We
explored some of my borough as a group on Tuesday, so Mary and I spent most of
Thursday exploring Greenwich, rather than venturing further into Tower Hamlets,
but what struck me most about our group ventures on Tuesday was the incredible
contrast of poverty and wealth. We arrived in the middle of Canary Wharf,
surrounded by skyscrapers and posh young professionals. And yet, in the back of
my mind, I kept thinking about how we were also in the center of the London borough
with the highest rates of child and adult poverty, early death, and homelessness.
The gentrification was palpable as we strolled past juice bars and perfectly
manicured stretches of AstroTurf. I found myself almost angry, knowing that for
all the wealth on this wharf, it seems to have done more to hide the struggles of the East End than
to ease them. This was the land of workhouses and dockers, Dickens and the
Ripper, shipping and scraping to get by under the uncaring eyes of the rich.
And yet there were hardly even pigeons, much less evidence of the blue-collar East
End or the housing crisis it is currently suffering. Or there weren’t, at
least, until we ventured away from the Docklands museum.
Almost
as soon as we crossed the street away from the museum, we found something more
like the Tower Hamlets that I expected. Certainly not abject poverty, but
Poplar looked more like the working class East End of Flesh and Bone, rather than a Manhattan-style financial district. It
was shocking, realizing that Canary Wharf’s skyscrapers were barely a ten
minute walk from the park where we had class, with its broken swing set and empty
beer cans everywhere. The whole thing made me think of The Emperor’s Babe, with the opulence of Felix’s villa and Severus’s
colosseum side by side with the slums where Zuleika grew up. It was also a
reminder that Tower Hamlets is much more than the most impoverished borough. It
is also the most ethnically and religiously diverse part of London, and that
was just as evident as the economic divide.
As
I said, on Thursday, Mary and I explored Greenwich. It was a fun trip, though
the transit to get there was a bit confusing. Like Canary Wharf and Poplar,
Greenwich is a district inherently tied to the water, and I’m very excited to
explore the Cutty Sark and the Maritime Museum, whether on my own time or during
a borough tour. There is also an absolutely unmissable view of the London
skyline from the Observatory.
Plan:
I
would like to do a tour of the Tower of London for my borough tour, and since
we’re scheduled to see Othello that day
at 2 pm, I think it would be best to change my tour to a different day. The
Tower might take longer than we’ll have before the show, and I suspect we won’t
want to do a tour before standing for 3 hours at The Globe.
At
the Tower, they’re having a live show about Anne Boleyn’s last days this
summer. It’s about 35 minutes out on the lawn, and they do it at 11 and at 2. I
think it would be interesting to consider in the context of Shakespeare and the
Tudor era in general. What does it mean for London to see a queen executed,
particularly the queen largely responsible for so much political upheaval?
I’d
like to have class at the Trinity Square Gardens. It’s immediately next to the Tube
station and across the street from The Tower itself, so it’ll be convenient and
not too much of a walk before the tour. There’s a small monument that we can
duck into in the case of rain, or a nearby pub called The Hung Drawn and Quartered
where we can have lunch. It’s very cute and kind of thematic.
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