“There exists the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of
the many localities that are hidden in London… In Jacob’s Island, the
warehouses are roofless and empty; the walls are crumbling down; the
windows are windows no more; the doors are falling into the streets; the
chimneys are blackened, but they yield no smoke. Thirty or forty years
ago… it was a thriving place; but now it is a desolate island indeed” - so wrote Charles Dickens, about the area off Mill Street in St James's Parish that is now home to some of Bermondsey's most desirable residences.
The
Southwark Heritage website quotes what Dickens says about the area in
Oliver Twist....
A visitor to that district, says the novelist, “will see the inhabitants of the houses on either side, lowering, from
their back doors and windows, buckets, pails, domestic utensils of all
kinds, in which to haul the water up…every repulsive lineament of
poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot and garbage – all
these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch.”
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| Jacon's Island blue plaque in Mill St |
Not just Dickens, but Bermondsey people of a generation ago, could scarcely credit the fact that the old warehouses that replaced the crumbling structures viewed by Dickens in the 1830s are now highly desirable, luxury, properties in one of London's most sought after locations
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| Mill Street today |
I have recently visited Mill Street and very impressed with whole area and resemblance to Jacobs Island. But there was no Blue Plaque in Mill street. Any comment sir help with this ?
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