Farewell to Andrew Logan's Glasshouse SE1

Sad to see the demolition of the Glasshouse in Melior Place SE1 (opposite the Horseshoe Inn), home to the artist Andrew Logan and his architect partner Michael Davis for many years. When they moved in in the late 1980s the site 'contained a concrete garage with a flat on top. A year later, inspired by a trip to Mexico, Davis added another floor and painted it pink. He put stairs on the outside, cut windows in the front and installed the glass roof, resulting in the huge, conservatory-like studio' (Guardian, 2008).

I went there once, with Logan giving tours as part of an Open House event. The place was joyously crammed with his sparkling mirror art work. The writing was on the wall once planning permission was granted for a block of flats  overlooking it. Who wants to live in a glasshouse when everybody can look into it from above? Logan moved out a few years ago, there was an art gallery there for a while but now it is gone for good (or bad).

Demolition site

How it used to be

The conservatory from above

Peak glasshouse

Logan can still sometimes be spotted cycling around the area, a queer legend famed for his Alternative Miss World parties and other events when he was living at Butlers Wharf in the 1970s. His warehouse space there was used for an orgy scene in Derek Jarman's film Sebastiene.

In an interview with World People Project a few years ago Logan said:  'I feel London is now in the grip of developers who are fuelled by greed. The face of London is quickly changing, a futuristic megatropolis is being built and the gap between the rich and poor is widening. Through all the changes the River Thames continues to flow.

In this particular case the issue is perhaps less gentrification - I don't think Logan was priced out - than the blandification of parts of London with more and more identikit blocks squeezing out anything quirky, interesting or unique.

HMS Belfast: Housing Protest (1981), Spandau Ballet and some seagulls

HMS Belfast is a 1930s built Royal Navy warship that has been permanently moored on the south bank of the Thames between London Bridge and Tower Bridge since 1971. It is managed as a tourist attraction by the Imperial War Museum. I am not a big fan of military hardware and remember a not so exciting trip there when I was at school, but no doubt there are interesting stories to be told about it not least its manufacture in the Harland and Wolff shipyward in Belfast -a notoriously sectarian workplace where Catholics had been violently expelled from their jobs - and its wanderings through the last days of Empire.

Not to mention that time it unwittingly hosted an early gig by Spandau Ballet in July 1980. The story is that they booked it as a private graduation party for some Oxford students. As remembered by their manager Steve Dagger: 

'Our host began to suspect he had been misled as the band’s equipment started to arrive and became agitated. His mood blackened as he saw the nature of the crowd that was arriving. This was the combined forces of hip London Blitz/club culture at its finest. There were Elizabethan inspired crossdressers, there were Soul boys, Rockabillies, there were Fritz Lang futurists, there was Boy George, Marilyn, Phillip Salon in their prime and one man in a wedding dress with fairy lights who asked Graham if there was a plug socket he could use to illuminate. Rusty Egan, the DJ from the Blitz and our great friend began his set of electronic sounds. It got worse still as the party got started and as the crowd became boisterous with drink, drugs (there was a lot of acid and speed ), and a degree of sex... Legendary club promoter Dave Mahoney, Polecat band member Phil Bloomberg, and others, although on the guest list, stole a rowing boat, and boarded the Belfast from the river. As the fire eaters that Chris had booked arrived and combined with his discovery of 2 men having sex in the engine room, it would be fair to say that our host went mental' (Source:  Spandauballet.com). The ship also featured in 1980s videos for Kelly Marie’s It Feels Like I’m in Love  and Depeche Mode's People are People.

Spandau Ballet on board ship

Dave Gahan (Depeche Mode) below deck

In  April 1981, HMS Belfast's eyecatching properties were put to use in a short protest demanding that the nearby Hays Wharf site be converted for housing not offices. Peter Tatchell, who took part, later recalled 'We bought a group concession in the name of the East Dulwich Tennis Club and then strung huge banners from the bridge.’  Tatchell can be seen between two banners in photo below, seemingly with the slogans 'Homes not offices' and 'houses on Hays Wharf'. At the time Tatchell was secretary of Bermondsey Labour Party and was soon (1983) to face  a virulently homophobic campaign when standing in the notorious Bermondsey byelection of 1983. The Hays Wharf campaign was not successful, though as highlighted in the excellent SE1 Stories exhibition and pamphlet, community action in that period did achieve some victories which is why social housing was built close to the riverfront from Waterloo to Rotherhithe.

photo by George Nicholson

Anyway today you can meet some interesting gulls chilling out by the boat and note how the Royal Navy appropriated their colouring for camouflage.

Black headed gull - in winter plumage with a whte head

Herring Gull

 Post prompted by a couple of pleasant encounters with seagulls in January 2025 and seeing the SE1 Stories exhibition at the Castle lesiure centre in Elephant and Castle.

Becket House - an immigration prison in SE1

At present there are major building works going on next to London Bridge station in St Thomas Street with the construction of a 27 storey 'EDGE London Bridge' office block well underway.  Whatever you think of it, nobody is going to much miss the Home Office building it replaced, known as Becket House. Before the latter vanishes from historical memory it's important to record what happened there as possibly the last designated prison in a part of London that has seen many prisons over the centuries.

Protest at Becket House in 2010

Becket House's purpose was probably unclear to those fortunate enough not to have to use it, including the many commuters passing by as they exited the south entrance of London Bridge station. The only clue was the daily queue of people from all corners of the world stretching around the building each morning.

Becket House was an an Immigration Reporting Centre where asylum seekers were required to attend regularly.  In most cases this would involve a long queue and a short signing on but the terror underlying this was never really knowing when you left home that morning whether you would be coming back again. Asylum seekers could be detained when they turned up and for this purpose Becket House had what was called a 'short term holding centre' where people could be locked up until they were moved to a longer term detention centre and then potentially deported.  This was officially designated as a prison and subject to HM Prisons Inspectorate (see for instance this critical report of a 2009 inspection). It consisted of two adjoining secure 'holding rooms', one for single adults and one for families. As well as being used for people detained when signing it was used to lock up people arrested in immigration raids in the community organised from Becket House.  People were usually moved to a removal centre on the same day, though sometimes they were moved overnight to local police station cells. The centre was run for  some of its time for the then UK Borders Agency by Group 4 Securicor (G4S).

At one time Becket House was processing 15,000 appointments a year. How many people were detained in total is unknown but one report shows that between August and October 2009 alone 255 people had been detained, including 39 children (15%) and 59 women (23%). Among those who were  locked up there was Amir Siman-Tov from Morocco. Detained when he reported to Becket House in January 2016 he was transferred to Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre where he died the following month (see Inquest report). 

As part of the Government's Hostile Environment, Becket House was designed to intimidate - in 2018 the Guardian reported that an official there had been filmed saying 'We are not here to make life easy for you. It’s a challenging environment we have got to make for people. It’s working because it’s pissing you off'.

Becket House was the focus for a number of protests from migrant solidarity groups. The building closed in 2022 and was demolished soon afterwards.

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Several hundred people paused at Becket House during the March for Migrant Rights in October 2006

 which went from Imperial War Museum to Tanner Street park

No Borders protest in 2009

SOAS Detainee Support, Migrants Organise and These Walls Must Fall at Becket House in 2021

The only Immigration Reporting Centre for South London is now at Lunar House in Croydon. 

Recent street art: Captain America, Sweets and Ganesha

New piece by Artful Dodger on Peckham Road by Southamton Way junction, a Trump era lamentation featuring Captain America and referencing Simon and Garfunkel's Mrs Robinson too 'Where have you gone, Captain America? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you'. The same artist painted the nearby Carrie Fisher mural

'Money can't buy love, but it can buy sweets, I like sweets' by Dope, on Penge High Street.

Not sure if a statue of Hindu deity Ganesha counts as a street art, but its on Tooley Street SE1 outside the new Lalit Hotel.