A few months ago, The Greenwich Phantom made me aware of the fact that early bollards used on pavements came from cannons captured during the Napoleonic war. The cannons were apparently stuck in the ground with a cannon ball on the top – and the design has remained ever since.

If you look at modern bollards, many are indeed not that dissimilar to a cannon with a cannon ball on the top.

The problem with this is that metal is a precious commodity, and I found it difficult to believe that such a valuable lump of metal would be so casually dumped as street furniture. I wondered if it was an urban myth based on a somewhat more mundane truth.

A bit of research later, and these valuable captured cannons were indeed scrapped by the British government following the Napoleonic Wars – as a result of political lobbying by the arms industry. It seems that the armaments manufacturers were worried that the government would reuse the captured cannons for its own military forces, and hence the firms wouldn’t be able to sell more cannons to the government. After representations to the government, it was agreed that the loss of business would close several companies and as a healthy arms industry was (and still is) considered to be vital to national security, Parliament agreed to scrap the French cannons.

In actuality, they ended up being buried muzzle down to act as road bollards. Later they were buried muzzle upwards with the classic cannon ball stuck on top.

So, in order to save the British arms industry, hundreds of valuable cannons were unceremoniously taken over by local authorities for street furniture. However, there is a side-effect of this, as street bollards were largely unknown in England at the time, and the use of the captured cannons as “new” bollards would have reminded the populace of the recent military victory in France and probably been something of some pride for the populace.

Anyhow, the reason for this ramble, is that I have often noticed a rather old looking bollard in Wapping and the other day I finally remembered to have a decent look at it and take a photo. If not an original Napoleonic cannon, it is at the very least not much later in age. I’d guess that if it is an original, it is probably quite valuable now. The bollard is on the corner of Wapping Rose Garden, in case you want to have a personal visit – or to dig it up and take it along to the Antiques Roadshow being held in Greenwich later this year.

Incidentally, the word bollard is thought to come from the French “bole”, which referred to a short stout stump of wood used for tying boats alongside piers and jetties.

Final point – someone has started a blog that comments on bollards found around London – strangely fascinating.

This is probably more the remit of The Greenwich Phantom, but as part of the Greenwich foot tunnel lies on MY side of the river, and this concerns a particular bugbear of mine, I shall talk about it.

The tunnel, for those who are not familiar with it is a 100 year old tunnel under the river linking Greenwich to the Isle of Dogs, and has lifts/stairs at each end.

I rarely take the lift down on the north side, as that seems a bit lazy, but occasionally I treat myself – and a while ago noticed in passing that a Health and Safety notice in the lift had been amended to state that photography was banned in the tunnel.

Thinking about it, I was sure there was a ban on flash photography, but now it seems to have been recently changed to a complete ban on all photography. Today though, the southern lift on the Greenwich side was actually working for once – although the operator in the lift was on the phone to someone and it seemed it was about to be turned off again.

Inside was a large, newish looking sign warning that photography is banned – but the health & safety sign was still unedited, and my suspicions were proved correct. The original sign only banned flash photography!

For some reason, over the past few months someone has decided that an existing (if dubious) ban on flash photography for health and safety reasons has to be expanded to a complete ban on all photography in the tunnel.

I’ve always been curious about the ban on flash photography as this is just a foot tunnel and hardly likely to cause anything more serious than a bit of annoyance to fellow walkers – and a lot less annoyance than screaming kids – but a total ban on all photography?

I use the tunnel a lot, and people are always taking photos down there without people dying or getting injured. An artist at the local market even sells rather somewhat arty photos of the tunnel.

What dire calamity has befallen the tunnel in the past few months that caused the H&S nazis to immediately clamp down on photography in the tunnel to prevent repeat of this mystery disaster?