from the British colonies were unloaded and the goods picked up, especially tea and spices, were temporarily stored until they were resold.
Butler's Wharf added the warehouse landscape comparatively late. The plant had its most significant period in the first half of the 20th century. At times, Butler's Wharf was one of the largest tea warehouses in the world. In 1950 up to 6,000 boxes were unloaded every day.
In the 1960s, the structure of the movement of goods changed. Instead of general cargo, standardized containers were increasingly used. As a result, the importance of the London warehouse close to the city decreased in the 1960s. The turnover of goods shifted instead to the Thames estuary, especially to Tilbury and Felixstowe . Similar to St Katharine Docks and Docklands in east London, Butler's Wharf was no longer needed in the late 1960s. The then owner, Town and City Properties Group Ltd. , terminated the last contracts in 1971 and left the Butler's Wharf buildings empty. Like other former docks, Butler's Wharf was deteriorating.
Occupation by artists
A few years later, artists began to use the free spaces as studios and studios. They included David Hockney , Derek Jarman, and Philip Jeck . They rebuilt the rooms for their purposes, with some living space being created. Electrical installations and water pipes were mostly improvised. Its use was formally illegal, but was tolerated by the authorities and the owner. The Arts Council of Great Britain , a non-governmental institution for the promotion of art, supported the artists temporarily with financial donations. By 1979 Butler's Wharf had become the largest, liveliest and most diverse artist community in London. At times up to 150 painters, sculptors, photographers, dancers and singers lived and worked here.
The punk band Sex Pistols gave the tenth live performance of their career at Butler's Wharf in February 1976. The band Siouxsie and the Banshees , at that time representatives of the punk and post-punk scene, performed there for one of their first concerts in July 1977, as did the band Adam and the Ants in December 1977 , at that time also punk. In December 1979 the music and art performance group Throbbing Gristle , a pioneer of industrial music , gave a concert in the rooms of Butler's Wharf. The musicians from The Clash and the young Billy Idol with his band Generation X also regularly stayed in this building complex in the second half of the 1970s. After all, Chisenhale Studios and Chisenhale Dance Space have their roots in Butler's Wharf.
The illegal use by artists, partly in the British press as squatters ( occupants were known) ended at the end of the 1970s. After a fire broke out in one of the halls in August 1979 due to an improperly installed electrical cable, the supervisory authority demanded that the owner establish operationally safe conditions, which the owner refused for financial reasons. In the following months almost all artists left the facility.
Terence Conran: restructuring into a luxury quarter
In the late 1970s, investors began to take interest in Butler's Wharf. Inspired by the corresponding developments in the bohemian quarters in New York and Chicago and the restructuring of the St Katharine Docks opposite, the owner, Town and City Properties Group Ltd, was considering the construction of a large, 180-bed hotel that would be connected to a shopping center . In doing so, however, he met resistance from the remaining users. Ultimately, the owner did not pursue the plans any further. A little later, a group around the designer and businessman Terence Conran took up these considerations and changed them with the aim of turning Butler's Wharf into a luxury quarter with jetties, offices, restaurants and high-priced apartments.
Butler's Wharf Ltd.
In 1984 Conran and some business associates bought Butler's Wharf and six adjacent buildings for less than £ 5 million. From 1987 the project company Butler's Wharf Ltd. the plant new. Before completion, the project company was insolvent; the debt was £ 70 million. A Danish investor bought the facility out of bankruptcy in 1992, but left Conran in charge of the work. The complete completion took until 1997.
The constructional and urban planning side of the renovations were responsible Conran and his partners from the beginning itself While there have been since 1981. London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC), a formal governmental cultural organization (English: Quango ) whose job reviving the Docklandschaft the east London was.
The LDDC did not undertake any planning in this area. It limited itself to reviewing and approving Conran's plans. In doing so, she ignored the concerns of the local authority Southwark London Borough Council .
Redesign: luxury in an old facade
In contrast to the development in the St Katharine Docks, which had been completely redesigned and largely rebuilt since the late 1970s, Conran wanted to retain the building structure of Butler's Wharf and in particular its Victorian building front on the Thames side. The interior, on the other hand, was re-cut after gutting . This also applied to some of the neighboring buildings that were included in the renovation project. Gastronomy was planned in the ground floor areas, living rooms and offices in the higher floors.
In 1991, the first restaurant on the Thames was opened in the old buildings, Le Pont de la Tour . As the renovation progressed, more restaurants followed in the next few years, many of which offer upscale European or Asian cuisine. Some restaurants in the area facing away from the Thames also offer system catering . Initially, all restaurants were run by a Terence Conran company.
The apartments in Butler's Wharf were and are very expensive by London standards. As early as the late 1980s, before the renovated complex was completed, a two-room apartment with a view of the Thames was asking for £ 260,000; In 2015, a three-bedroom apartment facing Tower Bridge cost more than £ 5 million.
Further environment
In an annex is the Butler's Wharf Chef School , a school for chefs . The Design Museum London has been located downstream since 1989 . The Institute of Brewing and Distilling is also located here.
rating
The development from 1980 is assessed differently. For some, Butler's Wharf is an outstanding example of a successful, privately organized neighborhood revitalization. Others point out that Conran's reshuffle caused gentrification with all of the drawbacks that come with it. As early as 1979, local authorities had warned of a socio-economic change in the neighborhood and feared that Butler's Wharf could become "another zoo for the jet set" after St Katharine Docks. Today, Butler's Wharf is occasionally seen by critics as a “ hipster playground ”.
literature
- Christopher Hibbert, Ben Weinreb, John Keay, Julia Keay: The London Encyclopedia , Pan Macmillan, 3rd edition 2011, ISBN 9780230738782
- Tim Heath, Taner Oc, Steve Tiesdell: Revitalizing Historic Urban Quarters , Routledge, 2013, ISBN 9781136020742
- Geoff Marshall: London's Industrial Heritage , The History Press, 2013, ISBN 9780752492391 .
Web links
- Publication by London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) on the renovation of Butler's Wharf (1998)
- Eric Webb: Old Butler's Wharf in Bermondey: Working Practices . Story of a warehouse worker at Butler's Wharf
- Tea trade in Butler's Wharf: Contemporary illustration from the years around the First World War
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Christopher Hibbert, Ben Weinreb, John Keay, Julia Keay: The London Encyclopedia , Pan Macmillan, 3rd edition 2011, ISBN 9780230738782 , p. 118.
- ↑ a b N.N .: LDDC Completion Booklets: Butler's Wharf. www.lddc-history.org.uk, 1998, accessed October 8, 2015 .
- ↑ Geoff Marshall: London's Industrial Heritage , The History Press, 2013, ISBN 9780752492391 .
- ↑ a b c d e f N.N .: Art & empty buildings: Butler's wharf 1971–1979. southwarknotes.wordpress.com, accessed October 8, 2015 .
- ↑ a b c d John Thirlwell, Patsy Fagan: On the waterfront, the artists are drawing up battle plans . Report in the Evening News of December 14, 1979, p. 35.
- ↑ www.sexpistolsofficial.com (accessed October 3, 2015).
- ↑ Overview of music concerts at Butler's Wharf in London , accessed on October 7, 2015 (English)
- ^ Tim Heath, Taner Oc, Steve Tiesdell: Revitalizing Historic Urban Quarters , Routledge, 2013, ISBN 9781136020742 , p. 126.
- ↑ NN: About LDDC: A Brief overwiew. www.lddc-history.org.uk, 1998, accessed October 8, 2015 .
- ^ A b Tim Heath, Taner Oc, Steve Tiesdell: Revitalizing Historic Urban Quarters , Routledge, 2013, ISBN 9781136020742 , p. 127.
- ↑ Eric Webb: Old Butler's Wharf in Bermondey: Working Practices . Story of a warehouse worker at Butler's Wharf (accessed October 4, 2015)
- ↑ Exemplary sales advertisement from October 2015 on the website www.rightmove.co.uk (accessed on October 8, 2015).
- ↑ https://www.ibd.org.uk/home/
- ↑ a b N.N .: Refusal of Regeneration. southwarknotes.wordpress.com, accessed October 9, 2015 .