Thamesmead

A walk exploring the GLC’s city of the future, and visit to the Lesnes estate occupation

29th June 2024, starting at 1100hrs at Abbey Wood station

With Philip Boyle, Tom Cordell, and James Lansbury

Image courtesy of Matthew Wickens

Planned to provide homes and jobs for 60,000 Londoners, Thamesmead was regarded as one of Europe’s leading urban projects when it was launched in the late 1960s. Yet within twenty-five years the project was effectively abandoned, dismissed as another failed dream from three decades of optimism that had followed World War Two.

Artist’s impression of the proposed town centre in 1967 Thamesmead plan

The story of Thamesmead’s failure is too often understood with the same tedious narrative that is used to write off the broader ambitions of the welfare state - of well-intended but fundamentally unworldly professionals whose efforts to improve society in the interests of the poorest ultimately made things worse. It may not be true, but it is a comforting myth that justifies the underlying greed and class prejudice of those who have since the 1970s eagerly destroyed the welfare state.

This walk will explore why Thamesmead was built, and why many of the ambitions of the planners, first at the London County Council (LCC), and then at its successor the Greater London Council (GLC), were eventually unrealised. Above all it is the story of Thamesmead is one conflict between London’s local government, and Britain’s central government. As with so much of London’s recent history, events begin with the 1943 Abercrombie/Forshaw County of London Plan, which aimed to reduce London’s population by dispersing millions of Londoners to new settlements outside the city’s boundaries. After a wave of new town development launched in the late 1940s,  a change of national government in 1951 frustrated the LCC’s plans for further new towns, and forced it to consider developing the waterlogged marshland between Erith and Woolwich as the only site available to relocate its surplus population.

Hook new town, a sketch from the unrealised Cox-Shankland plan showing vertical segregation of pedestrians and vehicles. Hook was hugely influential on the GLC’s subsequent plans for Thamesmead

We will look at the LCC’s unrealised Hook new town plan, and see how ideas developed there were incorporated into the two plans made for the Thamesmead site - the first in 1962 for a 25,000 person settlement made by a team led by Ted Hollamby, and the later scheme presented in 1967 that was eventually part built. We will see how the GLC housing architects achieved a complex variety of built forms using the Balancy industrialised building system.

Balancy industrialised building home being erected, Thamesmead late 1960s

The tour will end with a visit to the Lesnes estate occupation, where we will get to see the inside of several homes and meet protestors and residents.

Model of 1967 GLC plan for Thamesmead, showing marina and riverside town centre