Category Archives: The Thames

Royal Albert Dock and London City Airport

After last Sunday’s diversion, I am back in the Royal Docks, this time exploring the second of the three individual docks that make up the overall “Royals” dock complex – the Royal Albert Dock.

The following map shows the Royal Albert Dock (the top of the two docks), and the red dotted line shows the walk I am covering in today’s post, with some of the key buildings circled. I am starting at the red oval to the left of the map. There is so much to find around this part of east London, that it will take a couple of posts to cover  (© OpenStreetMap contributors).

I also have an error to own up to. In my original post on the history of the Royal docks, I included a number of photos that my father had taken, describing them all as being of the Royal Victoria Dock. From some comments and emails received (thanks for all the comments, they are all read and appreciated), from people who had worked in, and known the area well, the photo showing ships lining the sides of a dock was in fact the Royal Albert Dock:

Whilst all the other photos had identifiable features, and were of the Royal Victoria Dock, my father must have started his walk around the Royal Victoria Dock at the eastern end of the dock, where it joined the Royal Albert, and where there was a good view along the Royal Albert, so the above photo is of the Royal Albert Dock, and is where I am walking in today’s post.

I started the walk at the appropriately named Royal Albert Station on the Docklands Light Railway:

One of the few surviving buildings from when the docks were operational is located right next to the DLR station, this is the Compressor House (light blue oval in the map):

The Compressor House dates from 1914 and was originally a warehouse providing cold storage for cargo shipped via the Royal Docks:

The Compressor House featured in a document released by the Mayor of London back in May 2024. The document covers the “leasehold disposal of Compressor House, for 10 years, to Really Local Group to deliver a project that addresses priorities of good growth, levelling up and Royal Docks placemaking; and provides best value for the GLA Land and Property Limited commercial asset.”

Apparently the building retains many original internal features such as hoists, rails and winching machinery. Plans for the building include a café, rooms for hire, including for exhibitions and performances, and a learning / meeting room.

I love the terms used in documents talking about the benefits of a project, as the Mayor of London document talks about linking the surrounding communities with the Royal Docks, through “in this case through the lens of digital inclusion”. I have no idea what this means.

It would be really good to make publicly accessible use of the building – providing the original features are retained, along with the story of how the building was once part of the Royal Docks success.

Arms of the Port of London Authority and the date of 1914 displayed above the door.

From the Royal Albert DLR station, and the Compressor House, it was a very short walk to the side of the Royal Albert Dock:

There is a wide walkway along the northern edge of the dock, with some recent developments along the side, but what impresses is the enormous expanse of water. The above view is looking east, and the view below is looking to the west, where the bridge can be seen that marks the point where the Royal Albert meets the Royal Victoria Dock:

Whilst there has been less development along this side of the Royal Albert Dock, along the south of the dock, where there is a strip of land between the Royal Albert and King George V dock, there is the result of one of the first major infrastructure projects around the Royal Docks, that was, and continues to be an issue for many local residents, and which made the Royal Docks a significant transport hub for London. This is London City Airport, where from the north side of the dock, you can watch planes landing and taking off, where there were once warehouses:

View across to the terminal buildings at London City Airport:

The idea for an airport in the docklands came from the London Docklands Development Corporation in the early 1980s. The concept was for an airport that would service the business centres of the City of London, and the proposed development centered on Canary Wharf in the Isle of Dogs.

The airport would offer swift access from these centres of business, with minimal waiting time at the airport. Almost a “turn up and fly” approach, rather than the longer travel out to airports such as Heathrow and Gatwick, with the lengthier times for check-in, security etc. as well as often delayed take-offs and landings.

The airport was built by the civil engineering and construction company, Mowlem, between 1986 and 1987.

Incidentally, one of the best books I have on the construction and engineering of the London Docks is “London Docks 1800 – 1980 by Ivan Greeves (1980)”. (I will give a long list of the books and sources I have used in the final post on the Royal Docks).

Ivan Greeves was a fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a Director of John Mowlem, and Mowlem had been involved with many of the civil engineering projects around the London Docks. Greeves’ book is a wonderful detailed civil engineering history of the London Docks.

There were many publications by both the LDDC and other publishers, as the development of the docklands got underway. I collected as many as I could, and one was the magazine “Vistas”, published by the London Docklands Publishing Consortium, and in issue 2. Spring 1987, the first two airlines that would use London City Airport, which would open later in the year were featured:

The first two airlines were Brymon Airways and Eurocity Express, and an article in Vistas explains the airlines plans, and the type of service they intended to operate from the new docklands airport.

There is also a photo showing London City Airport under construction, when it occupied just the land between the Royal Albert and George V docks:

The article continues, with both airlines explaining the benefits of flying from London City Airport, with Brymon fully focused on the business traveler, and Eurocity Express also focused on the business traveler, but also expecting a share of leisure travelers:

It was a Brymon flight that had helped prove that planes could take off and land from short landing strips in the docklands, when in 1982 a Brymon Dash 7 aircraft landed at Heron Quays in Canary Wharf.

Eurocity Express changed name to London City Airways in 1988 to more closely align the identity of the airline with London City Airport, but would suffer financial collapse two years later in 1990.

In the late 1980s I worked for a company that was split between London and Amsterdam and did use London City Airport a number of times. It was a really fast airport to get through, whether arriving or departing, and the best bit was always coming into land, with the steep approach, and good views of the surrounding docklands.

I did take my camera a number of times, but cannot find the negatives. Hopefully one day.

Old and new industries / business around the Royal Docks – planes at London City Airport, with the Tate and Lyle factory in the background:

After opening, the airlines operating from London City Airport used propeller driven airplanes such as the Dash 7. These carried relatively few passengers when compared to larger jet aircraft, however they were more than capable of landing and taking of from a short runway.

The airport served business centres close to the UK, such as Amsterdam and Paris, and in the following years the destinations served, as well as the number of passengers grew considerably (including New York for a short time).

An extension to the airport opened in 1992. Access to the airport improved in 2005 when a DLR station was opened at the airport, and in 2008, additional aircraft parking space was opened on an extension to the airport built on piles over part of the King George V dock.

Jet aircraft started to use the airport in the early 1990s, and today jet aircraft run the majority of services, with a small number of propeller driven aircraft still operating.

In the first full year of operation, 133,000 passengers passed through London City Airport. In August of this year, the Government approved the expansion of the airport to increase capacity from 6.5 million to 9 million, with more weekend and early morning flights.

Flight destinations and the target traveler have also moved on from the initial business market, and when I had a look in the terminal building there seemed to be just as many people, if not more, going away for leisure, including families, than business.

I am writing this on a Friday evening, and I had a look at the first flight on Saturday morning which is a British Airways flight to Ibiza – definitely not one of the original target markets.

There is not much going on along the north bank of the Royal Albert Dock, and whilst I was walking, on a summer’s weekday morning, there were very few people around., so in this quiet place, it is strange to hear the sound of a jet aircraft taking off, or the quitter sound of a landing, at regular intervals:

There is a certain symetry between the airport and the old docks. The docks transported cargo all over the world and the airport is now flying people.

The north bank of the dock is really quiet, as this view along the walkway demonstrates:

And with it being such a peaceful environment, it is hard to imagine just how busy the Royal Albert Dock was, and what a sight it must have been, with so many ships coming and going, and vast amounts of cargo being shifted between warehouses, transit sheds, quayside, lighters and ships, as the following photo of the dock demonstrates:

The warehouses that ran alongside the length of the dock were not meant for long term storage, most were transit sheds as this was their main purpose, to temporarily hold cargo as it transited from ship to destination, or from source to ship.

The following photo shows a typical transit shed at the Royal Albert Dock:

And an innovation across the Royal Docks was the use of the railway as a means of transport. The docks were threaded through with rail lines allowing the movement of goods within the docks, and out onto the wider mainline rail networks, as the following photo of a cold store, along with overhead conveyors between buildings, shows:

Continuing the walk along the Royal Albert Dock, and I have reached a series of office blocks:

I have no idea who thinks of the slogans that often try to attract people or companies to new properties, “Regenerative Audacious Disruptive” and “Where Paradigms Shift” – totally meaningless – although I suppose that if a company moved their office to one of these blocks, with so few facilities or other businesses around, it would genuinely be “disruptive”:

Although they do have a good view along the dock, and across to the towers on the Isle of Dogs:

All these office blocks appear to be unoccupied, and they are a testament to an over hyped scheme that was entirely dependent on foreign investment and foreign businesses.

A headline in the Guardian on the 30th of May, 2013 read “Chinese to develop slice of British imperial past: Royal Albert Dock due to be Asian business park by 2023: Transformation of London site could bring 20,000 jobs”.

The article below the above headline reported that the Chinese developer Advanced Business Park had signed a £1 billion agreement with London Mayor Boris Johnson to develop a 35 acre site alongside the Royal Albert Dock with offices and shops, with the aim of attracting Asian businesses to set-up their European head quarters at the site, as well as British companies who do business in Asia.

At the signing of the agreement, Boris Johnson said that it would be “London’s third great business area” and that it “will restore jobs and growth to the Royal Docks, an area . . . that has been in more or less continuous decline for 50 or 60 years”.

The parts of the development that have been completed seem to have been mainly empty since completion, and the 20,000 jobs have not materialized.

In 2022 newspaper headlines reported that the “Royal Albert Dock a ghost town as developer goes bankrupt”. This was ABP Investment Ltd, the Beijing based original property developer.

In May, 2024 the Greater London Authority was looking for a new developer for the land alongside the northern edge of the Royal Albert Dock, as from the original 2013 agreement, only about 10% had been built, and this 10% was mainly empty office blocks.

The central street through the existing office blocks is called Mandarin Street, reflecting the Chinese heritage of the original developer and investment:

Leaving Mandarin Street, and the empty office blocks behind, I continue walking on past the empty land that should by now, based on the 2013 agreement, have seen 20,000 people working here:

Look left from my position when taking the above photo and there are some really good, original buildings from the time of the working docks, and this is the Dock Manager’s Offices (green oval in the map at the top of the post):

Grade II listed and built in 1883 by Vigers and Wagstaffe. The name of the building should explain what went on here – it was from where the Royal Docks were managed, where the dock records were kept and administered.

A second building, alongside the Dock Managers Office is the Central Buffet, also by Vigers and Wagstaffe, dating from 1883, and is also Grade II listed.

The Central Buffest appears to have been a café / restaurant for workers and for passengers traveling via the Royal Docks. It also appears to have been used as a pub, as this report from the 6th of December 1897 explains;

“BETTING AT THE ROYAL ALBERT DOCKS – At Stratford Police court on Saturday, Thomas Clarey, a lighterman, of 49, freemasons-road, Custom-house, was summoned on six information’s for using the Central Buffet, a public-house in the Royal Albert Docks, for the purpose of betting with other persons, and Henry James Morgan, the secretary of the London and India Docks Joint Committee, the holder of the licence of the Central Buffest, was summoned for permitting the place to be used for the purposes of betting.”

A “barmaid” was also called to give evidence, so the Central Buffet was certainly also working as a pub.

The Dock Managers Office and the Central Buffet are remarkable buildings, and from their appearance they would be more expected in the suburbs, or as a country house, rather than in the industrial east London docks.

Winged figure with trumpet on top of the Central Buffet:

A look along the Royal Albert Dock, and there is still much of the dock behind me, and in the distance, out of sight in the photo below, is the Royal Victoria Dock. You really need to walk alongside the Royal Docks to fully appreciate the sheer scale of these manmade temples to London’s trade:

Vessels berthed at the Royal Albert Dock:

More shipping in the Royal Albert Dock:

New Quays added to the Royal Albert Dock in the 1930s:

The following photo shows how cargo could be loaded to and from lighters as well as the quayside. The Royal Albert Dock was known as a dock where goods of all sorts could fine the appropriate facilities for unloading, storage and distribution:

All very different today as I walk along a mainly silent quayside, with just the occasional take off or landing on the other side of the water to disturb the peace.

London City Airport is on the south side of the Royal Albert Dock, however there was a second, short term airstrip on the north side of the dock.

In 2007, the Red Bull air racing event took place in London, and the long open space alongside the north of the dock proved ideal for the pits area and runway for the event.

If I remember correctly, the Red Bull race was also held in docklands in the following year, 2008, and these events had quite an impact on the London City Airport, as flights from the airport had to be suspended whilst Red Bull racing was underway.

Peer over a fence as you walk along the north side of the Royal Albert Dock, and parts of the overgrown runway can still be seen:

The RB in the runway designation of RB 28 stands for Red Bull. There is a photo of the runway in as new condition, and when in use for Red Bull Racing on the Abandoned Forgotten & Little Known Airfields in Europe website, which can be found by clicking here.

Further along the Royal Albert Dock, there are some recent buildings which have brought activity to the area, although as I was there during August, they were again very quiet.

These are educational establishments, and first is the London Design and Engineering UTC (University Technical College):

A UTC is a government funded school that offers 14 to 19 year olds a more focused technical and scientific educational, taught in a different way to a normal school.

The next building is the University of East London:

The area around these buildings should be much busier in school term time, but during August they just added to the sense that the northern section of the Royal Albert Dock needs a considered development plan to bring in more life, and benefits for the local community just outside of the dock, not just yet another area flooded with identikit apartment blocks.

Next to the university buildings there is the student accommodation, which includes several rather different, round blocks:

They are described as “having a nautical theme in homage to the shipping heritage of the area”:

They certainly have a good view, looking out on the dock, and with views of planes arriving and departing at the airport on the opposite side of the dock:

The Royal Albert Dock was opened on the 24th of June, 1880, and cost £2,100,000 to construct – a considerable sum of money at the time. I described the opening ceremony in my first post on the Royal Docks, here.

Although built not that long after the Royal Victoria Dock, the Royal Albert was needed to accommodate ships of larger size and deeper draught than the earlier Victoria Dock, as well as providing a significant amount of additional space for ships to dock, and the associated infrastructure for moving and storing cargo.

The Royal Albert Dock was 27 feet in depth (just 1.5 feet deeper than the Royal Victoria, but suffcient for the expected larger ships). The entrance from the Thames to the Royal Albert Dock was 550 feet in length and 80 feet wide.

The water area that the Royal Albert Dock occupied was 73 acres, compared to 66 acres for the Royal Victoria.

The Royal Albert Dock was the first London Dock to be lighted by electricity, and this helped the dock to be in use by both night as well as day.

Between the main dock area of the Royal Albert, and the locked entrance to the Thames was a basin. In the following photo, I am almost at the basin, and looking along the full length of the dock. A little way along the dock edge on the left, you can just see the entrance to the King George V Dock, which is to the south of the Royal Albert

Looking in the other direction at the basin, the area of water between the dock and the Thames:

The following map extract shows the eastern end of the Royal Albert Dock (upper length of water) with the basin connecting the dock to two entrances to the river:

Today, the area to the north of the basin has been redeveloped, and there are blocks of new apartment buildings to be seen. The area from the upper entrance to the river and down to the large entrance to the King George V dock is undeveloped, and is where we can see some of the old dock infrastructure, and get an impression of the size of the dock entrances.

Changes within the basin have added some routes across, including lifting bridges:

From this point, I took a very short detour to find another of the building that remain from when the docks were operational, the Galyons Royal Docks (purple oval in the map at the start of the post):

Originally the Gallions Hotel, it is Grade II* listed, and as with the Dock Managers Office and the Central Buffet, it was by George Vigers and T R Wagstaffe  and dates from the same period as it was built between 1881 and 1883:

The Civil & Military Gazette on November the 8th, 1893 carried an account of a visit to the Royal Docks, which included this description of the Gallions Hotel:

“At the Gallions Hotel you meet old salts and ships captains of all types; some, of the old-fashioned style, look as if they have just foregathered with their friends, Cap’en Cuttle and Bunsby, and shake their grizzled heads dolefully (as is the custom of grizzled heads all over the world) over the present degenerate age; they drink rum and hot water, with an enticing piece of lemon floating on the top out of fat glasses with a leg, called very appropriately ‘rummers’ and stir up the seductive beverage thoughtfully with a fat glass spoon.

Of a different stamp, and yet of the true British sailor breed are the smart young captains and mates who are standing each other whiskies and sodas (plenty of whisky and very little soda). The genial landlady knows them all, and has a greeting for each; they come and go at intervals, and in the meantime, have been round the world. It is a small journey now-a-days, this circumnavigation of the globe, and is thought nothing of at the Gallions. Many and curious are the tokens of affection and esteem brought home by these sailor men to their kind hostess; her parlour walls are simply covered with curios of every conceivable kind.”

The interior of the Gallion’s is interesting, and is perfectly described in the Historic England listing: “Notable interior with diagonal timber bracing of massive proportions to ground floor. Oak staircase with enriched balusters and newels. Main saloon contains huge timber bar and original fittings.”

The exterior is equally interesting, with a “roughcast first floor with plaster frieze by Edward Roscoe Mullins”:

According to the excellent book “Docklands – An illustrated historical survey of life and work in east London” (North East London Polytechnic – 1986), the Gallions Hotel was for the “use of liner passengers embarking at the adjacent jetty. A subway used to connect with the Royal Albert Dock Basin”. I have also read that the subway was more a covered walkway between hotel and boarding point for liners.

Whilst the Gallions Hotel (or Galyons using today’s spelling) is still a pub / restaurant today, it is now serving a very different clientele. Not a liner passenger or “old salts and ships captains” in sight.

There is another building nearby which is also still serving the same purpose. This is the Royal Docks Impounding Station (yellow oval in the map at the start of the post):

The purpose of an impounding station is to maintain the water level in the enclosed area of the docks.

The docks gradually loose water through evaporation, seepage through the walls of the dock, and through the lock gates, although this is less of a problem as the lock gates are infrequently opened these days.

To replace lost water, the impounding station pumps water into the docks from the Thames, and on the day of my visit, possibly difficult to see in the following photo, the impounding station was active, and water was upwelling in the area in front of the four pipes which route the water into the basin. The water was very mud coloured compared to the rest of the dock:

The impounding station was built in 1912 and was originally equipped with three steam driven pumps. These were replaced by four electrically powered pumps in 1954. 

There is a water intake in the Thames at Gallions Reach, and a 4m by 5.5m intake culvert connects to the impounding station, below which is a large wet well, where water from the intake is then pumped into the dock.

To put the operation of the building into perspective, each of the four pipes leading from the building into the dock are 70 inches in diameter, and through these, each pump and pipe carries 7150 litres of Thames water a second into the dock, and as an Olympic swimming pool is the usual measure when water is concerned, when all four pumps are working they would fill one of these swimming pools in one and a half minutes.

Whilst I have not seen inside the Royal Docks Impounding Station, a few years ago I did visit the impounding station at West India Dock, which you can read about in this post.

Arms of the Port of London Authority and date of construction on the impounding station:

The rear of the impounding station, also showing the new apartment buildings that have been recently built around the west end of the Royal Albert Dock:

By the end of the 19th century, the Royal Victoria and Royal Albert Docks were very busy places. Their colossal length could handle very many large ships at the same time. Cold stores, general warehouses and transit sheds were integrated with a rail network that ran within and around the docks, interconnecting the docks and with the wider national rail network.

Ships were getting larger and faster, and refrigerated shipping brought new opportunities to bring cargo into the country, however the success of the docks was also seen as a threat to many traditional businesses within the UK, as the following extract also from the Civil & Military Gazette on November the 8th, 1893 explains:

“The ships of this line (at any rate those employed in the frozen meat trade), go out with general cargoes round the Cape of Good Hope, and return around Cape Horn; they are away altogether about five months each trip. In addition to the mutton and lamb, a great trade is gradually springing up in butter and cheese, and many tons of these commodities are now imported into England. It seems a poor look out for the wretched British farmer, and something will have to be done for him before long, or the agriculturist in Britain will become as extinct as the dodo; he is undersold at all points, and cannot make a living from the soil.”

As has always been the case, the ability to import large quantities of a product frequently causes a conflict with internal producers which often cannot compete.

There is so very much to see around the Royal Docks, and in next week’s post, I will be walking through the more derelict part of the area, where the entrances between the Thames and the dock are located, walking across a large locked entrance, and then into North Woolwich and Silvertown.

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Royal Victoria Dock in 2024 – Part 2

One ticket has just become available for my walk this Saturday, the 2nd of November, exploring the Lost Street of the Barbican. Click here for details and booking.

In today’s post, I am continuing my walk around the Royal Victoria Dock, completing the second half of the walk, along with a couple of short diversions to look at how the area around the dock along with Silvertown has, and continues to be, redeveloped.

The following map shows the route of today’s post, starting at the circle at lower right, which was where I ended the walk in the previous post, and ending at Royal Victoria DLR station at upper left  (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

And this was my first diversion away from the dock, with a walk down to see the Thames Barrier Park:

Thames Barrier Park was completed, and opened in November 2000. Whilst it is a “normal” park, consisting of open green space, trees etc. there is one really unique feature in the park, which can be seen in the map on the poster.

This is a slightly angled, 130 foot long sunken garden, which has parallel lines of planting and hedges, which have been trimmed to give the impression of a series of waves running along the length of the garden.

The following view is looking along the sunken garden from the north, down to the Thames Barrier, which can just be seen in the distance:

I did wonder if the sunken garden occupied the space of a dock, however after checking OS maps of the area, there was no dock covering the length of the garden, although there was a small dock that covered part of the lower section of the sunken garden, towards the river, so whilst this may have been the inspiration for the sunken garden, the large area we see today was down to the construction of the park.

The site was occupied by chemical works (as was so much of the Silvertown riverside), with petrochemical and acid products being processed and manufactured. So great was the contamination of the soil, that a six foot layer of crushed concrete was placed on top of the original ground level to protect the new topsoil.

Whilst I can see that this applied to the area of the park surrounding the sunken garden, as this part of the park is slightly raised, the land of the sunken garden must have been specially treated.

Looking north along the sunken garden, where a DLR train can be seen entering the Pontoon Dock station:

The park is named after the Thames Barrier, and there is a good view of the barrier from the southern end of the park:

The following photo is looking to the east along the river, showing the gently sloping foreshore along this part of the river, along with new apartment buildings and industrial sites on the far side of the river:

Walking back up to North Woolwich Road, and we can see one of the defining industrial features of the area, the Grade II listed Grain Silo D:

Grain Silo D was built in the early 1920s alongside one of the finger channels in Pontoon Dock, off the south side of the Royal Victoria Dock.

The silo was used to extract and store grain from ships moored in the channel alongside, using either a bucket conveyor or by a suction elevator. Grain in the silo would be transported onwards, either by barge, or by the rail network that crossed the area between the mills to the south of the Royal Victoria Dock, and the wider rail network.

Silo D was built on the site of an original silo which was damaged in the Silvertown explosion of January 1917 (the subject of a future post). The following 1921 photo from Britain from Above shows Silo D under final construction to lower left, with the original silos A, B, and C surrounding the new silo (Image Source: EPW006144 ENGLAND (1921). Industrial buildings and wharfage, Silvertown, 1921):

In the above photo, you can see the rail tracks to the left of the silos, with a shed covering part of the track next to each silo. Grain would have been transported by conveyor belt from the silos to the sheds, where is was loaded onto the goods wagons on the rail network, for processing in the nearby Millennium Mills.

Silo D is Grade II listed, and will be retained within the extensive redevelopment which is taking place around Pontoon Dock. It will have its own “Quarter” – the Silo D Quarter, where the building will sit alongside the retained dock water, but surrounded by new developments.

You can see an image of the future location of Silo D by scrolling down a short distance on the Lendlease Silvertown website, by clicking here.

.Another “Quarter” in the redevelopment of the area around Pontoon Dock is the Mills Quarter, which will be based around the old Millennium Mills. At the top of the Lendlease Silvertown website page accessed via the above link, is an image of the rear of the Millennium Mills buildings, once development of the area is complete.

The rear of the building as seen in 2024:

The map at the top of the page on the Lendlease Silvertown website shows just how large the redevelopment is, along the south east section of the Royal Victoria Dock.

Whilst redevelopment of the area that has been derelict for so long is much needed, as are the homes that will be built, the issue I have is the identikit design of the buildings, very similar to almost all other areas of London also undergoing development.

Also, the way (particularly with Silo D), new buildings appear to crowd around those that remain from the working docks.

Having said that, this type of identical housing blocks is a similar approach to the streets of terrace housing that covered so much of the land over which London expanded during the 19th and early decades of the 20th centuries.

There is very little left of pre-war housing around Silvertown. One stretch is along Mill Road just to the west of Silo D, where there is a row of houses on the eastern side of the street, although only the first ten are pre-war, the rest of the street (from just past the lamp post along the street) dates from the late 1950s / early 1960:

In the above photo, a chimney can be seen at the end of Mill Road, and walking to the northern end of the street, close to the Royal Victoria Dock, we can see the chimney in the centre of a roundabout:

I will show the original surroundings of the chimney later in the post as it is a remarkable survivor, however at the end of Mill Road, we can see the western side of the Millennium Mills complex:

Along with the rear of Silo D:

And by the roundabout with the chimney at the centre, if we look at one of the turn offs from the roundabout, which ends abruptly at a gate, we can see the Millennium Mills buildings:

The Millennium Mills we see today are not the original buildings bearing the name.

The Royal Victoria Dock was long a centre for grain storage and flour milling, and the company William Vernon & Sons built the first Millennium Mills in 1905 to mill flour.

Vernon’s produced flour using the brand name “Millennium Flour”, and they won awards and gained a considerable market, based on advertising which featured the quality of their flour, and the expertise that went into their milling process, for example, from the Evening News on Saturday the 13th of February 1909:

“Science controls the ‘Millennium’ Mills. It dictates the operations resulting in ‘Millennium’ Flour, which the good housewife knows makes the best-flavoured and most nutritious bread on the market. Say ‘MILLENNIUM’ to Baker – always.”

And from the Evening News on Friday the 23rd of April 1909:

“Millennium Flour cannot be surpassed. All that science can do has been done at ‘Millennium’ Mills to ensure the production of perfect flour. only the highest grade wheat is used, and absolute cleanliness in every process is insisted upon. Say ‘Millennium’ to Baker – always.”

Vernon’s milling and cleanliness was such that they also advertised that their flour was the purest white on the market.

As well as alongside the Royal Victoria Dock in London, Vernon’s also had a similar mill in Liverpool, another port where imported grain was received. In 1910 they were advertising “Remarkable Facts” about the capacity of their two mills, with:

“The daily capacity of the Millennium Mills is equal to an output of 9,600 bags of 140 lbs. each; i.e. about 3,000,000 per annum – sufficient to supply the seven million people of London with bread for two months and a half.

The loading out capacity into barges or lighters at each mill is 3,000 bags per hour. the Granary departments have a storage capacity of 250,000 sacks of wheat.”

The original Millennium Mills buildings were damaged in the Silvertown explosion, with the mill back in full operation in 1920 as William Vernon & Sons were advertising an auction of all the surplus material left over from the rebuilding process, which included 30,000 stock bricks, 3 Tons of bolts, ladders, barrows, tools etc.

In the same year, William Vernon & Sons amalgamated with Spillers Ltd, another business who started as flour millers in Bridgewater, Somerset in 1829, (although it looks more like a take over by Spillers).

Throughout the 1920s, the business was expanding rapidly, and in the following decades, the buildings alongside the Royal Victoria Dock were rebuilt. Luckily, the buildings have their year of construction at the very top, so going back to the photo above, the smaller building on the right dates from 1933:

And the larger building on the left dates from 1954, which was part of the post war rebuild of the site following bomb damage during the Second World War:

Whilst the name of William Vernon, the company that originally started milling at the Royal Victoria Dock has disappeared, the brand name of their flour “Millennium” can still be seen on the mill building today, alongside the name of the company that took them over – “Spillers”:

The end came n 1981 with the closure of the Royal Docks, although the mill had been in decline for some years before.

And since closure it has remained empty and derelict, but has been been used in numerous films, TV programmes, music videos and, in the case of Jean-Michel Jarre’s Destination Docklands, the building was painted white and used as a backdrop for the concert.

Music videos that have included the mill, along with other views of the docks include Ask by the Smiths:

And Take Back the City by Snow Patrol:

Along with Fluorescent Adolescent by the Artic Monkeys:

There are many others.

From the roundabout, there is a view of the chimney and the Millennium Mills:

And using one of the photos from Britain from Above, it is possible to locate where the chimney was, in relation to the rest of the buildings that were on the site, both remaining and demolished (Image source: https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/image/EAW035762)

The arrows point to the following:

  • The red arrow is pointing to the chimney that now stands alone at the centre of a small roundabout
  • The oranage arrow is pointing to the 1933 building that can be seen today
  • The yellow arrow points to the 1954 building, which can also be seen today
  • The green arrow is pointing to the infrastructure that was used to extract grain from ships and move to the mill buildings. i have included my father’s photo of these structures from his 1953 visit, below:

I have now reached the edge of the dock, and one of the first areas that was redeveloped around the Royal Victoria Dock – Britannia Village:

Britannia Village occupies the south west corner of the Royal Victoria Dock and was built during the 1990s and consists of, by today’s standards, relatively low rise housing, typically up to four or five floors.

Between the houses that face onto the dock, and the dock, there is a walkway along the old quay, where a number of original cranes have been retained:

The cranes are all Grade II listed, and were made by Stothert and Pitt Cranes of Bath. The majority date from 1962, however there are two 1920 cranes included in those still standing around the dock.

All the industry that once surround the Royal Docks has long gone, as has the majority of industry along the river, however there were two places that I wanted to find that have survived, because they are dependent on the river rather than the docks.

I will cover the main site when I walk around the Royal Albert and King George V docks, but for today, it was a short walk south from the south west corner of the Royal Victoria Dock to find the factory that makes Lyle’s Golden Syrup:

Abram Lyle was born in Greenock, Scotland in 1820 and operated a cooperage and shipping business, with many of his ships transporting sugar cane.

In 1881, he expanded on this involvement in the sugar trade, by building a sugar refinery along the Thames.

Part of the process to refine sugar produces a thick treacle like substance, and Lyle used this byproduct to produce a syrup which could be used in cooking and as a sweetener. This was originally called “Goldie”.

The name soon changed to Lyle’s Golden Syrup, and in 1885, the syrup was sold for the first time in tins, with the same branding that has survived to this day (the company holds a Guinness World Record for the longest running brand), and the company today has one of the tins on the corner of their building:

The trademark on the tin names Abram Lyle & Sons, Sugar Refiners, with an image of a lion in the centre surrounded by bees. This image is a result of Abram Lyle’s religious convictions as the image is based on a story in the Old Testament of the Bible of Samson’s lion and bees, which results in the slogan “Out of the strong came forth sweetness”, which can be seen just below the lion.

Abram Lyle’s company merged with the sugar refining company of Henry Tate, who also had a nearby sugar refinery (in a later post), to form Tate & Lyle.

Tate & Lyle sold their sugar refining business, which included Lyle’s Golden Syrup in 2010 to American Sugar Refining, Inc. (part of their ASR name can just be seen in the above photo), with Tate & Lyle focusing on specialty ingredients. Part of the sale included American Sugar Refining continuing to use the Tate & Lyle and Lyle’s Golden Syrup branding.

The factory on the banks of the Thames today produces over one million tins of Lyle’s Golden Syrup, which is also sold in different formats such as plastic bottles, and is exported across the world.

A wonderful survivor from when this part of the river was end to end industry.

To the east of the Lyle’s factory is a large open space, which is not included in the main Silvertown development to the south of the Royal Victoria Dock, and around Pontoon Dock, however its location next to the river makes it a prime future redevelopment site:

After this brief diversion, I have returned to the Royal Victoria Dock, and am now at the south west corner, looking east along the dock:

To the left, I can see the western end of the Royal Victoria Dock, indeed of the whole Royal Docks complex. Where the white floats in the water are located was the locked entrance between the River Thames and the Royal Victoria Dock, the original and only entrance when the Victoria Dock was first built:

This locked entrance was completely filled in after the closure of the docks, but the outline of the entrance can still be seen at this corner of the dock. To the right is the latest site of City Hall – the location of the Mayor of London and London Authority.

And from the end of the dock, I can look east along the full length of the Royal Victoria Dock, a view which shows the sheer scale of this dock, just one of three that eventually made up the Royal Docks complex:

In the above photo, the thin line of the walkway bridge that spans the dock roughly half way along can be seen in the distance.

Zooming in, we can see the bridge, and behind that the Connaught Bridge where the Royal Victoria meet the Royal Albert Dock, and this later dock is much longer than the Victoria:

There is very little that has survived from the time when the docks were operational. The cranes are the most obvious features, and at this western end of the dock there is an old capstan:

Which was also made by Stothert and Pitt of Bath, the same company that made the cranes that remain around the dock:

Looking across the western end of the dock, and we can see the start (or end) of the cable car that runs over the river to the Greenwich Peninsula:

Before continuing round the western end of the docks, I took another quick diversion down towards the river, to see a construction site for a new route across the river that will soon be operational:

This is a large area between the west end of the Royal Victoria Dock, and the river, all to the west of the Lyle Golden Syrup factory. Boarded off so it is not yet possible to walk down to the river, and with part of the Docklands Light Railway running across, which provides a good view of the site:

This is the site on the north of the river where the Silvertown Tunnel is being constructed.

The Silvertown Tunnel is expected to open in 2025 and and as well as lanes for traffic, it will also include a dedicated bus lane. First proposed in 2012, the tunnel is intended to address congestion issues at the Blackwall Tunnel by providing additional capacity across the river.

Construction of the Silvertown Tunnel along with ongoing operation and maintenance has all been privately financed, and when the tunnel opens there will be a charge applied to vehicles using the tunnel, and to stop people continuing to use the Blackwall Tunnel as a free alternative, a charge will also be introduced to use the Blackwall Tunnel.

Looking through one of the access gates to the construction site, we can see the distinctive building that is on top of the northern access portal to the tunnel, where traffic running to and from Silvertown Way and Lower Lea Crossing, will be able to access the tunnel to and from the Greenwich Peninsula:

When complete, the area around the tunnel portal will be landscaped, and completion of construction work will free up a considerable area of land around the portal, and down to the Thames for further development.

It will be interesting to return towards the end of next year when the tunnel should be in operation. It will continue to be a construction site, but then probably lots of apartment blocks.

Returning to the western end of the Royal Victoria Dock and this is the new City Hall building, home of the Mayor of London and the London Authority:

The building was originally called the Crystal and was built by the engineering company Siemens and opened in 2012 as an exhibition centre, learning and global knowledge hub focusing on the future of the city and on sustainability.

When it opened, Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London said that “It is a clear sign of the confidence in London’s ability to nurture and support eco-enterprises that Siemens has chosen to locate its flagship centre of sustainability here in the UK capital. The Crystal is set to sit at the heart of a brand new Green Enterprise District, which will sweep across east of the city. We envisage that the district will be a vibrant, international hub incubating dozens of low carbon businesses.”

Four years later, Siemens sold the building back to the Greater London Authority and left the building a few years later after an early surrender of their 7 year lease on the building.

In 2021, the London Authority used a break clause in their lease of the City Hall building on the south of the Thames, next to Tower Bridge. The London Authority did not own the original City Hall, it was leased from the the Kuwaiti owned St Martin’s Property Group, who also own the surrounding land and buildings between Hay’s Wharf and Tower Bridge.

The move to a building the London Authority already owned was planned to saved a large amount of money over the following years, along with being part of the regeneration of the Royal Docks complex, by moving a significant London institution, along with a large number of staff, to the docks.

It is interesting that the London Authority and Mayor of London are now based in a building that was until 1965, part of Essex, when the implementation of the London Government Act 1963 transferred the area to the east of the River Lea from Essex to Greater London.

The same comment applies to the Royal Docks, as for most of their operational life, they were in Essex, rather than London.

in the same year as the Crystal building opened (2012), the cable car also opened, taking passengers across the river to the Greenwich Peninsula, and opposite the new City Hall building is the Royal Victoria Dock entrance to the cable car, where gondolas start their journey across the river:

The Cable Car has never been the success expected during planning, and after an initial peak of users after opening in 2012, the annual number of travelers on the cable car has dropped considerably, with summer peaks showing that the cable car is mainly used by visitors to the Royal Docks and Greenwich Peninsula, rather than commuters or workers.

The following graph shows the number of travelers in millions from 2012 on the left to April 2024. For the reporting period of 2023 / 2024, the maximum usage was 180,000 a month, with the minimum usage being 70,000 a month.

Gondolas leave and arrive over the Royal Victoria Dock:

I am now on my final part of the walk around the Royal Victoria Dock, and leaving the dock at the north west corner, I cross the Western Gateway, which is the main approach road to the Excel exhibition centre. Fully redeveloped with a bit of retail, hotels, restaurants and residential:

On the opposite side of the Western Gateway, where Seagull Lane heads to the DLR station, is this strange structure:

This was built between 1987 and 1988 as one of the early projects in the regeneration of the Royal Docks.

The building is one of the storm-water pumping stations around the docks, and the surface structure conceals the majority of the infrastructure which extends 25 metres below ground level. There are some interesting diagrams and photos of the pumping station here.

The blue painting of the circular structures is now rather faded. When completed, this was a deep blue, with red and yellow for additional features of the station.

These colours were chosen as “from the outset the building was meant to be a visual delight, an oasis in the drab industrial environment of Silvertown”.

Much of the area around the Royal Victoria Dock has changed considerably in the years since the pumping station was completed, and there is not that much of the “drab industrial environment” left.

And a short distance further, I reached the Royal Victoria DLR station, a fitting end to a walk around the whole of the Royal Victoria Dock:

I hope the last three posts on the Royal Docks and a walk around the Royal Victoria Dock has shown just how interesting the area is, from the vast area of the water that made up the original dock, to the way that the dock evolved and developed, the industries that surrounded the dock, and the potential future of the dock.

The development around Pontoon Dock, the old Millennium Mill and Silo D will be transformative in one way or another.

I just hope that some reference to the history of the docks survives and the story of those who built and worked at the docks is embedded into the new developments, and that the area does not become another densely packed area of identikit towers.

And to finish, if you would like to relive the Jean Michel Jarre, Destination Docklands concert back in 1988, held in the Royal Victoria Dock, with the mill buildings in the background, including the building that was in one of my father’s photos in last week’s post, before it was demolished a few years later, the film is here:

If I remember correctly, the concert was on a barge on the dock (which was probably why children in the choir were wearing lifejackets). I have no idea how the electrical equipment they were using continued to work given the very wet weather on the day.

I still have to cover the Royal Albert and King George VI Docks, however rather than a continuous run of posts on the Royal Docks, for next week’s post I will be visiting a very different place.

alondoninheritance.com

Royal Victoria Dock in 2024 – Part 1

The Royal Docks decline started in the late 1960s / early 1970s with the gradual shift in goods transport to containerisation and much larger ships. The Thames was not deep enough to allow these ships to travel all the way to the London Docks, and the much larger ports specialising in supporting container traffic were being developed in Felixstowe and Southampton.

The last ship to be loaded in the Royal Docks left on the 7th of December 1981, and after that, the docks fell into a state of gradual dereliction.

The Docklands Joint Committee was formed in January 1974, and published the “London Docklands – A 1976 Strategic Plan”, which I have written about in this post. Apart from the development of some local housing, the report did not lead to any significant redevelopment of the London Docks, including the Royal Docks.

This would come in the 1980s, with the founding in 1981 of the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC), an agency set up specifically to drive the redevelopment of the docklands to the east of London, both north and south of the river.

The Royal Docks came within the LDDC’s responsibility, and their many publications provide a record of their intentions for the docks, plans for redevelopment, and how this was being achieved.

One such publication from 1990, as development of the Royal Docks was underway was “London Docklands – Royal Docks”, one of a series of publications covering each of the main dock areas:

The photo on the front shows the renovation of one of the locked channels between the Thames and the docks. I suspect this is the lock between the King George V dock and the river, as it is the only remaining entrance to the docks that remains in place today, much as it did when the docks were fully operational. The photo gives an indication of the sheer scale of the dock entrances.

Unfolding the brochure provides a map of the Royal Docks, with details of:

  • Schemes Proposed, Underway or Completed
  • Major Development Schemes Being Discussed with Developers
  • Sites Expected to Become Available

The map shows the sheer scale of development proposed or planned, and this was just the Royal Docks, although they were by far the largest set of docks in London.

Many development sites were completed as expected, however there were many other sites that took much longer to be developed and ended up with very different use to that planned in 1990. Large areas of the Royal Docks are still be developed, and there are still places of dereliction.

It is a very interesting area to walk. The water area of the docks are slightly smaller than they were when operational, however they are still of a significant scale, and are very impressive as a man made structure.

There are a few buildings and features left from when the docks were operational, and much to see of what the Royal Docks have become.

So starting with today’s post, I am walking the first part of the Royal Victoria Dock. There is so much to see that I have had to split the overall walk into two posts. The map below shows the route covered in today’s post by the red line:

I am starting midway along the southern side of the Royal Victoria Dock, and one of the developments that was not included in the 1990 LDDC brochure is a very impressive pedestrian bridge that crosses the full width of the dock:

The bridge was commissioned by the LDDC and was opened on the 7th of October, 1997 by Glenda Jackson, the actress, who was also an MP and Minister of Transport in London at the time.

There are lifts at each end of the bridge, however these have always been unreliable and were not correctly designed for their exposed location. Challenges with sourcing spares, which often had to be custom made, ever increasing cost and unreliability has resulted in the Royal Docks Management Authority Limited suspending any further maintenance of the lifts, and they did not appear to be working on the day of my visit.

Instead, I took the 80 steps up to the top of the footbridge, and it is well worth the effort for the views.

Although the lifts are not maintained, the rest of the bridge is, and when I walked across there were repairs to the floor of the walkway being undertaken:

A walk across the bridge provides an idea of the sheer scale of these docks. This is a view looking east of just over half of the Royal Victoria Dock, with the old Millennium Mills buildings on the right and the Excel Exhibition Centre on the left:

At the far end of the Royal Victoria Dock are the Royal Albert and King George V docks, and between these is the runway of London City Airport:

On the other side of the bridge, along the south west corner of the dock, there has been considerable residential development with cranes along the edge of the dock providing a reminder of the dock’s heritage (this is area 38 in the LDDC map):

A close up of Millennium Mill – I will be looking at these buildings in detail in part 2 of the walk:

The view looking to the west, the remaining half of the dock from the footbridge:

At the far end of the dock. to the left is the outline of the old entrance between the Royal Victoria Dock and the Thames, just a small part of where the locked entrance reached the main dock area. This was one of the first parts of the old dock infrastructure to be filled in and was not shown in the 1990 LDDC brochure.

To the right is the City Hall building, the latest home of the Mayor of London, London Assembly and the Greater London Authority, after leaving the building on the south of the river by Tower Bridge:

The Excel Exhibition Centre occupies the majority of the north bank of the dock:

Go back to the LDDC brochure, and the map shows that at area 31 there was planned a “Mixed development comprising arena and exhibition centre, housing, business accommodation, leisure, retail and community facilities”.

This mix does generally seem to have been achieved. Using the bridge as a dividing point, to the left of the bridge there is residential, business accommodation, hotels and some retail and leisure, and to the right of the bridge is the Excel arena and exhibition centre.

At the base of the bridge on the north side of the dock is the Sunborn London Yacht Hotel:

When writing this post, I had a quick look at pricing for a room on the yacht, and if you read this on the Sunday of publication, this evening, you could have a room with a dock view for £141 with an additional £35 for breakfast. This goes up to £977 for a suite with the “Ultimate Romantic Getaway” package.

A very different ship, and very different use to when the dock was originally in use.

In front of the main entrance to the exhibition centre is one of my favourite London statues:

The statue shows three dockers. At the rear is a Tally Clerk who is recording in his notebook the goods being moved, on the left is a docker attaching the chains from a crane to the pallet holding the cargo being moved, and on the right is a docker pushing a trolley that was used to move goods between the quayside and transit shed / warehouse.

The figures depicted are based on real dockers, Johnny Ringwood, Patrick Holland, and Mark Tibbs. It was Johnny Ringwood who campaigned for the statue, and the Royal Docks Trust, ExceL Exhibition Centre and a contribution from the Queen Mother raised the £250,000 needed to complete the work by the sculptor Les Johnson.

It was put in place in 2009, and there is a article on the BBC website showing Johnny Ringwood visiting the sculpture earlier this year. The article can be found here.

The importance of the role of the Tally Clerk (the figure in the sculpture with the notebook) can be seen in the following newspaper article from 1951:

“More tally clerks from London docks struck today in sympathy with tally clerks at the Royal group of docks who struck yesterday.

The National Dock Board announced that 913 tally clerks are on strike and 2,770 dockers are unable to work without them.

London’s biggest docks – the Royal group – were almost idle today because the Dock Board engaged a tally clerk who was a member of the union but not of the local branch.

More than 200 tally clerks staged a lightning unofficial strike last night claiming the Dock Board had broken the agreement not to recruit more tally clerks.

More than 30 ships in the docks are held up, including the Eva Peron with the first shipment of Argentine beef since the new agreement was signed.

Warehouses and dock space are choked with export goods waiting to be loaded after food and raw materials are unloaded.”

As well as the figures being of real dockers, the other feature I like requires a close look at the cargo. A bit difficult to see, but the various items on the pallet are marked with the country of origin – Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Australia, and below the name of Hong Kong is Johnny Ringwood’s name:

The main entrance of the Excel Exhibition Centre:

Rather than Excel, I should use the correct name format of ExCeL, which stands for Exhibition Centre London – which does make the use of a second London at the top of the main entrance rather redundant.

The first phase of the building opened in November 2000, with a second phase, which extended the building along the side of the dock, opening in 2010. There is a third phase currently under construction.

In 2008 it was purchased by the Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company, as can be seen on the main entrance.

The centre has hosted numerous large and small events. One that made use of the dock was the London Boat Show where large and small boats and ships were transported to the centre via the river and into the dock. Large ships were often moored alongside the dock when the show was on.

If you have not visited an exhibition or conference at the centre, you are probably aware of it from publicity in 2020 when it was one of the NHS Nightingale Hospitals, set up during the Covid pandemic.

It was equipped with 4,000 temporary beds, however I have seen references that it was only ever used by 54 Covid patients, and after opening in April 2020, it closed in April 2021.

There is an interesting video showing the transformation of Excel into a hospital, supported by the military, here:

There is not that much left from the time when the Royal Docks were operational, apart from the large expanse of water, however, just to the north of the main entrance to Excel, there is Warehouse K:

This impressive run of brick warehouses is Grade II listed and was built between 1850 and 1855, the same time as the Victoria Dock was under construction.

They were original a tobacco warehouse and was the first warehouse in London to be designed specifically for servicing by the railway. in this extract from the 1892 OS map, you can see Warehouse K marked, with the double line of a rail track running in front of the building, with the rail tracks running back to connect to the main lines of the railways supporting the Royal Docks (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

I then headed down to the walkway between exhibition centre and dock, to walk along side the dock to the far end:

There are still plenty of these quayside mooring bollards in place, and they look identical to the bollard in one of my father’s 1953 photos in the last post:

One of the pleasures of writing the blog, is that I learn loads from the comments, and apparently these bollards were also called Dockers’ Mistresses. See this post from Jane’s London for an explanation.

A short distance along, and the pathway was blocked by an event at the Excel, and by construction work on phase 3 towards the far end of the centre. Very frustrating as I could not get to the point where my father had taken a couple of photos looking across the dock to buildings on the far side.

View looking across to the Millennium Mill:

And to the area which appears to have been in the background in my father’s photo of a bollard in the last post:

So the only way to get to the far end was to retreat back to the main entrance of the Excel Centre, and catch the DLR from Custom House to the next stop at Prince Regent.

The bridge at Prince Regent Station provides an interesting view of the network of railway lines that can still be found around the Royal Docks.

In the following photo, the rail track on the right is the DLR leavoing Prince Regent Station and heading to the Royal Albert Station.

The tracks on the left are those of the Elizabeth Line, which are about to enter the Connaught Tunnel, which takes the Elizabeth Line under the docks to Silvertown, where it then enters another tunnel to pass under the Thames. I will cover the Connaught Tunnel later in this post:

Because of construction work for phase 3 of the Excel Centre, there was no direct route from Prince Regent Station to the dockside, so I took a slightly longer route via Royal Albert Way, and then via a footpath towards Connaught Bridge, as I wanted to find the building shown in the following photo:

This is the Fox Connaught which advertises that it is a “traditional pub in London’s Royal Docks” – and there are very few of those left.

The pub was built in the early 1880s, and was called simply the Connaught. The pub’s website claims that “our pub began by serving passengers arriving at the bustling Victoria Docks” however the following is an article from Building News on the 1st of August, 1884 which claims a different first use;

“CONNAUGHT TAVERN, ROYAL ALBERT DOCK – This tavern was the first of a group recently built by the London and St. Katherine’s Dock Company, for the accommodation of workmen employed at the New Royal Albert Dock. On account of the nature of the subsoil – which for about 30 feet under the ground level is composed of peat – a secure foundation was obtained by piling. The walls are faced with red bricks and the roofs covered with tiles. The building was erected by Messrs. Perry and Co., Tredegar Works, Bow. Mr. George Vigers is the architect.”

The above article is interesting on a number of levels. Firstly it describes the nature of the subsoil, with a 30 foot layer of peat below ground level. This was Plaistow Marsh, and it did complicate the construction of the main dock complex.

The article references the Connaught Tavern being built for the accommodation of workmen employed at the new Royal Albert Dock. The number of workmen on the dock would have far exceeded the number that could have been housed in the building, and I would also be surprised if the dock company had built such a quality building for workmen constructing the dock. It may have been built for the more managerial workers, those responsible for the design, engineering and construction of the dock.

When the dock was completed, it probably was used, as the tavern’s website states, for passengers arriving at the docks, as well as a growing local population.

The walls of the pub have some lovely decoration, including this brick relief of a large sailing ship:

Walking from the Connaught Tavern, I am back at the Royal Victoria Dock, looking west along the dock with the exhibition centre on the right:

Looking down the full length of the dock:

It is here, at the eastern end of the Royal Victoria Dock, that I cross the channel between the Victoria and Albert Docks. There are a couple of relics from the old docks to be found:

Including this round brick structure:

The structure is one of two air vents to the Connaught Tunnel, a tunnel that was built to take the railway underneath the docks, at the point where the Victoria and Albert Docks meet.

The Connaught Tunnel is not a bored, deep tunnel, rather a tunnel constructed using the cut and cover technique.

It was built in 1878 to take the Stratford to North Woolwich line under the dock. This railway line was George Parker Bidder’s original railway to North Woolwich, built before the Royal Docks, (see the first post on the Royal Docks), and was running to the eat of the Victoria Dock, and was therefore an obstruction to the construction of the Albert Dock.

The Dock Extension Committee formed to manage the construction of the Albert Dock, looked at a number of options, including rerouting the railway (this was impossible as the combination of the Victoria and Albert Docks formed a continuous run of water between the Thames in the east and in the west), and also a bridge, but the issues with this option were the number of times that the bridge would need to be opened to allow ships to pass, and difficulties getting the railway company to accept this, as well as the compensation they would almost certainly claim.

A tunnel was the only option for rerouting the railway and getting it across the dock complex.

The tunnel consists of a cutting on either end with arched buttresses to provide support for the side walls, then the tunnel which was built using a concrete roof.

The tunnel is not far below the surface as in 1935, the Connaught Passage – the name of the channel of water between Victoria and Albert Docks, was deepened, requiring the central section of the tunnel which passes below the Connaught Passage to be lowered. When this work was carried out, the central brick lined section was replaced with a steel lining.

Air vents were required, as when designed and opened, the railway carried steam trains so a method was needed to vent steam and smoke to the surface.

The railway to North Woolwich closed in 2006, and the tunnel fell into disuse.

The Connaught Tunnel was a perfect route to get beneath the dock and head to a tunnel to cross below the Thames when Crossrail / the Elizabeth Line was planned.

A significant amount of restoration work was required to get the tunnel into a condition that it could be used for the Elizabeth line, but today, if you take the Elizabeth Line to Woolwich, you are travelling along the route of this old tunnel, and crossing underneath the Royal Docks, just below the Connaught Passage.

The following OS map from 1951 shows the Connaught Passage, which is the channel between Victoria Dock on the left and Albert Dock on the right.

The route of the tunnel is highlighted by twin dashed lines and I have highlighted the location of the two brick air vents with red arrows (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

The overall height of the air vent, including the sub-surface structure is 14.69m, from the track bed of the railway to the top of the exterior brickwork of the surface air vent.

There is a good Crossrail video on the Connaught Tunnel, here:

And another Crossrail video showing a journey through the Connaught Tunnel in its new role as a route for the Elizabeth Line, here:

As well as the two vents to the tunnel, there was a brick pump house on the surface, which contained equipment and a shaft down to where a culvert brought in water from the tunnel, where it was then pumped into the Royal Albert Dock.

The pump house has disappeared (this structure, as well as the two air vents are not listed), however there is a new circular structure in (if my memory is right) the same place, so possibly there is still a need to pump water from the tunnel, or possibly Crossrail work waterproofed the tunnel.

I will leave the Elizabeth Line running below the surface, and I will cross over the Connaught Passage, between the Albert and Victoria Docks, via the footbridge, which, as the green light demonstrates, has the capability to open, when a ship needs to pass between the two docks.

Looking under the Connaught Road Bridge to the Royal Albert Dock:

Looking along the full length of the Royal Victoria Dock from the passage into the Royal Albert:

After crossing the Connaught Passage, I find the second air vent, along with these strange metal vents. No idea of their purpose, and whether they are connected to the Elizabeth Line tunnel below:

The Connaught bridge carries the road over the Connaught passage, but I am walking underneath the bridge between the north and south side of the docks:

When looking at the bridge, it is hard to imagine that this large structure is actually a swing bridge, or more accurately, a cable stayed swing bridge.

I found the following rather shaky but remarkable video of the swing bridge in operation:

And by the side of the approach road to the Connaught Bridge, we are also along side London City Airport, and the yellow poles and lighting for the runway approach:

At the southern end of Connaught Road is a roundabout with the statue “Athena”:

Athena was installed in 2012, and at 12 metres high, is the tallest bronze sculpture in the country. It was the work of Nasser Azam, a contemporary artist based in London.

Although there is a road on the roundabout leading into the area to the south of the Royal Victoria Dock, it is fenced off, with no access, as this part of the Royals is still small industrial / derelict land.

It is the areas labeled 40 and 39 in the LDDC map at the top of the post.

My only route to get back to the dock was to walk down to the North Woolwich Road and follow that for a while before returning to the dock.

This is the view to the east whilst walking from the roundabout down to the North Woolwich Road. Part of the Excel exhibition centre can just be seen between the trees on the right, indicating where the dock is located.

How streets end in this area to the south of the Royal Victoria Dock:

A lucky photo – a British Airways flight taking of from London City Airport next to the Royal Albert Dock, with a higher aircraft turning over east London to join the south London approach to Heathrow airport:

Another dead end:

This whole area to the south of the Royal Victoria Dock (39 and 40 in the LDDC map) is scheduled for significant development over the coming years.

The Royal Docks Delivery Plan 2024 – 2029 by the Royal Docks Team, Mayor of London and Newham Council describes this part of the Royal Docks as the 20 hectare site around Pontoon Dock, being developed by the Silvertown Partnership, with a target of over 6,500 new homes.

The plan also includes a new curving bridge across the Royal Victoria Dock. This bridge will be slightly above ground level to provide a much easier pedestrian and cycling route across the dock, if you do not want to take the high level bridge, or the lifts are not working (which appears to be almost all the time). The bridge will connect the new Silvertown development around Pontoon Dock with Custom House DLR station.

The Royal Docks Delivery Plan is a glossy document of almost 90 pages, but what I find rather depressing about the plan is what appears to be an almost complete lack of any inclusion of the industrial heritage of the place – why the docks are here, what they did, why they were important and the people who worked in the docks.

I did a search for the word “heritage” in the document, and there are ten uses of heritage, but they are all rather bland uses such as “We want to unlock the area’s remarkable heritage, landscape, and character to establish a vibrant new waterfront for the city where people can live, work, and thrice for generations to come.”

And in the Mayor of London’s Forward: “With its strong transport links and rich heritage, we’re harnessing the Royal Docks unique landscape and character to create a stunning new waterfront for London – a place where people can live, work and thrive for generations to come.”

But will there be anything to inform all those people living and working in those future generations of the history of the Royal Docks rather than it just being a rather nice waterfront to drink your expensive coffee alongside?

Information panel showing development plans:

Walking along the North Woolwich Road, I came to probably one of the most photographed derelict buildings around the Royal Docks (apart from the Millennium Mill). This is Georges Diner:

Georges Diner has been closed and empty for almost 20 years, the business having left the building in 2005.

The land is owned by the Greater London Authority, and a list of the GLA’s vacant buildings published in 2015 listed the diner with a statement that it “will form part of the Silvertown Quays project”, and ten years later, the building is still waiting.

The diner was well known for serving one of the best fried breakfasts in the area, and was frequented by workers from the surrounding building sites, lorry drivers, utility workers, many attracted not just by the menu on offer, but also by the car / lorry park to the left of the building, which is still there, but fenced off along with the diner.

The diner sits on the land in Silvertown planned for development by 2029 in the Royal Docks Delivery Plan 2024 – 2029, so Georges Diner will probably be another part of the Royal Docks heritage consigned to history within the next few years.

That is the first part of my walk around the Royal Victoria Dock, and I hope it demonstrates that there is so much to explore around this historic dock. The very few buildings that remain from when the dock was operational, the way the dock is being developed, and the potential for future development..

In the second post, I will complete the walk around the Royal Victoria Dock, with a brief diversion to the Thames Barrier, see a unique industrial site, where a new tunnel is being built, and end at the Royal Victoria DLR station.

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The Royal Docks – Victoria, Albert and George V

For this week’s post, and for the next couple of weeks, I am visiting an area of London that I have not touched before in the blog. This is the area covered by Silvertown and North Woolwich, along with the Royal Docks – the Royal Victoria, Royal Albert and King George V Docks, the largest and last docks built in London (although at the time in the County of Essex), that covered a considerable amount of what had been Plaistow Marshes.

I am here because it is an interesting area, lots of history, has changed, and is changing after the closure of the docks, and because my father took a number of photos of the Royal Victoria Dock on a visit on Saturday the 11th of July, 1953, and the first photo is looking along the length of the Royal Victoria Dock, showing a large number of ships moored alongside the dock:

The rest of my father’s photos are later in the post, but first, a look at the history of the Royal Docks.

They can be found on a bend in the river, to the east of the Isle of Dogs, between Bugby’s Reach and Galleons Reach. The dock complex is seven miles from London Bridge.

The following map shows the area today (within the red oval), with the majority of the water surface area of the docks still to be found, although there has been some small loses to this space. I have marked the locations of the three component docks that make up the Royal Docks:

The Victoria, Albert and George V are all connected, so they can be considered as one single dock complex, and when the final dock, the King George V was completed, they were the largest sheet of open dock water in the world.

Between the westerly entrance to the Victoria Dock and the east entrance to the Albert Dock, is a length of three miles.

The three docks were constructed in stages:

  • The Victoria Dock was first, and opened in 1855:
  • Then came the Albert Dock in 1880, and;
  • The King George V Dock was the final dock, opened in 1921.

As with all the London Docks, from opening to final closure, they were continually modified and upgraded to take account of changing trade flows, cargos, ship sizes and methods of cargo handling.

When the Victoria Dock was opened, it was simply known as the Victoria Dock, the Royal was added when the Albert Dock opened, as the company building the dock applied to Queen Victoria for approval to use both the name Albert and add the word Royal to the two docks.

The following map shows the Royal Dock complex in the late 1920s:

Why were these new, large docks needed?

In the mid 19th century, ships were increasing in size, and the first steamers were starting to be used for the transport of goods across the oceans. The volume of trade across the London docks was also expanding rapidly.

The existing docks of St. Katherine Docks, London Docks, West India, South and Millwall Docks and the Commercial Docks in Rotherhithe, were all too small to handle the new ships that London would be expected to support to maintain its position as one of the major ports of the world.

The first of the Royal Docks, the Victoria Dock opened in 1855, and the following report from the same years provides some background:

“NEW VICTORIA DOCKS – To those acquainted with the statistics of the trade of the Port of London, it is notorious that the existing dock accommodation is becoming, year by year, more inadequate to meets its increasing requirements. to supply this want, the Victoria Dock Company purchased a large tract of land in Plaistow Marshes. on the Essex shore of the Thames, below Blackwall.

These magnificent docks were commenced in June 1853, and the works have been unceasingly persevered in. A truly English spirit of ‘business’ appears to have directed the operations of all concerned. It was at one time proposed to open the docks sooner; but on a careful review of all contingencies this plan was not adopted. the spacious basins in connection with their quays and warehouses occupy no less than ninety acres of ground, a space far exceeding that of our East India Docks.

We may remark here, that the marsh, as far as Gallows Reach, was also purchased by the Company, and will be used as occasion requires. The advantage of situation possessed by these docks is sufficiently obvious, and the immediate neighbourhood of several lines of rail, present unusual facilities for communication with town. The Victoria Docks are announced to be opened on Monday next.”

Note that at the time, this whole area was within the County of Essex, and that although it was marsh, the benefit was that there was a very large area of undeveloped land, close to the Thames, and reasonably close to central London.

Around 1930, the Port of London Authority published a wonderful little booklet on the Port of London, covering a “brief survey of its history, with an outline of its present facilities and trade”:

The booklet included the following overview of the combined Royal Docks, and demonstrates the sheer size of the Victoria, Albert and George V docks:

  • Total area (including land for extension): 1,102.5 acres
  • Water area: 246 acres
  • Length of principal entrance: 800 feet
  • Width of principal entrance: 100 feet
  • Depth of principal entrance below T.H.W. at centre of cill: 45 feet
  • Quayage: 12.75 miles

These docks are in reality one huge dock divided into three sections and form the largest sheet of enclosed dock water in the world. They are 40 miles from the sea and only 5 miles by road from the heart of London.

Many vessels belonging to some of the best known Shipping Companies regularly use the Royal Victoria & Albert & King George V. Docks. Frequent cargo and passenger services to all parts of the world are based on these docks and as many as 50 to 60 vessels with a total displacement of about 500,000 tons are sometimes discharging or loading simultaneously in these docks. Vessels bring:-

  • from AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND – enormous quantities of frozen meat, wool , butter, cheese, fruit, wine and grain;
  • from SOUTH AMERICA – chilled beef and frozen meats, dairy produce, grain, wool and coffee;
  • from AFRICA – grain, wool, skins, tobacco, etc.;
  • from NORTH ATLANTIC PORTS – grain, flour, tobacco, and manufactured articles;
  • from BERMUDA – rum, sugar and fruit;
  • from VANCOUVER AND NORTH AMERICA (PACIFIC COASTS) PORTS – grain, timber, fresh fruit and canned fruit and fish;
  • from CHINA AND JAPAN – silk and cotton goods, soya beans, bamboos, canned salmon, hardwoods, hemp seed, cotton seed, vegetable wax, rapeseed oil, peppermint oil, lacquer-ware, porcelain and glassware, tea, rice, carpets, etc.;
  • from INDIA AND THE STRIATS SETTLEMENTS – tea, rubber, spices, canes, rattans, pineapples, mother-of-pearl shells, gums, carpets, cocoa, desiccated coconuts, shellac, tobacco, hemp, jute, gunnies, yarn and hessian cloth.

A couple of things to notice about all the above imports. With a couple of exceptions, they are all either raw materials or food stuffs. There are very few manufactured goods being imported. At the time, Great Britain was still a major manufacturing centre, one of the largest in the world, and was an exporter of manufactured goods to the world, so whilst the country need to import food and raw materials, exports would have been of manufactured goods.

The list also shows how patterns of trade have changed over the last 90 years, as we now import a vast amount of manufactured goods from China and other low cost manufacturing countries in the Far East.

The Port of London Authority booklet included the following image, showing why the Port of London was considered such an important centre of trade, just under 100 years ago:

The drive to develop the Victoria Dock came from a number of those engaged on the development of the railways around London.

George Parker Bidder was an experienced mid 19th century railway engineer who was working on the Eastern Counties Railway running from London to Southend. He had heard of the idea for building a dock on the Plaistow Marshes from a Mr. Blyth who was the manager of the West India Dock Company, who, perhaps surprisingly, took no action on expanding the West India Dock Company to include new docks to the east.

George Bidder joined with Thomas Brassey who was the contractor for the London to Southend railway, and they added another contractor, Samuel Peto, along with Edward Betts, his brother-in-law, and they privately financed a new railway line to run from Stratford to end in a field at North Woolwich.

This railway line was known as “Bidders Folly” after George Parker Bidder, as it seemed to serve no purpose.

As well as the railway, they started buying up land. Much for as little as £7 per acre, however the Dean and Chapter of Westminster owned some 647 acres, and they held out for £250 per acre, having heard that there was the possibility of a new dock being built.

Although the Victoria Dock opened in 1855, it was not until 1858 that it reached it fullest, original extent, and was;

  • 4050 feet in length and included four jetties, 581 feet long and 140 feet wide;
  • There were almost 3 miles of quays;
  • The entrance lock from the Thames was 80 feet wide, 326 feet in length and 28 feet deep.

Building a railway that ended in a field became a major benefit for the new dock, as it provided good transport links with London, and via the Great Northern Railway, gave access to the industrial Midlands towns.

The following extract from the 1927 edition of the Railway Clearing House Official Railway Map of London and its Environs shows the railways around the full Royal Docks complex:

When the docks closed, the railways around the docks became the ready made routes for the Docklands Light Railway, so the “Bidders Folly”, the route of the railway that ended in a field, has continued to serve this part of London to this day.

As well as the railway, the Victoria Dock benefited from the latest hydraulic machinery which operated equipment around the dock, such as cranes, capstans, lifts etc. as well as the lock gates at the entrance to the dock. to give an indication of the savings this type of machinery could provide, the large lock gates could be opened in 1.5 minutes, compared to between 10 and 20 minutes at the other London docks, and with the hydraulically powered capstans, a single man could do the work of up to 40 men, when hauling in a rope from a ship.

All these capabilities put the new Victoria Dock at a considerable advantage to the other London Docks, and as an indication of their immediate success, in April 1858, when the dock was fully operational, 2,500 barges and 508 ships entered the Victoria Dock in a single month.

The following photo from Britain from Above shows the Royal Victoria Dock in 1930. The photo is looking to the west, and we can see the western entrance to the Royal Dock complex to and from the Thames. on the right of the dock are the jetties that extended from the dock edge (source: EPW032928 ENGLAND (1930):

The Victoria Dock had been built using a large amount of debt, and as is so often the case, there was a financial crash which led to further consolidation of the London docks.

A total of £1,076,664 had been borrowed to build the dock, and by 1866 there was still almost £800,000 outstanding on the loan.

The financial houses of London had lent considerable sums to fund the railway building boom from the 1840s, and in 1865 the collapse in the Indian cotton market resulted in many of these financial institutions running short of liquidity.

The bank lending rate was raised to 10%, and a wave of bankruptcies followed, with Samuel Peto, one of the original contractors involved at the start of the Victoria Dock, being one of the first.

Thomas Brassey was left with the liability for the whole of the loan, and being unable to finance the loan, he had to sell the Victoria Dock to the London and St. Katherine Dock Company.

This left all the main docks to the north of the river in the hands of just two companies – the London and St. Katherine Dock Company, and the West India Dock Company, and challenges for the West India Dock Company were about to get worse.

The following photo shows the full Royal Dock complex in 1946, from the east, looking west. In the distance is the Royal Victoria Dock. To the right is the Royal Albert Dock and on the left is the King George V Dock (source: EAW000057 ENGLAND (1946):

By the 1870s, the volume of trade handled by the Victoria Dock had increased considerably, and the size of ship using the London Docks was continuing to increase.

The London and St Katherine Dock Company therefore decided to make use of the land to the east of the Victoria Dock to build a new, large dock complex.

This was the Royal Albert Dock and was opened on the 24th of June, 1880 by the Duke of Connaught.

The lock providing the entrance to a dock was often the limiting factor in the size of ship that could be accommodated. To allow larger ships to use the Royal Albert, the entrance for the new dock was 27 feet deep, compared to 25.5 for the Victoria Dock. The entrance was 550 feet in length and 80 feet wide compared to the Victoria Docks entrance length of 325 feet.

In future expansions of the Royal Albert Dock, a second entrance would be added with a greater depth than the original entrance.

As well as now being the largest of all docks in London, the Royal Albert Dock was also the first dock to use electricity for lighting, and it was planned that work at the dock would be able to continue by night as well as by day.

Another difference with the Royal Albert Dock was in the buildings alongside the dock edge. Rather than storing goods alongside the dock, it was planned that goods would be quickly moved between ship and land, so single storey transit sheds were built to provide a temporary home for goods before they quickly moved on.

Queen Victoria gave permission for the use of the name Albert and for adding “Royal” to both the Victoria and Albert Docks, and whilst the opening of the Victoria Dock seems to have been a quiet affair, the opening of the Royal Albert Dock was a very different matter, as described in the following newspaper report from the time:

“THE ROYAL ALBERT DOCK – The Duke and Duchess of Connaught, as representing the Queen, was to publicly open to-day the Royal Albert Dock, an extension of the London and Victoria Dock Companies’ works at North Woolwich. For the purpose the Royal party will leave the Speaker’s Stairs at half-past eleven in the steamer Victoria, and Mr. George H. Chambers (Chairman of the Company) and other officials will be in attendance. The visitors will be conveyed down the river in fourteen steamers, and upwards of 8,000 persons will be admitted by ticket to witness the ceremony.

At Woolwich the Duke and Duchess and suite will be transferred to the Vestal, which will pass the entrance jetties and enter the lock under a royal salute fired by the 3rd Essex Artillery Volunteers, pass through the basin between the lines of steamers, and the dock under a second royal salute – the bands playing the National Anthem. An address will be presented to the Duke and Duchess of Connaught by the Chairman of the Company, to which the Duke will reply; and he will afterwards name the Victoria Dock, the Royal Victoria Dock, the Victoria Dock extension, the Royal Albert Dock, and the docks as a whole, the Royal Victoria and Albert Docks. A luncheon will follow, and the Royal party will return to and arrive at the Speaker’s Stairs about half-past four.”

And since that opening ceremony, the docks have jointly been know as the Royals.

It must have been quite a sight seeing 14 steamers coming down the river carrying those attending the ceremony. The Duke of Connaught was Arthur, the seventh child and third son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The Duchess of Connaught was Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia.

The name Connaught can still be found at the Royal Docks as the road bridge that crosses the docks, between the Victoria and the Albert docks is called Connaught Bridge.

As with the other London Docks, the Royal Docks were continually evolving to support different trade routes, different types of cargo, improved machinery and transport systems, ways of moving cargo between ship and shore, changes in ship design and size etc.

Even during the First World War, upgrades were being made to the docks. New 3 ton electric cranes were installed along with track on the north side of the Albert Dock. An additional 6,000 yards of railway sidings were installed at Victoria Dock.

After the First World War, the importation of large quantities of meat from Australia, New Zealand and South America became a new challenge requiring new buildings at the docks.

A new cold store was built in 1920, which had two, 3 inch layers o cork to keep the interior refrigerated space cold. A second cold store quickly followed at the west end of Albert Dock. This cold store was of two storeys, 1,100 feet long and 123 feet wide. This addition provided four million cubic feet of capacity, and allowed almost a million carcasses of mutton to be stored.

Meat handling facilities were also added to the Royal Victoria Dock. Rather than a cold store, a method of rapidly moving meat from ship to road and rail.

This comprised a dedicated berth for the Royal Mail Line who operated a route between London and South America and imported beef into London. 6,000 feet of mechanical runways were installed, along with automated weighing machines, with the runways transporting beef from ship to insulated rail and road transport, ready for delivery across the country.

Other additions included two large, modern flour mills built on the south side of the Royal Victoria Dock. One for Joseph Rank Ltd. and the other for William Vernon and Sons Ltd. Both mills had warehouses and silos for storing grain.

The flour mills and grain stores can be seen in the upper left cornet of the following photo of the Royal Victoria Dock dated 1937 (source: EPW055308 ENGLAND (1937):

Back to the photos taken by my father on Saturday the 11th of July, 1953, and this was the view along one of the Royal Victoria Dock quaysides. Cranes on rails on the left and transit buildings on the right:

Strangely, there does not seem to be anyone at work in the docks in these photos. It was a Saturday, although I assumed that the docks were 7 days a week operations. It may also be that given the docks were so large, he was in areas where there was no active loading or unloading.

Another view along the quayside:

Lighters are moored in the dock to the left, there is a mechanical grab in the foreground which would have been used to unload raw materials from the hold of a ship. A numbers of barrels, presumably waiting for transport, and note the rail on the right which allowed goods wagons to move along the quayside for movement of goods directly between wagon and ship.

I believe my father was at the dock as part of a visit organised by the St. Bride Photographic Society, then part of the St. Bride Institute next to the church off Fleet Street, as many of the photos are carefully composed for their artistic quality, rather than just documenting the docks. The following is an example, showing the mooring ropes leading up to the bow of a ship:

The following photo is very similar, as it focuses on one of the quayside mooring bollards:

However, the above photo does allow the location to be identified. In the background of the photo there are a number of buildings, and the building on the left has a much taller, small extension projecting above the rest of the building. There is also a ship going in, between the two buildings.

In the following extract from one of the Britain from Above photos, we can see these buildings, with the building with the taller extension standing out (on the left of the oval). The ship that can just be seen in the above photo was in the channel that leads from the main Royal Victoria Dock to the much smaller pontoon dock that can also be seen in the following photo:

So my father’s photo of the mooring bollard was taken from the opposite side of the dock, looking across to the buildings on the other side, next to the entrance to the pontoon dock.

The above image is dated 1946, and you can see that all the jetties that were part of the Royal Victoria Dock (and seen in the earlier 1937 photo), have now ben removed.

These jetties were fairly weak structures, and became difficult to use as ship sizes increased. Goods also needed to be moved along the jetty, between quayside sheds and ship – an inefficient way of operating, so the jetties were removed, and post-war, all ships simply moored alongside the quay.

Cranes – photo 1:

And crane – photo 2:

I do not know if the cranes in the following photo were being built or demolished. I suspect they were being built:

In the earlier photo with the mooring bollard, there was a building in the background with a taller extension to a small part of the roof. In the following photo, my father had walked slightly to the east along the northern side of the Royal Victoria Dock, and in the background we can see the eastern end of this building, between two moored ships:

Bow of a moored ship, with another in the background:

In the following photo, my father had walked to the southern side of the Royal Victoria Dock, and photographed the area in front of the flour mills and grain stores, with the specialised equipment that unloaded grain from moored ships and transferred to the grain stores:

I have highlighted the location of these structures in the following extract from one of the Britain from Above photos, and you can clearly see the two tall structures in front of the grain stores and next to a moored ship:

I assume that these structures used suction to take off the grain from the ship and move to the grain store. Another photo showing more detail:

Not my father’s photos, but a couple of photos that show how goods were handled at the Royal Docks.

The first photo is the interior of a transit shed alongside the Royal Albert Dock:

Whilst the Royal Victoria Dock developed specialised buildings and transport methods for grain, floor and meat, the Royal Albert Dock was a more general dock, handling almost any cargo that needed to be transported to or from a ship.

These cargos were not meant to be stored for long at the dock, rather they were quickly sorted and held in a transit shed, then moved to either road or rail transport for onward delivery across the country.

The above photo shows the transit shed holding a vast quantity of cargo of different types, in boxes, sacks and rolls.

The following photo shows meat being unloaded from a ship to the quayside, where it looks as if it is being put on large trolleys for transfer:

That is a quick look at the Royal Docks, and a slightly more detailed look at the Royal Victoria Dock.

I have not covered the King George V dock yet, and will cover this in a future post, as well as posts covering a walk around the entire perimeter of the Royal Docks today, and through part of Silvertown to explore more history of this very large dock complex, what is left from when the docks were operational, and how the docks have, and continue to change and develop, for example with the London City Airport.

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Two Tree Island – The Last Landing Place on the Thames

There are a couple of tickets left for two new walk dates. Click on the links for details and booking:

Over the last couple of years, I have been writing about a number of the Thames stairs in central London, however for today’s post in my weird obsession with these places on the river, I am visiting Two Tree Island in Essex, to find the last landing place on the Thames.

I need to clarify the definition of last landing place. I am using the list of steps, stairs and landing places on the tidal Thames, as listed in the book on access to the river published by the Port of London Authority:

The book lists all the landing places, steps and stairs on the tidal river, which is the area of the PLA’s responsibility, so from Teddington in the west, to near Southend in the east.

The definition of the last landing place could be at either extreme of the tidal river, depending on which way along the river you were heading, however for the last landing place, I am using the location on the last page in the book, and furthest east on the maps within the book.

And using that definition, the last landing place on the River Thames is a causeway on Two Tree Island in Essex, the location of which is being pointed to by the arrow in the following map (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

A couple of weeks ago, we were going to a concert in Southend, so it was the perfect opportunity for a diversion to find Two Tree Island, and the causeway.

Two Tree Island is, as the name suggests, an island, and is located between Southend and Leigh-on-Sea, and Canvey Island.

The island nature of the place can be seen on the one road to the island, with the need to cross a bridge which takes you over the channel which runs to the north of Two Tree Island:

Looking west as you cross the bridge, and the nature of area becomes clear, low-lying, channels of water, and subject to the changing of the tide:

Looking over the eastern side of the bridge, there is a small marina on the left. This often dries out when the tide is low, but during my visit, the tide was coming in and the width of the channel was widening:

Having crossed the bridge, and we can look back and see the edge of one of the housing estates that surround Leigh-on-Sea, on the high land that centuries ago was the natural barrier to the Thames:

Two Tree Island has not always been land. It was reclaimed from the river in the 18th century and used as farmland. In 1910, a sewage works was built on the north east edge of the island, and for parts of the 20th century, it was also used for landfill.

Two Tree Island was flooded during the major flooding of the east coast and Thames estuary during 1953.

Once over the bridge, there is a sign welcoming you to Two Tree Island, and the sign indicates the current use of the land as it is managed by the Essex Wildlife Trust:

I can find no confirmed source for the name of the island. There are may trees on the island today, perhaps when the land was first reclaimed, when it was farmland, there may have been two distinctive trees. The first written reference to the name I can find is from 1967, when the site was included in a list of reserves set-up by the Essex Naturalists’ Trust.

The site was also called Leigh Marsh, and there are older references to this name, for example in 1836, when the the owner of the land had died, and their executor was selling the farm and farm land that the deceased had owned, which included: “Also 179 acres, 1 rood, 36 perches of valuable marshland, situate in the parishes of Leigh and Hadleigh, called Leigh Marsh, with a dwelling house and out-buildings, which is let until Lady-day next, £120 per annum.”

The land was valuable as it was good grazing land, and the mud flats and sea bed of the estuary off Two Tree Island was also used as shell fish beds, so the whole area was a valuable, agricultural site.

There has always been the threat of development in places along the river. In 1973, Maplin Airport, further east, off Foulness Island, was being considered as a new London Airport, and Southend Council put forward Two Tree Island, and the surrounding marshes, as a new nature reserve to compensate for the loss of land at Foulness and in the Thames Estuary.

The previous year, 1971, a “massive yacht marina” was proposed for Two Tree Island, however this was thrown out by Southend Council.

The majority of the island is now nature reserve, with plenty of tracks to walk, there is a small air strip for a model aircraft club, and a slowly decaying Pill Box as a reminder of the threat of invasion along the estuary in the last war.

The remains of the old sewage works are now providing a haven for birds, including nesting Egrets.

I have now reached the southern side of the island to find the causeway, where there is a Port of London information sign:

With the map showing the area in detail, and a helpful “You Are Here”:

And it is here that I find the causeway, the last landing place on the River Thames, within the area of responsibility of the Port of London Authority:

Not that impressive, compared to many of the stairs in central London, however this is a simple, functional place which is still in use. A concrete strip running out into the water from which boats can be launched and recovered.

The land in the distance in the above photo is Canvey Island, and as we look around, we can see other infrastructure that is only there because of the River Thames.

Looking to the east, directly over Canvey Island, are the container cranes of the London Gateway, the latest port on the river, having opened in 2013, and offering a deep water channel, and mooring along side, for the very large container ships that use the river today:

And looking to the south, the storage tanks for liquefied natural gas (LNG) are on the Isle of Grain on the southern side of the Thames. LNG is brought by ship from across the world to be stored in these tanks before being distributed to homes and industry across the country, or via undersea pipe to Europe:

The Thames Estuary has been the entry point for goods and commodities for centuries, and today this includes gas to power the country, and container ships full of all manner of products.

Looking east, and in the distance, we can see the City of Southend-on-Sea:

A look back along the causeway:

Although the causeway is a firm stretch of concrete, it is always good to remember just how far and how quickly the tide comes in along the Thames, and the tide was rising and washing over the causeway:

And within a few minutes, water was covering half of the causeway:

So that was the last place of access to the River Thames, according to the Port of London Authority listing – just a few hundred more to go along the river.

I have written a number of posts about this area of the river. You may be interested in:

As a postscript to the post, all my posts on Thames stairs have attempted to show how important the River Thames has been in the history and development of London, and how the river was once such a key part of the life of the so many Londoners.

We have tended to loose that connection with the river. The Thames is the reason why London is located where it is, and also why London has developed as much as it has.

There is not that much traffic on the river in central London, however towards the estuary, the docks at Tilbury and London Gateway are still busy.

The river is much cleaner than it was when industry lined the river and so much of London’s rubbish entered the river.

Although today, the river is a good way to travel on Thames Clippers, views along the river are good, and the river adds value to the properties built along side, it is also a river that is viewed as a potential risk from rising sea levels and flooding, it is used as a dumping ground for sewage from sewer overflows, and we have built into the river so it is channeled for much of its route through the city.

Whilst writing today’s post, I had BBC Radio 4 on for a change, and by chance there was a fascinating programme on the rights of natural features such as rivers, and how a number of rivers have been give the legal rights of personhood, which basically states that rivers have certain rights, such as the right to flow, the right not to be polluted etc.

It is a fascinating concept with a number of rivers in places such as New Zealand, India and Mexico having already been granted similar rights to that of a person.

In the UK, there is currently an initiative to develop a Rights of River motion for the River Ouse in Sussex.

It is a fascinating concept, and interesting to consider how this could apply to the River Thames, and how the river could be considered as an end to end entity, with rights, from source to estuary.

Some background on the River Ouse initiative can be found here

And the BBC programme Rivers and the Rights of Nature is here

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Sunderland Wharf and Ordnance Wharf, Rotherhithe

One of the pleasures of writing the blog is finding out more about an area I have already covered. Back in February I wrote a post about Horn Stairs, Cuckold’s Point and Horn Fair, and whilst at the stairs I had walk around Rotherhithe Street, and a block of flats seemed vaguely familiar.

Back home I looked through the photos of a boat trip my father had taken along the Thames in August 1948, and found the flats I walked past in Rotherhithe Street.

This is the August 1948 photo of Sunderland Wharf and Ordnance Wharf, Rotherhithe, with the block of flats in the background:

The same view, seventy six years later in 2024:

in the following image, I have mapped the 1948 photo to that of 2024. The flats are just about visible behind the new houses which line the river. I have also marked where the tall building and the chimney nearest the river were located in the area as seen today:

The area covered by today’s post, is highlighted within the red oval in the following map  (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

There is a whole sequence of photos that my father had taken in August 1948 on a boat trip from Westminster to Greenwich. I have already featured a number in the blog, but there are a number where there are no easily identifiable features, such as a wharf name on a building, and the buildings along the banks of the river, particularly on the south side, have changed so much that identifiable features are rare.

Luckily, it was finding the block of flats that enabled the location in this photo to be identified.

The series of photos show a very different London to the east of Tower Bridge. Significant bomb damage and an area of warehouses and industry, often very dirty and polluting industry.

The following extract is from the 1949 revision of the Ornance Survey map, so only one year after my father’s photo, and the features in the photo can be seen in the map.

I have highlighted them as follows:

  • Dark blue arrow – the block of flats seen in the background
  • Red arrow – the remaining tall and narrow building
  • Green arrow – the chimney nearest the river to the right of the photo
  • Light blue arrow – possibly the second chimney in the photo. It appears further back in the map than in the photo. This may be down to the perspective of the photo, or possibly an error with the map

 (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“)

The area in the 1948 photo consisted of a number of wharves, as can be seen in the above map.

The land between the flats and the river was Ordnance Wharf. I cannot find the use of the wharf immediately before the war and subsequent bomb damage, however the type of industry that occupied Ordnance Wharf can be seen in the following newspaper article from April 1883:

“DESTRUCTIVE FIRE IN ROTHERHITHE – At about midnight, a fire, which was attended with the most disastrous consequences, broke out in the extensive oil-cake mills at Ordnance Wharf, Rotherhithe, London, S.E. The premises, which consisted of six buildings, each of three floors were occupied by a French firm, Messrs Francoise and Joseph Badart Freres, who carry on a large business as oil-cake merchants in the south-east districts.

How the fire originated remains a mystery, but in a very few minutes it gained a complete mastery of the buildings, enveloping them in a mass of flame which made it quite impossible for even the firemen who were first on the spot to attempt to effect an entrance.”

The entire site was destroyed in a couple of hours, and the fire burnt until six in the evening, and a large number of men then had to be employed to keep the site damped down so fires would not restart.

Oil cake seems to have been the product made from the oil released from many different types of seeds.

The book London Wharves and Docks, published in 1953 by Commercial Motor does not have an entry for Ordnance Wharf, so I assume it remained derelict after the war.

The next Wharf is Sunderland Wharf, the area to the right of the tall, narrow buildings and up to the chimneys. In 1953, the occupier of the wharf was listed as Bermondsey Borough Council, and use of the wharf was listed as “Disposal of house and trade refuse by barge”.

The location of the chimneys, and the building to the right, most of which is not shown in the photo was Upper Ordnance Wharf. In 1953 this was still a working industrial site, and was occupied by H.J. Enthoven and Sons, Ltd, who processed non-ferrous metals, coal, coke and iron ore, and seem to have been mainly processing the metal lead.

An extract from part of my father’s 1948 photo shows some of the infrastructure at Upper Ordnance Wharf. These look as if they were used to funnel materials from the factory site down into barges on the foreshore:

A highly industrial site, along with a number of derelict areas after wartime damage.

it is very different today, as I found with a walk around the site.

This is Rotherhithe Street, with the blocks of flats on the left. The block in the 1948 photo is the one furthest on the left:

The block of flats seen in the 1948 photo, and which enable the location to be identified is shown in the photo below. The distinctive middle section, where brick rises up above the entrance to the flats, the full height up above the upper attic space, which gives the central section a top of a flat wall of brick:

The estate of which the above block is part is Acorn Walk. Built in the 1930s, the estate consists of a number of similar blocks of flats as shown in the following estate map. The block in the 1948 photo is the block at upper right:

The name Acorn Walk comes from Upper Acorn Yard, a flat space for storing timber on which part of the estate was built, and Acorn Pond, an expanse of water a short distance to the south which was also used for storing timber.

Walking up to the river’s edge, and this is the view along what was Ordnance Wharf. The tall narrow building in my father’s 1948 photo was where the taller section of the terrace of houses, the one with the structure on the roof with cupola and weather vane, can be seen:

At the end of the above terrace is the following view, where Sunderland Wharf and then Upper Ordnance Wharf. and the H.J. Enthoven industrial premises were located. The funnels in the extract from the photo that tipped material down into barges were were the furthest trees on the right can be seen:

I had walked along the river walkway earlier in the year for the post on Horn Stairs, not realising that this was the location of one of my father’s photo. The following photo is looking back towards the warehouses of Canada Wharf taken from the edge of the 1948 photo, so these warehouse would have been to the left or east of Ordnance Wharf:

Horn Stairs is at the base of the Canada Wharf warehouse, the bottom left corner of the building in the above photo, so I went to take a look at the stairs.

I remarked in my post back in February, on the poor condition of the stairs, and how the upper steps seemed to be deteriorating badly, and just under six months later, the top step has disappeared, leaving a gap between the concrete edge of the walkway and the stairs, and the next couple of steps do not look all that robust.

The tide had been coming in for a few hours when I visited, so the foreshore was covered, and the navigation marker at the end of the causeway leading out from the stairs was isolated in the waters of the river:

To show just how wide is the range of the tide along the river, compare the above photo with the following photo taken for my Horn Stairs post which shows the navigation marker at low tide, with the remains of the causeway fully exposed, and the above photo had not yet reached high tide, and it was not one of the occasional very high tides.

Rotherhithe is really fascinating, and I will be writing more blog posts about the area in the coming months. To get from the north side of the river where I had taken the comparison photos from across the river, to the Rotherhithe side, I used the Thames Clipper / Uber boat route RB4, which is a dedicated route between Canary Wharf and the Doubletree Hotel in Rotherhithe.

This is a brilliant route across the river, and lands at the Doubletree Hotel where as far I can tell, the route to the street is through the hotel lobby (or at least that is the route I have always taken).

The following photos cover the short section of street from the Doubletree Hotel to the site of the 1948 photo, starting with this view looking along Rotherhithe Street:

The first building is this rather ornate house, which dates from the mid 18th century, and is not the type of building you would expect to find with so much industry between the street and river:

This is Nelson House and the building is Grade II* listed, and was a shipbuilder’s house. It reflects a time when this part of the river was not end to end industrialisation, but was small industry associated with the river, such as timber yards and shipbuilders, along with their owners and workers homes, including those who made good money from their river businesses. Inland from Rotherhithe Street when the house was built, it was all still fields.

The house was included in the 1972 Architects’ Journal feature “New Deal for East London”, on the possible threats to many of the historic buildings of east London (both north and south of the river. See this post for more information on the 1972 article).

The following photo shows the house in the early 1970s, with the name of the last Thames focused business to occupy the building:

Next along Rotherhithe Street are the buildings of Mills & Knight at Nelson Dock:

Nelson Dock had long been a slipway into the river and there was also a dry dock where ships could be taken in from the river, the water drained out, allowing the hull to be worked on in the dry.

The 1953 London Wharves and Docks publication still lists the site as providing these services.

We then come to the Blacksmiths Arm:

There may have been a pub here in the late 18th century, but the first written reference to the Blacksmiths Arms that I can find is from the London Morning Advertiser on the 2nd of May, 1823, when particulars for an estate that was for sale could be had at the Blacksmiths Arms, Cuckolds Point.

Given that Cuckholds Point was the area of foreshore at the base of Horn Stairs, I suspect that this is the same pub.

The current building dates from the mid to late 19th century, and the interior and the mock Tudor frontage dates from the 1930s.

We then come to the part of Canada Wharf that faces onto Rotherhithe Street:

Along this stretch of Rotherhithe Street is an unusual reminder of one of the earlier attempts at providing a river boat service – a reminder of some London transport history:

The White Horse company ran a ferry along the river from Canary Wharf and Rotherhithe to the City, opening in June 1999. In 2000, they also ran the ferry service from Greenwich, by the Cutty Sark, to the Millennium Dome.

Both services closed in 2001, and the assets of the company were put up for sale, so the above sign represents a ferry service that ran for two short years.

I am pleased I found the location of the 1948 photo, one of those I thought might be a challenge, and a photo that highlights just how much Rotherhithe has changed.

Now for some extra content after a walk through the City last week:

A Transformation for All Hallows Staining

Back in 2018, I wrote a post based on my father’s photo of the tower of All Hallows Staining, all that remained of the original church:

Walking through the City last week and although I knew there was a major redevelopment planned, the sight of the church tower standing alone in the rubble of the demolished buildings that once surrounded the tower was rather stunning:

The construction site is surrounded by tall wooden hoardings that you cannot see over, however holding my camera above the wooden wall, and lots of random clicking revealed the following scene, where the area around the tower has been demolished down to ground level, revealing the basements of the demolished buildings:

I have written about the history of the church, and some of the surrounding alleys in my post All Hallows Staining and Star Alley, which you can read by clicking here, so I will not repeat the history of the area in this post.

The site was the home to the post-war version of Clothworkers Hall, and the Clothworkers’ Company have had a hall on the site since 1528. The Clothworkers’ Company also own the land and will have a new hall built as part of the overall redevelopment.

The documentation that goes with the development (called 50 Fenchurch Street) states that it sits on the “southern edge of the City’s eastern tower cluster”, and this can be seen in the following photo:

As well as a new hall for the Clothworkers’ Company, the development will consist of a 36 storey commercial tower, which will have a new public roof garden, which seems mandatory in recent City developments.

The tower will have “Innovative vertical urban greening to mitigate air and noise pollution, and improve biodiversity”, and there will be a new public realm at ground level, which will include access to the church tower and to the crypt of Lamb’s Chapel, which was originally at Monkwell Street, now under the Barbican Development (I wrote about Lamb’s Chapel in this post).

The view of the tower and building site from Mark Lane:

And from Fenchurch Street, where a lone pillar from one of the demolished buildings remains:

Whilst the buildings that were demolished were of no real architectural or historical interest, and the Clothworkers’ Company will remain on a site they have occupied for hundreds of years in the latest iteration of their hall, what is often ignored and lost is the historical layout of the streets and alleys.

In the following extract from Rocque’s 1746 map of London, I have highlighted the church (red arrow), Clothworkers’ Hall (green arrow) and an alley by the name of Star Alley (red arrow):

Although surrounded by post-war buildings, Star Alley, as a physical alley that you could walk, existed all the way up to the recent demolition, in the same alignment as in the 1746 map.

It may survive in some form in the new development, either studs on the ground, different types of paving, or a name of a walkway through the new tower, but the alley will have been lost, and for me, it is the loss of this historic streetscape which is worse than the loss of the post-war buildings or the build of a new tower.

I finished off my 2018 post with the following paragraph:

“It is remarkable that the tower of All Hallows Staining has survived for so long without a functioning church. The tower, churchyard, Star Alley, Dunster Court and the Clothworkers’ Hall form a small City landscape that is the same as mapped in 1746 and may date back to around 1456 when the Shearmen (the predecessors of the Clothworkers’ Company) purchased the land in Mincing Lane.”

Little did I know that six years later, apart from the tower of All Hallows Staining, everything else would be gone.

The Clothworkers’ Company have a page on the development on their website which can be found by clicking here.

And for an online PowerPoint presentation on the development, with lots of images on the new development, click here.

Sunderland Wharf and Ordnance Wharf, and All Hallows Staining – just two examples of just how much London changes over time.

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Hanover Stairs and The Ship – Rotherhithe

For this week’s post, I am continuing with one of my favourite London subjects – Thames Stairs, and I am in Rotherhithe to find Hanover Stairs, and also to check whether the stairs confirm my theory that nearly every Thames stair had an associated pub.

This was the view, early on a sunny morning, walking along the footpath beside the Thames, with Hanover Stairs signposted next to the steps down to the river:

Hanover Stairs

There is a gate at the top of the stairs, with a warning sign showing someone falling down the stairs, along with the danger warnings of Slippery Steps, Sudden Drop and Deep Water – all of which make sense for these stairs:

Hanover Stairs

A look down the stairs reveals that they are in very good condition and consist of brick steps leading down to a sandy foreshore:

Hanover Stairs

The Port of London Authority list of access points to the River Thames has very little information about these stairs. It just states that they were in use in 1977, consisted of concrete stairs and were in good condition.

Hanover Stairs are in Rotherhithe, and I have marked their location with the red arrow in the following map (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

Hanover Stairs

Hanover Stairs are rather unusual in that there is a ship moored at the foot of the stairs. A scene that was probably rather common when the river was in use and ships would have moored in the river and along the foreshore.

Hanover Stairs

Presumably a house boat, and equipped for permanent occupation as there are a range of pipes plumping in services between the ship and the shore.

During my visit it was a low tide and I could walk out for a reasonable distance across the foreshore. In the following photo, I am looking back from the water’s edge to the shore line, and the photo shows how the shore here drops considerably away from the edge of the land:

Hanover Stairs

Looking east, with Shadwell and Limehouse visible across the river:

Rotherhithe Gas Works Pier

On the right of the photo, just along the foreshore from Hanover Stairs, is the jetty that once served Rotherhithe Gas Works, which I explored in this post.

Looking across to Wapping on the northern shore of the river, and we can see New Crane Wharf:

New Crane Wharf

There is a gap to the left of New Crane Wharf. This gap is to allow access for another set of Thames Stairs – New Crane Stairs, which I wrote about in this post.

The narrow gap for New Crane Stairs, between two large buildings, shows the importance and persistence of Thames Stairs.

The following photo is looking west along the river, and in this photo we can clearly see how steep is the drop in the foreshore from the edge of the river out towards the centre:

Hanover Stairs

I have marked the location of Hanover Stairs with a red arrow in the following extract from the 1894 edition of the Ordnance Survey map  (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Hanover Stairs

Next to the stairs, where the house boat is today, there was a small pier. On the foreshore, there is the abbreviation M.P.s – This stands for mooring posts and shows that ships and boats would have been moored along the foreshore at Hanover Stairs.

Large buildings line the river, warehouses and industrial sites, with a small number of terrace streets leading back in land.

To the upper right of the above map, is the pier for the Rotherhithe Gas Works, and these works can be seen running back in land, where the circular feature of the gas storage tanks can be seen.

I have a theory that nearly all Thames Stairs in populated and industrial areas, had a pub located next to the stairs, and Hanover Stairs continues to confirm this theory.

In the above map, I have ringed the PH of Public House which was opposite the stairs, where an alley led between two adjacent large buildings, down to the stairs.

I found the name of the pub by doing a newspaper search for Hanover Stairs, and found the pub had a good Thames related name of the Ship.

A typical example of where the Ship was mentioned in relation to the stairs, and an advert which shows how these pub were important for more than just drinking is the following advert which appeared in the Kentish Independent on the 24th of January, 1852, where an auction was being advertised for the “Stock of Mr. Little, Timber Dealer, who is retiring from business”.

The auction of Mr. Little’s stock included a very large quantity of timber, a “capital nearly new Timber Cart”, and rather strangely “a Sow and Four Pigs”.

The advert then goes on to list where the catalogue for the auction could be had, and this is where I found the reference to the Ship:

“Catalogues had: the Lord Duncan and Dover Castle, Broadway; Bratt’s New Cross Inn: Shard’s Arms, Old Kent Road: The Ship, Hanover Stairs, Rotherhithe; Prince of Orange, Greenwich; Three Tuns, Blackheath: Tiger’s Head, Lee: Dartmouth Arms, Sydenham Common; of Mr. Little on the premises, and of Mr. Rogers, Auctioneer, Valuer, Estate and House Agent, Lewisham.”

Another advert which mentions the pub was from June 1825 shows the type of excursion you could have taken on a summer’s day, early in the 19th century:

“GRAND NOVEL EXCURSION. A. READ, Captain of the FAVOURITE, Steam Packet, begs to inform his Friends and the Public that he has engaged the above elegant and commodious Vessel for an EXCURSION round the ISLE of SHEPPY, passing the Nore, Whitstable, Queenborough, and his Majesty’s Fleet at Sheerness, on Thursday, the 29th Instant, and return the same evening. A grand Band of Music will be provided. refreshments may be had on board at the usual moderate charges.”

Tickets for this “Grand Novel Excursion” were 5 shillings and 6 pence each, and the Ship was one of the places where you could buy tickets, and in this advert, Mr. Rounce was mentioned as the landlord of the Ship. Tickets were for sale widely across London, from the Rose by the Old Bailey, pubs in east London, both north and south of the river, a grocer in Tower Street, and offices in Fenchurch Street.

Both of these adverts show the importance of these local pubs to other commercial activities. They were places where you could advertise to the local community and use as local distribution hubs.

The importance of the relationship between the Ship and Hanover Stairs is that in these two examples, and many other reference I found, although the pub is in the street opposite the stairs, the name of the street is not mentioned, just the name of the pub and the name of the stairs.

The Ship closed around 1960, and sadly I cannot find any photos of the pub.

The majority of the Thames Stairs have lost their associated pub. A few still exist in Wapping (Pelican Stairs next to the Prospect of Whitby and Wapping Old Stairs next to the Town of Ramsgate).

In Rotherhithe, a surviving example is the Mayflower, where to the left of the pub can be found Church Stairs:

The Mayflower, Rotherhithe

21st century detritus washing up on the foreshore at Hanover Stairs:

On the foreshore

The earliest written references I could find to Hanover Stairs dates from the 1790s, where for example, on the 11th of January, 1796, in a list of Dividends to be paid to Creditors, there was the following “Alexander Christall and James Church of Hanover Stairs, Rotherhithe, Surrey, Sail-makers”.

On the 28th of November, 1761, it was reported that “The John and Thomas, Blickenden, loaded with Corn, is sunk in the River near Hanover Stairs”.

Hanover Stairs can be seen in Rocque’s map of 1746 (underlined in red):

Hanover Stairs

The map shows that in the 1740s, whilst the river’s edge was developed, a short distance inland it was still orchards, farmland, fields, marsh and streams. The section of the road that is now Rotherhithe Street was then named Redriff.

One of the few streets that leads inland from Redriff is directly opposite Hanover Stairs, and is named Hanover Street. I suspect the street took the name from the stairs, as these were probably a much older feature than the street.

I cannot find the source of the name Hanover as used for the stairs. Possibly there may have been local merchants from Hanover in Germany, of it may have been after George I, who became the first British King from the German House of Hanover who was on the British throne between 1714 and 1727.

Hanover Street changed named to Heston Street, and in the rebuilding of the area over the last few decades, the street that was one of the first running inland from the river, was built over and is now one of the many lost streets of the area.

So the stairs along the foreshore have been here for at least 275 years, and features from the long industrial history of the area can still be seen along the foreshore, for example, large stretches of consolidated stone and concrete, much eroded by the river:

Hanover Stairs

Looking along the foreshore from Hanover Stairs to the pier that once supplied the Rotherhithe Gas Works with coal arriving along the river:

Rotherhithe Gas Works Pier

Looking back at the steps of the stairs, with in the foreground some of the chains and weights used to keep the house boat securely moored alongside the river wall:

Hanover Stairs

Cables and pipes carrying services to the house boat and tyres to protect the side of the boat:

Hanover Stairs

There are frequent mentions of Hanover Stairs in newspapers up to the 1930s, when the last two reports are about an 11 year old boy who drowned after falling into the river when he and his friends were playing on barges next to the stairs, and a thief who was caught in Rotherhithe Street with a sack full of Gin bottles, which had been stolen from a barge lying next to the stairs.

After the 1930s, there seems to have been very little happening at the stairs (or at least anything that was considered newsworthy). That may have been due to the level of bomb damage at the stairs and the surrounding streets, which was considerable.

After leaving the stairs, I walked along the river path to take a closer look at the former gas works pier:

Rotherhithe Gas Works Pier

The pier is in good condition, and is a suitable reminder of the connection between the river and the industries activities that once occupied so much of Rotherhithe:

Rotherhithe Gas Works Pier

I have often wondered what the metal structure is on the rivers edge at the centre of the pier, shown in the photos above and below. I assume it is part of the equipment which once carried coal from ships moored alongside the pier to the gas works, however now standing isolated of any other infrastructure, it almost looks like a work of art.

Seen from head on, the curves of the shaped metal on either side almost give the whole thing the appearance of a bird flying in from the river:

Rotherhithe Gas Works Pier

Another set of Thames Stairs ticked off the list, and one that continues the link between a local pub and stairs.

They were an important combination in the day to day life of the working river. The stairs provided access to the river and the barges and ships moored nearby, the watermen that would take you to your destination along the river, a place where those working or travelling on or along the river would have known well.

The stairs were also a landmark, referenced whenever you needed to refer to something happening on the river, on land, or to get to this part of Rotherhithe.

The pub was not just a place to buy alcohol, it was an important part of the local community, a place where other commercial activities could take place, such as selling tickets or distributing auction catalogues, where inquests to those who died on the river were held, where those working on the river probably went in for a drink after returning via the stairs, a local meeting point next to the stairs etc.

And that relationship is strengthened by the names frequently given to these pubs, which often referred to some aspect of river life, as with the Ship next to Hanover Stairs.

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London from the Roof of Albion Mill

I have just put a couple of my Limehouse and Wapping walks on Eventbrite for the month of June. Click here for details and booking.

If you walk to the southern end of Blackfriars Bridge, on the eastern side of the bridge there is a small garden, and it is a perfect example of how places in London can tell multiple stories, and for the garden the story is of the engineer John Rennie, the Albion Mill, a unique view of London, as well as the price of grain and flour in London.

This is Rennie Garden alongside the path that runs up to, and along the eastern side of Blackfriars Bridge:

Rennie Garden

This is a very small garden and consists of a few trees and two blocks of planting:

Rennie Garden

Which really look good, and bring a splash of colour on a sunny May morning:

Rennie Garden

The gardens were created in 1862 by the Corporation of London and named the Rennie Garden after the engineer John Rennie.

Rennie Garden

The following extract from the 1894 edition of the Ordnance Survey map shows the gardens (ringed in red), as a very small patch of public gardens squashed between the railway and the road, both of which were running on to the bridges which crossed the Thames (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Rennie Garden

In the above map, some stairs can be seen running down to the foreshore from the north of the gardens. The stairs are still there today, however they now lead down to the walkway along the side of the river:

Rennie Garden

There are though stairs on the other side of the river wall which lead down to the foreshore. This is not a historic set of stairs and they seem to have been built around the same time as the bridge.

So why are the gardens named after John Rennie, and what is the connection with a mill, the price of flour and a view of London?

John Rennie was the architect of London Bridge (the version of the bridge that was later demolished and moved to Arizona in the US). After Rennie’s death in 1821, the bridge was built by his son, also named John, who continued his father’s practice as a civil engineer.

According to “A Biographical Dictionary of English Architects” by H.M. Colvin, (1954), John Rennie (1761 to 1821) “was the younger son of a Scottish farmer, and was born in Phantassie in East Lothian on June 7th, 1761. As a child he showed a remarkable aptitude for mechanical pursuits, and he afterwards found congenial employment with a millwright. His earnings enabled him to study at Edinburgh University for three years before establishing himself as a millwright and general engineer. In 1784 he went to Birmingham in order to assist Boulton and Watt in designing and executing the machinery for the Albion Flour Mill ay Southwark”.

And that is the connection between John Rennie and the gardens, as they are on part of the site of the Albion Flour Mill, the first steam powered flour mill in London and at the time of completion, the largest in the world.

The Albion Flour Mill, Blackfriars Bridge is shown in the following print, with the edge of the bridge (the version before the Blackfriars Bridge we see today) at the right edge of the print:

Albion Mill

Before the Albion Mill, there had been a number of much smaller mills scattered across London and the counties surrounding the city, using a range of power sources such as wind and water.

The introduction of steam power rendered all these other mills redundant as the Albion Mill could process large quantities of grain with a reduced level of manpower. Being next to the river enabled both coal and grain to be delivered directly to the mill.

Newspapers reported on the opening of the Albion Mill, and the following from the 10th of April 1786 is typical “A few days since the Albion Mill, on the Surrey side of Blackfriars Bridge, commenced working. This mill, the largest in the world, has been erected by the proprietors for the beneficent and salutary purpose of supplying this great metropolis with flour, and of course reducing the price of bread, the greatest blessing the poor can experience on this earth. The machinery is worked by the operation of steam, and we are happy to say, there is every reason to expect it will amply fulfil the intent, and fully reward the ingenuity and public spirit of those gentlemen who have risked their money in this arduous and laudable undertaking”.

As well as being the first use of steam power in London to produce flour, the Albion Mill’s name was associated with a panoramic drawing made from the roof of the building “London from the roof of Albion Mills”.

The panorama as a form of painting and exhibition was invented by a Scottish painter, Robert Barker. One of the 19th century accounts of the history of the panorama claims that Barker had been imprisoned for debt in Edinburgh in 1785. “His cell was lighted by an air-hole in one of the corners, which left the lower part of the room in such darkness that he could not read the letters sent to him. He found, however, that when he placed them against the part of the wall lighted by the air hole the words became very distinct. the effect was most striking. It occurred to him that if a picture were placed in a similar position it would have a wonderful effect. Accordingly on his liberation he made a series of experiments which enabled him to improve his invention, and on June 19, 1787, he obtained a patent in London, which established his claim to be the inventor of the panorama”.

To display his new invention, Barker raised enough money to build “an entire new Contrivance or Apparatus for the Purpose of displaying Views of Nature at large by Oil-painting, Fresco or any other mode of painting and drawing”. This was to be found next to Leicester Square, with a small entrance from Cranbourn Street.

Barker gave his display the name “Panorama”, and once inside, spectators would stand on a raised circular platform in the centre of a round building. They were about 30ft away from the circular wall on which was painted the scene to be viewed, stretching for the full 360 degrees around the spectators.

After entering in the dark, light was then let in from the roof, and it was focused on the scene painted on the surrounding wall – the panorama.

The lighting and the quality of the painting on the wall gave the effect of standing in the middle of the real scene that was portrayed around the wall.

To keep paying spectators returning, Barker regularly changed the panoramas on display, and they were not limited to landscapes. One very popular panorama was of the Naval Grand Fleet lying at Spithead, with Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight in the background.

Robert Barker’s panoramas were very successful and always drew a crowd wherever they were on display. He opened panoramas in France, Holland and Germany, and the panoramas on display in Leicester Square would also go on tour around the country, as the following from Aris’s Birmingham Gazette on the 22nd of October, 1798 illustrates:

“By particular Desire of a Number of Families of Distinction in Birmingham and its Environs; the PANORAMA, Union-street, or perspective VIEW of the GRAND FLEET at Spithead, will continue open till Saturday next, the 27th instant, on which day it will positively and finally close, in order to embark for Hull, where it is engaged. That part of the public who have not yet had an opportunity of seeing the Grand Exhibition, will do well to take the present Opportunity of seeing the Wooden Walls of England before their Departure. Admittance One Shilling.”

After completion, the Albion Mill was the highest building between St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, so it was the ideal location from where to make another panorama, and to do this Barker sent his 16 year old son up to the roof of the mill in the winter of 1790 to 1791 to paint the view for the full 360 degrees – a vast panorama of London at the end of the 18th century.

The British Museum have a copy of the panorama from the roof of Abbey Mill in their collection, and it is available for use under a Creative Commons license, so although today I cannot get to the same height and specific location from where the panorama was made, below is a very rough comparison of the early 1790s with the view of London today.

All the prints in this post are  © The Trustees of the British Museum Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Looking to the east:

Panorama from the roof of Albion Mill
Panorama from the roof of Albion Mill
Panorama from the roof of Albion Mill

Looking to the north and we can see St. Paul’s Cathedral, spires of the City churches, and the Blackfriars Bridge on the left:

Panorama from the roof of Albion Mill
Panorama from the roof of Albion Mill

To the west:

Panorama from the roof of Albion Mill
Panorama from the roof of Albion Mill

To the south-west:

Panorama from the roof of Albion Mill

A very different view today:

Panorama from the roof of Albion Mill

To the south:

Panorama from the roof of Albion Mill

To mirror the above view, I would be looking straight at the Rennie Garden as in the photos earlier in the post.

As with Robert Barker’s other panoramas, the View from the Roof of Albion Mill also travelled across the country, and internationally, so for example, in 1796 it was on display in Philadelphia in the US, where you could walk in to see the view of London for half a dollar.

The panorama was also printed onto single sheets to give an idea of the view of London:

Panorama from the roof of Albion Mill

The Albion Mill did not last for long as in March 1791, a couple of months after the panorama was completed, the entire building burnt down.

The following report from newspapers of the time covers the fire, and also provides a possible cause:

“Yesterday morning, soon after six o’clock, a most dreadful fire broke out in the Albion Mills, on the Surrey Side of Blackfriars Bridge, which raged with such unbaiting fury, that in about half an hour the whole of that extensive edifice, together with an immense quantity of Flour and Grain, was reduced to ashes; the corner wing, occupied as the house and offices of the Superintendent, only escaping the sad calamity from the thickness of the party wall.

It was low water at the time the fire was discovered, and before the engines were collected, their assistance was ineffectual; for the flames burnt out in so many directions, with such incredible fury, and intolerable heat, that it was impossible to approach on any side till the roof and interior part of the building tumbling in completed the general conflagration in a column of fire, so awfully grand as to illuminate for a while the whole horizon.

The wind being easterly, the flames were blown across Albion place, the houses on the west side of which were considerably scorched, and the inhabitants greatly alarmed.

In the lane adjoining the Mills one house was burnt to the ground, and others considerably damaged. The Accident is supposed to have been occasioned by the Machinery having been overheated by Friction.

Another circumstance has been mentioned, that might operate either as an original or secondary cause in producing the above catastrophe:- A quantity of Grain that lay contiguous to the Machinery had been damaged by the late Floods, and was Yesterday Morning observed to have acquired such a degree of Heat, as made some of the Workmen conceive that it might be dangerous to put the Mills in motion. The Remark was not attended to, and the Consequence has been what we have related.”

So after 5 short years the Albion Mills had completely burnt down.

The following print shows the mill on fire, attempts to pump water from the river at low tide, into the fire, and watching crowds lining the side of Blackfriars Bridge:

Albion Mill

The total loss of the Albion Mill was estimated by the companies that had insured the mill at around £90,000. There were also concerns about the loss of a large quantity of grain, and what this would do to the price and availability of flour. The proprietors of the mill were able to assure concerned Londoners that whilst a large quantity had been lost at the Albion Mill, they still had large quantities at other grain stores.

There were many though, who celebrated the loss of the Albion Mill, and a number of satirical prints were published about the fire:

Albion Mill

In the above print, the dejected owners can be seen in the boat at lower left. In front of the building there are two barges on the river. The left barge is filled with sacks labelled Pot80 (potato), and the barge on the right with sacks of Indian Wheat. These sacks were implying that the flour produced at the mill had been adulterated. A number of demons can be seen rejoicing at the fire.

The opening of the Albion Mill had a very serious impact on all the millers in London and the counties surrounding the capital. The use of steam power had allowed the mill to produce flour quickly and efficiently, and the impact of this resulted in the closure of many other mills.

As an example of both the impact of the working Albion Mill, and the after effects of the fire, the following is from the Hampshire Chronicle on the 14th of March 1791:

“The Berkshire millers are sensibly affected by the late fire at the Albion mills, but not with grief. Many of them, who gave over working two years since, have again set their wheels in motion.

The flour-mills at Blackwall, Poplar, Limehouse, Rotherhithe, and many other places, which have stood still upwards of these three years, have also begun working again, owing to the Albion mills being burnt down.”

The price of flour had increased during the time of the mill’s operation. In the five years prior to opening, the average price of flour had been 44 shilling, 6 and a quarter pence. During the years the mill was in operation, the average price had increased to 45 shillings and 2 pence. A small increase, but still an increase.

It was argued that the increase in price was down to two bad harvests and that there had been a scarcity of wheat throughout all of Europe.

The following print also had a celebratory theme to the fire at Albion Mills, with a demon playing a fiddle on Blackfriars Bridge as the mill burns, whilst another demon fans the flames:

Albion Mill

The following print is titled “A New Dance, as it was performed with Universal Applause, at the Theatre Blackfriars March 2nd 1791” and shows a celebrating crowd on the bridge, and three men dancing in the foreground. The man on the right has a sheaf of papers over his shoulder on which is written “Success to the Mills of Albion but no Albion Mills”:

Albion Mill

One of the main complaints against the Albion Mill was that by being able to process so much grain and flour, and by forcing so many other mills to close, it was becoming a monopoly. These allegations may have had some truth, as soon after the fire, it was reported that:

“However well or ill informed the charge of monopoly against the Albion Mill Company may have been, the destruction of their mill has been followed by an almost immediate fall of three shillings per quarter in the price of wheat. This is proof that they were generally considered as having it in their power to keep up the price artificially.”

There were proposals to rebuild the mill in the years following the fire, however permission was not granted for the project, and houses were later built on the site of the Albion Mill.

I always find it surprising how you can take one very small spot in London, in this post, Rennie Garden at the southern end of Blackfriars Bridge, and find layers of history, and so many other connections. The story of John Rennie, a leading mechanical engineer in the later decades of the 18th century, the first steam driven mill in London, the story of the panorama and a unique and innovative view of London in the late 18th century, and the price of grain and flour.

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The Prospect of Whitby and Pelican Stairs

For today’s post, I have another of my father’s photos, taken on a boat trip along the River Thames in August 1948, this time looking across to Wapping, the Prospect of Whitby and Pelican Stairs:

Prospect of Whitby

The same view in 2024, some 76 years later:

Prospect of Whitby

The 1948 photo shows an area just three years after the end of the war, and the bombing that badly damaged the whole area of the docks. It was a dirty, industrial place, still important in supporting the trade of London and the country, with imports and exports through the docks.

Only a few buildings have survived the intervening 76 years. The Prospect of Whitby pub, today a brightly painted white building along the river. The brick building behind, the steeple of the church of St. Paul’s, Shadwell, and on the left edge of both photos is a warehouse (1948) now converted to flats.

The following extract from the 1949 edition of the OS map shows the area along the Thames featured in the photo, as well as the area behind  (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Pelican Stairs

The Prospect of Whitby can be seen roughly in the middle of the map, and to the left of the pub is Pelican Stairs and Pelican Wharf. Just to the left of the P in Pelican is a square which marks the position of the chimney seen in the photo.

An extract from the photo provides a closer look at the Prospect of Whitby and surrounding buildings:

Pelican Stairs

On the left is Pelican Wharf, then the Prospect of Whitby, with Pelican Stairs descending immediately to the left of the pub, then in the background, the large brick building of the London Hydraulic Power Company.

The same view today:

Pelican Stairs

A new apartment building has been built over Pelican Wharf. The first mention I can find of Pelican Wharf dates from December 1866, when the wharf was mentioned in an article about a collision in the river opposite the wharf.

Many of the apartment buildings in my 2024 photo were part of the late 1980s development of the area, and there is an article in the Brentwood Gazette from the 22nd of April, 1988 which mentions Pelican Wharf, and provides a reminder of the transformation of the 1980s:

“Six months after Black Monday the Docklands property market is experiencing a ‘new realism’, says Stephen Miles-Brown of estate agents Knight Frank & Rutley.

The Essex bookmakers and the South London car dealers – the ‘Top Gun’ speculators of yesteryear – have all but disappeared, says Mr. Miles-Brown. In their place has come the traditional buyer with a mortgage, a career and even a few children.

Docklands developers are in the middle of the strongest buyer’s market for years. They have responded quickly and imaginatively. Immediately post Black Monday, there were incentive schemes, buy-backs, chain breaking and mortgage discounts, now the latest and perhaps best news of all is the return to good old fashioned ‘value for money’, a code word for keen prices, more space and upgraded specifications.

These developments with a large degree of space and higher specifications are far removed from some of the earlier ‘little boxes’ and are to be found throughout Docklands in such places as Timber Wharf on the Isle f Dogs, Greenland Passage in the Surrey Docks, Lime Kiln Wharf and Duke Shore Wharf in Limehouse, Pelican Wharf and Eagle Wharf in Wapping and Millers Wharf by St. Katherine Docks.

April marks the start of the 1988 ‘Docklands Season’ with no less than 10 major residential developments coming forward over the next few weeks.

They offer the choice of over 500 new homes, from first-time buyer studios at under £100,000 to – only for the seriously rich – 3,000 sq. ft. penthouses at £1.5 million !”

The later half of the 1980s and into the 1990s really was a development rush along the banks of the Thames, and although the article described the situation as a buyers market, prices for river facing properties in the 1980s were expensive. A first time buyer’s studio for under £100,000 may seem really cheap today, but in 1988 this was expensive.

In the above 1948 and 2024 photos showing the Prospect of Whitby, a set of stairs can be seen running down to the foreshore to the left of the pub. These are Pelican Stairs.

Pelcian Stairs are listed in the Port of London Authority listing of access points to the Thames as being in use in 1708, and they are certainly old stairs. Their location next to a pub is typical of many of the stairs in Wapping, as many users of the stairs, whether arriving back, or waiting to leave via the stairs, would have headed to the pub, and the combination of stairs and pubs were centres of local activity.

The Prospect of Whitby was originally called The Pelican, but it is not clear where the name was used first, either the stairs or the pub.

The PLA listing (published around 1995) recorded that the stairs then had “Steps missing dangerous, derelict”.

As can be seen today, the stairs are now very much in use:

Pelican Stairs

The first written reference to Pelican Stairs I could find was from the 30th of August, 1746, when the Kentish Messenger reported that “On Tuesday Evening, a Fire broke out in the House of Mr. Pelham, near Pelican Stairs in Wapping, occasioned by a quantity of Okum taking Fire; which burnt with such Violence, that the same, and the House of Mr. Beane, a Distiller and Grocer, were consumed, with their Stocks in Trade, which amounted to several hundred Pounds; two other Houses, both inhabited, and other small tenements were much damaged.”

It is remarkable the number of fires that occurred, but perhaps not surprising when you consider that there were many houses, warehouses and factories where highly inflammable goods were stored, and where both building and working practices lacked the approaches needed to prevent the start and spread of fires.

The entrance alley to Pelican Stairs alongside the Prospect of Whitby:

Pelican Stairs

The large brick building behind the Prospect of Whitby can be seen in both 1948 and 2024 photos. This was the Wapping pumping station of the London Hydraulic Power Company.

The London Hydraulic Power Company (LHPC) was formed in 1884 by Act of Parliament, although the provision of hydraulic power by the company had started in the previous years with a station at Bankside, as the Wharves & Warehouses Steam Power & Hydraulic Pressure Company.

The aim of the company was to provide hydraulic power (water under pressure), across London, and the docks were a major consumers of this form as power, as there were numerous cranes, lifts, swing bridges, dock gates, windlass etc. which needed a reliable source of power to operate.

The LHPC established a network of pipes across London, interconnecting their pumping stations and their consumers – much like the electricity network of today – and as well as the London Docks, the company provided power to the numerous, power hungry industries and businesses across London, even extending to the raising and lowering of theatre safety curtains in the West End.

The Wapping pumping station was built between 1889 and 1892.

The station was equipped with up to six steam engines which used coal delivered via the adjacent Shadwell Basin, and took water from boreholes below the station and from the water in Shadwell Basin.

The large brick building we can see in the photos was were the accumulator tanks were located. These held water at pressure, so the hydraulic pressure across the distribution system could be delivered at a constant pressure, and the London system was at a pressure of 750 psi (pounds per square inch).

The Wapping station transitioned to electric pumping rather than steam and coal due to the Clean Air Act which had been brought into force due to the smog’s of the 1950s.

Remarkably, the Wapping station did not close until 1977, as hydraulic power was still being used, however by the 1970s, the reduction in the use of the London docks, and the transition to electric power for remaining uses of hydraulic power resulted in the closure of the station, and the network used to deliver the hydraulic power delivered by these stations.

With the 1980s liberalisation of telecommunications, and the forming of Mercury Communication as a competitor to BT, Mercury purchased the pipe network of the London Hydraulic Company to use as a ready made distribution network for their cables.

Although Mercury as a brand name disappeared in 1997, the pipes continued to be used by Cable & Wireless, and they still carry fibre optic cables today, so rather than distributing hydraulic power, the pipes are distributing voice and data across London.

The Wapping pumping station has had a number of temporary uses since closure, including activities such as an art gallery and café / restaurant, and there have been proposals for long term use, but as far as I know at the moment, there are no firm plans for the building.

Looking at another part of my father’s photo, and there was a bit of a mystery, but which shows how features remain hidden and then are revealed.

The following photo shows the area to the right of the Prospect of Whitby in my father’s 1948 photo:

Shadwell Basin

And this is the same view today:

Shadwell Basin

The 1949 OS map shows this section of the photo, as shown in the extract above, and the black cars parked in a line (possibly awaiting loading on a ship for export), are parked where the words “Mooring Posts” can be seen  (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Shadwell Basin

The map also shows the low warehouse behind the cars and what also likes rather like a domestic house to the left of the photo.

The mystery is that in 1949 photo and map, at the side of the river there is a continuous and straight line of wooden posts forming the edge of the land, however if you look at my 2024 photo, today the wall along the foreshore is curved, and to the right there is a solid, curved, concrete wall.

If we go back to the 1897 OS map, we can see a very different place  (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Shadwell Basin

We can still see the main entrance between the Thames and Shadwell Basin at the upper part of the map, but in 1897, below the main entrance, was “Shadwell Old Entrance”.

The London Docks were a continuous building site, and in Shadwell, the “Shadwell Old Basin” and the “Shadwell Old Entrance” were the first part of the docks to be built in Shadwell.

The success of these docks was such, that they were soon expanded and the much larger Shadwell Basin was built, just north of the Old Basin, which was included within the overall Shadwell Basin.

The old entrance would then be closed off, with the single main entrance shown in the 1949 map remaining as the eastern entrance to Shadwell and the London Docks complex.

I assume that the the original entrance was built over, probably not completely removing and filling in the entrance, rather building over it to complete the view we see in the 1948 photo and 1949 map.

When the area was redeveloped in the 1980s and 90s, this structure was then removed, and the curved concrete wall built across what remained of the Shadwell Old Basin entrance.

It is fascinating how across London, the evidence of former land use, industries etc. have survived and can still be seen today.

To see the street side of the Prospect of Whitby and the lifting bridge over the Shadwell Basin entrance, see this post from 2016, where I explored my father’s photo taken in Glamis Road.

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Iron Gate Stairs

Underneath the northern tower of Tower Bridge, there is a late 19th century version of one of the old Thames Stairs, which has a name that refers to one of the gates that controlled access into the Tower of London. This is Iron Gate Stairs.

The stairs are shown before Tower Bridge was built in this extract from Langley and Belch’s, 1812 New Map of London (underlined in red):

Iron Gate Stairs

Today, Iron Gate Stairs are reached via a tunnel which runs through the northern tower of the bridge, and comes out to a well maintained set of stone stairs:

Iron Gate Stairs

As far as I can confirm, by checking and aligning a number of maps, the stairs today appear to be in the same location as the stairs shown in the 1812 map.

It shows the importance of these access points to the river, that they were included in the design of Tower Bridge, and it must have cost more, and been more complex, to route the access to the stairs through the tower, rather than relocate them to one of the sides of the northern tower of the bridge.

The Port of London book “Access to the River Thames, a Port of London Guide”. includes these stairs in the listing of all points of access to the river along the tidal Thames, and the PLA record for Iron Gate Stairs reads:

  • Stairs and Causeway
  • Constructed of Stone
  • A landing place in 1708 and 1977 and in use at the time of the book (around 1995)
  • Structure is listed
  • The stairs are gated
  • Bathing from these stairs is extremely dangerous

I cannot find a separate listing for the stairs on the Historic England website, so I assume that the stairs are included within the overall Grade I listing of Tower Bridge, as the access to the stairs is part of the structure of the bridge.

The name of the stairs is interesting, and it appears to refer to a gate that once controlled access to the south east corner of the area between the walls of the tower and the river.

In this 1852 plan of the Tower of London, there are a cluster of buildings in the lower south east corner, with a black line, indicating some form of gate, controlling access (red arrow):

Tower of London

 © The Trustees of the British Museum Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Although not named, the stairs can be seen running down to the river, next to the gate.

After the construction of Tower Bridge, the name Iron Gate is retained, and although the stairs do not appear to be named (perhaps because they are under the bridge), iron Gate is used next to the tunnel underneath the approach to Tower Bridge, where today you can walk from the St Katherine Dock area, to the area between the Tower of London and the river.

In the following extract from the 1897 OS map, Iron Gate is shown just to the east of the bridge  (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Iron Gate Stairs

And in the 1951 revision, the name is still in use, but on the western side of the bridge (not also the name Irongate Wharf in use in both maps)  (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Iron Gate Stairs

So Iron Gate in the OS maps seems to continue to refer to a gate across this access through the wall created by the approach road to Tower Bridge.

As with all Thames stairs, there are references to the stairs in multiple newspaper reports over the centuries. For example, the following is from the Public Ledger and Daily Advert on the 9th of October, 1826, and unfortunately it does not record what Samuel Pearce did, which required such a public apology:

“CAUTION TO WATERMEN – I Samuel Pearce, Waterman, plying at Iron Gate Stairs, near the Tower, beg publicly to acknowledge and express my grateful feeling to John Morrison, Esq. for foregoing a prosecution against me, which I well merited, in consequence of an unprovoked and unwarrantable outrage committed on him on Friday evening; for which I cheerfully make this public apology, which he accepts, in consequence of the distressed state of my wife and infant family.”

Iron Gate Stairs were also the boarding point if you wanted to travel to “Harwich, Yarmouth and Places Adjacent”, as the 80 horse-power Steam Packet Swift sailed from the stairs on Sundays and Thursdays in the 1820s.

Indeed, Iron Gate Stairs feature in papers across the 18th and 19th centuries with all the usual stories of activities that happened at these places which formed a key access point between the land and the river.

As with other stairs, Iron Gate Stairs was a place where bodies recovered from the river were brought up to land.

The Historic England Monument Record for the Iron Gate refers to it being a gate tower constructed during the reign of Edward III (who reigned between 1327 and 1377), and that it was built to strengthen the defences of the Tower on the southern side of the complex, and that it commanded a “walled causeway through to the Develin Tower at the south east corner of the outer wall.

Stow in the early 17th century refers to the Iron Gate as being great and strong but not often opened”.

The Iron Gate was demolished in 1680 following a review of the Tower’s defences, and whilst looking for space to expand accommodation.

So whilst the gate tower was demolished, as shown in the 1852 map, a gate seems to have remained in place, although rather than the gate tower, just a standard gate.

After demolition, there also appears to have been a cluster of buildings around the location of the gate which seem to have been used for accommodation, storage and small industrial activity.

Construction of Tower Bridge cleared these buildings, and today we can see the area where the Iron Gate was located when looking towards the bridge, from the west:

Tower of London

And with some lovely historical continuity, the area of the Iron Gate is still gated, with a gatehouse and barrier across the road:

Tower of London

And looking through the walkway under the approach road to Tower Bridge, we can see gates part open across the walkway, as well as much larger and stronger gates set against the sides of the walkway:

Tower of London

In the following photo, the entrance to the walkway tunnel under the approach road is on the right, and the arch on the left provides access to the entrance to Iron Gate Stairs:

Iron Gate Stairs

Which, as the PLA description of the stairs records, is gated:

Iron Gate Stairs

Through the gate, and we can see the railings around the top of the stairs. The surrounding walls are covered in the white tiles that are common to the majority of the places where you can walk under the bridge:

Iron Gate Stairs

View of how the tunnel exits the base of the northern tower of Tower Bridge, and the steps leading down:

Iron Gate Stairs

As the PLA document records, a causeway is part of Iron Gate Stairs, and for the stairs this is one of the largest causeways to be seen. It covers a large space at the base of the stairs, both in terms of width and length into the river:

Iron Gate Stairs

The stairs are part of the construction of Tower Bridge, and I assume that the causeway may well date from the same time (assuming it has been continuously repaired). I doubt whether the stairs would have had a causeway of such size prior to the bridge being built.

The need for a bridge at or around the location of Tower Bridge had been a pressing issue for many years prior to the construction of the bridge. In the later half of the 19th century, there was so much cross river traffic that an urgent solution was needed.

In 1884, the Southwark recorder and Bermondsey and Rotherhithe Advertiser was reporting that “The Corporation also propose to establish a steam ferry across the river, from Iron Gate Stairs, Little Tower Hill, to Horselydown Old Stairs, near Horselydown Lane. Another scheme for crossing the Thames is proposed by the Tower (Duplex) Bridge Bill. The structure would cross the river from Hartley’s Wharf, Horselydown, to Little Tower Hill, having in the centre of the river two loop bridges.”

The following year, the Eastern Argus and Borough of Hackney Times, was reporting about the construction of the new bridge, and that “the work will be done by the City Corporation which has set down five years as the period for completing it. It is to be formed from a point westwards of and near the Iron Gate Stairs to Hartley’s Wharf. The cost will be £750,000, and the structure will be of such a character as to admit of the passage at all times of the tide of vessels navigating the river. The bridge will be a great convenience to East London”.

The above report does call into question whether the current stairs were built on the site of the original Iron Gate Stairs, as the article states that the new bridge is to be built “westwards of and near the Iron Gate Stairs”.

A later article in June 1886 does though seem to confirm that the northern tower, and the stairs we see today are on the site of the original stairs, as when describing the works for the new bridge, the article states “On the north side, as already stated, it touches the shore at Irongate Stairs, from which a road will lead directly up to the Minories”.

In 1889, Watermen were complaining about the disruption to their trade “THE TOWER BRIDGE AND THE LONDON WATERMEN – The Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed to considered the Tower Bridge Bill proceeded to-day to hear the evidence of numerous watermen who claim compensation for disturbance of their occupation between Irongate and Horselydown Stairs in consequence of the construction of the works,. George William Shand was the first claimant”.

I would have thought that the watermen would have been far more concerned about the forthcoming loss of their trade between the two stairs once the new bridge had been opened.

Based on the majority of newspaper reports, aligning maps, and the Port of London Authority listing of Thames Stairs, I am as certain as I can be that the stairs we see today are in the same place as the original Iron Gate Stairs.

The railing by the side of the view over the stairs seem to have acquired evidence of many of the tourist visits to the site:

Tower Bridge

I had a good look around, however I could not find any signs that name iron Gate Stairs.

They are though yet another example of historical continuity, with the stairs being in roughly the same place after the construction of Tower Bridge, and being named after a gate dating back to the 14th century, located where there are still a barrier and gates in position, to close of the south eastern entry to the space between the Tower of London and the River Thames.

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