Tag Archives: bermondsey street

Beautifully blown in Bermondsey

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BERMONDSEY STREET IS only about 500 yards in length, and about 200 yards of it runs under the railway tracks and has no shops, eateries, or any other outlet open to the public. The remaining 300 yards of this thoroughfare is a delight to visit. It is lined with numerous cafés, restaurants, and a couple of pubs. In addition, there is a good picture framer, several art galleries, some fashionable shops, a church, and a museum of fashion and textiles. There are also a couple of open spaces – small parks. Apart from the magnificent Caphe House – a superb Vietnamese restaurant, one of my favourite places on this street is London Glassblowing (see: https://londonglassblowing.co.uk/).

London Glassblowing is a gallery dedicated to the display and sales of artistic glasswork creations. It was founded by Peter Layton, who was born in 1937 in Prague (then in Czechoslovakia). Fleeing the Nazis, his family moved to Britain in 1939. They settled in Bradford near his grandfather, a pathologist who was a colleague of Sigmund Freud. Initially specialising in ceramics, Peter went to teach at the University of Iowa in the USA. While he was there, Peter soon became fascinated with glass and studied in the institution’s glass blowing programme. After his return to the UK, where artistic glass blowing was not yet highly developed or even highly regarded, he opened the London Glassblowing Workshop in Rotherhithe in 1976. After moving to several different locations, it arrived at its present home on Bermondsey Street.

In addition to displaying fine works of art made with glass, visitors to the gallery can watch the glass blowers at work. This is fascinating to see. When we visited yesterday, the 16th of February 2024, there was a group of young children watching the glass blowers at work. A gentleman was patiently explaining what the glass blowers were doing and how they were achieving the exquisite multicoloured vase they were making. It was only when I got home that I realised that the person explaining was none other than Peter Layton.

An infrequently opened church in London’s Bermondsey

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AS FAR BACK AS the 8th century, there was a priory in London’s Bermondsey district, just south of London Bridge. Like most other monastic institutions, it was dissolved during the reign of King Henry VIII. By 1296, there was a church close to the monastery, the ‘St Mary Magdalen Chapel’. This was built to serve the needs of the workers in the Priory and Convent of Bermondsey. It was the forerunner of the present church of St Mary Magdalen on Bermondsey Street. Please note that the name is Magdalen, rather than Magdalene.

In 1680, the church was deemed unsafe, and most of it was demolished. The late mediaeval tower was retained, and was encased in plaster, which hides its original surfaces. By 1690, a new church had been built. This incorporated the old tower, and is what can be seen today. There were a few later modifications made to the edifice, but most of what one sees, is how it was in 1690. The church was damaged both in WW2 and in a fire in 1971, but it has been faithfully restored. The wood carvings on the reredos beneath the Victorian stained glass eastern window might well have been created by the famous wood carver Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721), who was born in Holland and died in London.

The church feels spacious inside. We were lucky to have been able to enter it because apart from Sunday mornings, when a service is held, it is only open to the public between 12 noon and 2 pm on Fridays. We entered at about 1.45, having just eaten a tasty Vietnamese meal at the nearby Caphe House on Bermondsey Street.