Our London flat is on the site of the former Phoenix gasworks. And the Lambeth area along the Thames has long been industrial. Some of it was linked to the Thames itself, with barge building, and even fishermen. There were potteries, glass works, barge builders and all sorts. Much was changed by the building of the Albert Embankment at the end of the 1860s. Surprisingly, there are a few photos from before then - especially those by William Strudwick.

Fore Street, Lambeth. Lower Fore Street, a narrow cobblestoned street in Lambeth, pictured in 1865. Fore Street ran alongside the river between Vauxhall Gardens and Lambeth Palace. It was pulled down to make way for the Albert Embankment in the 1860s.

The Thames foreshore at Lambeth where many people found work as labourers or sailors, shortly before the building of the Albert Embankment in 1866-9. It is part of a collection of images by William Strudwick, which are among the only surviving mid 19th-century images of a London working class district.

Early morning Lambeth Bridge 1860s

St Margaret's church at Lambeth Palace, from Fore St.

ABOVE Shot across river 1865 - a view of the Thames foreshore at Lambeth Reach, just before the Albert Embankment was built. Princes Wharf, the whiting works of S. Jones and J.T.Walford, is the left of John Cliff's Imperial Potteries, once the site of Lambeth (or Vauxhall) Glass Works. To the right is J. Smith, barge maker. The gasometers of the London Gas Works are visible in the background.

Men unload esparto grass from barges at a wharf near Lambeth on the River Thames. The grass is used for making bank notes and stockings. Westminster Bridge, Houses of Parliament and Big Ben in the background, 1938.

Bargebuilders at Bishop's Walk, Lambeth. This run of barge builders wharfs was on the south bank of the Thames opposite Parliament. Barges were the main form of transport on the Thames. The barge builders yards were swept away for St Thomas's Hospital.

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