London Wall, then and now.

Twentyone years ago I was working for Leicester Heavy Haulage, and one of our regular jobs was to load up concrete panels at Trent Concrete Cladding Ltd at Colwick in Nottingham, and deliver them to London Wall. At the time there was a massive redevelopment programme taking place. I remember thinking, 'oh no, not again', when the office gave me more paperwork to do another trip down there, I hated driving in London.

I have dug out these photo's, and have even found a copy of a delivery note. I have kept all the paperwork from my heavy haulage days, movement orders, notifications to the police and utilities, details of routes and which loads were escorted.

It says here that I was onsite at 7.45am and left at 1.15pm, and the slinger standing on the top of the concrete panel in the second photo, was Harry Greenwood.

We used semi stepframe trailers for these loads, they were heavy and we had to keep the weight low to the ground. I remember following a colleague once, he was half an hour in front of me, and when I got to the top of Archway Road, round the bend, I came across him parked at the side of the road. One of his panels had come adrift and had skidded down the road, demolished someone's garden wall and come to rest wedged against the house.

When the panels have been unloaded we had to bring the frame back so we couldn't pick up return loads. There it goes hanging on the end of the tower crane.

Look at London Wall now, to think I played a part in the construction of this. I went in the Museum of London, it was a fascinating place, and free to get in. It showed the history of London, right from the beginning up untill the present day, and beyond.

Some more pics of the area.

I took the following four photo's of computer generated pictures, inside the museum, there was no restrictions on taking them. They illustrate how London might look in the future.

Wind turbines down The Mall

The city under water.

Picadilly Circus flooded and littered with turbines.

And after global warming it will be like a tropical island.

Scary stuff indeed, but will it happen? There seems to be some doubt.