There are many streets in London where, if you prise open the

lid of history, a wealth of fascinating facts, folklore and tall

tales will tumble out, but foul smells? Bermondsey Street SE1

has the uniquely dubious distinction of being the smelliest

street that ever existed. To walk down it in 1850 would at first be to set

your nostrils delightedly twitching at the rich, deep fragrance of Cuban

cigars perhaps or the aromatic spices that were ground there but to venture

further was to encounter fetid stenches that might even send you mad.

The great trade winds

drove England’s ships half

way round the world, when

they came back from the

Caribbean, from Mandalay

and from China the boats

were low in the water

beating up the slate grey Thames stuffed to the gunwales with

unimaginable riches where they berthed in London in a cloud of heady

scents.

Not for nothing was Bermondsey dubbed the ‘Larder of London;’ the

names of the buildings in Shad Thames still bear witness to their once

exotic contents: Vanilla and Sesame Court, Tea Trade Wharf, Anise and

Cinnamon Warehouse. The riverbank storehouses were bursting with

coriander and fennel, cloves worth more than gold, ginger, cumin and

tamarind, and, it is said, that even today the occupants of the smart new

apartments that the warehouses have become can still detect the smells of

their former purpose.

However, a time traveller

would discover that the

tantalising and evocative whiffs

of the top end of the street soon

gave way to the putrefaction

associated with the area’s main

trade - the tanning of leather -

where the beauty of the products

thus created: white kid gloves,

soft suede bags, wallets, boots

and belts belied the hideous,

odious practices behind their

manufacture.

All down the street were

reeking tanneries, festering pits

of soaking skin, clustered there to take advantage of the now lost

Neckinger River and the tidal Thames, however even the constant flow of

water couldn’t flush away the smell of death. One leather making process

entailed the application of urine and dog excrement, and a railway arch in

Crucifix Lane was piled high with the stuff collected by ‘pure’ gatherers

who scoured the kennels of London for the less than pure ordure.

If you dared remove the handkerchief from your nose you might be

lucky enough to pick up a gentle waft of chocolate or sweet biscuits,

custard or blancmange before you were assailed by sulphurous blasts from

the gunpowder works or throat catching vinegar, and the boozy fug of beer

and gin. Just a few yards apart, the Bermondsey Gas, Light and Coke

Company did daily battle with the India Rubber Company to see who

could best blot out

the sun with eye-

watering, acrid

fumes.

Halfway down

the street was the

abattoir; the

slaughter men

tossed the hides

out of its doors

where other men

were ‘un-hairing’

and ‘de-fleshing’ them. The routine

domestic nasty niffs of Dickensian

London - cesspits, butchers and

fishmongers – just contributed to the

ghastly air.

Opposite ancient plague pits, where

Tanner Street Park is now once stood the

Bermondsey Poorhouse, a place

where, it was reported, the urinals

and the water closet ‘stink so

offensively as to poison the whole

atmosphere.’ Its infirmary wards

were described as a ‘fever nest.’

Passing Bellyard Mews the

Victorian traveller might encounter

vile belches of burning cork, then

stagger coughing into a poisoned

cloud of pungent sulphuric acid and

mercury used by Christy’s, the

biggest hat manufacturer in the

world, purveyors of bowlers to

Winston Churchill and the

designers of the original Stetson,

and the Mountie’s cap. These two

chemicals combined often caused

derangement in its workers and

gave rise to the expression ‘as mad

as a hatter.’

Animal hides dipped and

dyed can cause spontaneous gagging in those

who have never before experienced the

putrid olfactory sensation as visitors to

Marrakesh or Fez might attest.

Bermondsey’s Morocco Street

was so named as a tribute to

those skilful Berber tanners but

the road is now trod by the well

heeled instead of the stretchers

and cobblers who once

sweated over the boots

that were made there.

Nothing was wasted; in

a hundred dingy

workshops horn,

hair and bones

were shaped into

knife handles,

scraped up into

wigs, boiled into

glue or mixed into

dog food.

And the corpses

weren’t just those of

beasts. The soft ground of St. Mary

Magdalene graveyard and its proximity to Guy’s Hospital

afforded great opportunity for body snatchers who by night

disinterred the recently dead and took them by cart or via the

mythic secret tunnel twixt it and the dissector’s table. There

still stands on the corner of Bermondsey and Abbey Street a

small white building known as the Watch House where two

officers provided a deterrent to the resurrection men.

The smells of Bermondsey Street continued at its

southern tip although thankfully they become

much less malodorous. Mr Crosse and Mr

Blackwell were making most excellent pickles

a short distance off eventually including their

legendary Branston variety. At the junction

with Tower Bridge Road was the Bermondsey

Marché Ouvert, where as recently as 1995,

between sunrise and sunset, stolen goods

could legitimately be sold; just south was the

famous Hartley’s Jam factory its sticky, sickly

miasma hanging heavy in the air occasionally

punctuated by the unctuous aromas emitting

from Manze’s, the oldest surviving eel and pie

house in the world.

One hundred and sixty years later the air has cleared and

the fragrances of Bermondsey Street now assume the most

subtle of forms; from its flower shops the delicate scents of

lilacs in the springtime, from its select restaurants the

complex aromas of the finest of dining, from its hipster

coffee houses a hint of Blue Mountain, and from its

residents the exquisite yet indefinable sweet smell of

success.

The Watch House by Dougal Gordon © 2014

The Cutty Sark unloading tea from China in London Pool

To venture further wasto encounter fetid

stenches that mighteven send you mad.

The Bermondsey Street Poster, TheBermondsey Stink Map and individuallimited edition prints of the BermondseyStreet buildings can be purchased at theartist’s website. Please click here

The Great Stink of Bermondsey Street

The great Thameswarehouses once bursting

with spices from the FarEast are now buy-to-lets

owned by investors from theFar East.

A Tanner scrapes the fleshfrom the hide to even it up.

“You’ll probably be the mostpopular girl in the world

when you serve Crosse andBlackwell Branston Pickle.”

South London’s super-cool BermondseyStreet boasts £4 million warehouse lofts

with Porsches parked below but not so longago it was a filthy, festering stink-hole.

Steve Overbury sniffs the air

The soft ground of St.Mary Magdalenegraveyard and itsproximity to Guy’sHospital afforded greatopportunity for bodysnatchers