Steve Cornish spent about the first half of his life on the Dickens Estate; it was where a deep love for Bermondsey and its community flourished. The second half was spent Downtown when he moved into a new house after Surrey Docks closed; there he became a major campaigner against big developers trying to change the way we lived – developers with big money who wouldn’t be seen dead in SE16 years ago, writes Michael Holland.
Mum, Margaret, done many jobs; ‘She worked in Shuttleworths for a long time, then dinner lady in St Michael’s School,’ he says. Harry, his father, was self-employed as a roofer.
Steve’s first school was Riverside. ‘I enjoyed it; when you go there aged 5 it’s playtime, innit?’ he shrugs. ‘But as you get older it gets a bit more serious… I liked English, sport and History’
Playing out on the estate, he recalls, was ‘Tin Tan Tommy and those sort of games, but to be honest it was all about getting up to mischief – The river was hundred yards away so we’d get into the warehouses and onto the roof and swing on the cranes to get on the barges – being daredevils – Who’s gonna bottle out?’
The wharves featured a lot in Steve’s growing up. ‘When you got older you realised there were things in them that you could nick and sell. I was on a life-learning slope for that area… But I always made sure I didn’t go home with Thames mud on me shoes cos the old man would know I’d been on the river…’
Family holidays were spent in Combe Haven near Hastings where his nan had a caravan, or Butlins in Minehead where there was a big forest for a playground.
Uncle Tommy Cornish also lived on the estate. He ran the Tenants Association with wife Flo for many years and was a Labour councillor. Perhaps Steve got his campaigning blood from them. They lived in Havisham House on the new part of Dickens Estate and it wasn’t long before Steve’s family moved the few yards from Pickwick House, where he was born, into the brand new Tupman House. After coming from a flat where the tin bath hung behind a door and the kitchen table folded down from the wall, Steve’s mum cried when she see her brand new ‘proper kitchen’ and indoor bathroom.
At 11, Steve moved to Paragon School, which was not as close to home as his first school, and ‘the wrong side of the Old Kent Road’ he tells me with a knowing nod. You could walk to school but I’d hang off the back of a lorry going down Tower Bridge Road and jump off at the Bricklayers’ Arms’.
The school was was close to three pie-mash shops and Steve favoured Joyce’s: ‘You could stand a fork up in the liquor in there, and you’d find sawdust in it as well if someone opened the door and the wind blew it up from the floor!’
He got more into sport at Paragon: ‘We had a good PE teacher, Mr Roper.’ It is where he was first taught to play cricket. ‘There was always competitions between the four houses and I love competition – It brings the best out in me.’
Steve attended the Cambridge University Mission(C.U.M.) youth club where he says he was ‘taught right from wrong – You had prayers but they also had a rifle range in the basement! You’d pay a penny for 12 slugs and fire an air rifle at a target!’
Steve’s competitiveness had him making a small nick on the best rifle so he could make sure he found that one every time. ‘With any competition we’d all try to cheat one another,’ he adds with a laugh.
Steve reveals he was an average schoolboy but did excel at metalwork. He was way ahead of the other boys so the teacher would allow him to do his own thing. He still has a cannon he designed and made. The skills learnt there would serve him well in his career.
Sport has been a ‘massive’ part of Steve’s life; ‘Most of my friends are through sport, with football the main one, and from playing for some of the best local teams (C.U.M., Fisher, Oxford & Bermondsey, Charterhouse, Stansfeld).’ And he always played for the Dickens Estate team: ‘We were fantastic! We went unbeaten for two years! Plus fishing; I started that at an early age.’
On leaving Paragon, Steve first found work at Christians Wharf where his mate was the boss and paid him £10 a week, cash in hand. ‘I’d never had so much money; a tenner! I didn’t know what to do with it, and this was when beer was one and ninepence a pint!’
But Steve had signed up for an apprenticeship as a Pipe Fitter/Welder which was about to start soon and meant a drop in wages to almost half of what he had grown used to. He didn’t want to lose what seemed like a fortune but Harry Cornish had better ideas: ‘I’ll never forget what my dad said: “Do this apprenticeship and you’ll have a job for life, but your mates will always be on a tenner.” ‘
Steve heeded his father’s words and never looked back. He did his apprenticeship and stayed with that first firm for 24 years.
With money in his pocket Steve would use the Becket, The Fort, The Fleece, The Fellmongers…
It was when out with his mates that he met Christine, his future wife. They married in St James’s Church in 1977, with the reception in Wade Hall, and got a flat in Pickwick House – just four doors away from the one he was born in.
By the early 80s The Cornishes were happy with life but Christine would say, ‘We don’t even own the door knobs on this flat’, as a way to get Steve thinking about buying. One day she discovered houses for sale on the old Surrey Docks and sent Steve down to what had more or less been a muddy wasteland for ten years. All he could see was a Portakabin, which he made his way to and found that houses would be sold in the morning. He was advised to get in the queue that had already started to form. Steve slept in the car and put down his £100 deposit the next day and waited for his house to be built. They moved in a few months later.
When the recession came in the late 80s his firm folded, so Steve and a friend began finding their own work until a job at an Essex oil refinery came along. ‘I had two years of hell there but it was good money and I had a mortgage to pay.’ But with the addition of a daughter, Victoria, to the family, the long hours and drive to and from work were difficult.
The next job came by chance when there was little work about and he went to the Jobcentre. That very day a vacancy had come up that required someone with all the skills Steve had. It was as a Maintenance Engineer with Thomson Reuters, the multinational company in Canary Wharf: Steve went for the interview and was pleased to find the interviewer was ‘an ordinary fella – one of us, if you know what I mean’.
Steve noticed a West Ham badge on the interviewer’s coat so when the work questions had been dealt with, Steve made sure he let it be known that he was a West Ham fan. He wasn’t, but the lie got him a second interview. Steve got the job, stayed there 22 years until he retired and it wasn’t the only time he has used cunning and subterfuge to get what he wants.
As Bermondsey became trendy the developers hovered. Living Downtown meant Steve saw the area changing fast and not always for the better. He has now been Chairman of Russia Dock Woodlands for 25 years: ‘Elected by the people,’ he emphasises, ‘so I’m very proud of that achievement – and of keeping developers away from our 35 acres of woodland for all those years’.
But it hasn’t been easy. He didn’t like it when the local people were being priced out, or when they wanted to build a 15-storey block on the duck pond. The Downtown Defence Campaign was formed to fight the developers who had told Steve ‘they’d crush him like a beetle’. Nevertheless, the group took them to the Royal Courts of Justice where Steve had to get up and speak in front of four Law Lords. The duck pond now has kingfishers enjoying it and the 15-storey building became just four floors high…
‘We pulled all the groups together to form Green Connections (Southwark Park Association 1869, Stave Hill Ecological Park, Lavender Pond Nature Reserve) We’ve gotta join forces because if we jump on our own they won’t listen, but if we all jump together they’ll listen, don’t worry about that!’ Steve was enthused now we were talking about campaigning. ‘It’s to ensure developers fulfil their own green ambitions and not just put a few plants in a pot!’
Fishing has been a lifelong hobby and for the past seven years he has been secretary of the Surrey Docks Angling Club – ‘It keeps kids off the streets,’ he stresses.
The club has just negotiated with developers for:
- new decking for the angling pontoon
- access for disabled anglers
- the dock restocked to add more fish to catch
Plus, Decathlon will sponsor matches for the younger anglers. This is all part of angling returning after three years of not being able to fish in Canada Dock.
Other campaigns Steve has been involved with include keeping two pubs open, salvaging an iconic pub sign and the Bermondsey Coat of Arms that was on the old Seven Islands building.
Just as he pretended to support West Ham to get a job, Steve twice impersonated a Health & Safety Office in order to get on to building works where he suspected foul play was taking place. Once inside he would be asking where the workers’ hard hats were, why discarded wires were trip hazards and rubbish in doorways were fire hazards. In the panic and confusion created he would take photos of the suspected destruction of listed features and fittings to use as evidence against greedy developers trying to turn Bermondsey pubs into flats. Two pubs were saved by photographic evidence but he could not save The Albion, although he did manage to salvage the iconic Courage Cockerel which will soon be up on a local wall again
The Albert McKenzie VC Statue in Tower Bridge Road was also very special to Steve. ‘He was a Bermondsey boxing champion who proved to be a war hero,’ he tells me proudly.
Local men from Stansfeld Oxford & Bermondsey Club initially got together to raise funds to have a statue built by Kevin Boys the Rotherhithe blacksmith. The campaign widened and it was not long before the money was raised. Steve’s metalwork and welding background meant he was enrolled into the creating of the rifle part of the sculpture.
We were reaching the end of our interview.
Steve fills his day caring for his father-in-law, Vic, and forever campaigning to keep Bermondsey from being ruined by over-development.
He tells me that what makes Bermondsey great is the people: ‘The banter can be wicked but funny.’
His favourite place is the Dickens Estate where he was born and where he spent the first years of marriage. He still uses the same barber in Spenlow House that he has used for years, and every time he goes for a haircut he pops round to have look up at the flats he lived in half a lifetime ago,
Christine sadly died in 2024 and now there is just daughter Victoria, herself a top dentist in Harley Street who also wed in St James’s and who he is very proud of. ‘She has been fantastic with what we’re going through.’
He still lives in the house built on a muddy Docklands wasteland and has no plans to move.
