onionbagblog

Following the Saturday afternoon Hythe-a-thon with Mr Mule at The Greyhound a few weekends back, I took the good man’s advice and went for a mooch around Colchester’s forgotten industrial past, capturing it in photo form.

I use to make money (ish) from doing this sort of thing back in South London, photographing the area’s faded glory ahead of the rapid pace of gentrification. Something tells me that the same urgency of documenting the changing landscape of The Heygate hasn’t yet reached the Hythe.

Which has to be a good thing.

You can re-build at a pace that satisfies the developers, but it most certainly doesn’t satisfy the soul of the community. Even on a damp grey day down by the old industrial heartbeat of Colchester, and the Hythe still had something unique to offer amongst the uneasy alliance of rubble and buy to lets.

The area is far from dead I thought as I composed frame after frame, hoping to capture something of both the old and the new in a single shot. I lingered around the area opposite King Edward Quay, the former timber dock site that is now a dumping ground for old settees.

Plans are in place to open up a grand antique and architectural salvage yard around this patch. This is a sure sign that an area is set to change. I noted the appeal of the springless settees, and pondered that if they were perhaps given a good shampoo, they could be passed off as a piece of salvageable furniture, fit to sell on for folk who like something with a bit of character.

Strange, that.

Here’s hoping that the new money that is about to come into the Hythe won’t be put off by the salvageable, um, shit that is being planned by Anglian Water along the Shaven Haven Road.

Evidence was all around me of the way in which badlands caught between the old and the new sometimes takes a life of its own. The planners may be patient, but other forces occasionally help to speed along the pace of change. Burnt out buildings are rapidly becoming a heritage landmark around the Hythe.

I completed my morning of fancying myself as something of a flaneur [ooh - get you] by taking in the Hythe Station and the backdrop of words, images and thoughts, largely put in place by Mr Mule himself.

You won’t find any contemporary urban vision of a non-existent luxury lifestyle dream being sold here; instead the industrial history of the Hythe, exploring themes of the way the area once was, and how it might move forward with the same feeling, given a modern twist.

It’s not just art for art’s sake either. Even under the bruising skies of late August, primary school kids were sucking the last days of freedom out of the six week break, and clearly enjoying reading something slightly different on the railway billboards to the usual banal crappy advertising that is forced upon commuters.

The dampness of the day eventually did for the DLSR, and I headed back along the Trail and out towards Wivenhoe. As soon as you are parallel with the University South Towers and the Hythe becomes something that is out of site, out of mind.

It is almost as if a boundary has been put in place where the twisting muddy riverbanks of the Colne become at one with nature, rather than being tamed by the heavy industry that has characterised the Hythe of the past.

I can’t say that I’m a flag waver for a 16 metre high chimney flue that is going to pump out the stench of re-processed shit all day and all night, but at least a link with the industrial past will be put in place.

The Hythe has to change. Here come the salvaged settees, the short-term residents in the temporary accommodation and even the stench of the green apple splats being floated down the Colne from the aresholes of Colchester.

Same as it ever was.