Reminiscences

In my blog Eighteenth-Century Sanitation I used Wren's Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich (Now called Royal Naval College) as one of my examples. I enjoyed writing that blog, and thought I'd give the matter some further consideration.
 The top picture shows the buildings as they appear in the present day from Greenwich Park, with the Queen's House in the centre. Nowadays they are set against a backdrop of Manhattan-style skyscrapers, but don't seem to have too much trouble fitting in (in an odd sort of way). Ain't it pretty? Well it wasn't always so.
The picture at the bottom shows Greenwich as I remember it as a boy. It was an industrial area. Wren's beautiful buildings were black with soot. Everything was black with soot. Anything you touched in the street left you with soot on the pads of your fingers. There are no skyscrapers on the Isle of Dogs, only wharves. It was a poor working-class borough then, just like its neighbour Greenwich. Greenwich Power Station, to the right, was still operating and billowed out huge funnels of smoke. The Thames was a working river then; note the barges and tugs and all the derricks. In fact my Great-Grandfather, who lived just beyond the power station, worked on the tugs as a fireman. He loved it.
I was born in the workhouse. The middle picture is of Greenwich Union Workhouse. It is a forbidding building, and was run by equally forbidding staff, who were feared for their cruelty. Of course it was no longer a workhouse when I was born. The National Health Service had taken it over, and by then it had become St Alfege's Hospital. The buildings were later demolished to make way for the Greenwich District Hospital, which itself closed some years ago.
On my journey I imagine myself to be like Greenwich. It is the same place it has always been, but changes with events. It acquires things which are unfamiliar, which in time become familiar. For me it is a quite incongruous mixture of the beautiful and the ugly. I often notice things that I must have seen many times, but seem to be new. I remember the place I have always loved, but have no fondness whatsoever for my family who lived there. That is how my journey has been so far. I hope that this personal demon of mine is heading for rapid extinction.