THE QUEST FOR CREEKMOUTH
I am now able to bring the story of the "Princess Alice" tragedy to a fitting conclusion as I have now been able to visit and photograph the memorial that was created on the north bank of the river. It has only been in place four years, established by the Creekmouth Preservation Society.
This is a most noble organisation as what there is to preserve of Creekmouth is hard to discern. I have never, in all of my years of living in this amazing city, visited a more dispiriting corner of the capitol, dominated as it is by sprawling industrial sites clawing at the very edges of the river. In all of this terrain there are just left two little patches of green, neither of them in great shape, but, I'm sure, genuinely appreciated by the locals as a perch for bird-spotting on the marshes and somewhere to exercise the dogs. What this environment must have been like before the introduction of the Clean Air Act I dread to think.
Basically, it's a zone ever bit as heart-sinking as this aerial view suggests:
But enough of my moaning, nose-pinching. On the positive side, finally with the kind help of an angler, I located the memorial. I doubt I would have found it otherwise, as it's set back from the river, but there it is.
It's so easy in our troubled times to forget the miseries that have gone ahead of us, but it costs us little to stop, pause and spare a thought for those who suffered such a grim fate, as here on this spot, the scene of this country's greatest ever peace-time calamity.
I am now able to bring the story of the "Princess Alice" tragedy to a fitting conclusion as I have now been able to visit and photograph the memorial that was created on the north bank of the river. It has only been in place four years, established by the Creekmouth Preservation Society.
This is a most noble organisation as what there is to preserve of Creekmouth is hard to discern. I have never, in all of my years of living in this amazing city, visited a more dispiriting corner of the capitol, dominated as it is by sprawling industrial sites clawing at the very edges of the river. In all of this terrain there are just left two little patches of green, neither of them in great shape, but, I'm sure, genuinely appreciated by the locals as a perch for bird-spotting on the marshes and somewhere to exercise the dogs. What this environment must have been like before the introduction of the Clean Air Act I dread to think.
Basically, it's a zone ever bit as heart-sinking as this aerial view suggests:
But enough of my moaning, nose-pinching. On the positive side, finally with the kind help of an angler, I located the memorial. I doubt I would have found it otherwise, as it's set back from the river, but there it is.
It's so easy in our troubled times to forget the miseries that have gone ahead of us, but it costs us little to stop, pause and spare a thought for those who suffered such a grim fate, as here on this spot, the scene of this country's greatest ever peace-time calamity.
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