At last a use for Stave Hill.

Date: 12 November 2007 15:04:13

Stave Hill in Rotherhithe, on the site of a filled-in Surrey Dock, is an artificial mound at the end of a ceremonial way planted with various runically significant trees, which was built, along with other oddities like Hilly Fields Stone Circle, in the megalithic frenzy of the years 1999 and 2000 which rounded off England's twenty-year love-affair with crop circles. Who knows - maybe if we could ask the folk who built Silbury or Stonehenge or the Long Man or the Nazca lines or Carnac why they did it maybe they would say "well, we were having a few pints in the pub and it seemed like a good idea at the time".

But there is, I have now found out, a use for it. If there is something really bad going on in the East End you get a great view.

This was a clear cloudless blue sky - all the darkness in the sky was from a fire at Stratford, some miles away in north-east London, off to the left from the point of view of this picture.

I was on a bus on my way to work after a morning doing other things when I saw this:

So, just in case, I wandered round trying to find out what was going on and work out where the fire was. I wouldn't want to get onto a train and find myself stuck in a tunnel as lines closed down or people were being evacuated past me. As it turned out the fire was miles east of where I work and there was no problem, but I was being very cautions until I either heard some news or got a good enough view to see where it was.

So I walked over to Stave Hill about a quarter of a mile away and got a view over the whole of south and east London. I reckon the cloud was at least five miles long and a mile high. An astonishing sight.