45 Squared 42) ST GEORGE'S SQUARE, SE8
Borough of Lewisham, 70m×40m
For my Lewisham square I headed to the borough's northernmost point and a drab postmodern piazza with a significant backhistory. The Thames laps one edge, bang opposite the Isle of Dogs, its broad sweep best viewed from a short concrete jetty. To the north is Greenland Dock, one of whose boatyards abuts the Square behind a messy fence. Everything else round here is lowrise flats and housing, part of the Deptford Wharf development circa 1992, which is also when St George's Square officially sprang to life.
It comprises a long rectangular open space, securely bollarded to deter joyriders, with an avenue of hornbeam trees down the centre. Originally it was all paved but around 15 years ago the council decided to soften the vibe by replacing the outer stripes with lawn and shrubbery. The grass is now pretty threadbare, in some places just mud, and the bushes have shrunk back like receding gums. The benches hold little appeal on a dank day in November but must still be used because an avalanche of bottles, pizza boxes and empty laughing gas canisters tumbled around the litter bins. A passing dogwalker looked at me with a look of despair suggesting she wasn't impressed either.
One flank comprises 11 pseudo-terraced townhouses, very much of their era, and the other is a dead end used as a parking free-for-all by cars, vans and the occasional small truck. Prior to residentialisation this whole area had a proud maritime history, being the northernmost extent of the riverside hubbub known as Deptford Strand. The first dock opened here in 1604 and by the 18th century was a major shipbuilding yard assembling large seagoing vessels for the East India Company and the Royal Navy. In 1850 Dudman's Dock was purchased by the Brighton and South Coast Railway for the transhipment of coal around its railway network, the landing quay crisscrossed by cranes and wagons, none of which is evident now because British Rail abandoned the site in 1970.
What you will find is the site of an even older relic called St George's Stairs, one of several sets of steps in tidal London providing public access to the Thames. The staircase here is plainly a modern replacement, being slippery concrete rather than slippery timber, and because I arrived near high tide merely led down into turbulent water. I know from previous visits that a small beach opens up at low tide where beachcombing is possible, though perhaps not advised because, as a large yellow sign facing the river duly warns, Sewer Outlet 30 Metres From This Board.
What seeps out here beneath a low concrete slab are the slurried waters of one of London's lost rivers, the Earl's Sluice, a waterway with a considerable geographical significance. Between here and South Bermondsey station it marks the approximate dividing line between the boroughs of Southwark and Lewisham, and prior to 1899 marked the precise boundary between Surrey and Kent. The Surrey Docks were the other side, obviously, and what's now Deptford Wharf was somehow once part of the same county as Canterbury and Dover. A few metres upstream is the boundary stone that used to grace the last bridge across the Earl's Sluice, delimiting St Mary's parish Rotherhithe and St Paul's parish Deptford. But the modern sewer now ends marginally in former Kent, and my understanding is that St George's Square is an undeveloped stripe to avoid building on the mucky tunnel underneath.
