England' - no keeping a Bermondsey boy down evidently!

The chief industries of Bermondsey

were, and perhaps are, leather and the docks, with all the adjuncts of lightermen, stevedores and pilots. We had a

`Scotland has men of Ayr,

Ireland men of Cork,

But London has "Lightermen"!'

A walk along Bermondsey wall would pass `Quays that could have mounds of coconuts, chests of tea built as high

as houses, black pools of molasses ... hogsheads of sugar'.

`It is no good pretending that coal wharves, guano factories and Bathing Creek, though socially necessary, are

commonly edifying. They are glum, and if the wind is in the wrong quarter you wish you were not there'

(Tomlinson).

The reason why Horsleydown becomes the Mecca of this pilgrimage is simply that I was born there.