Reflections

Much of London has been patently affected by the economic recession: boarded up high streets and part-finished building sites are constant reminders of this phenomenon.  However, turning west along the canal at Westbourne Park, a long forgotten industrial hinterland is an even more poignant reminder of a different kind of prosperity long neglected.

Abandoned industrial buildings address the water’s edge. The oldest, built to accommodate the unloading of freight barges, are now long-since obsolete by centuries of merciless change. Firstly, the creation of the railway network and then high-speed motorways; now just simply by an unsympathetic post-industrial society.

Nonetheless, it’s hard to imagine that today’s portal-framed distribution centres, built efficiently out of metallic sheets at the slip roads of motorways, would present such a poetic backdrop to an afternoon walk.

Stuart McKenzie

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