Category Archives: The Thames

Queenhithe – The Original London Dock

The following photo was taken by my father from the south bank of the river, looking across to the north bank, it is where the walkway along the river turns slightly inland to pass under Southwark Bridge:

Queenhithe and the north bank of the River thames

The same view today:

View to the north bank of the River Thames from Bankside

The layout of the place is the same today, with the pillars (although today much more substantial) supporting the building overhead, being in the same place. The building on the left is now a Zizi Italian restaurant, replacing the warehouses and industrial buildings that once lined this stretch of the river.

The view is across to the north bank of the river, where a number of warehouses can be seen. Of these, there is only one building that remains today. That is the large warehouse directly underneath the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The subject of today’s post, is a feature on the north bank, that is just visible in the above photo.

Whilst the warehouses form an almost continuous line along the river, there is one place where the river cuts slightly in land to form a small dock. This can just be seen to the right of the following enlargement from the above photo and is Queenhithe Dock:

The view across the river today. Queenhithe can just be seen as the indention in the river wall, just to the right of centre. The tall brick building to the left is the warehouse seen below the dome of the cathedral in the above photos:

A closer view showing Queenhithe Dock. The building at the back of the dock is a recently completed hotel:

Queenhithe’s importance comes from the fact that it is a surviving dock space dating back to the Saxon and Medieval period.

The dock is believed to have been established by King Alfred after he reoccupied the area within the City walls in 886. At that time, it was called Ethelredshythe after King Alfred’s son in law, when it was a place where boats were pulled up on the foreshore with goods being sold from the boats.

The name Queenhithe comes from Queen Matilda, the wife of Henry I, who was granted the taxes generated by trade at the dock. Hithe means a small landing place for ships and boats.

Matilda also had built London’s first public lavatory at the dock, which was available for the “common use of the citizens” of London, and was no doubt built at the dock so the output of the lavatory could flow directly into the river – some things do not change.

Queenhithe is shown in the Agas map (from around the mid 16th century to the early 17th century), with one boat with a sail, and a smaller boat being within the dock:

The map appears to show some open space between the end of the dock and the houses lining Thames Street, and this space was presumably used for holding cargos being moved between the ships on the river and the land, and for conducting sales.

Writing in London Past and Present (1891), Henry Wheatley describes Queenhithe as:

“It was long the rival of Billingsgate and would have retained the monopoly of the wharfage of London had it been below instead of above bridge. In the 13th century it was the usual landing place for wine, wool, hides, corn, firewood, fish and indeed all kinds of commodities then brought by sea to London.”

The dock today is a much smaller part of what was the original dock and trading area. Excavations beneath some of the buildings surrounding the dock have found remains of a Roman quay along with the 9th century shore where trading took place, along with a series of medieval waterfronts, showing how during the medieval period the river wall was gradually being pushed further into the river.

The edge of the dock as it enters the Thames:

Queenhithe is classed as a Scheduled Ancient Monument, and is one of the areas along the river where any form of mudlarking or disturbance of the dock or foreshore is prohibited.

The Historic England description of the reason for designating Queenhithe as a Scheduled Ancient Monument provides a good explanation of the importance of the place:

“Quays are structures designed to provide sheltered landing places with sufficient depth of water alongside to accommodate vessels over part of the tidal circle. The features and complexity of quays vary enormously depending partly on their date but also on their situation and exposure, the nature of the underlying geology and alluvium, and the volume and types of trade they need to handle. By their nature, quays also tend to occur in proximity to centres of trade and administrative authority, usually in locations already sheltered to some extent by natural features. Basic elements of quays may include platforms built up and out along a part of the coast or riverside that is naturally deep or artificially dredged, or along an artificial cut forming a small dock on a riverside or coast.

Urban waterfront structures and their associated deposits provide important information on the trade and communication links of particular periods and on the constructional techniques and organisation involved in the development of waterfronts. Artefacts recovered through excavation and the deposits behind revetments will retain evidence for the commodities which were traded at such sites.

Major redevelopment schemes along the Thames in the past have meant that the site at Queenhithe Dock is a rare survival of a sequence of waterfront constructions dating from the Roman period. The timber quays, revetments and the occupation levels are well preserved as buried features. It will provide evidence for the riverside development of London including archaeological and environmental remains and deposits. These deposits will provide information about the river and riverside environment and, by extension, about the people who lived alongside and have used it. The site is of particular significance as one of the few early medieval docks recorded in London.”

At low water, the full extent of the foreshore within Queenhithe can be seen:

Queenhithe featured in a range of newspaper reports which help to give an idea of what life was like at the dock, and in London. Some examples:

3rd December 1741: “On Friday a wealthy Baker near Bishopsgate Street, was by two Money-Droppers, deluded into a Public House by Queenhithe, and there at Cards tricked out of above £100. Tis strange this stale Cheat should still prevail.”

According to the rather wonderful “The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue” by Francis Grose, a Money Dropper was a cheat who would drop some money, and then pretend to find it in front of someone, who he would then entice into a pub to share in his good luck at apparently finding the money.

Once in the pub, the Money Dropper would then cheat or rob the person he had enticed into the pub out of any money they had on them, and with the Baker, it was £100, a considerable sum of money in 1741.

Interesting that in 1741 it was thought that the was a “stale” cheat, so must have been a method employed by cheats for many years before.

The Lord Mayor’s procession (now the Lord Mayor’s show), when the new mayor took office was once a very riotous affair across the City. Crowds, fighting, fatal accidents – all very different to today. A long account of the November 1774 procession included the following reference to Queenhithe: “A man was run over by a coach at Queenhithe, and killed. A boat was overset near Queenhithe Stairs by the Watermen attempting to row passengers nigh enough to see the Lord-Mayor take water, and, it is said, six people were drowned”.

A reference to Queenhithe in 1799 adverts headed “Important Inland Communication” highlights how, in the days before the railways, goods arriving or departing from the river around Queenhithe could transfer goods across the rest of the country.

The advert stated that “The Public are respectfully informed, that Goods are regularly conveyed from Queenhithe, London, to Newbury, and from thence o Andover and Salisbury, and also down the Andover Canal to Southampton, and vice versa”.

It cost 11d (old pence) to send a hundredweight (about 112 pounds or 50kg) to Newbury, 2shillings and 6d to Salisbury and 2shillings to Southampton.

The advert shows how in 1799 there was an integrated transport system to transfer goods between London and surrounding counties and towns, as it also states the company “affords a regular communication with the following market and borough towns, and their respective neighbourhoods: Amesbury, Blandford, Cranborne, Christchurch, Dorchester, Downton, Fordingbridge, Fareham, Gosport, Havant, Kingscleare, Lymington, Mere, Newport, Poole, Portsmouth, Ringwood, Romsey, Shaftesbury, Whitchurch, Wilton, Wimborne and Yarmouth”.

It is often overlooked that the success of London as a trading port and as a commercial centre was only possible because of an interdependent relationship with a complex transport network between London and the rest of the country.

It was no good if people or goods arriving in London could not travel to destinations across the country with reliability and with a reliable timetable and cost.

One of my many unfinished projects is mapping out all the 18th century coach routes out of London. It was a very extensive network, equal in its day to the train network we have today.

As well as a reliable transport network, another important factor in the success of trade along the river was transparency in the pricing of key goods, so a market could develop based on pricing transparency. Here again, Queenhithe featured in many newspaper reports on the previous day’s prices:

“The Price of Flour for Bread at Queenhithe, from 4s, 9d per Bushel, Second Sort from 4s 4d to 4s 8d per Bushel. Windsor Beans £8, 2s per Quarter. Common Ditto £2 per Quarter.”

Sometimes the flour brought up for sale did not always sell as in 1757: “Last week several Mealmen at Queenhithe loaded their barges with the Flour that they had brought up for Sale, and sent it back”.

A “Mealman” was the name given to those who traded in grains and flour.

In the following photo, I am looking across the Thames from the north east corner of the dock:

There was a very similar view in the book Wonderful London, published in the 1920s, which shows lighters moored at the entrance, and inside the dock:

The description that goes with the above photo reads “Old Queenhithe, Once The Principal Dock Of London Port – All that is left of Queenhithe is an indentation in the line of wharves backing onto Upper Thames Street. But this, with Billingsgate, once formed the Port of London. It was called by its present name in the reign of Henry II, but as a dock it is centuries older, for we first hear of it in 899 during Alfred’s reign. To encourage its prosperity taxes were levied on foreign vessels discharging cargo elsewhere in the city. By Stow’s time it had fallen into disuse. It is now used for floating lighters to the surrounding warehouses”.

Queenhythe as a trading dock gradually lost its usefulness as the size of ships increased and the docks grew along the river, both within the City of London, and along the rest of the Thames.

As shown by the Wonderful London photo above, it did continue to be a place where lighters could be moored, with the relatively flat bottom of the dock allowing a lighter to be settled at low water, rather than being moored in the river. Space along the foreshore would have been at a premium during the 18th and 19th centuries, and partly into the 20th.

The Wonderful London photo shows the bed of Queenhithe appearing to be a level layer of mud. Today. the bed of the dock is mainly stone, broken bricks and the other detritus that gets carried along the river.

I suspect that the mud has gone as there is no activity in the dock today, and the lack of moored lighters and shipping along the river has increased the flow of the river, which has led to erosion of the mud.

If you look at the dock today, it gives the appearance that the mud has been cleared, and the incoming tide has pushed some of the old dock surface, and rubbish from the river, up to a pile at the back of the dock. Even an old scooter looks as if it is now becoming part of the buried history along the river:

Along the eastern wall of the dock is the Queenhithe Mosaic, which provides “A timeline displaying the remarkable layers of history from Roman times to Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee”:

The mosaic was design by Tessa Hunkin and Southbank Mosaics created the installation in 2014, and next to the river, it starts with the first Roman invasion:

Then we see the first reference to Queen Matilda and Queenhithe:

And that Queenhithe was London’s Grain Dock, a role it still had in the 18th century:

Other key London events are included such as when St. Paul’s Cathedral was first built in stone, and when London became a Saxon town:

There is then the 19th century “Big Stink” and World War 2 and the Blitz, which damaged so much of the area surrounding Queenhithe:

And finally the Millennium Bridge and the Jubilee. The mosaic is mainly a timeline, although the Thames flows along the length of the mosaic and at the end. as well as covering events in 2012, we also see the river opening out into the estuary, and four turbines from the wind farms that have covered parts of the wider estuary:

Rocque’s map of 1746 shows Queenhithe Dock with a small area of open space at the top of the dock, labelled Queen Hith (earlier references to the dock often spelt the Hith part without an e):

There are a number of boats which look as if they could be either sailing into, or away from the dock. There are also two sets of stairs. On the right are Queen Hith Stairs, and on the left are Queen Hith Little Stairs.

I can find a number of references to Queenhithe Stairs over the last few centuries. I quoted one earlier in the post with the story of the “boat was overset near Queenhithe Stairs“, when a Waterman was taking people out into the river to see the new Lord Mayor take to the river.

The Port of London Authority listing of all the steps, stairs and landing places on the tidal Thames does not have any reference to these stairs, however, they are still there. Not the nice set of stone steps leading down to a causeway on the foreshore, rather Queenhithe Stairs now consist of a vertical metal set of steps right up against the river wall, with a short set of steps providing access over the river wall as can be seen in the following photo, in exactly the same place as in the 1746 map:

Looking over the edge of the river wall, and we can see the vertical steps heading down to the foreshore:

There is a high river wall around Queenhithe, an essential bit of infrastructure to keep the surrounding land dry during times of very high tide, and building embankments along the river has been a continuous project in keeping the City of London dry.

I found a mention of Queenhithe Stairs in a reference to building an embankment wall, when in 1856 the London Weekly Chronicle had an article on an Act of Parliament to progress a whole series of infrastructure projects across London, including;

“An embankment along the Middlesex side of the River Thames, which said embankment will commence at or near certain stairs called Queenhithe Stairs, in the parish of St. Michael, Queenhithe, in the city of London, and from thence run in a westerly direction along and in front of the north bank of the river, and terminate on the river bank at or about a point in the parish of Saint Margaret in the City of Westminster, in the county of Middlesex.”

Other parts of the Act included building a railway within the embankment, so this was one of the enabling acts for both creating a new wall along the river and building what has now become the Circle and District underground railway lines along the Embankment.

The embankment as actually built ended at Blackfriars and did not extend to Queenhithe Stairs. The warehouses along the river, with their need for easy access directly onto the river prevented the new embankment being built as far as Queenhithe, but it is one of those “what ifs” with the development of London over the centuries.

From the walkway along the side of the river, there is nothing to be seen of Queenhithe Little Stairs, and I cannot find any written reference to the stairs, however looking across from the south bank of the river, we can see a set of steps vertically up against the river wall in the place shown in Roqcue’s 1746 map:

Interesting how there is a rise in the height of the foreshore around the bottom of the steps, and how these stairs survive despite having very little practical use these days, although I suspect that with the height of the river wall, having stairs along the foreshore is a sensible precaution for anyone stranded on the foreshore as the tide comes in, or having fallen in the river, although with the tides in the river, getting to the stairs would be a challenge.

Queenhithe is an interesting survivor, as what survives is the space, rather than any physical structure such as a building, wall, paving, etc. Whilst there are remains of the use of the dock below the surface, Queenhithe’s importance is as a reminder of how the City and the Thames developed and for so many centuries, were interdependent.

Given the level of 19th century rebuilding of the City, I am surprised that Queenhithe survived, and was not replaced by new warehouses, however the dock had already given its name to a Ward, so the importance of the place must have long been clear, and removing the place that was the source of the Ward’s name was probably too much, even for Victorian commercial redevelopment of the City of London.

alondoninheritance.com

Trig Lane Stairs and Thames Foreshore Erosion

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Trig Lane Stairs lead down to the Thames foreshore, just to the east of the Millennium Bridge. Today, the stairs connect the foreshore with the walkway that now runs along the edge of the river, with apartments and offices between the river and Upper Thames Street.

Back in 1949 it was a very different place, a mix of wartime bomb damage and with many of the warehouses remaining from the time when this section of the river was busy with the movement of goods between barges and warehouses.

This is one of my father’s photos from 1949. The wooden stairs of Trig Lane Stairs lead down to the foreshore, warehouses either side with an open space between (not bomb damage, but an open space for movement of goods), and one of my father’s friends standing on the stairs:

I took the following photo from the south bank of the river. To the right of the Millennium Bridge, along the wall that runs alongside the river, you can see a dark rectangle, which is the entrance to Trig Stairs through the river wall, and the wooden stairs to the foreshore can just be seen below the gap:

As with the edge of the Thames through most of London, this area has changed dramatically in the 74 years between the two photos.

The warehouses have been replaced with new buildings, with a single block covering the space behind the stairs and along where several warehouses once stood.

Walking along the edge of the river from the east, and the Trig Lane Stairs can be seen in the following photo, just behind the group of people on the foreshore:

The entrance to Trig Lane Stairs in 2023:

The stairs go up, before going down to the foreshore are an indication of the height of the river wall now needed to prevent any flooding at times of exceptionally high tide.

Once over the stairs, we can get a view of the wooden stairs going down to the foreshore:

And this was the same view in 1949:

In 1949 the warehouses were still in use, and the loaded barges which can be seen in the background are probably holding goods that are waiting to be moved to the warehouses as these were mostly used for import.

According to the 1953 edition of “London Wharves and Docks”, published by Commercial Motor, the warehouse to the left of the stairs in my father’s photo was the warehouse of Crown and Horseshoe Wharf, which traded in general goods, and specialised in canned goods and chemicals. The warehouse had storage space for 100,000 cubic feet of goods.

The warehouse on the right of the stairs was Sunlight Wharf, owned by LEP Transport, and in 1953 was described as “premises particularly suited for storage of canned goods, having large basement accommodation at average low temperature”.

One of my photos is of the last days of Sunlight Wharf and is in my post “Baynard’s Castle, A Roman Monument And The Last Working Crane In the City”.

The following extract from the 1951 edition of the OS map shows Trig Lane Stairs just below the centre of the map, at the end of Trig Lane (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

According to “A Dictionary of London” by Henry Harben, the first mention of the name was as Trigge Lane in the 1603 edition of Stow’s Survey of London, and by 1677 it was Trigg Lane.

The first mention of the stairs was by John Strype, who published a new, expanded version of Stow’s Survey of London in 1720. Strype’s description of the stairs and lane was “Trig Stairs, so called from the Stairs on the Water side, which is indifferently well supplied by Watermen. The Lane is pretty open, reasonably well built and inhabited”.

Henry Harben states that the name came from John Trigge, the owner of property around the lane and stairs, and in the following centuries, the name has changed from Trigge to Trig. The “London Encyclopedia” (Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert) also repeats the source of the name, and that “the Trigge family were local residents in the 14th and 15th centuries”.

The street Trig Lane has all but disappeared. It no longer runs from Upper Thames Street down to the stairs. Development over the last few decades has obliterated the original route of the street, but the name remains in an east – west street, which is mainly an access route to the rear of one of the buildings that now faces onto the river.

The current routing of Trig Lane can be seen in the following map (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

Having photos from 1949 and 2023, looking down from the stairs to the foreshore allows comparison of the foreshore, 74 years apart.

The following photo is an extract from the 1949 photo, looking at the area where a number of wooden structures can be seen:

I have labeled what I assume is the top of the groyne line on the right. The groyne line is shown in the 1951 OS map, and apart from a gap opposite the stairs, it runs along the foreshore, a little distance out from the embankment.

The groyne line was probably a wooden wall used to retain the foreshore and create a reasonably flat surface on wich barges could be positioned and their cargo unloaded into the warehouses.

I have also labeled wooden posts that appear to be retaining a plank. There is a similar plank to the left and these two may have been where the groyne line returned to the river wall, or could have formed the edge to a causeway that ran out from the bottom of the stairs.

Looking at the same view today, and we can see just how much of the foreshore has eroded in the last seven decades:

The groyne on the right, the top of which was visible in 1949 has now disappeared. The groyne on the left which was just below the foreshore is now fully exposed.

We can also see the wooden posts which were once retaining the planks along the edge of the causeway.

Comparing these two photos shows that at the location of the groynes, the foreshore has eroded a good two to three feet.

The Thames foreshore is a very fluid space, in all senses of the word.

Trig Lane and the stairs date from the 17th century, and are probably much older and even if the name Trig dated from around that time, there were probably stairs here much earlier as stairs were such an important part of access between the land and the river, and along this part of the river, there has been port infrastructure for so many centuries.

The London Encyclopedia has the same view as it states that the stairs were earlier known as Fish Wharf.

Excavation at Trig Lane between 1974 and 1976, prior to major development of the area revealed remarkable remains of the medieval waterfront with significant wooden revetments and other infrastructure of the port between the late 13th and mid-15th centuries.

The following is an extract from William Morgan’s map of London from 1682, and shows Trigg Stairs. To the left of Trigg Stairs is Paul’s Wharf which also had a set of stairs. I do not know whether it was an artistic interpretation of the scene, or whether it was fact, but the stairs by Paul’s Wharf had a large cluster of watermen’s boats, but none at Trigg Stairs:

What I love above Thames stairs is not just the physical structure, but the stories you can find about what happened at the stairs. Just small glimpses, but they help with an understanding of what life was like at the boundary between river and City.

For example, from the Newcastle Courant on the 15th of July, 1721:

“Last Monday, Mr. Hargrave, who sometime ago killed one Capt. Wilkes, a half Pay Officer in Racket Court, Fleet Street, and fled, and coming off the water at Trig Stairs, drew his sword upon the Waterman, without any provocation, and stabbed him very dangerously in the Breast, for which he and his Companion were forthwith seized, and carried before the Lord Mayor, who committed them to Wood Street Compter”.

And from the Caledonian Mercury on the 1st of July, 1728:

“On Tuesday in the afternoon, a Barge Man was struck down by lightening as he was going up a ladder at Trig Stairs; and falling into the River, was drowned before any help could be got”.

From the Kentish Weekly Post on the 24th of January, 1759:

“A Journeyman Carpenter crossing the water from Trig Stairs, being a little in liquor, and imagining he was near the shore, jumped out of the boat and was drowned”.

The Reading Mercury reported on the 28th of July, 1783, that:

“The lighters of Mr. Rodbard, at Trig Stairs, Thames Street, having been lately frequently robbed, a guard was appointed to overlook them; and early yesterday morning three persons were discovered filling the corn into sacks, who being fired at by the guard, one of them was killed; the others immediately rowed off in a boat which they had stolen for the occasion, to Pepper Alley Stairs, where they escaped, leaving the body in the boat.”

The London Morning Herald reported on the 13th of October, 1837, that:

“Yesterday evening an inquest was held in the King’s Arms, Queenhithe, before W. Payne (City Coroner), on view of the body of Joseph Colcourt, a lighterman. It appeared from evidence that the deceased was in company with a boy bringing a barge down the river, on Wednesday morning last, about three o’clock, and had arrived alongside Trig Stairs, Queenhithe, when the barge struck against another which was moored off the stairs, and deceased, who was at the time standing on the gunwale, was, in consequence of the concussion, precipitated overboard, and sunk immediately. The boy made what efforts he could at the time to save him, but they were ineffectual. The tide was running down very strong, and it was impossible to render assistance. The body of the deceased was found next morning near to the spot where he fell in. Verdict – Accidental Death.”

Whilst all these stories are of assault, theft and accidental death (as today, the press only report the bad news), they are a common theme to all Thames stairs, and show the dangers of working on the river, of crossing the river, crime on the river, children also working in such dangerous conditions etc.

Standing at the stairs today, it is hard to imagine a guard firing and killing one of those trying to steal corn from barges moored by the stairs.

In Morgan’s map of London from 1682, the stairs were spelt Trigg, but by the time of Rocque’s map of London in 1746, the last “g” had been dropped, and they were just Trig Stairs, as they remain today.

It is interesting how place names change, and I suspect that it was usually a gradual simplification of the name, so the stairs started with the name of a local land owner as Trigge, then Trigg and finally Trig, so the name ends with a spelling that more accurately mirrors how the name is pronounced.

The groynes today still seem to form a boundary between the water and the foreshore at a typical low tide:

I assume that the rubble behind the groyne may have been used as infill to build up the foreshore on the land side of the groyne to create a platform where barges could be moored on some reasonably level ground.

And today we can also see where the eastern groyne ends, there is a gap where the causeway would have extended, and the wooden posts along the side of the causeway now project above the surface. It could also have been where the groynes returned to the river wall. This shows just how much erosion the foreshore has suffered in the last 70 years:

View along the foreshore to the west:

And to the east – the large brick building at the end of the run of modern buildings is the only warehouse that remains from the pre-war period:

In the Port of London Authority book: “Access to the River Thames. A Port of London Authority Guide, Steps, Stairs and Landing Places on the Tidal Thames” (published around 1995), Trig Lane Stairs is listed as having 9 stone steps and 18 wood steps, and that the condition was bad.

The stairs today have 16 steps. The stairs in the 1949 photo are longer as they went into the recess in the wall, so I do wonder if the stairs at the time of the PLA survey were the same as in my father’s photo, as they would probably have been in bad condition having been exposed to decades of Thames tides washing over them.

The PLA listing confirms that the stairs were in use in 1708, and at the time of the survey they were not in use.

The stairs today are in good condition, and whilst probably not in use as a landing place, they provide access to the foreshore:

The following photo shows the view across the river to Tate Modern, the old Bankside Power Station:

My father did take photos across the river from the top of the stairs at different times to the photos of Trig Lane Stairs.

The first shows dates from 1953 and shows the new Bankside Power Station when the first half had been completed and was in operation. The original power station is on the left, where the parallel rows of chimneys can be seen. I wrote about the view, along with other photos in the post Building Bankside Power Station.

And this view from 1949 shows the original power station on the left, and the Phoenix Gas Works on the right. I wrote about this view, along with a wider view of Bankside in the post A Bankside Panorama In 1949 And 2017:

Trig Stairs are in good condition, but the same cannot be said for the remains of the wooden structures on the foreshore, the groynes and the possible edges to a causeway leading out from the base of the stairs.

I suspect that erosion of the foreshore may have been speeding up over the last few decades, as the groynes and platform they protected are now not needed and are therefore not maintained, and that there are no obstructions along the foreshore or the river that would have slowed down water passing over the foreshore (for example, barges on the river and moored on the foreshore).

I doubt whether the remaining wooden structures below the Trig Lane Stairs will be there in another 74 years time.

alondoninheritance.com

Limehouse Hole Stairs and the Breach

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Limehouse Hole Stairs are one of the very old stairs between the land and the river. They are towards the eastern edge of Limehouse, in an area once known as Limehouse Hole, where the river turns south on its journey around the Isle of Dogs.

Today, the stairs are a wide and well maintained set of steps leading down from the walkway alongside the river, towards a very roughly rectangular area which is accessible when the tide is low:

The location of Limehouse Hole Stairs is shown by the red oval in the following map (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

On the foreshore at low tide:

The foreshore at Limehouse Hole Stairs has large sandy patches along with plenty of stone and brick that has found its way into the river from the buildings and infrastructure that once lined the Thames.

If you look closely, it is interesting how similar items can be found in lines along the foreshore. They were left when the tide went out, and form a line across the sand. I have no idea of the mechanism that leaves them in a line rather than randomly scattered, and on the foreshore at Limehouse Hole Stairs, a line of green glass / plastic / minerals (not sure what they were), was stretched across the sand:

The Port of London Authority list of the steps, stairs and landing places on the tidal Thames has very little information on Limehouse Hole Stairs, just recording that they were in good condition, with stone and concrete steps and in use. The PLA had not recorded whether the stairs were in use in their two key recording years of 1708 and 1977.

The stairs are old, but the stairs we see today are very different to what was there prior to the redevelopment of the area in recent decades, which I will show later in the post.

The following extract from the 1949 revision of the OS map shows the location of Limehouse Hole Stairs (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“)..

There is an area of foreshore that dries when the tide is low shown mainly within the red circle. Limehouse Pier extends into the river. Follow the pier back to land, and in the corner is Limehouse Hole Stairs.

You can also see in the above map, a line forming two sides of a square, with the river walls forming the other two sides. The two lines running across the dried foreshore in the map were a wooden surround, parts of which can still be seen today, as I will show later.

I will come to the relevance of the blue circle later in the post.

This area has a complicated naming history.

Written references to the stairs date back to the early 19th century, although these do not explicitly name Limehouse Hole Stairs. A typical advert in February 1807 was for the Schooner Anne which was for sale and could be seen “lying at Limehouse Hole, opposite the stairs”.

The name Limehouse Hole is also a bit of a mystery. It may refer to a form of small harbour or dock, although I find this unlikely as the larger Limekiln Dock is within the area traditionally known as Limehouse Hole.

I did wonder if the name referred to a hole in the river, perhaps a particularly deep part of the Thames, however in the area known as Limehouse Hole, the bed of the river is of a depth that is normal for much of this stretch of the river, typically around 6 metres deep at the lowest astronomical tide.

There is though a strange depression in the bed of the river not far to the west, in the middle of the river opposite the entrance to Limehouse Dock, where the river descends from a depth of 5.5 metres to a depth of 11.4 metres, all within a small area of the Thames.

To add to naming confusion, if we look at Rocque’s map from 1746, there are stairs in the rough location of Limehouse Hole Stairs, however Rocque calls then Limekiln Stairs, and he also names this stretch of the river Limekiln Holes rather than Limehouse Hole, so perhaps the name refers to some aspect of the Limekiln industry, and as this industry declined, the name changed from Limekiln to Limehouse Hole.

The Survey of London does though state that the name Limehouse Hole was in use for this section of the river by the seventeenth century, so perhaps Rocque was confused with the Limekilns and Limekiln Dock, or in the 18th century there were different names in use.

The extract from Rocque’s map is shown below:

The first references to the full name of Limehouse Hole Stairs start to appear around 1817, and there are multiple references in the 1820s onwards. All the usual events that make their way into the papers – accidents on the river, ships for sale, fires in the buildings by the stairs, rowing competitions, and tables of rates for Watermen to charge to row passengers along the river.

In the OS map shown above, there is a pier coming out from Limehouse Hole stairs. The earliest reference I can find to the pier dates from 1843, when there was an article in the November 5th edition of The Planet recording a court case, where “On Tuesday, Jonathan Bourne, a waterman, and one of the proprietors of the floating-pier at Limehouse Hole stairs, appeared to answer a charge of carrying passengers in his boat on Sunday, in violation of the rights and privileges of William Banks, the Sunday ferryman. The real question in dispute between the parties was as to the right of the watermen owning the floating pier to convey passengers to and from the Watermen’s Company steamers which stop there. When the tide is low there is not sufficient water for the steamers to come alongside the outer barge of the pier, and the watermen row the passengers to the steamers, and vice versa, but no money is taken.”

From the article, it appears that the pier was owned by a group of watermen. The article also shows how watermen were regulated, and had specific rights covering what they could do, and when. I did not know that the Watermen’s Company ran steamers on the river. This must have been a far more efficient way of conveying passengers along the river, rather than rowing as watermen in previous years would have done. Also, an early version of the Thames Clippers that provide the same service today.

The pier seems to have disappeared by the 1860s, as in the East London Observer on the 1st of May, 1869, there was a report on a public meeting of the parishioners of Limehouse “to consider what action should be taken in obtaining the construction of a pier on the Thames, for the convenience of the inhabitants of Limehouse”, and that “there were many persons who would far rather go to the city by boat than either rail or bus”.

A new pier was needed because “the old pier was never under the management of the Thames Conservators, but under that of the watermen, who let it go to ruin”.

A new pier was built in 1870 and this second pier lasted until 1901, when it was removed for the construction of Dundee Wharf, and a couple of years later, the London County Council built the third pier on the site.

Getty Images have some photos of this third iteration of the pier, with the following photos showing the pier stretching out across the foreshore, with Dundee Wharf in the background, on the left. Click on the arrows to the sides of each photo to see all images of the pier in the gallery. (If you have received this post via email, the photo may not be visible due to the way code embedding works. Go to the post here https://alondoninheritance.com/ to see the photo).

Embed from Getty Images

The photos show the wooden surround which was shown in the earlier OS map. The photo helps with the purpose of this surround, as it presumably held back a raised area of the foreshore to create a reasonably level space for barges and lighters to be moored.

The Survey of London states that this third pier “was removed by the PLA in 1948, but the stairs and Thames Place, though closed off in 1967, survived until 1990”. The survival of the stairs until 1990 presumably refers to the version of the stairs prior to that which we see today.

The result of multiple piers, along with the wooden surround to the area, means that there are still remains on the foreshore which we can see today:

Including plenty of loose timbers which may have been washed here from other locations along the river:

And when the tide is low, we can still see the wooden surround which once enclosed a flat area of the foreshore as can be seen in the Getty photo above:

The following 1914 revision of the OS map shows Limehouse Hole Stairs and the pier, and also shows Limehouse Hole Ferry running across the river from the pier. This was a ferry to the opposite site of the river which landed at Horn Stairs, and which provided a fast way of crossing the river, rather than having to travel to either the Rothehithe or Blackwall Tunnels (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

The following photo from Britain from Above shows the site in 1953 when the pier had been removed. I have marked Limehouse Hole Stairs, which at the time was simply wooden steps leading down to the foreshore. To get a closer view, the photo can be found here.

The pier had been removed just a few years before the above photo. Limekiln Dock runs inland towards the top of the photo, and, along with the shape of the river wall where Limehouse Hole Stairs is located, is the only feature that survives today. Almost every single building has disappeared.

Although Limehouse Hole Pier has gone, there is another pier, a short distance to the south, where the Canary Wharf pier can be found today, which provides access to the Thames Clippers, providing a similar function to the old steamers that once docked at Limehouse Hole pier:

Looking north from Canary Wharf pier, and there is another feature that survives. In the following photo, looking towards the location of Limehouse Hole Stairs, there is a straight row of metal piling, followed by a brick wall:

With a closer look, we can see that the brick wall turns inwards:

Returning to the 1949 revision of the OS map, I have marked the curved brick wall in the above photo, by a blue circle in the following map:

The curved brick wall was at the northern side of the entrance to a dock that ran alongside Lower Aberdeen Wharf.

The wall today looks as if it continues in land and I would love to know how much of the old dock, and the walls that once surrounded the dock, survive under the modern walkway that has been built as part of the redevelopment of the area.

We can also see the dock in an aerial photo, again from the Britain from Above web site, and dating from 1938:

I have highlighted the corner wall we can see today in an extract from the above photo, and have also marked the stairs and pier:

As well as Limehouse Hole Stairs, the other part of the title of the post is “the Breach”.

Much of the Isle of Dogs, and indeed much of the land alongside the Thames, is low lying, and over the centuries, it has been very common for there to be floods during high tides.

As London grew, and trade along the river developed, land was reclaimed, and river walls were built, but until the 20th century, these walls were often not of the height and strength we see today.

Nor far south of Limehouse Hole Stairs is an area of land where the river wall was breached, and was flooded, or in a state of marsh, for very many years. This was known as “The Breach”, and was shown on maps, including Rocque’s 1746 map, where it can be seen with a road running around what appears to be an area of marsh:

There is also a water feature in the above map called the “Poplar Gut”, and both this and the Breach were mentioned in an article in the East London Observer in 1903, when “Pepys in his diary under date of 23rd March, 1660, mentions that he saw the great breach which the late high water had made, to the loss of many thousands of pounds to the people about Limehouse. In Gascoyne’s map, the spot is marked by the explanation ‘Old Breach, the Foreland, now a place to lay timber’ and ‘The Breach’ is applied to what was more recently known as the Poplar Gut”.

The reason why the Breach happened where it did was down to the natural erosion of the land by the river at this particular point in its meander around the Isle of Dogs.

In time, and without any human intervention, the Thames would have cut through the northern section of the Isle of Dogs, leaving the part of the river around the south of the Isle of Dogs as an Oxbow Lake. The Thames has made subtle changes to its course over the centuries, and it is only in recent years that we have effectively put the river into a concrete and banked channel, and limited the natural forces of erosion.

There are also stories of people digging out ballast from the foreshore around where the Breach occurred, which would have contributed to the flood.

The view from Greenwich would have looked very different if the river had continued with the Breach.

in the quote from Pepys, he mentions that the Breach is now a place to lay timber, and this would have been a good place, as timber was often kept in a wet environment to stop the wood drying out and to allow gradual conditioning before sale.

In a parish map from 1703, the area is marked as a place to lay timber:

In Rocque’s map, there is an inland area of water called the Poplar Gut and in the above map it is labelled as the Breach. This was part of the area that flooded when the river breached the bank along the river.

This must have been a significant area of reasonably deep water, as on the 10th of June, 1748, it was reported that “On Saturday last, in the evening as Mr. George Newman, son of Mr. Newman, an eminent Linen Draper in Whitechapel, was washing himself in Poplar Gut, he was unfortunately drowned, although all possible means were used by a companion he was along with, to save him, to the inexpressible grief of his parents, and all who knew him”.

The Breach lasted for some years, and was still shown in the 1816 edition of Smith’s New Plan of London, which also included the recently completed West India Docks, which had been built over the Poplar Gut:

The Breach would soon be reclaimed after the publication of the above map, as the size and number of docks grew on the Isle of Dogs, and industry expanded along the edge of the river (the West India Docks and the channel across the Isle of Dogs will be the subject of future posts).

Nothing remains to be seen of the Breach today, although it was to the south of where the Canary Wharf pier is today, in the following view:

And almost as a reminder of when it was impossible to cross where the water of the Thames had breached the bank, during my visit, the path was closed, but this time for maintenance, rather than a flood:

This small area of Limehouse has changed dramatically over the last few decades, however there are still places where we can see traces of the previous industrial. docks and riverside infrastructure.

Wooden planks still poking through the foreshore, although being gradually eroded, a brick wall running along the river’s edge, and location and names of the stairs that bridge the boundary between land and the river.

You can find links to all my posts on Thames stairs in the map at this link.

alondoninheritance.com

Ratcliffe Cross Stairs

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For this week’s post, I am returning to my exploration of the ancient stairs that line the River Thames. In the 1920s books Wonderful London there is the following photo of Ratcliffe Cross Stairs, described as “an ancient and much used landing place and point of departure of a ferry. There is a tradition that Sir Martin Frobisher took boat here for his ship when starting on his voyage to find the North-West Passage. Ratcliffe Cross is the old name for the thoroughfare leading to this landing stage, whence Butchers’ Row meets Broad Street, Shadwell, and Narrow Street, Limehouse”:

I do not know if that is the ferry mentioned in the Wonderful London text, but it does illustrate perfectly how these stairs, and the causeway that ran from the bottom of the stairs, was used to take a boat either along the river to another set of stairs, or to a ship on the river.

The following map shows the location of Ratcliffe Cross Stairs, with the red arrow pointing to where the stairs meet the river ( © OpenStreetMap contributors):

Limehouse Basin is the area of water to the right of the map, and the dark pink road above is the Highway leading into the Limehouse Link Tunnel, with the dark pink line of Butcher Row running north.

Ratcliffe Cross Stairs leads from Narrow Street at the point where it does a sharp bend to head north to a dead end at the Highway.

In the following photo, the dark blue gates are the entrance to Ratcliffe Cross Stairs:

Ratcliffe Cross Stairs are in what was the old hamlet of Ratcliffe. The name came from Redcliff as the high ground along the route of the main street that ran from the City to the east of London, parallel to the river had red sandstone exposed in the slight cliff that descended down to the marshy land along the river.

The road that ran along this higher land became known at the Ratcliffe Highway (now just the Highway), as it followed the river from the City to the hamlet.

Although now not as well known as the stairs in Wapping, Ratcliffe Cross Stairs were important and well used river stairs, and to understand why, we need to look at maps that show the area at a time when development was limited, and much of east London was still fields.

The following extract is from “A New and Correct Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster”, published by Haines and Son in 1796. Firstly, a close-up of the location of Ratcliffe Cross Stairs (underlined in red), shows the stairs were at the end of a road (Butcher Street) which led directly down to the stairs (© The Trustees of the British Museum):

Now using the same map, we can zoom out, and we can see the wider context of the location of the stairs (red oval):

If we follow the route of the road that runs down to the stairs, then after running through some fields, and limited development along the road, we reach Stepney. Follow the main road through Stepney as it turns to the left, and we reach Mile End Old Town, so the road that runs directly to the stairs is the direct route from Stepney and Mile End.

Also, if we look to the left, we can see two main roads that run from the east of the City of London, which also run to Butcher Street, then down to Ratcliffe Cross Stairs.

So whilst today, the stairs are at a quiet location, where Narrow Street turns to a dead end, it was once at a key location, at the end of the main road that would have made the stairs the most direct route to the river from a wide area of east London.

Rocque’s 1746 map of London does not name the stairs, but the street leading back from the stairs is called Ratcliff Cross (centre of the map, along the Thames):

The above map also shows Butcher Row leading down into Ratcliff Cross, and there is a Watch House shown at the junction between Butcher Row and where the road to Stepney is off to the right, and the road to the City on the left.

A Watch House also confirms that this was an important route between Mile End, the City and the river.

The stairs appear to have been in use in the 16th century, and were probably much older. Although I cannot find an early, verified reference to this, Ratcliffe Cross Stairs were alleged to have been used by explorers and adventurers of the later half of the 16th century, such as Sir Hugh Willoughby and Sir Martin Frobisher.

Sir Hugh Willoughby was a soldier, who took command of an expedition funded by the Muscovy Company, to find a north east passage along the northern coast of Russia, to the Far East. Willoughby, along with his crew would die in the attempt.

Sir Martin Frobisher was a sailor who made three attempts to find the north west passage to China. He survived all three expeditions, but failed to find a way through from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

I have found references to Ratcliffe Cross being used by 16th century adventurers such as Willoughby and Frobisher in a number of books on London and in a series of newspaper articles on the history of east London in the East London Observer in 1912.

There is also a plaque in the King Edward VII Memorial Park in Shadwell, next to the air vent / old pedestrian access to the Rotherhithe Tunnel:

Just a note on spelling – the hamlet and the stairs seem to be referred to by both Ratcliff and Ratcliffe. I am using the version with an “e” at the end as this was the spelling used for the Wonderful London photo.

There are a couple of points here regarding the reference to famous adventurers leaving the stairs. They were just the boarding point where they would have got onto a smaller boat to be rowed to their ship which was either moored on the Thames, or at Deptford.

Locations along the Thames were also not the last place in the country that they would have set foot, as these expeditions frequently stopped at places such as Plymouth to take on any final provisions and to pick up and leave final messages.

There is also a question as to whether any reference to Ratcliffe Cross refers to the stairs, or to a cross.

There are multiple references to there being some form of cross near the stairs which was used as a place to receive a blessing before departing, to make proclamations, and as a place from where news could be spread.

The cross appears to have been just north of the stairs, and at some point along Butcher Row.

Again, referring back to the maps above, this would have been a good location for a cross given the convergence of roads, and the road running from Mile End, through Stepney and straight down to the stairs.

The following photo is looking north along the short stub of Narrow Street (that was Butcher Row) up to where the Highway joins the Limehouse Link Tunnel. Butcher Row continues north across the Highway.:

The cross was in place in the 18th century as the poet and playwright John Dryden has one of his characters mention having heard a ballad about the Protector Somerset being sung at Ratcliffe Cross.

There are also references to the cross being lost or demolished in the 18th century, and in the early 20th century there were attempts at setting up some form of commemoration of the cross, for example from the Shoreditch Observer on the 26th of July, 1913:

“The Borough Council in January last resolved to request the London County Council to consider the question of the commemoration of the site of ‘Ratcliffe Cross’ on the ground that the spot witnessed the departure of mariners in the time of Elizabeth.”

And from the East London Observer:

“The Council are aware that the question of a suitable perpetuation of the historic ‘Ratcliffe Cross’ has been recently referred to, and in this connection we beg to report that we have under consideration a communication from Mr. C. McNaught, dated 7th, December 1912, urging that some sign, signification, or memorial thereof should be placed on the pillars of the Ratcliffe entrance to the Ratcliffe and Rotherhithe Tunnel. We think that the suggestion embodied in the forgoing communication is one which should be supported, and therefore, we recommend that the London County Council be requested to give effect to what Mr. McNaught suggests in this matter, and that Mr. McNaught be informed of the actions taken.

Councilor Maynard could not see why a memorial of Ratcliffe Cross should be put on the most modern structure of Rotherhithe Tunnel. He did not think the London County Council would agree to it.

Councilor Brennan was in favour of the memorial, pointing out that the tunnel was the nearest spot to the site of the Cross.”

The above text is interesting, as it shows the conflict between commemorating old London on the latest infrastructure, and it also implies that the cross was not right by the stairs, rather towards where the Highway junction with Butcher Row is now located, as this is close to the entrance to the Rotherhithe Tunnel.

The Mr. McNaught mentioned in the above article was Charles McNaught. He appears to have been a local historian, and wrote a series of articles in the East London Observer titled “Roundabout Old East London”.

He seems to have been rather cynical about some of the well known historians who had published books about London. In one article, he writes that “When Sir Walter Besant and his lieutenants came down to Ratcliffe a little more than a dozen years ago, they found at first that the hamlet offered little to interest or instruct.”

He also wrote that “When Sir Walter Besant ‘discovered’ this part of London”

He implies that authors such as Besant (who wrote a number of books about the history of London) came to places such as Ratcliffe, with his “lieutenants”, they did not put the effort in to discover the real history of the place, and eventually found out what the locals already knew, whilst claiming to “discover” the place.

So we have stairs that were at an important location, at the end of a direct route from Mile End, that had an important cross close by which had some symbolic meaning for departing sailors, and was used to make announcements (the East London Observer reported that the cross was used to make a proclamation about Queen Victoria becoming queen), dates from at least the 16th century, and was known as a departing point for 16th century adventurers.

Time to take a look at the stairs:

The above photo is an earlier photo to my latest visit, just to show how far the water of the Thames comes in at high water. The above photo was taken when the tide had already been receding.

The photo below is when the tide was out, and shows a set of steps down to the foreshore:

The foreshore nearest to the steps seems to be comprised of a very fine sand. There was a strong breeze during my visit, and walking through this section risked fine sand being blown in the eyes.

The following map is a 1914 revision and shows Ratcliffe Cross Stairs (just above the EY of Stepney) (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Just to the left of where the stairs meet Narrow Street, where the street heads north, there is the PH symbol for a Public House.

In researching Thames stairs, the majority appear to have had a pub located next to the stairs. This would have been a place to wait for your boat to arrive, a place for a first drink after you have arrive back, or just simply had some business next to the stairs.

The pub was the Ship Tavern, and in 1939 “East London’s oldest woman licensee, Mrs. Rose Hannah M. Jenkins (aged 69), who for 40 years was in charge of the Ship Tavern, Narrow Street, Stepney, has died. The Ship was formerly the resort of men from the sailing ships who used to land at Ratcliffe Cross Stairs.”

In the above map extract, the stairs do seem to have a causeway extending across the foreshore, and the 1920s photo shows this causeway. Ratcliffe Cross Stairs does have a Historic England listing, with the “Old stone slipway to River Thames” being Grade II listed.

The causeway has today completely disappeared. Whether it was demolished, gradually eroded, or perhaps is covered by the debris deposited on the foreshore by the river, I do not know. It would be good if it was the later.

The view from the foreshore looking towards the Isle of Dogs:

View of the river frontage of the buildings that face onto Narrow Street:

Foreshore looking towards the east:

View towards King Edward VII Memorial Park

A short distance along the foreshore showing the construction site for the Thames Tideway Tunnel:

Looking back from the foreshore towards the stairs. The causeway would have run down from the stairs to where I am standing.

The above photo shows a couple of things. Firstly the size of the tidal range on the Thames. I was standing close to the water to take the above photo and at high tide I would be completely underwater by several feet. The green algae on the walls shows the height of the tide.

Also, a bit hard to see, but the height of the foreshore drops off on either side of the stairs. The foreshore is covered in stones, the remains of bricks, bits of wood and concrete, and I do wonder if parts of the causeway remain below the surface.

I checked in my copy of the Port of London Authority book: “Access to the River Thames. A Port of London Authority Guide, Steps, Stairs and Landing Places on the Tidal Thames” (published around 1995), and the following table shows the entry for Ratcliffe Cross Stairs:

Interesting that it referred to the stairs as a landing place in 1977 (so still in use), and that the paving had been renewed. The implication was that in 1995 the stairs and causeway were in good condition.

After the post on Wapping Dock Stairs a few weeks ago, I did email the Port of London Authority with a question as to who is responsible for the Thames stairs, however so far I have not received a reply.

There is also the remains of the industrial use of the Thames. In the photo below there is a large layer of concrete, which may have been a slipway of some sort. The scaffolding is there to support maintenance work on the building above.

However behind the scaffolding is this large pipe which contains four smaller pipes. There were water draining from the two middle pipes, but I have no idea what they were used for, are they still used, and how far back they go.

There is a cobbled slipway on the foreshore, close by the stairs, and I did wonder if this was the site of the Wonderful London photo, however the slipway uses different stones, and is wider than the one in the photo:

The following extract is from the 1949 revision of the OS map. Ratcliffe Cross Stairs are in the centre of the map, and to the right I have highlighted a feature identified as a “jetty”:

Parts of this jetty are still visible:

Wood and concrete on the foreshore:

And the remains of an old shoe:

I do have a PLA Thames Foreshore Permit, but very rarely get the time for any serious searching. I have always wanted to find a complete clay pipe, but no luck. This would be a wonderful connection with those who once lived and worked on the river.

What I did find at Ratcliffe Cross Stairs was this stone bird:

It seems to have been made out of a lump of flint as the stone is exposed where part has broken off, however the overall shape of a bird and some of the decoration and colour can be clearly seen.

I have reported and sent photos to the Portable Antiquities Scheme Finds Liaison Officer at the Museum of London, so await an update as to whether it has any age.

The River Police are still a very visible presence on the Thames, and in 1937, Police Constable Earnest Butters of the Thames Police received £5 “in recognition of his courage in rescuing a five year old boy who had fallen into the river at Ratcliffe Cross Stairs on July 2nd”.

Ratcliffe Cross Stairs deserve more recognition, and more research. There are no plaques or information boards at the stairs to provide any information as to the historic importance of the location (as with all the Thames stairs).

The Ratcliffe Cross, after which the stairs are named is a fascinating bit of lost east London history, and has been added to my very long list of things to try and find out more about.

That is another set of Thames stairs explored, and all the stairs I have covered in previous blog posts can be found in the map at this link.

alondoninheritance.com

Wapping Dock Stairs

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If you have been on my Wapping walk, you will hopefully recognise the following view, and it is a view that I find fascinating as it represents the history of crossing the Thames between Wapping and Rotherhithe..

The main feature in the photo is Wapping Station, a station on the London Overground that from Wapping crosses under the river to the next stop on the route south at Rotherhithe.

I will touch on the station later in the post, but the main focus of today’s post is at the end of the walkway to the right of the station, a walkway that leads up to Wapping Dock Stairs.

If you have been reading the blog for a few years, you will realise I have a strange fascination with Thames Stairs.

Not so much the physical stair, although these are really interesting, historical structures, rather what the stairs represent.

For centuries, these were the main interface between the land and the river. If you were travelling up, down, or across the river you would use one of the Watermen who would cluster at the base of the stairs, to row you to your destination.

If you were leaving London, you would reach the boat taking you to your destination via a river stair, or if you were arriving back in London, you would return to the land via the stairs.

Countless thousands of people have used these stairs. For some, arriving at the stairs would be their first view of London, for those leaving, it could be their last view of London.

Many of those who have had to flee the country, for political or religious reasons, would have left the country via Thames stairs. Perhaps leaving in disguise, or in the dead of night to avoid recognition, to catch a boat to take them away from the country.

I have covered many such stories in previous blog posts, and will provide links at the end of today’s post, but for now back to Wapping Dock Stairs.

As with nearly all the stairs in Wapping, Wapping Dock Stairs are old, and date back to at least the end of the 17th century, and are probably much older.

In Rocque’s map of 1746, the stairs are shown in the centre of the following extract, with Wapping Dock Street being the street that leads up to the stairs:

Richard Horwood’s map of London from 1799 also shows Wapping Dock Stairs, and when compared to Rocque’s map, Horwood adds a level of detail with individual buildings lining the streets:

The location today, with the stairs and station circled, is shown in the following map ( © OpenStreetMap contributors):

Turning off Wapping High Street, this is the approach to the stairs. The walkway on the right leads to an entrance to the building on the right. The walkway on the left leads to the stairs.

Nearly every set of stairs in Wapping had a pub by the side of the approach to the stairs. Only two can be seen today, the Town of Ramsgate by Wapping Old Stairs, and the Prospect of Whitby by Pelican Stairs.

Wapping Dock Stairs also had a pub, the Swan, and we can get a view of the pub from an advert in the Morning Advertiser on the 2nd of December,1806 when the lease came up for sale:

“A lease for 21 years, and immediate possession, of the SWAN PUBLIC HOUSE, situate at the corner of Wapping Dock Stairs, as eligible a spot for business as any along the coast; it contains in the basement, an extensive dry cellar; on the ground floor, a convenient bar, large tap-room, and good parlour, and three stories above, with a space of about 30 feet square on each floor, divided into numerous well-proportioned rooms; here is an abundance of accommodation for lodgers, as well as ample conveniences for an extensive business; common industry and attention would assuredly beget here a very lucrative trade. May be viewed at any time for a week prior to the sale. Particulars to be had of Mr. Harris, No. 12, Gracechurch Street.”

There are many newspaper references to these pubs by stairs, and so often they offer a glimpse into a story which you really want to know more about, for example, from the Morning Advertiser on the 26th of August, 1808:

“If the next of Kin of Hendrick Steerwell, late belonging to the West India Merchant ship Ranger, dec. will apply at the Swan, Wapping Dock Stairs, they will hear of something to their advantage.”

This brief advert leaves so many questions unanswered. Who was Hendrick Steerwell, where and how did he die (presumably whilst serving on the West India Merchant ship Ranger). What did he leave that would be of advantage to his next of kin, did they benefit, and also what happened if there were several next of kin.

A whole story could be written based on that single advert from 1808.

The advert also highlights that the stairs were a key part of the pub’s location. Rather than giving an address on Wapping High Street, the pub is specifically mentioned as being at the stairs.

Back to Wapping Dock Stairs, and approaching the stairs there is a strong metal gate preventing any access to the stairs. Behind the gate are the stone steps often found at these stairs which added a bit height and therefore flood prevention from high tides:

Looking over the gate, and we can see why they were fenced off so securely:

There are stone steps that run down to where a series of wooden steps once led down to the foreshore. These wooden steps have completely eroded away.

From the bottom of where the wooden steps should have been, the remains of a causeway leads out across the foreshore, into the river.

Much of the causeway has also eroded, leaving only the wooden stakes on either side that would have held the causeway in position.

From the top of Wapping Dock Stairs, we can look across the river to Rotherhithe. This view would once have been full of ships, with ships being moored around the stairs, some of which were often for sale, such as on the 20th of November, 1805 when the following auction was advertised:

“This day, the 20th Instant, at Three precisely, The good Smack Ocean, built at Burnham in Essex, in 1798, is a strong, clinch-built vessel, and is well adapted for the Oyster Trade, a Pilot Boat, &c, well founded in stores. Lying at Wapping Dock Stairs.”

To pursue my rather nerdy interest in Thames Stairs, I have finally got hold of a copy of a book published by the Port of London Authority, titled “Access to the River Thames. A Port of London Authority Guide”, with the sub-title of “Steps, Stairs and Landing Places on the Tidal Thames”:

Although the book is not dated, I believe it was published around 1995.

It covers all the steps, stairs and landing places on the part of the Thames managed by the PLA, the tidal Thames, and covers from Richmond down to Southend.

There is an outline map, based on the area covered by a PLA chart for sections of the river, with the stairs along that stretch of the river marked and named.

There is a table for each set of steps, stairs and landing places describing key features of each. I copied the details for Wapping Dock Stairs into the following table:

The categories for each set of stairs, landing places etc. in the book are the same, allowing them to be compared.

For Wapping Dock Stairs the stairs are described as having a broken causeway and wooden stairs. This probably means that the wooden stairs were part there, but in the following 30 years they have disappeared completely.

Bathing is dangerous, and public access to the stairs is blocked by a fence which the London Borough of Tower Hamlets will remove when the stairs below Mean High Water Mark are made safe.

I have always wondered about responsibility for these stairs. The London Borough of Tower Hamlets were responsible for putting in the metal gate, but are they responsible for the stairs down to the foreshore, or is it the Port of London Authority who, along with the Crown Estate are the primary owners of the foreshore.

I have emailed the PLA asking who is responsible for the stairs, it will be interesting to see the reply.

The tables for all stairs, from Richmond to Southend list whether the stairs were a landing place in 1708 and 1977. Wapping Dock Stairs is listed as a landing place in 1708, which sets a minimum age for the stairs as over 300 years.

I do not know why 1708 has been used for all stairs, steps and landing places along the tidal Thames. A few quick searches have not revealed any surveys or maps that were made of the whole tidal river in 1708 – probably another question for the PLA.

The Grade 2 listed building that the table states that the stairs are adjacent to is the 1920s Gun Wharves that runs along 124 to 130 Wapping High Street.

I wrote at the start of the post that the photo of Wapping Station and Wapping Dock Stairs show the methods of crossing the river that have been in use for hundreds of years.

In the early 19th century, the increase in the numbers of people crossing the river by boat resulted in a proposal for a foot tunnel under the river.

The result was a foot tunnel where the rail route under the river is today. I walked through the tunnel in 2014, and the following is a brief extract from my post on the tunnel, which you can find here.

A Thames Tunnel was badly needed. It was a four mile circuit between Rotherhithe and Wapping via London Bridge and ferries carried 4,000 people across the Thames every day at Rotherhithe.

Marc Brunel was convinced that a tunnel could be built and had the concept of a shield to protect workers at the face of the tunneling work. A meeting with investors was held on the 18th February 1824 and a company formed with Brunel appointed as engineer.

The shaft was started in March 1825 and all appeared to be going well, however in January 1826 the river burst through, but work pressed on and by the beginning of 1827 the tunnel had reached 300 feet.

As work progressed, in addition to the risk of the river breaking through, there were all manner of problems including strikes, mysterious diseases (the River Thames was London’s main drain, polluted with a considerable amount of sewage) and explosions from “fire-damp”.

The river continued to burst through. On Saturday 12th January 1828 six workman were trapped and drowned and despite the hole being filled with 4,000 bags of clay the project was temporarily abandoned due to lack of funds. The tunnel was bricked up and no further work carried out for seven years.

Work started again on the 27th March 1835 and carried on for a further eight more years.

In March 1843 staircases were built around the shafts and Marc Brunel led a triumphant procession through the tunnel. Marc Brunel’s son Isambard worked with his father during the construction of the tunnel and was appointed chief engineer in 1827, however his work with the Great Western railway took him away from the tunnel during the later years of construction. Marc Brunel worked on the tunnel from start to finish.

As one of the sights of London, the Thames Tunnel was a huge success. Within 24 hours of the tunnel’s opening fifty thousand people had passed through and one million within the first fifteen weeks.

It did not remain a foot tunnel for long. The Thames Tunnel was purchased by the East London railway in 1866 and three years later was part of London’s underground railway system.

View along one of the tracks in the tunnel:

The wall between the two tracks in the tunnel had arches spaced at roughly regular intervals along the length of the tunnel.

When the tunnel first opened for foot passengers, a number of enterprising Londoners set out stalls in these arches selling to those who had come to walk through the tunnel. There were reports at the time of how all these stalls selling food, souvenirs etc. degraded the walk through the tunnel. Low level crime was also attracted to the tunnel.

Looking at the arches in what is now a railway tunnel shows a quality of design and finish that was meant to be seen by people walking through, rather than speeding past in a train.

So in summary, the view across to Wapping Station and the adjacent Wapping Dock Stairs shows:

The means of crossing the river between Wapping and Rotherhithe for hundreds of years by taking a boat from a Thames Stair
The introduction in 1843 of a foot tunnel which offered a new and unique way of crossing the river, and;
The purchase of the tunnel by the East London railway in 1866 and integration into London’s rail network, part of which it has remained to this day

There was another feature that I wanted to find related to the station. Walking slightly in land, along Clave Street, then Clegg Street, where on the corner is this building, part of the landscape of Wapping prior to the development of recent decades:

With some lovely metal fittings that allow the wooden door to be rolled along the front of the building:

Which I suspect have not worked for many years:

At the back of the building, there is a small green space, with a children’s playground in Hilliards Court. At the side of the playground is this structure:

Stand here for a few minutes and you will soon hear the very clear sound of a train, either pulling away from, or slowing down into, Wapping Station. An unexpected sound in this very quiet Wapping green space, coming from an air vent to the tracks below.

Openstreetmap includes the route of the railway, even though it is underground at this point. I have circled the air vent at the top of the following map ( © OpenStreetMap contributors):

The PLA book on Steps, Stairs and Landing Places on the Tidal Thames lists a total of 241 from Richmond to Southend, along both banks of the river – so I have only scratched the surface.

If you are interested in reading about the other Thames stairs I have covered, then:

alondoninheritance.com

The Broomway and a London Airport

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I am fascinated by both London, and the impact that London has had on the wider country. Even some of the most remote parts of the surrounding counties have felt the threat of London’s continual growth, and the infrastructure needed to service the rapacious city. To find such a place, and to walk what has been called the country’s most dangerous footpath, took me to Wakering Stairs in Essex last Sunday morning at 7am, ready to walk the Broomway.

The Broomway is an ancient footpath, several hundred years old, that links mainland Essex at Great Wakering with Foulness Island.

Foulness is now mainly Ministry of Defence property, although it does have a small community living on the island. The MoD have built a bridge connecting with the mainland, however before the bridge was constructed, the only way for residents to get to and from the island was via a boat across one of the creeks and channels that surrounded the island, or via the Broomway.

The shore facing the wider Thames Estuary / extreme southern part of the North Sea is extremely flat and extends a considerable distance from land. This has resulted in a large area of flat sands that are either covered by water, or as exposed sand, mud and low lying water, depending on the tide.

The part of the shore close to land is comprised of a black organic mud, that is very sticky, can drag down someone who walks into this area, and is very difficult to get out of.

Further out, there are reasonably stable sands, however these still have their dangers. It is these sands that offer a route to travel between the mainland and Foulness when the tide allowed, and was marked by poles of Broom and was used for centuries as a route to and from Foulness.

I have long wanted to walk the Broomway. I am reasonably good at planning routes which involve the tide, walking over tidal mudflats etc. however the Broomway is not a route I would take without an expert guide.

Tom Bennett is qualified in a number of outdoor activities, and offers guided walks along the Broomway. These sell out quickly, but a number of months ago I was able to book a walk in October, not my preferred month due to the risks of autumn weather, but in the end, it turned out to be a perfect day’s walking.

The route taken was between Wakering Stairs and Asplins Head, and the following map shows the location of these points, along with the location of Foulness, to the north-east of Southend (© OpenStreetMap contributors).

This is not the full route of the Broomway which originally went all the way along the easterly coast of Foulness, and there were a number of access points between the Broomway and the land.

I photographed the map on an information panel at Wakering Stairs, where there are plenty of warnings about the dangers of the area. The map shows the Broomway running parallel, but a distance offshore, to Foulness, and also shows the full length of the path, and the points where it is relatively safe to travel through the dangerous areas of mud near land and reach Foulness.

The time needed to walk the whole footpath, and return along the same route is such that it is difficult to avoid the incoming tide, so the walk last Sunday covered half the route.

Standing at Wakering Stairs at seven in the morning, looking out over the mudflats is rather magical. The sun rising above the distant sea, the sounds of flocks of birds on, and flying above the mud flats:

In the above photo, on the right, where the sea meets the sky, the Redsands Maunsell Fort can be seen.

So what is the London connection?

Maplin Sands is the name of the large area of sands offshore Foulness, and in the early 1970s, it was Maplin Sands and Foulness that almost became London’s third airport.

In the 1960s, London had two main airports, Heathrow and Gatwick. Air travel was growing rapidly, and this growth was expected to continue well into the future, so the search began for the site of a new airport.

In 1968 the Roskill Commission, also known as the Commission on the Third London Airport was formed, with the aim of investigating options, and making a recommendation for the location of the new airport. The commission was named after High Court Judge Eustace Roskill.

The locations were narrowed down to four, Cubington in Buckinghamshire, Foulness in Essex, Nuthampstead in Hertfordshire and Thurleigh in Bedfordshire.

The commission published their report in 1971, with a recommendation that Cubington in Buckinghamshire should be the site of the third London airport. The commission turned down the Foulness option mainly due to issues with accessibility, as Foulness was on an isolated part of the Essex coast, with no current, or easy to implement transport options. The commission feared that if transport options could be put in place, they would still be too far from central London, and airlines would continue to prefer Heathrow and Gatwick.

The Government turned down this recommendation, and went for Foulness which had been put forward in a separate report by Professor Colin Buchanan, a dissenting member of the Roskill Commission.

The reasons for this decision were the avoidance of significant impact to countryside and people, there was pressure from well funded groups opposing Cubington. Essex County Council were in favour of Foulness, and it was seen as a way to regenerate the area around Southend.

In the 1972-73 Parliamentary Session, the Maplin Development Bill was introduced and the Maplin Development Authority was set-up, which would have the responsibility for the development of the land, which, as well as the airport, would include a deep water port and new town, along with the transport links needed to connect the new airport to London, and the rest of the country.

The airport was supported by the then Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath, however it would not last long, with only minimal works to test whether the Maplin Sands could be reclaimed for the construction of the airport.

In March 1974 the Labour Party took over in Government, and commenced a review into the airport. In july 1974 the review was published and Peter Shore, the Labour MP for Stepney and Poplar announced that the Foulness / Maplin Airport project would be abandoned.

Back to the Broomway, and the walk over what could have become the third London airport, started at 7:30 am. The walk left Wakering Stairs and headed out, away from the coastline, and the dangerous mud. The following view is out on the Broomway, looking back towards Wakering Stairs:

The above photo shows large expanse of sands and water with hardly any landmarks. The first we reached was a small patch of grass growing in isolation:

To the south, Foulness is separated from the mainland by the Havengore Creek. Today, there is a bridge over the creek which is part of the upgraded roads along Foulness used by the limited number of occupants, and primarily by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

In the following photo the Havengore Bridge can be seen in the distance as we walk over the sands where the creek flows into the sea.

The island’s connection with the MoD starts in the mid 19th century when the War Office used sands to the south as an artillery range. The War Office tried to expand to the north and attempted to purchase Foulness Island from the Lord of the Manor, however he refused, although the War Office started to buy up any land or farms that became available.

When Alan Finch, the Lord of the Manor died in 1914, his half-brother inherited the estate and agreed to sell to the War Office, who then owned over two thirds of the island.

Since 1915, Foulness has effectively been a closed island. Mainly used by the MoD for weapons testing, but with a small community remaining and some farming.

The Essex Weekly News on the 18th of December 1914, described the island as:

“AN OLD WORLD PLACE – If Foulness island becomes simply a military area we shall see there after two thousand years an instance of how history repeats itself. The Romans selected Mersey Island further along the Essex shore as a military camp, and fortified it against invasions by Norsemen. Now another foe, equally barbarous again threatens us from the North Sea.

Foulness is very flat and scantily wooded, and but few farm houses and cottages are in view, although there is a population of about 480. The island was constituted a parish in 1550. The Parish Church erected in 1850 on the site of a series of wooden buildings, is dedicated to St Mary.

The nearest point on the mainland to Foulness is Great Wakering from whence as a spot known as “The Stairs” it is reached at low tide by a headway over the sands. Stubby tufts of broom stuck in the sand about thirty yards apart mark the way for the traveler. There have been some narrow escapes by those who have ventured along this wave-washed road; and indeed few experiences are more alarming than to find one-self along the ‘Broom-way’ as the road is called, a couple of miles from land in the dusk of a winter’s day with the tide beginning to race across the Maplins.”

Once out on the Broomway, it is easy to appreciate the risks whilst walking along this “wave-washed road”. You are separated from land by a dangerous area of mud. There are no visual reference points. The land is so flat that when the tide comes in, it does so rapidly. Not an incoming visible wave of water, rather a deceptive rise in the water level all around that cuts you off from the land.

The following view is looking out to sea from the Broomway. The sea is not visible, just an endless scene of sand and water until the horizon meets the sky:

And in the following photo, looking back to land from the Broomway, which is now a narrow strip on the horizon, with the “Black Grounds” of dangerous mud separating you from the safety of the land.

The military use of Foulness caused additional risk to those navigating the Broomway. The area was used for training and the test firing of guns and ammunition. This use continues to this day, and there are large warning signs at Wakering Stairs advising that “Do not approach any object or debris as it may explode and cause serious injury or kill”.

Newspaper reports illustrate the risk when the Broomway was in use by Foulness residents, as the following from the Southend Standard and Essex Weekly Advertiser on the 1st of December 1910 reports:

“FACING DEATH AT FOULNESS – EXCITING INCIDENT ON THE BROOMWAY: For a long time there have been many loud complaints from the people whose vocation causes them to use the road known as the Broomway from Wakering Stairs to Foulness Island, as to the serious danger which is caused by the gun practice from the Garrison at Shoeburyness.

On Tuesday last two people were driving across the Broomway when they had the narrowest of escapes from death, or serious disablement, by the bursting of a shell. They were in two traps, a few yards behind each other, and their attention was drawn to the gun firing which was going on from the Garrison. Naturally enough they felt no fear of danger, as the Broomway is on the edge of space allowed for practice is a mile or more away.

Several shots passed a safe distance away, but suddenly one great shell ploughed into the mud not more than thirty yards away and burst with a loud explosion. Vast quantities of mud and water were thrown out in all directions, and some of it, in great lumps, struck the two gentlemen who were driving, So great was the force of the explosion that a hole many feet long and deep, big enough to hold a wagon and team, was dug out. The horses were scared, and it was only with considerable difficulty that they could be prevented from bolting.”

The Broomway is only accessible from Wakering Stairs at the weekend as during the week, Foulness is still used for live firing.

Continuing the walk along the Broomway, and the most significant landmark on the sands comes into view. This is the Havengore Maypole:

It is known as the Havengore Maypole as it marks a channel into Havengore Creek much further to the coast, and was once held in place by cables extending from the top of the pole to moorings in the sands, one of which can be seen to the left of the pole on the following photo:

The Havengore Maypole is a significant marker in the wide expanse of featureless sand and water, however it was surprising how difficult it was to see from any distance. This is a problem with navigating the Broomway in that everything seems to blend into a featureless landscape, including the distant sea and land.

The weather on the day of my walk was really good. Clear skies, light wind and good visibility, however the Broomway is also at risk from sea fogs and mists which can roll in rapidly leaving a walker lost in a grey fog with no idea of the direction of travel.

There are stories of people being lost in fogs and walking out to sea rather than towards land.

The name Broomway comes from the use of sticks of Broom placed in the sands at regular intervals. By following these sticks, the traveler had confidence that they were on a safe route. They only then had the tide, fogs and the risk of an exploding shell to worry about.

There are very few of these markers left today, just the occasional base of a pole sticking out of the sands:

For centuries the Broomway was the main route between Foulness and the mainland. There is written evidence of its existence back to the 16th century, and it is probably much older.

It was used by all manner of means of transport. Coaches, pony and traps, bikes, walkers. Newspaper reports of travel along the Broomway mention that the Postman had one of the most dangerous jobs as he had to travel the Broomway on an almost daily basis.

Even at low tide the sands are covered by pools of water and there are a number of larger channels of water to cross:

Maplin Sands – Nothing but sand, water and sky, and somewhere in the distance is the sea with the returning tide:

After 5km of walking across the sands, we reached Asplins Head, the point where there is a causeway across the dangerous muds providing a safe route onto Foulness. The following photo shows the end of the causeway furthest from the land. It is a jumble of rocks and broken concrete.

If you look to the left half of the photo, where the sands meet the sky, you can make out a low wall. Apparently this enclosed an area that was used to test how fuel burnt with fuel being pumped into the space bounded by the wall and set on fire.

The view towards Foulness showing the length of the causeway:

The view from Foulness along the Asplins Head causeway. The low wall of the circular enclosure for fuel testing can be seen on the sands to the left:

Whilst the Broomway continues further than Asplins Head, continuing on the route at a reasonable walking pace, and being able to return to Wakering Stairs is a risk with the returning tide, so Asplins Head is as far as the walk took us along the Broomway.

After a short break, it was then a final 5km walk back along the Broomway to Wakering Stairs.

The Broomway is a fascinating walk. Despite the proximity of the MoD, and the use of the sands for weapons testing, Maplin Sands still feels very natural. Large flocks of wadding birds are further out on the sands, and the casts of lugworms are frequently seen on the sands.

The area had a lucky escape in the 1970s when plans to build the third London Airport on Foulness and Maplin Sands were cancelled.

The remote areas of the Thames Estuary have been the focus for a number of airport proposals over the decades. See my post on the Crow Stone, London Stone and an Estuary Airport for an example of the most recent proposals for an airport on the Isle of Grain and the Hoo Peninsula in north Kent.

Researching the history of the airport proposals, and at the time there was much support for an airport at Foulness, both within the local area, and from around London.

Two examples show very different reasons for supporting the proposals.

Toby Jessel, the MP for Twickenham was a vocal supporter of the Foulness airport. He had long been raising issues with the increasing number of flights at Heathrow, the disruption that noise caused to residents, and even the risk of an aircraft crash in heavily populated areas of London as the number of flights increased. He also saw Foulness as the option that would result in less damage to the countryside compared to the inland options.

There was also an article in the Stage and Television Today on the 19th of October 1972, which I found amusing as it relates to the opening of a club / disco in Southend that I frequented in the late 1970s – Talk of the South (better known as TOTS), and that its opening was down to the possibility of Foulness Airport:

“Southend, and more generally speaking the South of England, have been left out on a limb as it were as far as good cabaret facilities are concerned and it is fair to say that it was not without consideration of the new Foulness Airport, Britain’s new number one air terminal, that the idea of a delux cabaret club was formed.”

TOTS closed a couple of years ago, but it lasted for much longer than the airport proposals.

The Broomway is not a walk to take without the experience and skill needed to plan and navigate a path a long distance from shore, covering dangerous sands, and at risk of a rapidly incoming tide and changing weather conditions.

I booked my walk via Tom Bennett Outdoors, and his walks can be booked here.

alondoninheritance.com

Pickle Herring Stairs

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Today’s photo from my father’s collection is one I scanned a while ago, but had not investigated until planning my guided walked between Bankside and Tower Bridge. It was taken from the foot of Pickle Herring Stairs. a name that will be familiar to readers as I have written a couple of posts about Pickle Herring Street.

The photo was taken at the bottom of Pickle Herring Stairs, looking towards Tower Bridge, with the travelling cranes that lined the foreshore on the right.

The stairs have disappeared in the considerable redevelopment of the area, and the walkway along the river and embankment have been extended into the river, so it is impossible today to be exactly sure where the stairs were located, however by lining up with features on the opposite side of the Thames, I suspect they were roughly where I took the following photo. The perspective is different as I used a wider lens compared to my father’s photo to show some of the nearby features to help with locating the stairs.

To the right is the old City Hall for the Mayor of London, now closed following the move of the Mayor’s office further east towards the Royal Docks.

The following extract from the 1895 Ordnance Survey map shows the exact location of Pickle Herring Stairs (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

The above map shows that by the end of the 19th century, the side of the river was lined by warehouses, however the cranes seen in my father’s photo had not yet arrived.

These would be installed during the early decades of the 20th century when the warehouses were expanded, and large cranes were installed to handle the quantity and range of goods that needed to be moved from river to warehouse.

They were called “travelling cranes” as they moved on rails along the platform on which they were built, so they could easily get to the cargo that needed to be moved.

By the 1952 Ordnance Survey map (just a few years after my father’s photo), the jetties had been built on the foreshore, and the travelling cranes had been installed. The following extract from the map shows the length of the jetty which supported the cranes. Pickle Herring Stairs are circled to the left, and the map confirms that my father’s photo is looking at both Tower Bridge, and the end of the jetty (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“).

Looking from across the river, the following photo shows where the stairs were located:

View of the south bank of the River Thames

I have written about the area, and Pickle Herring Street, including theories as to the origins of the name in two posts – The Lost Warehouses of Pickle Herring Street, and Pickle Herring Street Revisited.

What is not clear is what came first, the name of the stairs or the name of the street, or whether they were named at the same time.

I suspect the name of the stairs came first, and this could support one of the possible sources of the name down to the landing of Pickle Herring at this point on the river. however I have no evidence to support this.

What is certain is that both stairs and street are old names.

Regular readers will know that I find these stairs fascinating. Not only the physical stairs (where they remain), but that they can tell us so much about life in the area.

I looked back at some early newspaper articles that mentioned the stairs, and found the following sample from the 18th century.

The first is a report about a fire, a very common event in the warehouses full of inflammable goods along the river:

“15th January 1740: On Thursday night about 11 o’Clock, a fire broke out at Mr. Brooks’s a Hoop bender near Pickle Herring Stairs, opposite the Tower, that raged with such violence that in three hours time above 20 dwelling houses, besides warehouses were consumed.

A young fellow, a Waterman, who had rescued his wife and child, returning to preserve some of his goods, is missing, and supposed to have perished in the flames.

Last night, Joseph Chitty, one of the Candidates for the Borough of Southwark, sent over a present of 20 Guineas to be distributed among the most necessitous of the sufferers by the said fire.”

There were so many suicides along the Thames, and one of the methods used would be to get a Waterman to row you out into the centre of the river, as this very tragic report of a woman abandoned after becoming pregnant tells:

“26th January 1748: Yesterday a young woman took a boat at Pickle Herring Stairs and desired to be ferried over; when the boat came to the middle of the river, she threw down six pence, and jumped over. The Waterman with great difficulty drew her again into the boat; on which she confessed that being far gone with Child by a Noble Lord, and being refused any assistance, had determined her to put a period to her existence.”

Papers were full of so many strange events across the City. One, where someone was tarred and feathered, also ended with what was probably some of the day to day racism which foreign seamen had to endure:

“18th October 1784: Friday the following singular occurrence took place. A seaman arriving after being discharged from a vessel lying off Pickle Herring Stairs, on account of his having rendered himself extremely obnoxious to the rest of the crew, was imprudent enough to return on board the ship, upon which he was seized by some of the men, stripped, and tarred and feathered, with as much dexterity as ever that discipline was inflicted in the Country where it was invented, and still practiced.

In this situation he walked to the Public-Office in Shadwell, followed by an immense concourse of people, and exhibited his complaint before Peter Green, the presiding magistrate, by whole order of several pounds of butter and some quarts of oil, were administered, to clear the man from the disagreeable covering.

During the above operation, proper persons were dispatched by the Magistrate in search of the delinquents and in something more than an hour they brought to the Office the Mate and five of the seamen belonging to the ship on board of which the act had been committed, against whom a charge for an assault was substantiated. The Captain bailed the Mate and four of the men, but the other, a youth about twenty, a native of Nevis, was committed to New-Prison, Clerkenwell.”

The earliest newspaper report I could find was the one from 1740, however the stairs are certainly much older. They appeared on the 1746 John Rocque map, as can be seen in the following extract:

I suspect these stairs went back to the medieval period, or even earlier. Stairs were such an important way of accessing the river, and naming stairs would have been incredibly important, as:

If you were arriving or departing on a ship, you needed to know where on the river the ship would be moored, and the nearest set of stairs to use for arrival or departure. There are plenty of newspaper references where a name of stairs are quoted for the location of a ship;
If you asked a Waterman to row you across or along the river, you would have needed to tell the Waterman the destination;
For sales of cargo or goods, a location was needed to advertise the sale. There are very many adverts over the centuries using the names of stairs to locate a sale;
For events on the river, the stairs provided a reference point, and newspapers used the stairs to refer to the many accidents, deaths, ships departing and leaving, thefts of goods, crimes against people, where press gangs were operating etc.

The unique naming of each individual stair was also important to avoid confusion, so even when stairs almost had the same name, and were in a very similar location, the name always had something to make them unique, for example Wapping Old Stairs and Wapping New Stairs on Wapping High Street.

An example of how the names of stairs were used can be seen in the following 17th century token, of the type issued by merchants and traders to be used instead of cash. The token references the trader’s location as at Pickle Herring Stairs (© The Trustees of the British Museum):

The name on the token is that of James Acrigg. The only record I could find of him was his marriage in London in February 1675.

The very last newspaper report I found about an event at Pickle Herring Stairs was dated the 16th of August 1928, when “The body of an unknown man aged about 40 was found today floating in the Thames near Pickle Herring Stairs. It is believed the man has been in the water for several hours.”

Following the above report, the story of Pickle Herring Stairs goes silent. They would still have been in use, however this would be much reduced. Better street and underground transport removed the need for a Waterman to row you along or across the river.

Access to ships on the river was now mainly from piers or when ships were docked alongside the infrastructure on the waters edge (such as the jetty seen in my father’s photo).

They were finally lost under the redevelopment of the area between London and Tower Bridges, when the open space and riverside walkway was built and extended out into the river.

I will leave the final words in today’s post to the London Rivers Association, who were quoted in the Illustrated London News on the 1st of May 1996, which reported on their campaign that “The London Rivers Association believes that the Thames should be made better use of for both public and freight transport. ‘Getting in touch with the Thames’ is endeavouring to open up all access points to the river – steps and stairs which once had such distinctive names as Elephant Stairs, Hoy Steps or Pickle Herring Stairs. Some of the Millennium projects are very glamorous, said a spokeswoman for the association. this scheme is more modest and will benefit everyone.”

Too late for Pickle Herring Stairs – but a scheme that I would fully support.

alondoninheritance.com

Pleasure Boats on the Thames

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This photo was taken by my father in 1951, from one of the bridges over the Thames (no idea which one), and shows one of the pleasure boats that have been a feature of London’s river for many years.

It was the only photo featuring the Thames on the strip of negatives, so I suspect he was walking over the bridge, saw the boat about to pass under the bridge, and quickly took the photo.

It is one of those photos that probably seemed of not much importance at the time. A scene that was, and continues to be, very common on the river, but 71 years later it is a snapshot of a group of people travelling along the River Thames.

The boat was called the Skylark. I cannot find any details about the boat, however the year was 1951 and I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the Skylark was one of the boats that served the Festival of Britain site on the Southbank, taking people to and from the pleasure gardens at Battersea. I have checked the indexes in my books on the Festival, but cannot find a reference to the Skylark so it may be my memory playing tricks – a lesson to keep better notes.

The following extract from the photo shows the people on the rear deck. Mainly adults, a couple of children, and all rather formerly dressed for a trip on the river:

Pleasure boats have been a feature of the Thames since the 19th century, when newspapers were full of adverts for pleasure trips on the river. The majority of these seemed to be a trip to somewhere, rather than a trip along the river with no stopping point, apart from a final return to the point of departure.

For example, in 1899, a return trip in the “magnificent new steamers Boadicea or Cleopatra” from Westminster to Gravesend to see the gardens could be had for one shilling and six pence.

The number of ships on the river did cause passengers some concern. A letter writer to the London Evening Standard complained of two steamers appearing to race each other on the river, and one almost crashing into his boat in attempt to overtake. He finishes off his letter with “I for one, will never again take a pleasure trip on the Thames”.

The river is much quieter today, but with the return of tourism to London, the pleasure boats are again filling up and can be seen taking passengers on tours up and down the river.

This was my attempt to emulate my father’s photo:

This is the view from Waterloo Bridge showing one of the mooring places for pleasure boats:

As well as general tours, you can take a Horrible Histories themed tour telling the story of the Terrible Thames:

A full City Cruises boat with one of the smaller Thames Clippers on the left:

The small Thames Clipper boat seems to have a specialised role to shuttle passengers from the cruise ships that moor alongside HMS Belfast, across the river to Tower Stairs.

The Silver Barracuda, one of the Woods Silver Fleet, owned by a family who have been Thames Watermen for over 150 years:

One of the dining boats that cruise up and down the river:

With the closure of the London docks, traffic on the river significantly declined with the late 1970s and early 1980s being a period where it was so sad to see the quiet river.

The river has though, long been a way to travel across London – a liquid Central Line.

Going back centuries, it was often the fastest and safest method of travel, with watermen being the taxis of the day, rowing passengers between the numerous Thames stairs. Although they did have frequent accidents, and negotiating a fixed price was often a challenge until the gradual regulation of watermen services on the river helped to clamp down on poor practices.

Today, the ferry services once provided by a waterman rowing you along the Thames has been replaced by the Uber Boats run by Thames Clippers:

The Thames Clippers have been a 21st Century success story along the Thames. Since starting with a single boat in 1999, the company now has around 20 boats serving passengers on the Thames. The majority were made in Australia, however three, Jupiter, Mercury and Venus, were built on the Isle of Wight.

Each of the boats has their own unique flash of colour on the side of the bow (front) of the boat. In the above photo, the colour is (I think), mint, which identifies the boat as the Tornado Clipper (helpfully the name is also above the flash of colour, however the colour helps with identification at a distance).

Cyclone Clipper:

The Thames Clippers are the latest in a series of post-war attempts at running passenger services on the river. Some more successful than others.

Starting in 1905, the London County Council launched a number of steam-boat ferries along the Thames, with 30 boats at the peak of services. The following photo shows the “Opening of the L.C.C Steamboat Service by H.R.H The Prince of Wales”.

The post-war reduction in the population of east London, along with the closure of industry and docks along the river reduced the need for a ferry service, however there were a number of attempts at launching ferry services.

1968 saw a Hovercraft service along the river. The first hydrofoil, Shearwater 5 started passenger services in 1969. In 1988 Thamesline offered a service between the developing docklands and the City and a limited River Bus service was launched in 1989.

The launch of the Thames Clippers in 1999 came at a time when the redevelopment of the docklands resulted in increasing populations of residents and office workers, as well as significant increases in tourist numbers. investment by the company that owned the O2 also helped with the growth of the Thames Clipper services that we see today.

In 2019, the last year before Covid, Thames Clippers carried a total of 4.3 million passengers.

An addition to the Thames over recent years has been the ribs that offer visitors a high speed trip down the river to the east of Tower Bridge. Yellow ribs:

And red ribs, with a London Eye River cruise moored at the London Eye pier in the background:

Ribs moored up at the Festival Pier on the Southbank:

As well as tourist and passenger traffic, there are many other users of the Thames.

The Thames River Police can frequently be seen speeding along the river:

And much of London’s waste is compacted into containers at depots along the river, from where it is then transferred by barge to an incinerator in Belvedere, where it is burnt to generate electricity.

Although the central Thames alongside the City will not see the cargo shipping that was a feature of this part of the river for centuries, it is good to see that the river is busier than it was in the late 1970s.

Tourist boats, work boats, and the Thames Clippers, ensure that there is much to see along the river.

One of the best Twitter accounts and blogs for monitoring the range of traffic on the Thames, is the Tidal_Thames95 Twitter account and the Tidal Thames blog, both by Patricia Stoughton.

Hopefully there will be pleasure, ferry and work boats on the River Thames for many years to come.

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Lovells Wharf and Enderby House, Greenwich Peninsula

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I recently scanned some negatives from 1986, and came across three photos taken in Greenwich, where the walk along the river heads past the power station and the Cutty Sark pub, and joins the Greenwich Peninsula. This is the first of the three:

Very roughly the same view today – despite lots of walking around I could not get exactly the same view, as the area has been remodeled considerably since the mid-1980s.

Along the wall in the 1986 photo there were painted white letters for C. Shaw & Sons Ltd and Lovell’s Wharf:

The books by Mary Mills are my go to source for anything about the Greenwich Peninsula, and Mary has recently published “The Greenwich Riverside. Upper Watergate to Angerstein”:

For a detailed history of the peninsula and the considerable industrial heritage of the area, the book is invaluable.

The book states that the company Shaw Lovell leased the site in the 1920s. A company with a Bristol heritage, their business was as a “Shipping and Forwarding Agent”.

The company handled non-ferrous metals, including in the 1920s, scrap from the Great War battlefields.

A view of the methods that the company used to transport material between shipping on the river and the land is shown in the following photo from a bit further along the Greenwich Peninsula:

The same view today:

I found the exact position for the above photo. The chimneys of the power station, and domes to the right help, but in the foreground there is the low concrete wall on the left, and behind the barges in the 1986 photo is where the shore wall extends out into the river. If I had timed my visit better, I could have got the tide in the same position.

The main differences between the two photos is the lack of shipping moored alongside the wharf, and the cranes being used to transport materials.

The cranes were significant local landmarks. They may have dated from around 1950 and were originally in use in Dublin. The cranes moved to Greenwich in the 1970s, and remained on site until 2000, when the owner of the land had them removed.

To put the locations of this week’s post in context, the following map shows where I will be covering. Starting at the red circle, with the above photos just north of this circle, and finishing at the end of the post at the blue circle (© OpenStreetMap contributors).

As can be seen by comparing the above then and now photos, the area has changed considerably. What was an area of considerable industry has been derelict for some years, and over recent years the northward expansion of apartment buildings has started along the western side of the peninsula, and will no doubt meet the southward run of buildings close to the O2 dome.

Looking along the foreshore towards the dome at the northern tip, with new apartment buildings replacing the industries that once occupied the area:

View across the river to the towers of the Isle of Dogs:

Two colour apartment blocks:

Of the many industries along this stretch of the river, one was a company that was key in the provision of a technology that enabled communications across the world. This was the manufacture of submarine communication cables which took place at Enderby Wharf and it is here that we can see the remains of some of this activity.

Here was manufactured the first cable to cross the Atlantic and up until the mid 1970s much of the world’s subsea communication cables had been manufactured here. The web site covering the history of the Atlantic Cable and Undersea Communications has a detailed history of Enderby Wharf.

The tower structure that can still be seen is part of the mechanism, along with the smaller wheel on the left, used for transferring cable from the factory on the right to cable ships moored in the Thames on the left. Cable would be run across the walkway to the top of the tower then to the round hold-back mechanism on the left then onto the ship:

It was here that I was really surprised to see a new pub – Enderby House:

Enderby House is a historically important building. Grade II listed, the Historic England listing provides more details about the building:

“Enderby House belonged to the firm of Samuel Enderby, the largest whalers and sealers in Britain, and pioneers of Antarctic exploration. Hermann Melville describes their flagship and crew in “Moby Dick”. The decline of British whaling led to the Enderbys ceasing to have an interest in Enderby’s Wharf in 1854. It was then taken on by Glass, Elliott and Company, a contractor for the first transatlantic telegraph cable (lost while being laid in 1857) then the second in 1858 which operated for a few weeks. The business was reconstituted in 1864 as the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, who manufactured cable at Enderby’s Wharf to an improved design for another attempt in 1865, and a fourth in 1866, both times with the Great Eastern as the cable-laying ship, and by the end of 1866 had achieved the first successfully working transatlantic telecommunications cable connection. “

The last time I walked along this stretch of the peninsular in 2015, from Cutty Sark pub to O2 dome, Enderby House was looking in a very poor condition:

I walked around the outside of the pub, but could not see any references to the history of the site, or to the impact on communication technologies that the products manufactured here would bring, however the pub sign did appear to illustrate what I assume to be a representation of a telecommunications cable:

Opposite, within the fenced off wharf, was an example of a length of cable and the housing for the repeater equipment that would amplify the signal as it travelled for thousands of miles under the sea:

I get really conflicted when I see a building such as Enderby House. I am pleased that it is still there, and that it is a new pub (too many of these are closing), however it appears to be heavily altered, and does not appear to offer any information as to the importance of the site, apart from retaining the name and the pub sign.

Perhaps there is information inside and I am being unfair. I did not have time for a visit, having a meet arranged at the Cutty Sark pub on the walk back.

View of the northern side of Enderby House – if I was responsible for decorating the building I would have an artwork representing a trans-Atlantic cable running along the side of the building to break up the rather bland cream paintwork.

Fenced off access to the wharfs near Enderby House:

There is a flat wall of stone to be found among the apartment buildings and facing on to the walkway along the river:

Rather than repeat what the information panel to the right of the wall states, I will summarise Mary Mills comments from her book.

There was a road that ran underneath the new apartment buildings between Lovell’s and Granite Wharf (which was to the north of Lovell’s).

Much of the boundary wall of Granite Wharf along this roadway was made up of an extraordinary range of what appeared to be random stone, and was thought to have been quarried in Dorset, shipped to Greenwich where it was stored until it was sold for use in a construction project. Some of this stone had been used to construct the wall.

This stone wall was important as it was a visual demonstration of the stone trade from along the English Channel.

When the wall, along with the rest of the site was being demolished, Mary Mills was instrumental in getting the importance of the stone recognised, however the wall created by the developer using the stone is very far from how it was originally used, and what had been rough stone had been tided up considerably and placed in what is now a smooth wall of stone. Again, good that it has been retained, but it could have been so much better.

Soon after walking past Enderby House, development has stopped and the river path changes from a new, wide path in front of apartment buildings, to a narrow path alongside the derelict sites that are probably scheduled for development:

Where tour buses go to park:

I really love this part of the walk along the peninsula. A narrow path along the river’s edge, quiet, and a chance to think about what was here:

I still had my third 1986 photo to track down, and I suspect it was taken from the following pier:

This was the view looking back towards central Greenwich in 1986:

The following photo was the closest I could get to recreating the above. The landmarks of Greenwich all line up reasonably well. The barges moored alongside the pier in 1986 have all disappeared.

To the side of the footpath, there are the remains of structures that once provided access to the long gone industrial premises that lined the river:

A long closed gateway:

Looking back along the footpath – this stretch of the river is so very different to that which has already been developed, and I assume that at some point in the future, this footpath will become the same wide pedestrianised area next to new apartment buildings, as found at the start of the post:

A welcome sign:

The sign points to what looks like a temporary bar / pizza area built in front of Morden Wharf:

Morden Wharf was named after Morden College, the freeholder of much of the land in the vicinity of the wharf.

The last time I walked along the peninsular, Morden Wharf was fenced off from the footpath with high, wooden panels, these have now been removed with only their vertical metal supports remaining.

Having reached Morden Wharf, I turned back towards Greenwich.

The area that I have walked which has not yet been developed, is planned to undergo a significant transformation. The footpath winding its way between the river and the derelict industrial sites will disappear and large new towers will be built.

The developed is called Morden Wharf, and the website describing the development can be found here.

Scroll to the bottom of the page, on the Morden Wharf website, and the area I have walked can be seen to the right of the old brick Morden Wharf building, and the bar and pizza area will apparently become “The reinstated Sea Witch pub”, a very different recreation of a pub that was once close to the river, and that was badly damaged by a V1 flying bomb on the 12th of July 1944.

The 1986 photos captured some of the last years of some of the industry along this side of the Greenwich Peninsula. It would then remain derelict for some years, and is now undergoing a significant transformation. It is a good time to walk the western side of the peninsula before this happens.

My 2015 walk along the peninsular to the O2 dome can be found here and shows how the area is changing, and the final part of the walk.

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St Saviour’s Dock

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Before heading to St Saviour’s Dock, a quick thank you for ordering tickets for this year’s walks. At the time of writing, the Barbican walks and Wapping walks are sold out. Many of the Bankside dates have sold out, but there are some tickets remaining on later dates, and there are a few on the Southbank walks.

St Saviour’s Dock is an inlet from the Thames in Bermondsey, just to the east of Tower Bridge on the south bank of the river. We can look across the river near Hermitage Moorings on the north bank, and see St Saviour’s Dock just to the left of Butlers Wharf.

Cross over to the south bank of the river, and on approaching the dock, there is a walkway spanning the entrance:

View from the footbridge across to the north bank of the river, at low tide, with thick mud across the foreshore:

Looking along St Saviour’s Dock – a carpet of mud:

St Saviour’s Dock is a very old feature of this section of the river. Originally the mouth of the River Neckinger, although it is very hard to pin down exactly where the Neckinger ran with any certainty, and how much of the water course was a natural river.

There were many streams and ditches in this area of Bermondsey and much of the land was low lying marsh. Some of the ditches which may have once been part of the Neckinger can be seen on 18th century maps, which I will come to later in the post.

Looking south along St Saviour’s Dock, the bends in the dock give the impression of a natural feature. Early maps show the sides of the dock as relatively straight, so the curves we see today may have been the result of extending some of the warehouses that line the dock as an attempt to maximise warehouse space.

At the far end of the dock, it comes to an abrupt halt at “Dock Head” at the junction of Jamaica Road and Tooley Street.

It is impossible to know for sure as to the origins of St Saviour’s Dock. It appears to have been part of the lands of Bermondsey Abbey, and what was then a natural watercourse, had banks created on either side, and a mill built on one side of the dock by the abbey at some point around the 13th century.

Just to the east of St Saviour’s Dock is Mill Street, apparently named after a mill stream which ran along the route of the street and which powered the mill, which was used to grind corn for the abbey. Mill Street is on the other side of the warehouses that line the eastern side of the dock, so is very close and complicates the mapping of waterways in the area.

The land around St Savoiur’s Dock was fully developed between the 16th and start of the 19th centuries, as maps from the 17th and 18th centuries confirm.

The following is an extract from William Morgan’s map of London from 1682. St Saviour’s Dock is located just to the lower right of centre of the map:

Note that the name of the dock in the map is Savory’s Dock. This may be a simple corruption of the name, or it could have been a rather sarcastic description of the dock given that there was much pollution from the surrounding buildings, and Bermondsey’s growing industry, that ended up in the dock.

I like the depiction of a small boat in the dock. It looks too wide to be a waterman’s boat, and could have been a lighter that transported goods between boats moored in the river and the warehouses lining the dock.

By the time of Morgan’s map in the late 17th century, it appears that buildings were lining the majority of the dock, and streets had been built to the east.

If you click on the above map to enlarge, you can see that to the right of St Saviour’s Dock were a number of water channels, and that to the lower centre edge of the map, there are what appear to be two water channels either side of a road, with a name of “The Neckincher” along the street. presumably this name applies to the water channels, and is a version of the name Neckinger.

This is the problem with being sure as to the route of the Neckinger, and how much of the route was a natural feature, and how much were artificial channels and ditches used to perhaps provide water to the industries in the area, or to drain what was low lying, marshy land.

Seventy three years after Morgan’s map, a 1755 map has St Saviour’s Dock on the edge of the map, with the surrounding area looking much the same as in 1682:

It is interesting that the name Savory Dock was again used on this later map. This name does not appear to be used when reporting anything about the dock in newspapers. For example on the 10th of January 1730, the Kentish Weekly Post used the name Saviour in a report that “Last Sunday, a Man, well dressed, was found drowned in St Saviour’s Dock”.

I can find no newspaper reference to the Savory spelling of the dock’s name.

Newspaper’s do give us an idea of the type of businesses and properties that surrounded the dock in the years around the publication of the above map. For example, on the 11th of January 1762 there was a report of a fire in one of the buildings along the dock:

“Thursday morning a fire broke out in a granary belonging to Mess. Hemmock and Co. Corn Lightermen, at St. Saviour’s Dock, near Dock Head, which was consumed, together with 8 dwelling houses, and a great many warehouses, and other out-buildings; three other dwelling houses were greatly damaged. Mr Allport, a biscuit maker, and his family, ran into the street almost naked, not having time to save anything. It being low-water, it was with difficulty a whole tier of ships was preserved, as they lay upon the mud close to the Dock, and nothing parted them from the flames but a crane house, which took fire several times, but by the activity of the firemen was prevented from getting to a head. We hear no lives were lost.”

So in 1762, St Saviour’s Dock was surrounded by a granary, dwelling houses, and a great many warehouses, which does align with the view presented in the above maps. As well as the granary, there are also mentions of a “Mr John Robinson’s Rope Warehouse” in the dock in the mid 18th century.

The following map is dated 1813 and includes the names of the wharfs along the dock. Only two also have the names of products stored, with a granary at lower left of the dock and a lime yard at upper right.

What is interesting about the above map is the area to the left (east) of St Saviour’s Dock.

On this map there are a number of streams / ditches shown, along with bridges over these. I have highlighted the waterways with arrows.

The area between the waterway on the left and St Saviour’s Dock is the area that would become known as Jacob’s Island (after Jacob Street running through the centre). It was Charles Dickens who would bring some notoriety to this small patch of Bermondsey when he apparently located Fagins den and Bill Sykes death in Jacob’s Island in his novel, Oliver Twist.

In the lower left of the map, I have included the photo of Bridge House, a house that was built over one of the bridges (arrowed). I have researched and written about the location of Bridge House in my post “A Return To Bermondsey Wall – Bevington Street, George Row And Bridge House”.

The above map does confirm that the area was still a place of ditches and streams in the early 19th century, all possibly once part of the Neckinger, but would disappear during the rest of the 19th century as new warehouses and roads were built. The ditches do not appear to have any connection to St Saviour’s Dock or the River Thames, so must have just held stagnant water.

The following print shows a view of St Saviour’s Dock around 1840 – but the print is not quite what it seems (© The Trustees of the British Museum):

Underneath the name St Saviour’s Dock is the name “Southwark” rather than Bermondsey. The above print is really of the dock just to the north west of Southwark Cathedral, where the replica of the Golden Hind is now located.

Southwark Cathedral was originally the church of St Mary Overie. The church was renamed St Saviour’s at some point around the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, and this name would remain in place until 1905 when it became Southwark Cathedral.

The small dock just to the north west of Southwark Cathedral was originaly Mary Overie Dock, but with the renaming of the cathedral, the dock took on the name of St Saviour’s Dock and is shown with this name in Rocque’s map of London from 1746, and in this 1811 print which shows the church of St Saviour (Southwark Cathedral) at lower centre, and St Saviour’s Dock to upper left.

The 1895 OS map continues to show the Southwark dock as St Saviour’s Dock.

So there were two St Saviour’s Docks, and we need to be careful with references to the name. Today the Southwark dock is the location of the Golden Hind replica, and the address on the Golden Hinde’s website is back to the original name of St Mary Overie Dock.

The 1895 Ordnance Survey map of the Bermondsey St Saviour’s Dock shows that the dock was lined with warehouses, wharfs and factories, including a flour mill, coal wharf, packing case factory and lime wharf – the typical mix of industries that you would find along any stretch of the industrial Thames in the 19th century.

As with so much of the London docks, St Saviour’s Dock went into decline after the war. Warehouses located down a narrow inlet just were not suitable for the size and type of ships, and containerisation would kill off any hope of using warehouses such as those found in the dock.

St Saviour’s Dock remained as an open inlet to the Thames, but the buildings along the edge of the dock started a path to dereliction.

St Saviour’s Dock has been used in a number of films. One of these in the years before the buildings were transformed is Derek Jarman’s 1978 film Jubilee.

Jarman lived for a time in Butler’s Wharf, between the dock and Tower Bridge, and the film, which is still available as a DVD, whilst a typical Jarman film and very much of its time, is good to watch for one interpretation of punk and the late 1970s, but also for some London location spotting.

In the following clip, the characters Bod, Mad and Chaos are about to throw a body over the side of St Saviour’s Wharf, to the mud below, with the empty warehouses in the background:

From the 1980s onwards, the majority of the wharfs lining St Saviour’s Dock would be converted to apartments and offices. A walk along the side streets that follow the dock to the east and west reveals how many have survived.

Starting in Mill Street which runs along the eastern side of the dock, and to the north east corner is New Concordia Wharf:

New Concordia Wharf was originally built in 1882 as St. Saviour’s Flour Mill, however after one of the fires that seemed to be a frequent risk to the wharfs along the river, it was rebuilt between 1894 and 1898.

St. Saviour’s Flour Mill / New Concordia Wharf included a flour / corn mill, continuing a tradition of milling flour that goes back to the original mill built on the banks of the dock by Bermondsey Abbey in the 13th century.

Rather than being powered by water, the mill was steam powered, and the water tank and chimney remain, although the water tank has been somewhat hidden by changes to the roof of the building.

The chimney was truncated in 1979, and now looks rather ungainly with what appears to be a concrete slab on the top of the chimney, but is still an unusual sight on the end of a warehouse.

Conversion of New Concordia Wharf to apartments was carried out between 1982 and 1983 and was one of the first examples of the warehouse conversions that would become the standard for the type of building along the Thames.

We then come to Grade II listed St. Saviour’s Wharf:

St. Saviour’s Wharf was built in 1868, and was for sale by auction in 1870. The advert for the auction provides some details of this 1868 building:

“Saint Saviour’s Sufferance Wharf, together with the modern pile of warehouses in Mill Street erected in 1868 in the most substantial manner under the superintendence of an eminent architect and so arranged as to fulfil all the requirements of the Metropolitan Buildings Act and of the Fire Insurance Companies. The premises comprise three double warehouses each with five floors and basement, having a frontage of 117 feet next Mill-street.

The various floors are carried on columns from basement to roof, and are strongly timbered. The ground floor is asphalted. The party walls are 2 feet 3 thick, and there is no communication between the three warehouses, except on the basement.

There are two staircases to each warehouse, and loophole doors and windows on each floor fronting the land and waterside.

The floors of two of the warehouses are divided by brick walls 2 feet 3 thick, communicating by chambers, enclosed by wrought iron folding double doors.”

The details of the construction of the buildings were important for potential buyers. Not just to show the strength of the building, but also that the building was designed to limit the spread of fire.

Fires in warehouses were a continual risk. Buildings on top of each other, all crammed with highly combustible goods resulted in frequent fires, and the newspapers almost always had reports of fires in warehouses along the Thames (for example, see my post on the “The Great Fire at London Bridge”).

No idea what the purchaser of St Saviour’s Wharf paid for the buildings, however today, a 2 bedroom apartment is for sale at £1.2 million.

The view along the southern end of Mill Street, with more wharfs and warehouses. Unity Wharf nearest.

Unity Wharf is Grade II listed and is now mainly office / commercial space. In the 1953 publications “London Wharves and Docks”, Unity Wharf is listed holding Canned and Cased Goods, Bagged produce and General.

To the side of Unity Wharf is the entrance shown in the following photo:

It was gated half way along on my visit, but appears to be one off, if not the only passage through the wharfs to the side of St Saviour’s Dock.

In the 1895 Ordnance Survey Map, the passage is shown, and marked as “Free Landing Way”, which I assume meant that it could be used by anyone to land something by boat in St Saviour’s Dock, and the passage provided a route between water and Mill Street. I would have loved to have got to the end of the passage and looked over the edge into the dock.

At the end of Mill Street, we reach the junction of Jamaica Road and Tooley Street. In the following photo, the steps to the left of the red bins lead up to the wall at the very end of St Saviour’s Dock – the point labeled Dock Head in the 17th and 18th century maps earlier in the post.

Climb the steps, look over the wall, and we can look down on St Saviour’s Wharf:

Towards the northern end of the dock where it meets the River Thames and is spanned by the footbridge:

We can now walk along Shad Thames, the street that runs along the wharfs on the western edge of the dock.

The buildings have a couple of footbridges between the wharfs on the right and additional warehouse space on the left. These were used to transport goods between buildings without having to travel up and down floors and across the street, although looking closely at one of the bridges, I doubt these are original, they look either very good restorations or new copies of what would have spanned the street.

The following photo shows the “B” warehouse of St Andrew’s Wharf:

This building dates from 1850 and is Grade II listed, but as can be seen by the changes in brickwork, it has been partially rebuilt a number of times, most recently when it was converted for residential use.

We then come to the point in Shad Thames where it leaves the wharfs that line St Saviour’s Dock, and turns west to head towards Tower Bridge.

At this corner point is the much rebuilt and restored Butler’s Wharf:

And that brings me to the end of a look at St Saviour’s Dock, and the wharfs and warehouses that line this ancient inlet from the River Thames.

Although the buildings have been converted to residential and commercial, they do still provide a really good impression of what the dock would have looked like from the late 19th century onwards.

The thing that is missing is noise and activity. Walking the area today and it is quiet. No lighters in the dock, no goods being loaded and unloaded and very few people walking the streets.

The dock itself is always thick with mud, and I have never seen anyone searching the dock or foreshore. A good thing as it looks highly dangerous, but intriguing to imagine what is buried beneath the mud given the centuries of use of St Saviour’s Dock.

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A London Inheritance

A Private History of a Public City

Category Archives: The Thames

Queenhithe – The Original London Dock

Trig Lane Stairs and Thames Foreshore Erosion

Limehouse Hole Stairs and the Breach

Ratcliffe Cross Stairs

Wapping Dock Stairs

The Broomway and a London Airport

Pickle Herring Stairs

Pleasure Boats on the Thames

Lovells Wharf and Enderby House, Greenwich Peninsula

St Saviour’s Dock

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